The future of this Loomio group and the cc-nz email list

Kia ora,
Great to hear from you again! Welcome back!

To answer your questions:
Yes, Tohatoha is now an incorporated society with our roots in the project known as CCANZ. To quote Futurama, "We resemble but are legally distinct from the We are not Creative Commons.

Creative Commons' decision to transform its global network from an affiliate model into, well, into a different kind of membership model, necessitated the change for us. Under the new model CC chapters can't incorporate and they can't really act as affiliates. This worked out really well for us, but it did require us to make some changes--and to be clear that Tohatoha is not Creative Commons. We are something new and something different. And something awesome.

Tohatoha Aotearoa Commons is more than just a new name. It's a new organisation with wider interests and a broader mission--the new set of proposed objectives capture this very well. We want to help everyone understand the laws behind the internet and help ensure that the those laws are fair and equitable--both for people and for our planet.

However, if you are still interested in being involved with Creative Commons, there is a NZ (newly formed) chapter. In my personal capacity I serve as both the Lead and the current rep to the Global Network Council. Happy to talk to you about joining.

I'm not really sure what you mean by community fora--do you mean the Loomio group and the email list? Tohatoha haven't been using Loomio because it just doesn't fill a current need for us. To be honest, we don't really have the capacity to maintain an online discussion platform. I love talking to people and I love the internet--but online communities take a ton of work to moderate and maintain.

That said, once the CC NZ chapter is up and running, maybe that group would be interested in Loomio. It's worth discussing. Same with the cc-nz list. These channels might be used again--but it's also the case that CCHQ is providing a channel in their Slack instance. I suspect that platform makes more sense for the chapter.

But again, it's still early days so who knows?

I want to make sure I've got this clear, so I can correct anything that might be misleading in my blog piece. So ... the organization formerly known as CC ANZ has experienced a cell division into two entities, a chapter of CC run more directly by its US parent, and a separate advocacy entity (Tohatoha). Is that correct?

"I'm not really sure what you mean by community fora--do you mean the Loomio group and the email list?"

Yes. As I explained in my blog piece, the cc-nz list was set up before CC ANZ formally existed, and served as a bootstrapping space. It's always been a bit of a grey area in my mind, in that it's been formally managed by CC ANZ (eg the move to OnlineGroups.net hosting) and the website directed people there, but it's also served as a semi-independent general discussion forum for the commons advocacy community in Aotearoa.

If neither of the two new entities are claiming it (so to speak), it could continue as an informal community space, or be wound up. It would be good to get an indication from those still reading emails from the list about their preferences on all these options.

"CCHQ is providing a channel in their Slack instance"

I'm not the first person to note that using a proprietary datafarm for official community discussions is totally inappropriate for any organization promoting the digital commons, and I doubt I'll be the last. I believe either/or cc-nz or this Loomio group would be a more appropriate channel for the kiwi CC community. Both because they are a hosted on free code tools, provided by local social enterprises with compatible organizational missions, and because they have a history as the community engagement tools for CC in Aotearoa.

To quote the "open infrastructure" section of the excellent Tohatoha campaign on Open Access:

To share knowledge widely and without cost to readers and creators, we need to direct resources towards projects that enable publishing, distributing, collecting, cataloging, indexing, and archiving research outputs. That infrastructure should be coordinated, open source, scholar-led and governed, environmentally friendly, and benefit from long-term financial commitments from the New Zealand government, universities, and research institutes.

This is exactly why something like a mailing list or Loomio is a more appropriate platform for commons community discussions than Slack. Other free code replacements for Slack are discussed here:

https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/slacking-off

BTW I can't help but note the irony that visiting the Tohatoha website without a Javascript blocker allows scripts to be run in the visitors browser from a number of third-party domains owned by Goggle; google.com, gstatic.com, and youtube.com

How about uploading your videos to a [PeerTube site like VidCommons.org](https://vidcommons.org/) and embedding those in the website? That doesn't preclude posting the videos on YT too, to make them available to their audience, but it gives visitors to your website a choice about whether to be part of that audience.

Tohatoha have been doing some very good work. As an outreach organisation, there's a huge amount to be said for taking our arguments to the users we're trying to persuade, which in this context means going to the proprietary platforms, whether we're huge fans or not.

If you're keen to see Tohatoha on a Peertube, maybe you could volunteer to run a https://github.com/mister-monster/YouTube2PeerTube for us?

Let's try not to make perfect the enemy of the good, shall we?

cheers
stuart

As an outreach organisation, there's a huge amount to be said for taking our arguments to the users we're trying to persuade, which in this context means going to the proprietary platforms

Fair point, but this doesn't require embedding their Javascript in the Tohatoha website (or using them for internal community discussions). Also, while you make a strong argument for syndicating Tohatoha content on those platforms, that doesn't require making them the primary hosting and distribution channel, when there are libre platforms like Vidcommons that you could push traffic to instead.

If you're keen to see Tohatoha on a Peertube, maybe you could volunteer to run a https://github.com/mister-monster/YouTube2PeerTube for us?

If you can provide the hosting, I'm happy to have a crack at it.

Let's try not to make perfect the enemy of the good

With great power, comes great responsibility ;)

Just an FYI, we don't use Slack at all. CCHQ use it for a range of communications. But Tohatoha does not use Slack at all.