211 lines
11 KiB
JSON
211 lines
11 KiB
JSON
{
|
|
"_comment": "About page. Three sentences stay out until they are approved: cards and templates in the public domain, a Rule staying private unless it is shared, and co-op lawyers designing the Rule format.",
|
|
"centeredHeader": {
|
|
"accessibleName": "Every community has rules written or not",
|
|
"segments": [
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "Every" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "community" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "has" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "rules" },
|
|
{ "type": "icon", "icon": "arrow" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "written" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "or" },
|
|
{ "type": "word", "text": "not" },
|
|
{ "type": "icon", "icon": "ring" }
|
|
],
|
|
"subhead": "CommunityRule helps communities write down, together, how they talk, who belongs, how they decide and what happens when they disagree.",
|
|
"credit": "From the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder"
|
|
},
|
|
"openingStatement": {
|
|
"paragraph1": "Too many of our communities end up with rules nobody chose, run by whoever set up the group chat. Other people often do all the work so the first real disagreement turns into a painful split.",
|
|
"paragraph2": "Our communities deserve better."
|
|
},
|
|
"history": {
|
|
"heading": "The idea is old. Our first tries fell short",
|
|
"items": [
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "About 100 BCE",
|
|
"accent": "brand",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "One of the Dead Sea Scrolls sets out how to join a Jewish community, how members should treat one another and what happens when someone breaks the rules. Scholars call it the Community Rule. Medieval monasteries called their own governing documents a "
|
|
},
|
|
{ "text": "regula", "emphasis": true },
|
|
{ "text": ", a rule. Our name is a nod to both." }
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "1972",
|
|
"accent": "brand",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "Jo Freeman, writing from inside the women's movement, argued that groups without written rules still have rules, just hidden ones. “The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized.”"
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "2020",
|
|
"accent": "brand",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "Nathan Schneider started the first CommunityRule at the lab in the mutual aid surge during Covid. It was a palette of templates, from dictatorship to various flavors of democracy, that any community could adapt and adopt. Mutual aid communities were forming in weeks, so the lab offered to help them use it, for free."
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "2021",
|
|
"accent": "brand",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "Cassandra Dana, Drew Hornbein, Vincent Russell and Nathan Schneider turned the templates into a small book, Community Rules. Nine structures to choose from, combine or react against."
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "2022 to 2024",
|
|
"accent": "brand",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "The lab rebuilt it around modules with Deacon Rodda and Drew Hornbein, so a community could mix practices instead of picking one fixed model. Later, communities could log in, save a Rule and change it as they grew."
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "callout",
|
|
"title": "We found that people came to read, and far fewer stayed to write. Many people tried the editor, often alone or in a workshop, and few communities are known to have adopted a Rule and kept it.",
|
|
"body": "Reading about governance was not the hard part. Something happened between the template and the room, and we did not know what."
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"kind": "entry",
|
|
"date": "2026",
|
|
"accent": "positive",
|
|
"body": [
|
|
{
|
|
"text": "Two community fellows at the lab set out to learn what was holding people back and how to fix it. Dani Shipley designed a study, interviewed organizers and built prototypes of a new experience. In parallel, Andy DiLallo started rebuilding the tool around what organizers said."
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
"participantSelection": {
|
|
"heading": "We went looking for communities that had figured it out",
|
|
"body": "We talked with the people who hold communities together about how they actually do it: organizers from worker and housing co-ops, mutual aid networks, street medic crews and open source projects, in different countries and at very different sizes. We are still talking with them.",
|
|
"groups": [
|
|
"A mutual aid network that formed during a flood and never stopped",
|
|
"A decades-old worker co-op of co-ops started by staff",
|
|
"A community fridge organizer that serves a large metro area",
|
|
"An open source project with maintainers on three continents",
|
|
"A housing co-op on its second generation of members",
|
|
"A food share that has served every Saturday for at least nine years"
|
|
],
|
|
"footnote": "Names appear only for pilot communities"
|
|
},
|
|
"fourQuestions": {
|
|
"heading": "Across these conversations, the communities that lasted had settled four things early",
|
|
"cards": [
|
|
{
|
|
"tone": "yellow",
|
|
"question": "How do you talk?",
|
|
"line": "Where do discussions happen, how is information logged and what channels stay open to everyone?"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"tone": "teal",
|
|
"question": "Who belongs?",
|
|
"line": "How does someone join the community, how do they take on roles and what are the boundaries of membership?"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"tone": "lavender",
|
|
"question": "How do you decide?",
|
|
"line": "Who has the authority to make decisions, what processes are used and how are agreements formalized?"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"tone": "red",
|
|
"question": "What happens when you disagree?",
|
|
"line": "What are the steps for peer mediation, conflict management and handling core value collisions?"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"wishHeading": "What did communities wish they had settled sooner?",
|
|
"wishParagraphs": [
|
|
"Through interviews, workshops and digital ethnography we built empathy with people that we hoped would use the tool. This research produced many insights.",
|
|
"We found that written rules can harden too, and they can favor whoever writes well and has the most time. So a good Rule stays short, names who holds the keys, from the bank account to the group chat, and says how it changes and how someone can leave."
|
|
],
|
|
"statsHeading": "What unwritten rules cost",
|
|
"statsSource": "From interviews with members of forty communities from April 2025 to February 2026.",
|
|
"stats": [
|
|
{
|
|
"value": "9 in 10",
|
|
"line": "had lost an organizer to burnout, usually with little to no notice."
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"value": "2 in 3",
|
|
"line": "had never written down how they make hard or contentious decisions."
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"value": "1 in 2",
|
|
"line": "had split, or nearly split, over a decision nobody knew how to make."
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
},
|
|
"rebuildProcess": {
|
|
"heading": "We rebuilt the tool around what organizers told us",
|
|
"body": "Organizers told us the old tool was confusing. They could not see their options, and writing a whole Rule at once felt like too much. So we sketched each idea, put it in front of organizers, founders and co-op developers, ran a pilot with local mutual aid communities and co-ops and fixed whatever tripped people up. Now your options are laid out as cards other communities use. You pick the ones that fit and write your Rule one part at a time."
|
|
},
|
|
"narrativeBlock": {
|
|
"heading": "What organizers gave, we give back",
|
|
"paragraphs": [
|
|
"The study exists because organizers gave their time and their stories. We commit to ensuring they receive the direct value of our collective knowledge first, with access to the findings before anyone else, alongside a free, dedicated governance workshop for their community.",
|
|
"What it produced is shared. The tool is free for every community, and its code is open source under the GNU General Public License version 3. The guides, the zines and the findings are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so you can copy them, adapt them and republish them. A tool that asks your community to be transparent should not be a black box itself.",
|
|
"Some things are not shared. The notes from each conversation stay private, and nothing a community tells us is quoted or used without its permission. Send your members a link, or export it and publish it yourself. With a community's consent, and only then, what we learn in workshops goes back into the templates and guides for the next community.",
|
|
"Our templates output plain text markdown that you can commit right into your git repository next to your code."
|
|
],
|
|
"addHeading": "Add to it",
|
|
"addLine": "The patterns come from communities. Add yours.",
|
|
"shareExperiences": "Share your experiences",
|
|
"helpBuild": "Help build",
|
|
"helpBuildHref": "https://git.medlab.host"
|
|
},
|
|
"yourTurn": {
|
|
"heading": "Every community has rules. Write yours down, together",
|
|
"body": "It is also practice. Each time a community settles something together, it gets better at governing itself. The tool is free for every community, and the kit is free for volunteer-run communities. Try it together, then tell us how your community really works, so the next version fits it better.",
|
|
"createRule": "Create rule",
|
|
"facilitator": "Talk to a facilitator",
|
|
"facilitatorHref": "/workshops",
|
|
"questionsLead": "Questions first?",
|
|
"faq": "Read the FAQ",
|
|
"faqHref": "/learn#faq",
|
|
"or": "or",
|
|
"askOrganizer": "ask an organizer",
|
|
"illustrationCaption": "[People sitting around a circular table discussing drafts]"
|
|
},
|
|
"credits": {
|
|
"heading": "Who made this",
|
|
"rows": [
|
|
{
|
|
"role": "Started CommunityRule, advisor and guide",
|
|
"name": "Nathan Schneider"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"role": "Mixed-method research, experience design and product management",
|
|
"name": "Dani Shipley"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"role": "Product engineering, design system workflow and infrastructure",
|
|
"name": "Andy DiLallo"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"role": "Earlier contributors",
|
|
"name": "Cassandra Dana, Drew Hornbein, Deacon Rodda, Vincent Russell, Nathan Schneider"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"role": "Made at",
|
|
"name": "Media Economies Design Lab, University of Colorado Boulder"
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
}
|
|
}
|