This is a mod for Minetest that enables diverse governance mechanisms. It seeks to implement the Modular Politics proposal. In the future, it will be possible to use this framework to simulate governance in a number of platform contexts.
This mod produces an API that can serve as a dependency for other mods that add specific governance functionalities.
For background information, documentation, and the project roadmap, see the wiki.
To use this in Minetest, simply install it in your mods/
or worldmods/
folder. Minetest will load init.lua
.
In the game, open the Modular Politics interface with the command /modpol
.
Modular Politics can also be used independently of Minetest as a command-line tool. Currently command-line use of modpol requires a Unix-style system, but it is intended to become more fully platform independent.
The command-line version is in the modpol
subdirectory. To run the program on Unix systems in CLI mode, install lua or luajit and execute the following in this directory:
$ lua[jit] login.lua
You can also interact with the interpreter by starting it this way:
$ lua[jit]
> dofile("login.lua")
In the interpreter, for a list of global functions and tables, use modpol.menu()
.
By default, a data directory named "data" will be created in this directory. /data
will contain a log file and serialized program data files.
Another storage method may be chosen in modpol.lua
. A StorageRef-based method for Minetest 5.* is included: storage-mod_storage.lua
.
Initiated by Nathan Schneider of the Media Enterprise Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of the Metagovernance Project. Based on the paper "Modular Politics: Toward a Governance Layer for Online Communities."
Other contributors include:
We'd love to welcome more contributors, particularly from the Minetest community! Please join the conversation in the Issues or the Minetest.net forum.
We are grateful for support for this project from a residency with The Bentway Conservancy.