Question on August 24th by Marcin Inbetween lines Theo's answers on the 30th of august 2012
Le 24. 08. 12 15:22, Marcin Jakubowski a écrit : > Thanks for your insights. you're welcome :-) > Please tell me more about the procedures in Wikimedia Foundation. ok, below
I copy to Aaron and Raphael, without any expectation of answer, just for information
feel free to post these controbutions into your wiki or point me in which page you think I should post them,
I wish we could talk (I'm a lot better in oral then written form), and anyway latest we will meet in April 2013, we are preparing you a great moment of knowledge sharing and promoting OSE in Europe
I also posted links in our diigo for OSEwatch, with the tag governance in breif, the key governance methods compatible with opensource and post-scarcity are : - sociocracy - consensus-based democracy - opensource governance models (not specially wikipedia nor Moodle, but mostly bazaar approaches in little projects)
Common point of all those : they all aim at reaching a higher Gross Happiness , thus contributing in replacing the the old consumerist Gross Income model.
I suggest you always keep in mind that they exist have to innovative ecological models . those without digital/wiki culture (such as sociocracy Non-Violent Communication - NCV alias CNV in French) those with digital/wiki culture (such as wikicracy, condorcet+, bazaar opensource governance ...)
And besides, for OSE and it's headquarters in Missouri, you have decisional process that affects : A) the online community on the wiki and mailing lists/forums of OSE website-s (for example will there be a tool on water filtering within the 50 first GVCs tool, and which priority will it be given to develop it) B) the local co-living community, where stakes and challenges are different (for example who will have a private room, who can decide what which seeds will be planted in the land next year, how to manage a personal conflict, who will be in charge of buying...)
therefore, somehow, they should be two different gov methods, one for A, one for B.
> Is there a link to any of their procedures?
yes, I posted them here with the tag governance
> We should simply copy that which is relevant. If you can also point us to other places where we can gather useful governance information, please link to that as well. >
ok, here it is :
Wikimedia governance procedure is considered by those applying it as a toolbox, not a secured law, in the sense that they decide on a more or less "democratic" process depending on the level of importance of the decisions, with always possibilities by members to propose a review of the decision.
It uses informally the sociocratic principle of "circle of decision" :
1) Articles are beeing often monitored by one single person, call a "watch dog", and it can create big frustration for newcomers being often revoked when tha add new content within existing "potentially controversial" articles such as for example anthroposophy (considered as a "religion" within Wikipedia French language"
2) Election for the headquarters (foundation) board are made by "Condorcet+ method", the most "open-source compatible" one for big elections
3) Steward are elected and then decide by consensus when they have to suspend a page for editing conflict
4) The founder Jimmy Wales is considered as the honorary president (initially the benevolent dictator, but not anymore, since the community has grown too much for a dictatorship, like it is in Debian community), meanwhile Jimmy stays an "egery" (symbol) of the community, although after he took the decision of deleting a nude pix on commons.wikimedia.org, the community suspended his rights of administrating the commons pix database.
5) National chapters make decisions on lots of national opportunities, and have almost no right considering global decision, which creates tensions.
But with OSE and it's GCVs it's : A) an online community governance model with both social and economical stakes, and B) meanwhile it's a local community living management model, which is a lot more difficult somehow, because co-living is a huge challenge in our modern hyperindividualistic community
In community living such as Emmaus social centers, Foccolari or anthroposophic centers, Ecovillages (such as Findhorn, Auroville), the fact is that it is hard to create a real democracy, the decisions are often taken by a little group (or even a single) which arrived first or created trust with the founder. These leader-s are leaders because they succeed to motivate and lead, and gaining slowly trust with their wise position. This is the "artisan" way of governing. When it grows up to thousands of co-habitants (such as the aim of Ecopol), industrialization requires that founders become less indispensable, that's the big challenge in a real-life community.
This is why our Cluster (Smala, Ynternet.org, ...) is aiming at building an "Ecopol" with at least 2'000 persons : to test new forms of governance with postscarcity economy, gathering both opensource culture with sociocratic/consensual/NVC (Non-Violent Communication) approaches of having ancient/wise listening to the potential suffering or missunderstanding of each co-habitant.
In such innovative community governance model both artisanal 8little size, less then 100) and industrial (in fact over 100 cohabitants, but mostly when it reaches thousands), the good governance key-indicator is the ability to reach to consensus for important decisions. But many little decision are taken by one or 2 person-s, even in big "democratic" postscarcity communities such as Auroville, Damanhur, Findhorn...
When people think that the decision taken by little groups (1-5 persons for example) need to be rediscussed, the little group have to accept it and restart discussing.
Finally, as I said to Aaron, I suggested that in term both economical and social governance, you look at the Moodle model these models are rarely (or never as far as I know) defined in a resumed clear form, since "sustainability is complex". But you can learn by doing. And I started posting links to "howtos" with the tag governance in our social bookmakring (diigo) webtool, so if you wish that I post more, let me know. Maybe give me a feedback on what you need exactly.
And since there is a "core development" at (what I call) OSE "headquarters" in Missouri, it might be better to have mix between the Moodle-alike ecosystem and the "wikimedia-alike" governance ecosystem (a variety of toolto be used depending on importance of stakes for the entire community).
The major question on my humble opinion is "how much resources (time-money) is OSE headquarter and each future micro-factory willing to spent in managing socio-economical relationship" ? right now, I would suggest people should accept you are a benevolent dictator, and you gather some board member and co-habitants around you to validate your orientations/choices. Meanwhile, you could announce formally (in the wiki, as a letter to the community and true fans) that you intend to share more and more (this is the way I do, I start with all the power, and if I keep this power alone with time in a Smala house, it means the governance is not going in the democratic/sociocratic/wikicratic direction). Right now, we have a very limited community in Switzerland, and have no big group co-living. Yesteday, we finally found a land affordable but not perfectly appropriate because a bit too little (at least we can start something), so I signed the contract for buying it, we can start again to build a community and this time we will be owners.
But since 1992, I started and managed various houses of coliving (nor owned, just laon by city councils to avoid squatting) with this situation of having other people becoming seriously involved, gained my trust, and they got high decisional power without me being able to give a veto even on essential things, meanwhile we were continuing trying to reach consensus everytime it's possible.
This is why in our cluster of socio-environmental entreprises (Ecopol, Ynternet.org, Smala), we spend quite a lot in listening, facilitating, slowly, quitely, sustainably. Besides, we also work a lot on project-oriented method for the socioeconomical side of the project : who succeeds in geting funds is in charge personnaly, and it is in the same a biug charge and a big honor to reach a level where the co-leaders include a person in the executive direction and authrorize that person to sign grant demand and then manage it.
We also consider that merit is important, and steps with rituals :
1. newcomers arrive as invitees, trainees, participants, they contribute but have no right to decide, just sometime they are consulted informally or formally.
if they demand to stay more then a week, they are integrated as potential future resident by the "resident" which are sustainably inside
we have a step by step integration ritual, with a checklist on how to use mutualised tools/spaces both virtual and physical (the wiki, the fridge) and we create private spaces for putting private things in the public spaces (each person has a private space in the kitchen, the living room the bibliotek...) , movies to watch on our visions & believes (such as "la belle verte" and "surplus")
2. after about 6 month only, they can demand the statut of resident, and start integrating the newcomers
3. after 12-18 months, they can become formal "sustainable resident", and only then they can sign documents to order things for the community, develop their own "branch of activity", etc...
4. main critical decisions about the local community are only taken by "sustainable residents", a minority self-organized.
We always make sure that all co-habitants are not ghettos of any profile, and as coordinator/articulator I always try to have at least 20% ancient (over 60 years old), 10% under 20 years old, and all type of profiles between 20-60 years old : not only one type of socioprofessional situation, but a mix of profile which were previously some functionaires, some microentrepreneurs, social activists, teachers, socially poor and rich... If I see they are 2 persons with the same problem (alcool, frustration, difficulty dealing with order, radical survivalists, people refusing computers, people with difficulty to negociate...) I always pay a lot of attention to avoid trouble by not having newcomers asking to be resident if they have similar profiles (which would create a ghetto).
On OSE case, with 2 different situations )(local and online community), I'd suggest that :
- main decisions on GVCs are taken by the community of contributors online, if needed - main decisions on community living are taken by a group of ancien resident and the the indicator of good governane is that ancient resident grow in quality and quantity with time
In our community, we encourage criticism by all participants, at the condition it is only oriented on "how to do better", not oriented on judging nor attacking persons (again : NVC), and regularly (every 3-6 month) we demand formally to the participants to fulfill foms where they formalize what they suggest to empower/embetter. We consider this formalization and data management (evaluation) as a way to avoid crisis.
Besides, in the first 2-4 years, all participants are pionneers.
Our rules :
1) The pionneers that wont stay but quit with kindness and resolve eventual conflict before leaving receive some "greencard" from the sustainable resident (the leaders) to come back anytime for short visits, and send theirs contacts to visit/test/co-live into the community.
2) The pioneers that wishes to stay after 3-10 years are clearly informed that a community has a pioneering phase, but then becomes stabilized, and therefore becomes more structured, with more rules, less opportunity to improvise... except if they continue pioneering in other related communities.
3) regularly (every 1-2 weeks, or at least once a month), we organize little moment of celebration (scheduled long time beefore) where all cohabitants have to be present, we provide simply a good meal, and we have a brief moment (1-10 minutes) to announce who's newly arrived, whos becoming formally resident.
These information on the step by step integration to become a formal sustainable resident are formaly given to cohabitants by oral, so they see that they can build grow their belonging to the community, and so they feel able to chose (in many communities such as ecovillages, unfortunately decisions are taken without formal rules or steps, and therefore people feel insecure and turnover is high).
I encouraged a lot Aaron and you to watch the movie "la belle Verte" (in French with English Subtitle", its a "postscarcity" manifesto, a fiction, duration 70 minutes. It shows some believes behind (or as "prerequisite for") postscarcity governance.
To define our values behing our governance, we often use key words such as : - voluntary simplicity - happy sobriety
Based on these community visions/values, we accept that within community living, we lose some thing, we win others and so people manage better their frustration.
I hope this could help.
My book about ECOPOL, presenting all this and more about deep ecology worldwide, will be hopefully translated in 2013 in English
I hope you'll have the time to look at links posted into the Diigo about governance
started by Théo Bondolfi on 30 Aug 12
Inbetween lines Theo's answers on the 30th of august 2012
Le 24. 08. 12 15:22, Marcin Jakubowski a écrit :
> Thanks for your insights.
you're welcome :-)
> Please tell me more about the procedures in Wikimedia Foundation.
ok, below
I copy to Aaron and Raphael, without any expectation of answer, just for information
feel free to post these controbutions into your wiki or point me in which page you think I should post them,
I wish we could talk (I'm a lot better in oral then written form), and anyway latest we will meet in April 2013, we are preparing you a great moment of knowledge sharing and promoting OSE in Europe
I also posted links in our diigo for OSEwatch, with the tag governance
in breif, the key governance methods compatible with opensource and post-scarcity are :
- sociocracy
- consensus-based democracy
- opensource governance models (not specially wikipedia nor Moodle, but mostly bazaar approaches in little projects)
Common point of all those : they all aim at reaching a higher Gross Happiness , thus contributing in replacing the the old consumerist Gross Income model.
I suggest you always keep in mind that they exist have to innovative ecological models .
those without digital/wiki culture (such as sociocracy Non-Violent Communication - NCV alias CNV in French)
those with digital/wiki culture (such as wikicracy, condorcet+, bazaar opensource governance ...)
And besides, for OSE and it's headquarters in Missouri, you have decisional process that affects :
A) the online community on the wiki and mailing lists/forums of OSE website-s (for example will there be a tool on water filtering within the 50 first GVCs tool, and which priority will it be given to develop it)
B) the local co-living community, where stakes and challenges are different (for example who will have a private room, who can decide what which seeds will be planted in the land next year, how to manage a personal conflict, who will be in charge of buying...)
therefore, somehow, they should be two different gov methods, one for A, one for B.
> Is there a link to any of their procedures?
yes, I posted them here with the tag governance
> We should simply copy that which is relevant. If you can also point us to other places where we can gather useful governance information, please link to that as well.
>
ok, here it is :
Wikimedia governance procedure is considered by those applying it as a toolbox, not a secured law, in the sense that they decide on a more or less "democratic" process depending on the level of importance of the decisions, with always possibilities by members to propose a review of the decision.
It uses informally the sociocratic principle of "circle of decision" :
1) Articles are beeing often monitored by one single person, call a "watch dog", and it can create big frustration for newcomers being often revoked when tha add new content within existing "potentially controversial" articles such as for example anthroposophy (considered as a "religion" within Wikipedia French language"
2) Election for the headquarters (foundation) board are made by "Condorcet+ method", the most "open-source compatible" one for big elections
3) Steward are elected and then decide by consensus when they have to suspend a page for editing conflict
4) The founder Jimmy Wales is considered as the honorary president (initially the benevolent dictator, but not anymore, since the community has grown too much for a dictatorship, like it is in Debian community), meanwhile Jimmy stays an "egery" (symbol) of the community, although after he took the decision of deleting a nude pix on commons.wikimedia.org, the community suspended his rights of administrating the commons pix database.
5) National chapters make decisions on lots of national opportunities, and have almost no right considering global decision, which creates tensions.
But with OSE and it's GCVs it's :
A) an online community governance model with both social and economical stakes, and
B) meanwhile it's a local community living management model, which is a lot more difficult somehow, because co-living is a huge challenge in our modern hyperindividualistic community
In community living such as Emmaus social centers, Foccolari or anthroposophic centers, Ecovillages (such as Findhorn, Auroville), the fact is that it is hard to create a real democracy, the decisions are often taken by a little group (or even a single) which arrived first or created trust with the founder. These leader-s are leaders because they succeed to motivate and lead, and gaining slowly trust with their wise position.
This is the "artisan" way of governing. When it grows up to thousands of co-habitants (such as the aim of Ecopol), industrialization requires that founders become less indispensable, that's the big challenge in a real-life community.
This is why our Cluster (Smala, Ynternet.org, ...) is aiming at building an "Ecopol" with at least 2'000 persons : to test new forms of governance with postscarcity economy, gathering both opensource culture with sociocratic/consensual/NVC (Non-Violent Communication) approaches of having ancient/wise listening to the potential suffering or missunderstanding of each co-habitant.
In such innovative community governance model both artisanal 8little size, less then 100) and industrial (in fact over 100 cohabitants, but mostly when it reaches thousands), the good governance key-indicator is the ability to reach to consensus for important decisions.
But many little decision are taken by one or 2 person-s, even in big "democratic" postscarcity communities such as Auroville, Damanhur, Findhorn...
When people think that the decision taken by little groups (1-5 persons for example) need to be rediscussed, the little group have to accept it and restart discussing.
Finally, as I said to Aaron, I suggested that in term both economical and social governance, you look at the Moodle model
these models are rarely (or never as far as I know) defined in a resumed clear form, since "sustainability is complex".
But you can learn by doing. And I started posting links to "howtos" with the tag governance in our social bookmakring (diigo) webtool, so if you wish that I post more, let me know. Maybe give me a feedback on what you need exactly.
And since there is a "core development" at (what I call) OSE "headquarters" in Missouri, it might be better to have mix between the Moodle-alike ecosystem and the "wikimedia-alike" governance ecosystem (a variety of toolto be used depending on importance of stakes for the entire community).
The major question on my humble opinion is "how much resources (time-money) is OSE headquarter and each future micro-factory willing to spent in managing socio-economical relationship" ?
right now, I would suggest people should accept you are a benevolent dictator, and you gather some board member and co-habitants around you to validate your orientations/choices. Meanwhile, you could announce formally (in the wiki, as a letter to the community and true fans) that you intend to share more and more (this is the way I do, I start with all the power, and if I keep this power alone with time in a Smala house, it means the governance is not going in the democratic/sociocratic/wikicratic direction). Right now, we have a very limited community in Switzerland, and have no big group co-living.
Yesteday, we finally found a land affordable but not perfectly appropriate because a bit too little (at least we can start something), so I signed the contract for buying it, we can start again to build a community and this time we will be owners.
But since 1992, I started and managed various houses of coliving (nor owned, just laon by city councils to avoid squatting) with this situation of having other people becoming seriously involved, gained my trust, and they got high decisional power without me being able to give a veto even on essential things, meanwhile we were continuing trying to reach consensus everytime it's possible.
This is why in our cluster of socio-environmental entreprises (Ecopol, Ynternet.org, Smala), we spend quite a lot in listening, facilitating, slowly, quitely, sustainably. Besides, we also work a lot on project-oriented method for the socioeconomical side of the project : who succeeds in geting funds is in charge personnaly, and it is in the same a biug charge and a big honor to reach a level where the co-leaders include a person in the executive direction and authrorize that person to sign grant demand and then manage it.
We also consider that merit is important, and steps with rituals :
1. newcomers arrive as invitees, trainees, participants, they contribute but have no right to decide, just sometime they are consulted informally or formally.
if they demand to stay more then a week, they are integrated as potential future resident by the "resident" which are sustainably inside
we have a step by step integration ritual, with a checklist on how to use mutualised tools/spaces both virtual and physical (the wiki, the fridge) and we create private spaces for putting private things in the public spaces (each person has a private space in the kitchen, the living room the bibliotek...) , movies to watch on our visions & believes (such as "la belle verte" and "surplus")
2. after about 6 month only, they can demand the statut of resident, and start integrating the newcomers
3. after 12-18 months, they can become formal "sustainable resident", and only then they can sign documents to order things for the community, develop their own "branch of activity", etc...
4. main critical decisions about the local community are only taken by "sustainable residents", a minority self-organized.
We always make sure that all co-habitants are not ghettos of any profile, and as coordinator/articulator I always try to have at least 20% ancient (over 60 years old), 10% under 20 years old, and all type of profiles between 20-60 years old : not only one type of socioprofessional situation, but a mix of profile which were previously some functionaires, some microentrepreneurs, social activists, teachers, socially poor and rich...
If I see they are 2 persons with the same problem (alcool, frustration, difficulty dealing with order, radical survivalists, people refusing computers, people with difficulty to negociate...) I always pay a lot of attention to avoid trouble by not having newcomers asking to be resident if they have similar profiles (which would create a ghetto).
On OSE case, with 2 different situations )(local and online community), I'd suggest that :
- main decisions on GVCs are taken by the community of contributors online, if needed
- main decisions on community living are taken by a group of ancien resident and the the indicator of good governane is that ancient resident grow in quality and quantity with time
In our community, we encourage criticism by all participants, at the condition it is only oriented on "how to do better", not oriented on judging nor attacking persons (again : NVC), and regularly (every 3-6 month) we demand formally to the participants to fulfill foms where they formalize what they suggest to empower/embetter. We consider this formalization and data management (evaluation) as a way to avoid crisis.
Besides, in the first 2-4 years, all participants are pionneers.
Our rules :
1) The pionneers that wont stay but quit with kindness and resolve eventual conflict before leaving receive some "greencard" from the sustainable resident (the leaders) to come back anytime for short visits, and send theirs contacts to visit/test/co-live into the community.
2) The pioneers that wishes to stay after 3-10 years are clearly informed that a community has a pioneering phase, but then becomes stabilized, and therefore becomes more structured, with more rules, less opportunity to improvise... except if they continue pioneering in other related communities.
3) regularly (every 1-2 weeks, or at least once a month), we organize little moment of celebration (scheduled long time beefore) where all cohabitants have to be present, we provide simply a good meal, and we have a brief moment (1-10 minutes) to announce who's newly arrived, whos becoming formally resident.
These information on the step by step integration to become a formal sustainable resident are formaly given to cohabitants by oral, so they see that they can build grow their belonging to the community, and so they feel able to chose (in many communities such as ecovillages, unfortunately decisions are taken without formal rules or steps, and therefore people feel insecure and turnover is high).
I encouraged a lot Aaron and you to watch the movie "la belle Verte" (in French with English Subtitle", its a "postscarcity" manifesto, a fiction, duration 70 minutes. It shows some believes behind (or as "prerequisite for") postscarcity governance.
To define our values behing our governance, we often use key words such as :
- voluntary simplicity
- happy sobriety
Based on these community visions/values, we accept that within community living, we lose some thing, we win others
and so people manage better their frustration.
I hope this could help.
My book about ECOPOL, presenting all this and more about deep ecology worldwide, will be hopefully translated in 2013 in English
I hope you'll have the time to look at links posted into the Diigo about governance
> MJ
Théo