Docs Proposal: How the SourceCred Community Structures Power and Governance

[Bex]

Resources:

• Docs Proposal Process
• Core Meeting 1/12 notes

Purpose:

This is the first step in creating a doc that outlines the ways in which we structure power and governance in the SourceCred community. Props to @META_DREAMER for coming up with this docs idea. This post will act as a first draft and discussion area, which we will pull from to create the document. It’s also a space to take a stab at writing parts of the document you feel passionate or knowledgable about. So far, the following has been listed as part of this document:

• Social knowledge that isn’t entirely defined
• Hand signals used in meetings
• Governance
• Ways in which we decide to structure power and governance in our community
• Ways about how we collaborate
• Cred literacy, how it flows on platforms, etc.

Please answer these questions so we can make sure we’re all on the same page, and feel free to add anything else your heart desires:

1. What would you like to see included in this document?
2. Do your answers fall under the purpose of the document, to outline the ways in which we structure power and governance in the SourceCred community? If not, would you like to see any changes made to the purpose of the document?

Do you have any ideas for how to elaborate on the existing topics? Please go ahead!

[Jolie_Ze]

Hi Bex, thanks for this discussion topic!

I hope that the document has a short intro focussed on succinctly identifying the document as emerging and iterative.

Re: Hand signals used in meetings [I understand these may be written in another place and I’m not attached to the final draft]

We use a series of hand signals in our virtual meeting spaces. If and when these change we will update them to this document.

For now, they are:

• Fingers crossed: : to represent a direct response to the speaker regarding the current topic

• Thumb and forefinger meet/aka OK sign: to represent introducing a new topic into discussion

• Both hands held in a triangle with thumbs and forefingers touching: : point of process; we’ve kinda gone off track and I’d like to share that and center us

[Now this is an aspiration I have which follows]

Each of these signs can also be signaled using the chat function and the emojis that follow denote each of their emoji equivalents. Facilitators will be keeping track of the chat and virtual components of the meeting to address participants readiness to participate. If you ever feel you are being missed, please unmute yourself and let us know.

Reflection on my emerging role: As a part of Community Cultivation I will continue to make it my mission to make our spaces more accessible. I look forward to facilitating within SC, learning from the wise LB who has got us this far and will continue to inspire us and imparting my knowledge and lending my experience of facilitation to our meeting spaces.

As such the hand signals will likely be changing and expanded and the role of facilitator as well. I look forward to the next iterations and to our forthcoming process. It is for these reasons that I extra appreciate this being a visible part of your Docs proposal, Bex!

[LB]

My thought is that these topics listed are all kind of their own docs and to try and put them all into one might produce a confusing mega-post (something I’m becoming sensitive to as I start to realize I have a penchant for writing confusing mega-posts ). Though, I can see a uniting theme of “community knowledge” aka things our community has learned over time together but only really lives in the brains of community members (which makes it hard to transfer efficiently). And that is a major issue our community is struggling with right now.

One thought re: communicating social knowledge of all kinds is that we could make a Discourse category for “newcomer questions” or “newcomer support” or something of that ilk. Then we’d direct newcomers to ask their questions in the form a short topic which experienced community members can reply to with their experiential knowledge.

I see at least three distinct benefits:

1. We communicate that knowledge, but not at the expense of human connection.
2. We make that knowledge easier to access for future newcomers asking the same questions.
3. We start to collect a record of the things newcomers frequently want to know and the varied answers from the community, which could eventually drive the creation of a succinct and polished doc addressing the issue.

So maybe a new Discourse category is step 0 of figuring out these future docs?

(props to @Jolie_Ze and @decentralion for thoughts that helped sprout this idea)

[Bex]

I definitely agree that community knowledge should be on its own. @META_DREAMER, could you go into further detail on what you were hoping for with this document? Do you see governance and community knowledge overlapping, or would you like to see separate docs?

[META_DREAMER]

I think the governance doc would likely be separate from the “community rhythms and rituals” document. Our governance still isn’t well defined so that would be properly fleshed out later, but its still worth having somewhere on paper how we currently operate with a TBD and such. We have a lot of community practices and stuff that we should def document and make more visible, like hand signals, our meeting times and topics, the onboarding journey, our expectations / principles in terms of culture / behaviour, etc.

The “DAO Canvas” does a good job at highlighting the different pieces we might want to document, could be useful as a starting point / inspiration. Def don’t have to use all of it but I think there’s bits and pieces we could adapt to help people get a good holistic picture of how we operate as a community: