Here is the full text.

Framing the Social.Coop Diversity/Equity Conversation

May 20, 2018
Prepared by: @clhendricksbc, @emi, @mattcropp, @Matt_Noyes, @meia, @merouan, @rbenjamin

## Context:
Social.coop is a intentional online community made up of primarily cooperative inclined people who contribute monetarily to maintain its existence.

Paying members (and at present non paying users) are free to interact throughout the Mastodon Fediverse as they see fit. A code of conduct for members is in the works which hopefully will include a process for its application and use.

Working Groups are made up of members who voluntarily contribute their time, ideas, and votes to help set policies to improve the functionality, usability, engagement, and growth of social.coop. Though there is an expectation of general membership participation, at present a limited percentage of the total membership participate regularly.

Admin Ops Team are being formed and will be comprised of members who take care of critical day to day admin needs under the direction of their corresponding Working Group (Tech, Community, Finance).

In addition to maintenance and financial sustainability of the platform, ongoing priorities for social.coop include member diversity, equity and engagement.

As our Bylaws state, “Social.coop is a global intentional community that values a high degree of diversity among its users, including but not limited to gender/gender identity, nationality, religious background, ethnic and racial identity, sexual orientation, economic status, and abilities.” These are good values that need specific mechanisms so that we can gauge, report, or improve upon the engagement, diversity, and equity across the platform.

For a conversation starter the following is a pre-posal and questions.

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Diversity & Equity in Operations Initiative

In order to foster leadership and contributions among as diverse a set of members as possible, we propose that social.coop adopt an Diversity & Equity in Operations Initiative which would include the following parts:

A. A diversity audit of general membership, working groups and admin operations teams, to be conducted by the Community Working Group every [6] months, with data presented to the general membership.

B. Where a lack of diversity is found a recruitment drive will be organized by the Community working group.

C. To facilitate awareness of inclusivity and equity in participation, a process to raise, work through, and resolve equity concerns in operations shall be established by the Community Working group to be approved by the general membership.

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Benefits:

By building in a mechanism to track and drive diversity Social.Coop will demonstrate its commitment to build a community on an equitable basis along with its cooperative/democratic ethos. This will provide a strong narrative for engagement inside and outside the platform and could be a driver for an increase in membership.

Simplified Terminology Definitions:

Diversity is the variety of backgrounds in the room.
Dictionary def: (the state or fact of being diverse; difference; unlikeness:
diversity of opinion. 2. variety; multiformity. 3. the inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, color, religion, socioeconomic stratum, sexual orientation, etc.:

Inclusivity is how accessible getting in the room people was to people of various backgrounds
Dictionary def: the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on the grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc

Equitable is how fairly people of various backgrounds are treated in the room. Adjective.
Dictionary def: characterized by equity or fairness; just and right; fair; reasonable: (equitable treatment of all citizens).

Some Questions & Concerns

These questions and others will need to be answered by the Community Working Group as we prepare to implement this initiative.

What kind of questions would be used in the audit?

What format will those questions come in? e.g. Fill in the blank vs Fill in the bubble.

What if a member didn’t want to participate in all or part of the audit?

Will “abstain" be offered as questionnaire option?

Will the identifying data be connected to individual members?

What criteria for lack of (or proper amount of) diversity at the different levels (general membership, governance working groups, Admin Ops Teams) would be used?

What criteria for lack of (or proper amount of) inclusivity would be used? For example participation in Loomio group governance requires some degree of bandwidth to review discussions and proposals that not all members have at any given time. This system is more accessible to say part time workers than full time, or those without children than those with small children. What criteria for inclusive access will be used beyond standard identity markers?

What kind of data will be used to support/resolve equity conversations?

What is the process by which we will support/resolve equity conversations?

How will recruitment be done? Will we focus on individuals or organizations? Will the recruitment will be primarily offline or online?

How will we define the value proposition for people who we recruit to Social.coop for purposes of cultivating more equitable and diverse operations teams and membership?

Admin Ops Teams participation require a level of time commitment and in some cases possession of specialized knowledge or ability to learn that knowledge. How exactly should identity focused inclusivity and equity policies overlap with those requirements?

As a primarily volunteer powered organization the platform operations has relied heavily on a small number of volunteers to run; how can potential disruptions in coverage from the audits and corresponding diversity drives be mitigated?

How will valuable individual contributions regardless of identity of the members be solicited and maintained?

How can we keep from possibly turning off those who are part of a demographic that is already widely represented and yet still very much want to participate in governance?

I am sceptical about how the data collection part could work without being creepy or even dangerous.
History teaches us not to collect any data than could be later used in the worst conceivable way: https://falkvinge.net/2012/03/17/collected-personal-data-will-always-be-used-against-the-citizens/

Yeah data collection and storage is definitely a concern.

One of the reasons the data collected should really not be connected directly to any member/user but more percentage based data from like X% of reside in _______ region, X% identity as __________.

Seems like this could be accomplished by a private poll (where members can engage anonymously or not). And the data would be shared as strictly percentage based.

Interestingly has there been a conversation on what data is currently being collected, how its storage, and the ways it is (openly or not) being access right now? Thinking about what is on OpenCollective as it has some fo the most at risk financial member connected. Then there is admin data at various places. Some on Loomio as well.

Hi Mayel, not sure what you mean by data collection here -- I think the idea is just for us to be collectively aware of how much or how little diversity there is in our operations. So, for example, when we wanted to schedule a CoC call and saw that everyone on the list appeared to be male, we re-opened the poll and made efforts to bring in women. To do that kind of thing we need to see who is participating, in what, and how much, right?

"Paying members (and at present non paying users) are free to interact throughout the Mastodon Fediverse as they see fit"

I sincerely hope the upcoming code of conduct doesn't begin from the above principle. I was unable to participate over the weekend due to other engagements, but am interested in participating in the CoC committee in the future, if this is still possible.

More important than having diverse committees is holding members accountable; without this there is no inclusivity and no diversity. It's hard to have a consensus or to really be open to everyone when the chilling effect of hate speech and its other frequent associated consequences prevents marginalized people from full and honest participation.

Thanks Becci, I don't believe it was meant as a "laissez faire" guiding principle when it comes to members behaviors and speech.

More a statement on the current functional process of how a user signs up, some of them going on to be paying members, and then independently posting on their own behalf and interacting with both members and non members around content that is relevant to them regardless of any common bond that might have brought them to the platfrom.

The CoC conversation is definitely still on going. @matthewcropp is compiling the notes from the last call. Once that is done I believe it will be posted back in the code of conduct thread or as a new pre-proposal thread to continue gathering feedback and reach a consensus on a workable CoC proposal.

Great point -- the Code of Conduct should be clearly connected to this initiative. Becci, what would you suggest? How can we integrate the two: a code of conduct and specific measures to promote equity and diversity? I think our target here is habitual functioning of members of dominant social groups; we need to be intentional about equality and liberation.