Standardized Governance Tools

Convener: Sohyeon Hwang (@s0hw@hci.social, sohyeon@princeton.edu)

Website: soon to be in beta: https://crowcards.org – reach out for early access?

Notes

• Sohyeon Hwang post-doc @ Princeton on collective / community governance incl. on decentralized social media

• Bonfire blog post: https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/making-community-governance-legible-a-semester-with-bonfire/

• Demo:

  • Governing Together: Toward Infrastructure for Community-Run Social Media by Sohyeon Hwang et al https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3772318.3790855

  • Something similar to a model card. Simple, parsimonious.

  • Communities sit in trust bubble with each other.

  • Some bubbles might be intimate, some will be broader.

• Misha:

  • We OpenTech(AUC) (https://opentech-auc.org/) run our own bonfire instance: https://bonfire.opentech-auc.org/ (We run it with https://coopcloud.tech)

  • Amazing, but also confusing. a LOT of settings for managing reach of posts, that also overlap and clash (with rules for what setting has priority in case of clashes)

• CIGI Centre for International Governance Innovation

  • University of Waterloo

  • https://www.cigionline.org/

• Aditya: Different skill sets:

  • Building the platforms

  • Governing/moderation the platforms

  • It will be different kinds of people that are drawn to such roles.

  • alas people who are interested in doing the work can’t cover the costs - how do you sustain it?

  • Part of the Fediverse is run by people who think that decentralized social media means that you don’t need to moderate/govern anymore.

  • Anarchy doesn’t mean libertarian chaos

  • Use existing communities and existing organizational potential.

• Misha: Surf moderating for higher education. Good example.

  • So far, “governance” has mostly been things like “can we get this emoji pack or not?”

  • Question for the group: do you have experience with more spicy governance issues?

https://connectedplaces.online/on-the-coordination-for-better-moderation-systems/

• There is a difference between on the one hand families or groups of friends, and on the other hand bigger groups -> that creates different problems.

• for governance to be resilient, need to manage + leave room for uncertainty

• Sohyeon: Community Rules for an Open Web (CROW) in development.

  • https://crowcards.org/

  • Tool for making policy cards is in development

• Jim: Possible sympathetic group: Cooperative-run Mastodon for Canada. Join at join.cosocial.ca . I know several of the organisers, they build good things. Cosocial is working with the Alberta Libraries association on a Bookwyrm archipelago. As well as sandboxing a PDS.

You might be interested in Badgefed, fediprofile, and CommunityCredentials.org/CommunityCredentials.ca, as tools and interesting non-microblog Fediverse initiatives.

languages - depending on language, here are some options for policy. e.g. is your instance in Thai language? Here are rules for what characters should be allowed and forbidden in usernames and handles.