@joshsharp This is an excellent point — ownership can foster civic pride, which goes a long way towards the sustainability of great communities. Do you have thoughts on what this kind of ownership could look like?
@AngeloStavrow thanks! As I said in the post, it could be as simple as making the source available, so users can help work on the software. I think a user-owned co-operative is also a really interesting idea because then the community itself is in charge.
@belle aw thanks! I'd love to have more discussion about this but don't know how to encourage it if nobody sees the post.
@joshsharp Well, one way would be to mention @Manton & @macgenie. 😀
Two quick thoughts:
* Open sourcing would only give ownership to programmers.
* Communal Ownership adds many complications: money, enforcing rules, membership, etc.
It's a good topic; need to think more.
@joshsharp I think this is a really interesting point.
What if the community guidelines were open sourced and maintained democratically by the users?
That's the thing -- as I see it, we are owners with respect to our content, but users with respect to the Micro.blog service.
@joshsharp @Bruce Ownership is a fine paradigm for content, but I'm not sure it works for community. Is governance better? Can you own a community? Who owns your civic community? I don't disagree at all with your point. To be sustainable, the community itself needs to steer.
@kwlblt @joshsharp There are models from the pre-internet days: Rotaries, churches, etc. I'd be happy with the Quaker model if y'all had the patience for the "Sense of the Micro". 🙃
(Quaker governance is very slow and deliberate, but tries like hell to get everyone on board).
@Bruce I've been in Quaker meetings that went well, and I've been in co-opted Quaker style meetings that failed their purpose, but that's probably for a different thread. :)
@joshsharp @kwlblt I agree about the community guidelines. I think open-source docs is a good way for the community to build its own description of how it works, too. Micro.blog's help pages are nominally open-source but open issues seem to languish so I don't think it's truly community-driven at all.
@Bruce open source gives primary ownership to programmers, sure, but it liberates the source and the platform from the single current owner, allowing others to create alternatives. I agree it's not a perfect solution but it does allow a much larger range of possibilities than right now (including alternatives that do have a co-op model, and so on.)
@Bruce @joshsharp re: open-sourcing the code, while non-programmers might not work on the code, if more programmers could contribute, non-programmers would have more than one person who could hear & implement their ideas, so it still opens up community participation more.
@kwlblt Yes, Quaker decision making needs a Friendly spirit.
But, in terms of a self-governing community, I think it makes sense to look at models outside the online world too. Millennia have been spent trying different options. The US swarmed of civic groups in the late 1800s.
@joshsharp You don't need to mention me or @Manton. Replies to us will be seen be everyone who follows us and who has their preference set to see all replies. This is true for every user, not just Manton or me.
We created the community guidelines at the outset with input from many users. It would be a good idea to have a forum for discussion on ongoing editing. The timeline isn't great for that. We used the Slack #community channel, but I'd love suggestions on better platforms for this use.
@macgenie thanks! Discussion is a start but I think you could involve users more directly and give them more control by putting the guidelines somewhere like github and accepting proposals and edits.
@macgenie I was making a suggestion in response to Josh's question about how to get the discussion going without anyone seeing his post. I figured you and Manton would be a big part of any discussion of community ownership, so it would be worth asking you to join in. 🙃
@macgenie Would the discussion around community power also be better on Slack? I feel exploring those ideas (at a high level?) fits blogging. Questions of balance between the technical and the social feel right for my blog. Though I could condense Slack talks into posts.
@joshsharp Thanks for the feedback. The guidelines are in GitHub. I think we'll open source more things over time. Just started with the help and all the hosted blog themes.
@kwlblt I was riffing off of @joshsharp's co-op idea. For a fair number of communities, there is some communal property. Like a Masonic Hall. I guess in terms of a micro blogging community, it would be the servers running the timeline? And communal ownership gets complicated.
@manton that's great! I couldn't find a link to that anywhere in the help pages. I'd love to see the api docs get there too as we're really feeling the pain of minimal docs.
@joshsharp The API docs are in GitHub too. Almost everything is driven by user requests and open standards, including a lot of discussion in the IndieWeb community. Of course, we want to do more! It's true the public issues aren't well-maintained, but there's also Slack and email, where most feedback goes.
@manton okay cool. I can't see any link to the relevant repo on github in the help pages. Making this more prominent would be a great start! It's good that users are involved, but unless you already know where to help or give feedback, the whole thing appears pretty opaque.
@joshsharp some very interesting conversation came up about this! I'm hopeful that it'll continue, and lead to real changes in community involvement.
@joshsharp That's a good point. I'm not sure we really link to the repositories anywhere, just assuming people will find it. We probably need a help page for how people can get more involved that could link to everything.
@joshsharp I'm a member of a forum community that has group control. It was formed when several smaller private or semi-private forums decided to merge and combine into one forum.
But the big difference is all the forum principles have known each other professionally, and on larger forums for 15 or 20 years. They all get along and respect and trust each other. Everyone tacitly, adheres to an etiquite that we all learned decades ago. I don't see that same dynamic working for group control amongst a bunch of strangers, who don't have 20 years of connections and experience. Most things run daily by committee don't run very well or last very long.
@joshsharp Wow, a lot of great conversation on this topic while I slept! I have some thoughts that might be best shared as a blog post instead of a reply here. Thank you for prompting this discussion! 😊
@bradenslen that makes sense! But I'm not sure any sort of committee needs daily input. I agree it's a challenge but I'm sure there are examples where it does work, so I think "it's too hard, users shouldn't get a say" is the easy way out. We can do better than that.
@AngeloStavrow yeah, it's been great! Me too, actually, I need to gather my thoughts and blog about it some more I think 🙂 looking forward to seeing yours!
@joshsharp It's never as simple or as absolute as "users shouldn't get a say". In any good community the management needs to listen to the opinions and requests of the members.
@bradenslen right. And the process of making a request, listening, responding, and implementing, should be formalised and transparent. Management should be accountable to the community.
@joshsharp Yes, formalising the process... I think you finally summed up in that last reply to Brad what it is you actually meant in your original post.
@simonwoods also this is only one facet of the argument. I am still in favour of open sourcing the entire thing so users can help fix bugs, document behaviour, etc. As mentioned in the original post.
@joshsharp I don't think it's a bad idea. I just don't think it ought to be a priority and the lack of it does not represent poor stewardship.
@simonwoods fair enough, it's only my opinion and I want to discuss it and hear opposing viewpoints. But what if what you think should be a priority is not Manton's priority? You don't have much ability to change that, and I think you should.
@joshsharp Yep, I think we're largely in agreement.
(for reference, this is my longer follow-up post where we also continued the conversation: LINK)
@joshsharp Interesting points, and well-stated. I’m not sure that I agree. The way I see it, each individual owns their blog and content as sovereign territory. Manton is providing a tool that facilitates discussion between the blogs. He made the tool, set the guidelines, and has been a good host in my opinion.
I’d rather be a guest at Manton’s party than struggle for self-governance. Self-governance is difficult absent shared values, and shared values are so difficult to identify in online mediums.
More broadly, I also think:
1) If this system is ideologically wrong, those who believe so can start a different service to test their ideas. That’s not sarcasm, by the way. I genuinely think competing approaches are valuable!
2) Micro.blog is a business with a purpose. I like that purpose, but my use and appreciation of the service doesn’t mean I own it.
A personal note: I worked as a facilitator for many years, and I’ve come to appreciate the delicate touch required to create a safe space for conversation. Too much structure, it stifles. Too much openness, it becomes a sloppy and dramatic mess.
For me, the current setup is just right. That doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone, I realize.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 🙂
@cheri thanks for these thoughts! I guess it's hard to make a convincing case that there's a problem if you don't feel the pain of it. Personally I'd rather struggle with how best to involve the community than never try.
Re 1: right, this is the point I made about ownership — a user's only choices are whether to stay or leave. It's kind of the "free market" argument, as in "consumers' power is to vote with their wallets, and if they don't like something they can go buy a competing product". I think that's a disappointing binary, and I don't see why there can't be something in between. (All the same, Belle and I have been talking about how we'd build an alternative if it has to come to that. We actually used to run something sort of similar.)
Re 2: A business doesn't have to involve an owner and customers. That's why things like co-ops exist :) I definitely appreciate the extra overhead of changing to that approach, and sure, if people are happy being a community of customers then why bother with that effort.
I'm not necessarily saying there should be more or less structure. I'm saying that there is no process to follow for people who have issues they'd like to see fixed. For example, I don't use any Apple devices, so until recently I could only use micro.blog on the web (until @belle overcame the adversity of the API to make Pico for Android). The web app has had issues like content just not loading, and no paging to see older posts that I could've helped fix if I had access, or someone else could've raised formally, if they were part of the process of driving development. But there's no option to be involved in those ways. Again, if everything works fine for you and you feel well looked after, then there's no issue there, that's fine! If that's the majority view then the few people who don't have Macs and iPhones, people who would like to help fix bugs, can go elsewhere. That's a shame for those few and a shame for diversity, I think, but perhaps it would unite those who stay and who are content.
@joshsharp @belle @cheri If I thought open-sourcing M.b would have a positive impact right away, I'd do it today. There are trade-offs in focus and helping developers (it runs on 6 servers so is difficult to test locally). But the business model supports it. We'll get there, if a little slowly. (I've always wanted to open source our app Wavelength to encourage better podcasting tools, for example.)
@manton Perosnally I'm impartial to M.b being open sourced, but needing 6 servers doesn't necessarily mean it's difficult to test or run locally. With containerization you need some service definition and handful of images (which can be published), and you're set. One command can more or less run the full infrastructure.
The web app has had issues like content just not loading, and no paging to see older posts that I could've helped fix if I had access, or someone else could've raised formally, if they were part of the process of driving development.
I've been hammering on that issue since about two weeks into using M.b. It doesn't seem like a such a big issue to solve. The iOS apps already have "load more" option, so there is some sort of API for this already. How hard is it to add a "Load more" link/button on the page? (I would actually love for somebody to give me technical explanation for this...)
Sure, there might be other priorities, but c'mon - this is something that completely limits non-iOS users where the web interface is the only option, yet there is absolutely no priority or will to fix this issue. There was a "fix" while back, but very unstatisfactory one -- adding more scrollback history, instead of adding actual "load more" button. So time was spent, but it could've been spent for something better.
@joshsharp @belle I partially agree to what you and Belle are raising, but also don't think leaving is the solution. Leaving, in fact, is exactly "voting with your wallet". I think people who are not content should stay and keep raising issues, that's the only way there will be solutions that will benefit the whole community.
If you don't want to pay because you can't use the service as advertised (which is completely fair), you can still participate in the community -- you can run self hosted site, have your M.b account follow your feed, and you can interact/reply in discussions. The only thing you won't be able to do is use the M.b site to post new (non-reply) posts, you'll have to start those from your own site.
@oyam @joshsharp I agree, which is why I've stayed this long. But over and over my raised concerns go nowhere and do nothing. Nothing has changed, and I feel powerless to contribute as a result. I think it's unfair to put the onus on users to change the platform if they have no recourse to do so.
@belle @oyam I agree, that's why I've brought up my concerns and stuck around to discuss them. But so far it seems like the broader community doesn't want change, so why try to force it on them? Most people don't think there's any issue. I agree that it shouldn't be on us to try to effect change if there's no support and no means to do so except to keep annoying the contented guests at Manton's party by talking about it.
@manton @oyam I totally understand how scary it can be to open source code. That's still my position on a lot of stuff I've written — "please don't look, it's so ugly". But again, people can't help make it easily runnable in containers or whatever until it is open source. I don't think you're giving people enough credit.
On the other hand, definitely agree about the overhead, I've mentioned that as an issue before. You can't just open source it and magically more things happen without your time and input. Still, personally I'd like to see the team take on that overhead and just have less time for other more niche work, like the more specific iOS apps. The former benefits more people.
@joshsharp FWIW I don't think you're "annoying the contented guests". I also don't think much can be accomplished in these comment sections so I would hope there is more being done here; no, the users shouldn't be expected to do an unfair amount of work but pushing for change can be done in a better way... IDK.
As somebody locked into Android for 15 months and unlikely to drop my Windows desktop for at least that amount of time I am highly invested in pushing Micro.blog toward greater cross-platform parity and hold a strong belief the web app should be the canonical piece of the puzzle. With that in mind I have been working on gathering a groundswell of necessary improvements for the non-Apple part of the userbase as a way to strongly represent clearly the requisite needs of the group; would you be interested in contributing to that kind of thing?
@simonwoods Belle has tried to change things without resorting to public criticism for a while, and didn't get anywhere. Sometimes the better ways don't work.
But yes, that sounds good, I'd like to be involved. I'd add that the API is almost as important as the web app, though.
@jgmac1106 I hear what you are saying but I feel like its a different use case and that a forum would be better use. Sure a decentralised forum might be even better…
@simonwoods I got quickly stuck with API am stilll hoping to build little vue.js (webthing) so if anyone can help update / make guides for API I would be up for sharing code / practice. gitlab.adamprocter.co.uk/adamproct...
@adamprocter Yes i saw your reply oput of context and then clicked through to get at conversation. I would say GitHub...but all hate when issues turn into feature request.
I don't mind hanging with all these iPhone people. Just stay off micro.blog during major Apple announcements.