gateway co-op minimal governance v1
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three layers of roles (two official):
- member-stewards (some commitments to maintenance and participation, voting powers)
- member-users-contributors-advisors
- might use services, make contributions, help with the project (but without a commitment)
- financial contribution of some kind (still need to further define this officially, notaflof)
- member-curious (in the group chat, following along, not officially involved yet)
perhaps in the future voting could be expanded to included member-users-contributors-adivsors but keeping it small now for simplicity. for now adding a new steward would be a "medium decision" as defined by the decision process (defined below).
minimal basic governance (this could be changed later, but having something in place in the meantime)
this is based off of the sunbeam city decision model (https://wiki.sunbeam.city/doku.php?id=sbc_decision-making_process), which was based off of the autonomic decision model (https://autonomic.zone/blog/2021/01/how-we-make-decisions/), with one major change of the addition of a vote timeout on medium and large decisions. this change is based on the lived experience of limitations of the sunbeam model as it applied to use by a digital group, where unlike an in-person group, sometimes people "fall off the grid" and are unable to be found for a vote. a timeout on voting allows things to continue and the system to not break even if this happens.
SUNBEAM CITY v2 DECISION MODEL
1) Small - Get on and do the thing
No one would mind
Made by an individual within Gateway Co-op.
Could be in any area.
Up to individual Gateway Co-op members to decide if they should make the decision, or share it with the rest of Gateway Co-op to seek consensus.
After you do it, still tell people what you did, but don't need approval before you do it
2) Medium - Consensus Pending Objections With 3 Day Deadline
About admin and infrastructure.
Doesn’t affect the direction or operation of Gateway Co-op.
Give a deadline: unless anyone objects or asks for more time by then, it goes ahead.
Default deadline of 3 days for a poll
If any member of Gateway Co-op thinks it’s a Large decision, achieve Maximum Consensus™ (see below).
Doesn't necessarily need to be discussed at a meeting
Consensus Pending Objections: consensus is reached if no member-steward raises an active objection
3) Large - Consensus With One Week Deadline (Maximum Consensus™)
Important decisions affecting the operation, direction, working conditions and finances of Gateway Co-op.
Consensus voting: addressing any concerns, all member-stewards approve
Can be requested by any member of Gateway Co-op for any decision.
Input from every Gateway Co-op member-steward
Whoever proposes Large decisions is responsible for chasing up members for votes.
Votes can be in favour, against, abstain (stand aside) or block.
One member, one vote.
Default deadline of a week (if you don't vote within the deadline, your vote is not included and the decision proceeds)
0) personal projects hosted on the gateway. decide as you will, independently.
examples of decisions and their sizes:
- changing the governance mechanism --> large
- doing something with finances greater than 20 dollars --> medium
- adding a new member-steward --> medium
- adding a new member-user-contributor-advisor --> small (growth at the speed of trust)
- want to change the domain name for the website --> medium
- want to deploy a new service to one of the servers --> small
- want to fix a bug --> small
- reply to an email that someone sent to the coop --> small
- starting a new group chat or action group --> small
culturally, leaning towards letting people do things, and erring towards things being small/medium decisions. the point of the voting is not to all try to micromanage each other, but to have a fallback in case there is a disagreement.