Keith Axline

24 Followers
32 Following
45 Posts

if you've ever messed up a dimension or a hole position on something you're building, don't be too hard on yourself.

at least you're not the Cisco design engineer who caused an entire product line recall by placing the mode button (which resets the switch if held) directly above an RJ45 port.

Future Americans will look back on this as the era when billionaires ruled U.S. elections. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/billionaires-provided-15-percent-funding-midterms
Billionaires Provided 15 Percent of Funding for the Midterms

This is not a healthy situation.

Brennan Center for Justice
@kaxline @compthink @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon the governance aspect is so messy! Glad we've been experimenting with it for a while to see what works and doesn't. Still so much to learn too! Makes experimentation a little less daunting. ;)
@danhon @desertrat @compthink @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis Well that’s another wrinkle … what time frame are we worried about? Do we want to get existing mods compensated for their extra efforts in the next 6 months? Or do we want to build a system to support a future decentralized social network at scale? Both, probably. But where as an individual do you want to put your money?
@desertrat @compthink @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon I like the idea of a resource of experts. I’m starting up my own Mastodon server and would prefer to outsource the domain expertise so I don’t have to worry about it.
@desertrat @compthink @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon Governance is what we all hope to avoid because it’s messy, but eventually everyone will understand it’s an inherent need of decentralization. It’s arguably why decentralization hasn’t caught on yet. We’ll figure it out though, and then we’ll have the nice things.
@desertrat @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon there is no organization. if you try to create one, you'll inevitably never get a significant percentage of instances to use join it, then you'll get pressure from the official moderators over the rogue ones...why even start the cycle if its working.
@compthink @Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon That's why you create an organization that is independently governed & then if instances want support, they can reach out to the organization of community managers & work w/them. There's no rogue mods, its all in the open. I work in decentralized communities & have for a while. We use governance and collective action to solve problems. My understanding is that its not working, or won't at scale as more orgs make instances. Why not try?
@Chronotope @craignewmark @jeffjarvis @danhon instead of sending funds to the individual servers and risking the monetization threats/misperceptions, why not create an organization of trained moderators/community managers and those moderators are funded by that external org and individual servers can “request/hire” them from that community management org. That way the funds stay out of indie servers completely.
@Chronotope @jeffjarvis @danhon
I'm on it, talking to some folks who are much smarter than me regarding both Mastodon and the nonprofit world. Need to put my affairs in order.