Questions Research Should Be Answering: Your Challenges to Fostering Connection and Community

Convener: Julia Kamin, Prosocial Design Network (@juliakamin.bsky.social)

Notes

• Important to ask the right questions. From experience, start from building tools. Start at the application level: can have a theory about what makes a social network, but what we should start by asking what people want

• Have any local governments taken on OSW, and wah

Julia asks: is there any research on using OSW in communities and orgs? Answers welcome!

• Johanna has participated in several research studies, but most are focused on a) Mastodon b) the technicalities of instance admin/moderation. I would love to be a part of some research such as a case study of bringing communities into the Fediverse and how that onboarding and integration might happen.

• What challenges? One is that communities do not want to “join the fediverse”. Communities want to organize events, plan projects, document their operations, and do their daily work. The Social Network need is not a need for more/different tools. It’s a need for the community to own, and use, whatever tool best meets their true purpose. Very few have “Be on <insert platform here>” as a core value/mission.

• Oliva asks about how to construct a code of conduct without reproducing exclusion and harms in complex cases where members come in with their traumas especially in with members expressing self harm

  • And what examples of moderation exist that utilise a Transformative Justice framework or is TJ not compatible with a CoC?

    • possibly non-fediverse governance models can be explored in a Fediverse context? I’ve found some Board training that I’ve done is useful, and recently attended a “Sociocracy 101” intro. I think though just slapping up a copy of Terms and Conditions based on Mastodon is not adequate. You need to develop your constitution and articles for a digital community exactly the same as you would for founding any small community org.

    • Moderation does not scale (Mike Masnick/Tech Dirt wrote this out, with the math worked out, years ago). Community governance needs to be human governance.

Eliana: Figuring out who the community is. Want it to be open, but what are the boundaries. What are the customs that support deeper social ties?

Mariana Borges: Newsmast, helping people building communities from zero. When building from zero, the person moderating has to be working a lot. Have found that the more the moderator engages the more successful - but how support them so that they don’t hit burnout. Eliana: what are the tools that can lighten the load of these community stewards.

Aditya: one of the advantages of the OSW is that you can do careful, creative approaches - and restorative - than in large in large platforms. But other tools that can help with basic needs like dealing with spam.

Challenge: if people aren’t connected, no reason to be there.

Gilles: Going local is crucial

Mariana: Fandom is another area to explore