Meta Topic—What do we Want?
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Hi everyone,
Here is a place we can talk about what we are looking for out of participating in this community. Here is something I wrote in a yet-to-be-published blog post to get us started:
I was discussing with @zx the things I am looking for in online interaction that I'm not getting from traditional or federated social media. A lot of different things came up, but the most important and central is this: the need to be able to have deep, complex conversations with people I trust, in a way that those conversations are not ephemeral, lost in the endlessly scrolling feed, like an infinite dark plain in which attention is but a circle of candlelight—but permanent, archived, accessible. This is because I want to be able to collaborate with people to create ideas, with complexity and nuance, for which it's necessary to be able to build on the past and plan for the future.
So, we identified some key needs:
- To build a trusted community,
- To build and enforce community norms,
- To keep some discussions private, and some public,
- To keep past conversations easily findable and accessible.
- A few other important pieces are:
- A good mobile experience,
- Inexpensive to operate,
- Extensible with new features that might be needed.
- And, finally, it would be nice, but not mandatory, to be able to achieve some level of federation with the Fediverse, so long as it's strictly limited and controlled.
Given those requirements, an Internet forum was what suggested itself. Forums are encapsulated communities, with both technical and social norm-building and enforcement features. Good forum software provides both private and public spaces (although typically it's necessary to sign up to post and reply), and forums are archival, in that conversations aren't lost but categorized and saved, in formats that are designed to be accessible to referral and long-term interaction.
Some more questions
- What do we want to talk about? How do we want to organize discussion? Categories, etc.
- Do we want private areas? Which?
- NodeBB has federation abilities. I turned them off. Do we want to turn them on? Under what parameters should this forum federate?
- What are the (abstract) things you are looking for in online community? How can we concretize them?
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A alter_kaker moved this topic from General Discussion
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i'll be honest, it's hard for me to say what this forum should be about. the two forums i'm active in are the Signal community forum (and i couldn't tell you how that happened) and the toki pona forum (rip).
i guess i'm not that good at leading/starting a conversation
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For myself I'd like somewhere which can afford at least some respite from politics, but recognise I'm in the minority on this. I don't live in either the U.S. or Israel and my bandwidth for both of those never has a chance to recharge.
Mostly I'd just like to engage with more Jewish subjects, teachings, religion, music, literature, language, humour. Liberal arts rather than poli sci if you will. I'm very isolated that way.
As for federation, I'm 100% on board with people federating their posts out but am wary of bringing fedi in. Or more properly, bringing arguments from fedi in.
The abstracts I'm looking for are safety, a sense of comfort and home, somewhere that's nurturing of us as Jews.
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@ellie said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
For myself I'd like somewhere which can afford at least some respite from politics, but recognise I'm in the minority on this. I don't live in either the U.S. or Israel and my bandwidth for both of those never has a chance to recharge.
We can definitely try to keep politics somewhat contained in its own section. It might be worth looking into just how compartmentalized we can keep this space; maybe you can subscribe to some categories and just ignore—or even hide—others.
My biggest concern is that it might be difficult to keep politics out of Torah discussions. To me Torah is intensely political and it would be inappropriate to ignore that. But I'm using the broad definition of politics: the question of how do we live as a society.
Mostly I'd just like to engage with more Jewish subjects, teachings, religion, music, literature, language, humour. Liberal arts rather than poli sci if you will. I'm very isolated that way.
How granular do you think this should be? We can have levels of categories on here; lots of granularity has pros and cons for sure.
Another question is religion and how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference (i.e. Orthodox, Reform, etc)? I'm Orthodox, for example, which means that I need to either stay out of some conversations because my understanding is going to be straight up not welcome, or participate in some kind of bowlderized way, or risk serious conflict. One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.
In the old Facebook group I was on back in the day they would tag discussions with a FoR, and people would have to handle themselves. We could do that, or use the categories... What do you think?
As for federation, I'm 100% on board with people federating their posts out but am wary of bringing fedi in. Or more properly, bringing arguments from fedi in.
This sounds to me like we keep Fedi out for now, and people can share links the old fashioned way, via copy and paste. I agree with that, at least until we get something going.
The abstracts I'm looking for are safety, a sense of comfort and home, somewhere that's nurturing of us as Jews.
I love this list!
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So, there's a lot to take in from these few posts tbh. I'll do my best.
First and foremost, one of the things that really drew me in, was a conversation with @alter_kaker some time ago about having a space where we can either build a way and ideas of how to bridge over the gap between Jews of different backgrounds/beliefs- but maybe from a closer political stance?; or actually trying to provide a place for such conversations. And I totally agree with the saying that it's difficult to keep politics out of Torah discussions. And probably to keep it out of many discussions about life itself- and to be precise, I'm not talking about "politicians politics".. So yeah- nuanced difficult discussions would make it a vibrant, interesting space.
For example, personally, I would love to get more exposed to Hasidic ideas, philosophy and thought, to learn more about it. I have on my reading list some Gershom Sholem books and have already read and loved Martin Bubber's גוג ומגוג which is entirely Hassidic.So yes, having categories or rooms or whatever we have here that corresponds to that, would be a great way to go about this. Because I would absolutely love to see this place also provide all the things @ellie was talking about!
As for the technical stuff- I'm not that bothered with it tbh. Everything goes. The only thing I might suggest is for now to keep this place out of the outside world- i.e. the fediverse. I'd say we should build it first of all, and build the content it could offer us. Then we'll see. But that's just me, and if you're keen on joining the fedi, go for it
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@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
We can definitely try to keep politics somewhat contained in its own section. It might be worth looking into just how compartmentalized we can keep this space; maybe you can subscribe to some categories and just ignore—or even hide—others.
looks like you definitely can hide categories, so maybe a category "politics" (which we can even subdivide if we want) and then people could and be encouraged to feel free to mute it.
@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
My biggest concern is that it might be difficult to keep politics out of Torah discussions. To me Torah is intensely political and it would be inappropriate to ignore that. But I'm using the broad definition of politics: the question of how do we live as a society.
as someone who's very much in the "everything's political" camp that's something i had to deal with when adding "CW politics" to the tooot.im community rules. but to me there's two ways to reconcile that conflict:
- it's relatively easy to separate state politics and politics that don't concern political parties and politicians directly
- the general approach we take towards politics on tooot.im is "if someone complains that a post is political and should be CW'd, they're probably right, and so long as nobody complains we assume it's fine". that way people are encouraged to speak relatively freely, but also people are empowered to ensure the space feels safe for them.
@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.
idk if i'm once again too trusting, but i'm thinking that so long as we proactively remind people that all FoRs are valid so long as they don't actively harm another person, that people should stay respectful, mindful of their biases, then i don't see why different FoRs wouldn't be able to mix. i think that so long as someone didn't open a discussion explicitly saying "hey i want to get the PoV of people from this FoR only, thanks", there's no reason not to allow someone to join in, so long as they're aware of their limits (and even possibly state them outloud, e.g. "as someone who grew up in Israel i'm aware my perspective on this may be biased, but yada yada").
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@talya said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
so long as we proactively remind people that all FoRs are valid
This needs its own topic. As soon as I have some time, I'll try to branch this and other pieces into their own topics so that we can discuss them without turning this topic into a frustratingly digressive chat room
Or, if one of you wants to start a topic, I don't think that there are any restrictions
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@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
My biggest concern is that it might be difficult to keep politics out of Torah discussions
It might be that I choose to stay out of those discussions. I'm chronically ill and make these sorts of decisions every day.
How granular do you think this should be? We can have levels of categories on here
I'd start fairly broad so there's activity in each category, rather than a complex but partially empty structure, with subcategories for a few known needs or interests like klezmer and Hasidic ideas.
(Is Daniel still on his own klezmer instance? Or am I remembering that totally wrong? Might be useful to federate that and automate cross-posting to here? It would be a safe controlled way to try this out.)
how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference? ... One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact.... In the old Facebook group I was on back in the day they would tag discussions with a FoR, and people would have to handle themselves. We could do that, or use the categories... What do you think?
Make that goal clear from the outset. Also create a thread specifically to talk about how to do this so early members are all involved and those who join later can see our work and contribute their thoughts.
Tags so readers have an idea what to expect is good, and so is the expectation that people will handle themselves.I'm going back and forth on the idea of categories for the movements while the group is small and have currently landed on build it so it's clear there's space for everyone.
Those are my thoughts on the questions you've raised
(Oh, can we have a rule that positive, supportive emojis are read as positive and supportive?
Had a bit of trouble with someone reading : ) as passive aggressive. I'm too old to remember all those hidden meanings 
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@ellie said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
(Oh, can we have a rule that positive, supportive emojis are read as positive and supportive?
Had a bit of trouble with someone reading : ) as passive aggressive. I'm too old to remember all those hidden meanings )figuring out if you're dealing with someone who would use a smile emoji as a passive aggressive or genuine under any particular circumstances is a full time job
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@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:
Another question is religion and how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference (i.e. Orthodox, Reform, etc)? I'm Orthodox, for example, which means that I need to either stay out of some conversations because my understanding is going to be straight up not welcome, or participate in some kind of bowlderized way, or risk serious conflict. One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.
I created a topic for this discussion.
