Co-ops joining social.coop

@Rich Jensen to your point, applicants would still be asked to introduce themselves and explain their interest in joining.

Thanks @Nathan Schneider. I'm sure it'll all work out. No coops nor admins will be harmed. :) For the sake of good protocol I see should have offered a solution with my 'nay'. Was thinking of a slight revision like: Individuals, cooperatives and other organizationssupporting cooperativesare welcome to join. I understand it may be redundant and unnecessary under the circumstances. Let the will of the people prevail!

I like this. Maybe "who identify with the cooperative movement"?

Maybe "...that identify with the cooperative movement.." ?

Looks great w/amendment! Can't seem to change my vote, but I would if I could. Appreciate you NS and the collectivity of the beings present.

I think the home page text is becoming less prominant in Mastodon 4.0 (eg. see fosstodon.org when you're not logged in), so it might be good to stick this on the wiki homepage or somewhere similar too.

@jicka The proposal states that an organizational membership provides one account, not accounts for all of the co-op's members. The language is that org membership is "on a similar basis to individual membership, one membership = one account, on Loomio, Mastodon, and other services." Would you consider changing your vote?

I don't see where it is specified, but I'm on mobile and probably missed it. Thank you for the clarification!

Vote updated.

I'd like to surface a dissenting comment by @brainwane:

I'd like more clarity on allowed/aligned orgs. Related recent conversation with potential member: https://mastodon.social/@b0rk/109309598903058486

She asked: "i’m a bit confused by 'Promote products or services provided by individuals, cooperatives, or aligned communities over those provided by non-co-op, for-profit companies.' in [the CoC] like i run a for profit company, does that mean i shouldn’t join and promote my things?"

-Julia Evans, an indie educator who makes and sells comics.

I forgot this language is in the CoC, and I worry it is a bit draconian. I think we should express cooperative commitments through cultural signaling, not constraints on speech. I wonder if we should add another proposal here, something like:

• Remove the above language from the CoC. There are certainly cases when a cooperator might ethically feel obligated to advocate a superior non-cooperative service over a cooperative one.

• Add a question to the registration form like this: "What is your relationship to the cooperative movement?" This would encourage more self-selection among members who are active friends of cooperativism.

• Add language to our wiki like this: "Social.coop stands in support of the broader cooperative movement, in alignment with cooperative Principle 6, cooperation among cooperatives."

The key term in the CoC is "over". It doesn't say that someone can't promote products and services from non-co-ops. It says not to tell people to use those over using co-op options.

But what if, for instance, it is something like this: An activist wants a secure communication tool. I tell them, you can use DMs on Social.coop, but really you should probably use Signal instead, because it has stronger security protocols. I recommend Signal for this use-case over Social.coop.

I think it is pretty extreme that we would discipline people for a case like this.

The quote is from a positive mandate, that members will actively promote co-op and related options. I do agree that we would do well to adjust the language so it doesn't imply "promote co-op options even if they are worse in some ways". I think the ideal we want is that people should mention co-op options and highlight them for being co-op options. Signal is non-profit FWIW, and it doesn't itself have corporate ads etc, so it's closer to co-op values than something like WhatsApp.

Anyway, there's a separate fundamental problem I have with your reply. The entire idea that the CoC implies "discipline" as though that's some imposition of top-down power which is therefore extreme… that is a totally dysfunctional (but the widespread unfortunate view) of CoCs. A good CoC should embrace principles of restorative and transformative justice. It should celebrate learning and conscious-raising. And it should be celebrated when someone points out how I missed a chance to follow a mandate from the CoC, not be seen as a threat. "Oh thanks! I'm glad this experience reminded me to learn about and promote the co-op options!" and I edit my post accordingly, and everything is just better. There's nothing extreme and no top-down-discipline needed, and I strongly oppose the interpretation that a CoC is inherently about top-down discipline and should only apply when we need to impose some harsh penalty or something. A restorative CoC is what enables us to maintain higher standards than "don't be grotesquely toxic" or something.

Granted, newcomers will come often to see a CoC as "if I mess up, I'll be in big trouble" because that is the toxic horrible way that many communities use CoC. So, we do have to do the diligence of framing the CoC to acknowledge this common impression and deal with it before people then review the CoC itself.

Thanks for this, and I appreciate your reflections on the spirit. Even then, though, I think that part of the CoC is not something I support. I spend my life advocating the co-op movement, but there are often times when I have to be honest with people about what co-ops can do. And an edge case like Signal is precisely the kind of reason why the wording is weird. Regardless of how the CoC is practiced, I don't think that's a statement we need in it.

We're in agreement. CoC like everything else should be continually iterated and improved. This language definitely could be better. Let's just improve it keeping clearly in mind the idea of pursuing this vision that people don't get super anxious about any possible CoC issues. We want the CoC to highlight things that everyone can wholeheartedly support the spirit of and that we all welcome the feedback and learning opportunities if we have a place to improve our conduct. The key to making that work is clearly expressing that CoC issues get addressed by just asking people to fix things, not by top-down censoring and banning and tracking flags as some judgment of members. All those punitive approaches must be reserved for exceptional cases of persistent bad-faith conduct.

@Lynn Foster I'm not sure I understand your concern. I think what we are proposing is that organizations would manage their own credentials for their account. Why would they need additional software first?

There are co-ops and other groups that use social.coop now. Like DisCO, like Codeberg. So we have that now, and I'm sure they understand they need to manage their group-ness themselves, e.g. credential sharing. I just thought if we are going explicitly encourage co-ops to join, that is something different, and it would be good to be able to actually support them as co-ops. I just re-read the original proposal, and see it is only about culture and capacity. So I guess my concern isn't really valid for this proposal, and it is assumed that explicitly inviting them doesn't mean there is any particular support for them as a co-op. Which is probably fine, I'm not on twitter, but expect there isn't any support there either. I'll change my vote to abstention, since I don't know enough to have an opinion of the culture or capacity questions. Thanks for checking!

@juniper cameryn @Rich Jensen @brainwane I have modified the proposal in a way that I hope addresses the bulk of your concerns. Would you consider changing your vote?

Thanks so much for raising good concerns here!

Hi Nathan!

Just saw the Loomio via email to [email protected]... which, I think (?), is the account I used to cast my vote previously.

But now I cannot access that vote page from this account.

I think I have messed things up, some way or another, by also registering with a social.coop ( http://social.coop ) account (perhaps Loomio, or Open Collective, or both, or some other?) via [email protected]. "Wires crossed" may be my nickname in the metaverse, pluriverse and all such environments, forever... sigh.

Will seek to disentangle myself and change my vote. I appreciate your diligence.

In cooperation,

~r

I'm concerned about the disruption of our democratic governance by allowing organizations to be full members. If my coop Immers Space were to setup an account on social.coop, I would then have more than one vote on polls in loomio.