Relax instance registrations to "Approval required for sign up" from current "Nobody can sign up"

i love this dream of dreams

Thank you for the background, Matt! That helps a lot.

• I'm sorry but I still don't see why all these things must happen before people sign up for the instance. If we found a process that allowed us to automatically get back to the user with the requirement/instructions (say, via email), would that suffice to change your mind?

• What if the signup page showed the requirements inline, or at least linked to the form?

Will check the complexity of customizing the sign-in flow.

Tangent: why is the Open Collective something people must do upfront? That seems like a barrier to entry, and one that maybe puts the support aspect of the cooperative front and center (do we want that? some users with limited resources might feel nervous?). To be maximally inclusive, why not let users in "earlier" and then ask them to meet requirements, say, one month in -- once they know if they like the place? Just some ideas.

I love the idea of single sign-on and I'd love to help make that happen :)

It seems to me that if you aren't sure you want to be part of the Open Collective, then you shouldn't join here. If people weren't required to join the collective first, would they still have voting rights? If so, what would stop us from having an influx of people who don't share our values?

Michael

Adding some context on why I support this idea: it is to help us find cooperators who would make social.coop their mastodon home if they knew we existed.

While our homepage displays to humans that our instance is open for registrations, having the admin setting as it is communicates to a computers that our instance is not taking new members and that we should not be included in lists of instances people may want to join (e.g. joinmastodon.org).

As we can see from this proposal, the tech side of the change is trivial, however there are bigger implications for the Community Working Group. My view is the planning and proposals for this work should begin there.

i also strongly agree that we should be on joinmastodon.com -- cooperation should be for everyone and we should lead the way on that <3

Thank you! And I share your vision, I see this vote as the way in which we have or at least start that conversation within the Community Working Group :)

Coming from an IRL coop i am really surprised to see this number of blocks -- is there somewhere where the meaning of each of the votes is clarified in this context? because in all the consensus-driven orgs i've ever known a block is like "You block maybe once or twice per time you are involved with an organization because it represents a failure of the consensus process that is irresolvable -- your views differ from others enough that you'd be willing to leave the organization over it, rather than work on reconciling views. More discussion won't fix this." I can see how it might be different in a digital coop, but like i said just a bit taken aback.

I say this as someone who has seen blocks totally grind organizations to a halt and destroy them -- disagreements over process turn into blocks turn into nothing ever happening. no one can assume good faith anymore because they were blocked last time, so now it's on the table much more. there isn't a pathway for discussion because the odds of a block are >>1/n_people so the odds any given proposal passes are slim. as someone just getting involved with this coop i'd like to see some context for what the votes mean, how we think of them, what happens in the event of a block, etc.!

that sounds like a lot of fear based on your experience elsewhere, but not quite matching the situation we have here.

in this situation all the blocks (as best I can understand) are about starting this with a discussion with the community working group to make sure they are included in the process (as they do the registration work currently so makes sense they are included).

both me and @Will Murphy (representing 2/3 blocks) have said we support the spirit of the idea (smoother/easier registration flow), and the other block is totally up for the discussion about it.

it's exactly about creating a pathway for discussion.

I also agree it's not entirely clear what the votes mean in our context, I think we muddle through here with a "just about works" process... could be a nice inspiration for creating a little step by step social.coop guide, that expands on the stuff in https://social.coop/terms ... like "start a discussion including relevant working groups, ... " ... although personally I like the "muddle through" approach at the moment :D ... this discussion here seems a good opportunity!