Loomio
Mon 12 Mar 2018 5:07AM

The Common Bond & Scaling Strategy of social.coop?

MC Matthew Cropp Public Seen by 60

Let's use this thread to discuss our current and future scope of membership for social.coop. I am currently the primary member vetting applications, and my understanding of our grounds for admission is pretty loose. Basically, if someone indicates interest in at least one of the items on the poll in the intro survey, and something in their application doesn't scream SPAM, I let them in.

That loose screen nonetheless establishes that social.coop currently operates with a common bond that can be characterized as "affinity for the co-op model/movement."

I think this has contributed to our progress thus far by (1) creating a critical mass of mutually interesting content, which keeps members coming back, by focusing on the co-op movement, and (2) having a pool of expertise, energy, and interest to draw on for the work of actually constructing the platform.

As our platform matures, a key strategic question is how we scale beyond our present semi-intentionally gradual growth? Do we, when we hit a certain size/infrastructural capacity milestone, decide to drop the common bond (and thus the more curated feel of the local timeline) and start actively encouraging our networks not just to join Mastodon, but social.coop specifically? Or do we maintain an identity as a co-op movement social hub, and work to support other instances in adopting the organizational model we're developing?

Where are we going with this?

EM

Erik Moeller Mon 12 Mar 2018 5:27AM

Great thread, Matthew, and thanks for your work vetting new applications. Personally, I don't think we should restrict the topic scope to co-operative movements, but I feel that we should communicate an expectation that folks participate actively in running the co-op. It would be easy for new members to misunderstand the social.coop model as "I pay $X, and I expect Y in return", i.e. a classic customer/service relationship, rather than co-ownership and co-creation.

I've had my frustrations on the technical side -- there are similar sized Mastodon instances that have a better track record than social.coop in terms of updates, reliability, public monitoring, and so on. But I am patient because I know that we're here to figure this out together, and the folks doing the tech work are volunteers (thank you, Victor & Mayel!).

So, I'm all in favor of explicitly expanding the content/topic scope, but I think as we try to reach a broader audience, I'd suggest being even more clear what running this as a co-operative means, to avoid misunderstandings and complaints. This is "DIY social media", and people joining need to understand that their active involvement is what keeps it working & makes it better.

KF

Kevin Flanagan Mon 12 Mar 2018 8:23AM

Hey,

Is it necessary for all users to be members? There is almost certainly a sliding scale of participation. I miss my friends from other social networks and there are no shortage of people who would quit given a decent alternative they are good people with social conscience but not particularly knowledgeable about coops. I invited a number of friends and it took over a month for their registration which is nuts. I would open account registration to general public like any other social network and automate that then add an option for coop membership where membership is something like a verified account, members with a vote should be identifiably real people with official I'd of some sort.

People who like an ethical social network that use social.coop ( http://social.coop ) but are not members could also contribute to running costs as optional in fundraising drives.

Where as members pay a small members fee.

My two cents

K

AW

Aaron Wagener Mon 12 Mar 2018 11:44PM

I think that right now, we should continue the coop focus, because it allows for this "micro network effect" that is a big draw to signing up. You can go to the local timeline and get lots of coop news. It seems like that is why most people have been joining.

That said, I don't think that the criteria needs to be to high. It should be absolutely fine to join the network without being particularly knowledgeable about coops, as Kevin was talking about. In this sense, I think that the automatic membership makes a lot of sense. If you like (or tolerate) coops enough to become a member of one, then I think you have plenty of reason to be on social.coop.

I think it is better to have everyone in social.coop be a member. This keeps the network from being divided between members and nonmembers, and also helps to ensure that our revenue will scale with the membership. The awesome thing about mastodon is that if people don't want the responsibilities of owning their instance, they can join another one that is free and still talk to folks on social.coop.

ELP

Edward L Platt Mon 12 Mar 2018 11:58PM

There is some value in requiring members to show that they've at least read through our principles. The full bylaws are probably not necessary.

EM

Erik Moeller Tue 13 Mar 2018 5:27AM

Per Aaron, I would also prefer to avoid introducing a member/non-member distinction at this stage. There may come a point when social.coop can indeed be a traditional service provider to people who don't want to be involved in co-creating it on a day-to-day basis, but I don't think that point has arrived yet -- we simply aren't set up to meet the quality of service and maturity expectations people signing up under such a model may reasonably have.

MK

Michele Kipiel Wed 14 Mar 2018 4:07PM

Great thread, thanks for opening it! My personal understanding is that part of the problem lies in the fact we''re a bit "recursive": we're a co-op instance focused on co-op knowledge and promotion. This in turn creates a bit of a confusion about what's the core topic (ie. the interest in cooperatives at large? The actual participation in this specific cooperative called social.coop?).

I believe we can consider both these topics as core, or foundational values with equal dignity and importance and build on top of them, becoming more inclusive (eg. introducing the concept of "coop accounts", which we debated long ago) while not losing our focus on the cooperative movement. I would personally avoid becoming a general-purpose instance in the future, lest we lose our original spirit and values.

In conclusion, I'd say we can keep being social.coop, but we should do better at being welcoming and inclusive (as pointed out in the first anniversary thread a few days back).

N

Neil - @[email protected] Sat 17 Mar 2018 4:37PM

This touches the question Mastodon seems to be facing as a whole at the moment - that of general-purpose instances vs. topic instances. Topic instances make more sense to me, so I like the idea of keeping social.coop with a common bond (nicely phrased by Matt as "affinity for the co-op model/movement.")

Re: members and non-members, I think it's good to promote membership to encourage co-creation, but the expectation of monthly financial contributions feels a little exclusionary. There may be plenty with an interest in coops but without the means for regular payments. Any way to mitigate that without a member vs non-member split? Maybe accepting more than just US dollars, maybe something like Mayel's ora ( http://ora.network/ )?

MN

Matt Noyes Sun 18 Mar 2018 5:08AM

Great idea -- Ora seems very cool

NS

Nick S Wed 11 Apr 2018 10:31AM

I hadn't heard of Ora, but it does sound interesting, I must go and investigate it. Seems a variation on timebanking/mutual credit?

I was thinking about similar ideas myself. I'm very curious how or if it works in practice - I suspect it's harder to get working than it looks, as are most alternative currencies.

Perhaps social.coop could accept Ora, but I suspect this needs some careful thought in the light of the kind of questions I asked in the thread below about meeting the bottom line, and whether this is just a token contribution or actually used to pay coop bills in some way.

Another way of looking at this: I was wondering if Ora (or a currency like it) could be used to allocate the share of the funds collected by social.coop? Although this doesn't solve anything if the funds are insufficient in the first place, and in any case I suspect something like Enspiral's Co-Budget might be more appropriate for that.

NS

Nick S Wed 11 Apr 2018 9:05AM

Perhaps this was discussed elsewhere (I'm not a part of the finance subgroup), but I'd be interested to know a bit more about the economics of running social.coop. For example,

  • What is the minimum income it can survive on?
  • Where does that go?
  • How close to that does the social.coop run at the moment?
  • And so how much surplus does the operation have, and how is is it used?

Of course, there will be equipment and 3rd party services to be paid, which are fairly clear cut, and then there will be jobs which need to be done like maintenance and admin, which will be fuzzier if this is done by volunteers. (I can only guess what these are and whether they're sustainable for the long term.)

The question of scaling is related to this, in that the motivation to scale because the minimum requirements aren't really being met is entirely different to wanting to scale for some other reason. If the basics aren't met, then non-paying accounts/non-members need to be considered firstly in terms of whether they make social.coop more or less sustainable (by adding to the cost of running the infrastructure; or conversely by providing a pool of volunteers). Otherwise, social.coop could be fairly free and easy about not making the distinction (although it might choose to maintain "a common bond" as @matthewcropp puts it).

More questions which occur to me:
- Are there some clearly defined (system-critical or otherwise) roles which get remuneration?
- Are these roles necessarily performed by members? (I assume not but that in practice they are.)
- Are they currently being done by volunteers? Is that planned to change?
- And what is the selection / deselection process for them? (Many of them will require some technical or other skills.)

I assume part of the point of social.coop is to experiment with creating a viable self-sustaining community in contrast to the usual profit-to-stockholders exponential-growth model, and from there on promote the alternative. Right?

As to what I think now, knowing what little I do: I'd tentatively suggest that makes sense to maintain the "common bond" requirement, as that's part of the attraction for me, at least until it is generally considered to be dispensable because it isn't needed for sustainability (for example, it seems useful for finding contributors). I might change my mind if this seemed to be counter to the sustainability or health of social.coop in some other sense.

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