Who are to be invited to Loomio?

Who are to be invited to Loomio now that the evaluation period comes to an end (today)?

Sean, have you any ideas already how we are going to communicate to the decision that Diaspora is now going to use Loomio as its community governance platform?

Why not make an open invitation on the D stream and let people in who want an invite? This could be a buffer from people flooding github or get satisfaction or other tools. If someone doesn't want to read a post or not participate then let them decide that.

What may happen is that the process of "chaos" will shake out and some self-organization will occur. People will flock together where their interests lay and if there is momentum it will become evident. That is useful information for everyone. Let's trust that we can deliberate even if there is disagreement or reservation.

It may be that we ask Loom devs to give us pruning tools to delete branches that may die on the vine or maybe to move them to an archive, just out of the main thoroughfare. Or maybe they will make moderating tools to help us if they see there is a lot of abuse here. Still, can we just have trust that people will have good will here and they will act like grownups? I'd like to do that.

If we are for freedom of speech, then let's walk the talk. That will speak loudly and without words! :)

I'd be willing to offer a good compromise: how about, as a good first step, we get a group of about 30 more people directly invited to help vote on some initial governance issues, then after maybe two or three weeks, we open up further once we've got some solid guidelines to go by.

There are a few communities that have knowledge of the governance of other FOSS projects that could provide some excellent insight on things we as a community might not have even thought about before, and if it helps to put together a well-oiled machine before we open the floodgates, then we should rustle up some volunteers that know a thing or two about getting this project to where it needs to be.

Step two, of course, could involve opening the proverbial floodgates.

What terrible thing can happen by just inviting anyone on the stream who wants in?

I'm not saying we put this out in the public and let anyone in, someone should at least be a member of a pod.

Everyone knows who's been around for a while. Everyone will know if an upstart is causing trouble just to cause trouble. Don't you think it's possible that the gesture of letting new people in and welcoming their voices will bode well over all (and in the long term) for the community that we want to build, above and beyond the risks or fears of someone just behaving badly?

Anyway, who's to say that we set up all these "structures" now and then when the floodgates open, as you put it, people just bypass it and the infrastructure caves in anyway?

Why not just let people choose where they want to congregate and let them say what they want?

I agree this kind of free-for-all is not productive in github. But that was the only thing close to registering a bug that a simple user could do. I was never able to understand getsatisfaction. The irony, eh?... I just didn't get it! :)

Let Loom be the etchasketch for people to air out whatever they want. If there is momentum on something that develops here, community leaders can further discuss it (or just report it to share it with the larger community) on the CMS, etc., while a lead dev might act as a moderator and translate the actions in more technospeak on how that would be reflected in the code or in action on github.

This new form of discourse would be certainly better than having drama on the stream and cruft at github or diasporaproject.org.

For these reasons, I am reticent to go down the route you propose because I think it may shut people out who may have good ideas. It may also signal to the larger community that the core devs still want the last say on matters, and are not sincere in opening this up.

Here's another thought I just had. If we do as I suggest, that to be here you must have an account on a pod, then it may also increase numbers at people's pods if members know they can actually have some influence on where the project goes. The news of that may attract more people to join. That certainly is not something that Google+ or FB offers to their users, a platform to voice their desires and concerns! I don't think we should underestimate the power of that! :)

While that's an interesting thought, unfortunately we don't have a good "Sign In With Diaspora" system right now, to verify that users in our group are actually on D*. This sounds like a minor qualm, but really we're left with a good-faith system for now, which really doesn't have a good way to scale up. It's not a bad suggestion, but maybe in the future we could revisit that.

If you want to just invite old regulars that have been around for a while (rather than just anybody), I guess that wouldn't be a bad starting point. Perhaps it would be wise to create a quick proposal, that way everyone can at least go through the motions of accepting it (probably unanimously) to signify that everyone is in consensus over this approach. After all, we've just spent most of the day discussing policies and guidelines, it wouldnt hurt to see what works and what needs further tweaking.

I'd say invite everyone who wants to join. It's the only way. It's not like everyone wants to participate.

Sean, if we vote on this (or something else) could you post something on the blog?

@Madamephilo : everyone who wants to join here just have to ask for an invit. No problem about that.

But I think we have to organize ourselves. Make a strong structure, etc. And a first step could be discuss on Diaspora before come here to vote. I imagine something in 3 steps :

1. Talk about a bug, a feature, an idea on diaspora using hashtags. A first debate.
2. When Idea is clear and well prepared, come here to submit it to the vote
3. If the idea is voted, go to github to open a thread about it (or elsewhere if it isn't about Diaspora code).

With that, we will not see a lot of new subjects here (i mean more than 30 by hour, which would be unprocessable) and idea will be really prepared so we don't have to debate during hours, we can take a decision quickly.

Moreover, on Diaspora, everybody (including those who never heard about loom.io) can participate.

We just have to promote some hashtag (#whatcanidofordiaspora, #diasporatranslation, #diasporasuggestion, etc..) and... here we go !