council and consensus: a non-organization of non-members

[lulu]

Eeep I put this in the wrong subforum, how embarrassing :/

Okay HUGE CAVEATS   

- this entire thing started as a response on another thread and lead into a very long essay. THEN i thought "sheeeesh i should post this on my website instead of this forum" (which i might do in the future) BUT I'm writing this to open a discussion, linking to my own webpage feels like a plug, i don't think this text would hog resources, and since it's a forum.. you don't, like, have to read it. so although i feel a little embarrassed posting this, i think it's ok

- JUST in case this needs to be stated (I don't think it does but sometimes i'm wrong) this has nothing to do with this forum or community, just thought it would be a fun topic to discuss! so noooo i'm not saying that i want melonland to become a consensus driven anarchist community. i hope i've made that clear but i know this is a wall of text and some things might get missed

I was thinking about how communities function, if leadership and power need to go together, if that impacts collaboration or changes the "vibe" of a group, facilitates growth or contributes to stagnation, negative impacts it could have on leadership and members, et cetera.

Instead of rehashing things that don't work, I thought.. well, what has worked? Although not a perfect example, Rainbow Gatherings have existed for over half a century, and in my experience they are spaces where joy and creativity can thrive and flourish! 

"Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization."

Although this is an extremely OFFline example, I do think there are some principals which could be applied to online communities. I'm not recommending a wholesale adoption of each and every practice, and I'm definitely not saying that leadership/authority is bad. All groups have different needs. This isn't meant to be a glowing endorsement of Rainbow, either.  There are valid criticisms about cultural appropriation, maybe ya don't like hippies, etc. I'm mostly interested in exploring alternatives to traditional leadership/power/governance/moderation & how communities can exist.

I won't be going over EVERYTHING, and I'll be pulling text from the Welcome Home website. It's not an official website, there is no official website (or official ANYTHING), just a a GREAT resource for documents, history, and guides. so if this piques your interest check it out!  It's also a static site with frames, no CSS and tiled backgrounds that make the text hard to read!! (This post was brought to you by "open in new tab" + reader mode)

What the heck is the rainbow family?

On the surface, a Rainbow Gathering might like any generic hippy festival campout. You pop in, see naked people with dreadlocks, eat some hippie gumbo. That KotH clip is here because it's funny and fits the stereotype but it's also.. not a great representation

It's hard to define what a rainbow gathering REALLY is. There's an old saying in those circles, if you ask ten people what a gathering is, you'll get ten answers. Here's mine: a rainbow gathering is just anywhere people who want to be part of the "rainbow family" gather. There are regional gatherings, global gatherings, national gatherings. A picnic could be a rainbow gathering!  You don't apply for membership, you don't ask for permission to hold a gathering.

I think the most well-known is a large summer gathering in the United States. These take place in national forests - places where anybody is free to camp without permits. Of course you'd need a permit to host an event.. but there's nobody to apply for a permit, and it isn't really an event. These gatherings are more like temporary towns. People build kitchens, dig bathrooms, set up elaborate water purification systems, hold concerts, have discussions.. some people come to the gathering to take, some come to give, others come to build together. If you want something done, find people who are doing it, or do it yourself.

How the heck could this exist without leadership??

Rainbow introduced me to the concept of focalizers, council and consensus !

- "The location of the second gathering is decided by the people who show up to the first". But what, somebody has to lead the first gathering, right?

-"We don't have leaders in the Rainbow Family, but we do have folks that help us to focus on what we as individuals need to do."

- "One of the important things to realize is that focalizers aren't in charge. They aren't in control of anything or anyone but themself. People listen to focalizers out of respect, not because they have to. The best focalizers are invisible at a gathering. Just cause somebody may have a mailing list, or do a newsletter does not mean they are part of the "Rainbow Bureaucracy", and you can turn over your responsibilities as a human being to them."

Why the heck is this relevant??

If you ask ten people what "Web Revival" means, you'll get ten different answers.

You don't sign up to be in the web revival. It's not an organization and there is no leadership. People come from all walks of life, with different intentions ~ create digital worlds, online diaries, nostalgia pieces, homepages, alternatives to social media, etc. Some people create web rings, some create forums, some people come to visit with no desire to create their own websites. If you want something to exist, you don't need anybody's permission to build it.

[TYOMA !!]

This is mad interesting to think about!!!! I personally have been thinking alot about community organization, as I've been working on a project that I really want to be a collaborative effort, but I've never worked well in a group unless I've been getting told what to do... and now I'm the one who's "in charge" since I've done a lot of the base work so far, so actually reaching out for help is strange. Augh.

Anywho obviously this is a great way to think of the web revival in terms of recent events, like how people seemingly want to pin their hopes for Good Internet on a few people. The "structure" of Rainbow Gatherings sounds great for putting together some small collaborative websites, something I feel like isn't super common anymore outside of wikis! Food for thought.

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[Y2KStardust]

This reminds me a lot of quakerism, as someone who realllly needs to get back into practicing that again. One of the tenants of it is that there is little leadership, and what leadership there must be works on communal consensus/communal leadership. I like this concept a lot, the idea that no one person has the magic button to shut everything down.

[Melooon]

I enjoyed this thread and Im glad to see it's received a few interesting replies too! Don't worry @lulu , you're more then welcome to call me out and request new governance (That actually happened on one of my old mc communities  ).

This reminds me a lot of Quakerism,

I don't know much about the modern culture, but I was SUPER interested in Quakerism in the 18th century and how it influenced the age of Enlightenment; along with other philosophies such as utilitarianism. I think ideas around equality, the value of silence, the value of honesty (in the sense of being honest about/to oneself), and the overall value of individual humans (over profit or power), are all ideas that had (and have) a very big influence on how I look at the world 

I guess tieing that back to the hippie counterculture side and the rainbow family - they both lean on this word "peace"

I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world.

When I did a lil talk about the web revival to non-web revival people last year I found myself throwing in the line "Peace is the art of the web revival" - I didn't entirely know why I needed to say that, but there are a few things about the word peace:

• It means to not hurt others or yourself
• It means to be content or happy
• It means to value your time and the place you are at
• It means to give to others (being peaceful is contagious, it makes others peaceful too)
• It means to exit or escape troubles, but in doing is it also acknowledges those troubles, you can't have peace until you face your deamons

I'm sure that list could go on.. but I think in different ways those are all things that I've gotten out of the web revival 

These days I like using the term "connectivist art" to explain the web revival; what makes you a part of it and a participant in it is your choice to connect with others - the web revival is not made of sites, it's made of the connections between the sites - links and badges and web rings are the real web revival; its the power to create pathways, and routes and journeys - creating your own path is the root of all radical ideas 

Thats why I don't really mind if a site is super into the web revival, or if it's selling something, or if it's just someone into the aesthetic; as long as it has links, as long is it's participating in the flow of ideas, then its part of the web revival.

To put that in the context of the rainbow family comparison, I guess you could say links are our meeting places, links are the woods and the open fields. The web revival is a disused shed:

Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,

I guess that's a bit of a ramble, and it doesn't deal with the practical day-to-day organisation of sites and forums - but I think it does point to what I think the really important thing at the heart of what needs to be on people's minds when they are creating web revival sites and spaces. Sometimes just asking the question is the important part 

[Melooon]

I went to my local university library yesterday and I started reading up on organization; particularly about art and the Internet. I found lots of books from around 2013 talking about how capitalism on the web is a threat to democracy etc etc, but we've all heard that argument already - I wanted to find something new!

I know this topic is trying to come up with a literal way of organizing the web revival - but Im trying to figure out WHY we need to organise it like this - why are we the way we are - why do some things feel right and others feel wrong. If anything it makes me think we are, and have been, on the right track - it's just a matter of keeping going and pushing things a little more 

EDIT: Iv spolierd the rest of this post because it was more like raw notes: a lot of what I said was later included in this blog post in a more readable format, but you can see the old spoiler if your interested.

Many serious academic quotes

I didn't find anything new    But I didn't find something old that might help! It was "Postmodernism and Organisations" The book is from 1994, but that kinda interested me too since that's the dawn of the web era; that's somehow what we are always looking back to.

I think postmodernism is way past its sell-by date (even the book from 1994 says that at the end) but it's also still super influential and it's very relevant to understand the ideas that created the world today and as a jumping-off point to what comes next.

Postmodern epistemology suggests that the world is constituted by our shared language and that we can only 'know the world' through the particular forms of discourse our language creates. It is argued, however, that as our language-games are continually in flux, meaning is constantly slipping beyond our grasp and can thus never be lodged within one term. The task of postmodern writing, therefore, is to recognize this elusive nature of language, but never to create a meta-discourse to explain all language forms. We must beware of trying to explain formal structuring, for this is impossible. The 'myth of structure' is just one of the processes through which social action is reproduced. The postmodern theorist should instead seek to uncover 'the messy edges of mythical structure, the places where the [structuring] process becomes confused and defies definition by the discourses that are used within it' (Parker, 1992a: 10).

"Langauge-games" here seem to refer to any form of communication of ideas. This is what we do is it not?? The undefinable mythical structureless dream of the web - that is both technically totally definable, yet weirdly abstract?

Unlike in modern industrial society, where production was the cornerstone, in the postmodern society simulations structure and control social affairs. Models and codes precede reality and are reproduced unceasingly in a society where the contrast between the real and the unreal is no longer valid. As Baudrillard says, 'the real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced, the hyper. real' (19836: 146). In this society, 'simulacra' - that is, copies or representations of obiects or events - now constitute the real'. Whereas in the modern world we possess meaning in the laws of production, we find in the postmodern world a universe of nihilism where concepts float in a void.

Nihilism is a super interesting topic and I swing back and forth between thinking that it's the root of the web revival and also its greatest enemy. The idea of what is real is very much a BIG issue on the modern web and even more of a BIGGER issue with AI - so it explains to me why trying to make the web more genuine is one of the really important things for us - its when we start to get past the postmodern age and create something genuine again.

Evaluation of art's quality is usually made on high culture's terms according to Gans (1974), who focuses his interest on differences between popular culture and high culture. Gans argues that the difference is that serious art is art on the artist's terms and popular art is art on the audience's terms.

This a neat little definition for the difference between heavy art and pop art - it's also a nice little proof that personal homepages are high culture because they are made for their creator (though maybe that's a weee bit simplified) - I think a lot of web revival people would argue there is no difference between high and pop culture anymore and maybe that's another point where we get beyond postmodernism.

If the dominant mood of the late 20th century is irony, I would wish this to be replaced with passion and engagement on the grounds that it is difficult to speak clearly when you have your tongue thrust firmly in your cheek.

This is from the conclusion - and I think this is what we do 

Overall the book is old, and we are 30 years ahead of its ideas now - but it did leave me with some takeaways:

• We are not "over" postmodernism - it's more like we have absorbed and evolved its ideas.
• Some pre-post-modern ideas need to be rebuilt, but they need to be modular so they can be deconstructed again more easily, like Lego!
• Messiness is good! Things must be messy, but also they need to still cooperate.
• We must make comfortable spaces that allow comfort to be deconstructed and rebuilt constantly.
• Diversity and difference is the single most important thing in the web revival, we must always create differences.
• Mystery and the unknown is so important - we must keep making mysterious spaces - the mystery is more important than nostalgia.
• We can and must never define ourselves too well - the moment we do, we all have to run into the trees again and vanish!
• Passion and enthusiasm, even if it's cheesy, is the most important thing!
• I know I quoted a lot of big words here, but we must never take ourselves too seriously (but don't be afraid to do so too!)

[close]

[Melooon]

I noticed this topic was also cloned on the Yesterweb forum; so I decided to repost the replies from that thread here since they offer a good expansion of this discussion and it would be nice to gather it all in one place!

Thank you for sharing this here.

It does indeed sound a bit "hippie" (especially the name 🌈) but what a shallow reason that would be to disregard the approach. Especially since I personally believe there are some truths to be extracted from this.

"When love is a duty, it cannot fulfill anyone because love as a duty is dead."

From my understanding of the situation here, a crucial aspect was 'Mod Burnout'. These people, the moderators, volunteers, who arguably cared more intensely for this community than its participants, were overwhelmed by its burden. An in-flood of an ever-increasing number of people; and what did those people bring to the table? Likely nothing but expectations. Of others, of the community, of the leaders, of their "services". Gradually, this labor of love turns into the bondage of duty. And its beauty is lost.

Completely imaginary narrative on my part, but I believe this kinda feeling played at least a minor role here. It could even be interpreted as occurring in the opposite direction, based on some of the feelings being expressed by some members.

Regardless, what I'm getting at is this "Rainbow Family" sounds very freeing. Like it would be more successful in preserving the freshness, the poetry (God, I sound like a hippie) of 'Web Revival'. This would be rather laid-back, yeah? Which would be quite the contrast to the amount of seriousness taking place currently. Some fun would do this place a bit of good right now, imo, the balance feels a bit off.

There's another issue at play, however. If my understanding is correct, there is a fear of losing control. A preference to "burn it down" rather than surrender it. Like expressing: Yesterweb belongs to someone(s). How dare anyone try to take it from them. I believe that attitude is in direct opposition to what you're proposing. A shame; "in fear one shrinks".

I apologize because I am pretty sure you're looking beyond Yesterweb, heck maybe you're already over it. This was just my attempt to connect the 2. I believe there is plenty to discuss here, while completely disregarding Yesterweb.

Based 'King of the Hill' btw.

Quote from Arevakhach: [There's another issue at play, however...]

Well, you are close, but I think I have some knowledge that may bring clarity: the people we asked to inherit the yesterweb refused to inherit it. It turns out that those who we trusted the power to did not want any of the power for themselves. We have to admit that there is power in this position, particularly influence. Asking anyone to take over would be extremely irresponsible. There are definitely those that seek such power and influence within these spaces, and we have struggled against it in the past. If you will entertain my perspective: there is no fear of losing control, we are already giving up control and, instead of there being a situation analogous to a power vacuum in which the person who wants it the most gets the power, we are destroying that opportunity entirely.

But I don't want to make this topic about us and so I'm coming here to share The Tyranny of Structurelessness. It describes perfectly what I have witnessed organizing in several physical spaces as well as in online communities. It might not necessarily apply to the Rainbow Gathering, but I think if you try to organize anything with any greater complexity you will see the problems emerge that are described in this essay. I don't say it to be a downer but rather in hopes that it will help you perceive phenomena that you may otherwise not perceive while building your future spaces.

I am happy to see someone taking initiative.

I'm going to take some time to respond, but I don't feel like sitting at my computer all day. So for now:

Madness, the article you linked is excellent and touches on some stuff I didn't mention in my OP, because I was hoping the conversation would organically lead in that general direction. I don't think you're being a downer.

Arevakhach, you're correct that I am looking beyond Yesterweb, but.. well, there's a reason I posted to this forum! So I don't think discussions about YW are off-topic.

Hopefully there are others on the forum who are still interested in ~the movement~ and want to use the next two and a half weeks to have discussions about the future. Nothing wrong with grieving, and I think good discussions are being had on the forum shutdown topic. I just can't sit with the idea that Yesterweb was the entire movement. It's not, never was. I think the staff have made that pretty clear thru their posts (sidenote: Madness, I appreciate you being active here and sharing your thoughts even though you're exhausted and burned out)

Anyway I'm off to touch some grass, bbl :P

Quote from lu: [Madness, I appreciate you being active here...]

Thanks and it's no problem. I always have time to help people organize themselves - that's all I wanted to do from the start - it's my primary social responsibility, and I enjoy it tremendously.

The problem is, you first have to inspire people before they are interested in organizing. Inspiring others is the more difficult job, but it is also very rewarding when it happens. The OTHER problem is that inspiring and organizing are completely different work from moderating. I am burnt out and exhausted from moderating, when I should be inspiring and organizing instead.

So some of the staff has been talking about how, if we were to continue on with this project, we would have to reduce the burden of moderation to nearly nothing, instead of it eating up 99% of our available time and energy and leaving us with only 1% for the really important work. So essentially giving up on moderating public spaces entirely, and developing a way to connect with new people that you are reasonably sure you will never have to moderate (such as finding them in spaces that are already moderated).

That being said, correct organizing will be discovered through studying and through trial-and-error. I can't comment on the rainbow methods described because I have never tried them. They most likely work in some contexts and not in others, so even if they work well for rainbow gatherings, they might have to be seriously adjusted or even discarded in others.

I did have this comment though:
Quote from lu: [If you ask ten people what "Web Revival" means, you'll get ten different answers. ...]

I think this describes pretty well what it means to be a spontaneous movement. It's unorganized and anyone can do what they want. Eventually organizations from (like the emergence of biological organs from individual cells) and will be effective at influencing the movement, even of unorganized individuals. Organizations themselves are a form of collective power, and highly-organized individuals will have more power over individuals less organized.

This is inevitable. Eventually something will overtake the Yesterweb in this web revival space and have the ability to define the direction of influence for the entire community-at-large. And if you don't like what they are doing, your choices are to accept it, or out-organize it, or leave.

Organizations have the ability to influence who enters and who leaves the space, a very difficult thing to reverse over time. If someone with a lot of money gets involved, such as social media CEOs like Elon Musk, they can just pay to take over the space and have people organize it for them. I do think that this is a possibility, especially if there is an opportunity to make money off of the web revival, and I'm sure someone will discover a creative way to monetize it eventually. Just because it was abandoned by corporations in the past doesn't mean they won't come back to it if it revives to the point of being a viable market again.

Just my thoughts, thank u!

[candycanearter07]

@Melooon

the web revival feels special to me because of how much it feels like obscure little pockets that people truly care about keeping up and how much it has the vibe of people doing whatever the heck they want and like everything, everything is word of mouth like your friend could introduce you to the coolest thing, your link collection puts on display a site nobody has looked at in years, etc etc.. it just feels like what we were all promised the web would be like? i know its the most overstated thing in existence but most of the web is BORING. its all just corporate sites and social medias and like official organizations in the forefront, and like i really wish i couldve been there for when making your own site was "normal" and imo the de-emphasis of personal sites destroyed like a lot of potenital creativity and learning, like even if you knew nothing about running a site you would still HAVE a SITE. you could very easily see someone elses site, get blown away by what they are doing, and copy that for yourself. like having a site even if its skeletons really helps push people to experiment with it more, which is why i adore the idea of the everyone site here.. the whole web revival project really helps give that vibe of just being able to make anything and community that i just i love it and stuff it is so fascinating

[Kallistero]

   For a while, "Web Revival" has been a bit of a pet term for this particular little township here. By the Rainbow Family allegory, this area of the Web has felt like more of a single long-lived Rainbow Gathering encampment than a parallel to the entire Rainbow Family movement.

From my year or so of knowing of these spaces and occasionally relating it to others, lots of people elsewhere are interested in experiencing the same things, but they're just less interested in active participation. It's like how lots of people enjoy music or art, but fewer people actively engage with the artists personally, and even fewer people ARE the artists. The group that is "people who enjoy art" is less of a movement and more of an interest that people have.

The group that is "Web Revival" feels like it can be interpreted in a similar space, except that "Web Revival" is a term that we here use to wrap a bunch of things together so it's less unwieldy to communicate. There are lots of people out there who enjoy the same things but don't really adhere to the moniker. People who seemingly don't embrace the term or have never heard of it will still express its aesthetical inspirations or the spirit of the idea that "The Internet that can still be fun!" And these people have had a lot of others engage with their work, too, people who also havent engaged with "Web Revival." 

The believers who are outside of the space really give the impression that the roots of "Web Revival" manifest more as a temperament, a sort of undercurrent, that's growing its way into people's minds within the wider culture. It's a term for something that people already feel within themselves, as much as those of us in a community centered around it may think of Web Revival in terms of communities. Saying that you enjoy Web Revival can be akin to saying that you enjoy disco music or southern gothic horror films. You have an interest in what I call a "strange art," which is an artform that isn't widely thought of as a type of art, like making cooking recipes or coming up with speedrun strategies. Sure, there might be communities centered around these things, but as concepts, they're fundamentally something that each person can engage with on their own before sharing with the community, whereas Rainbow Family IS the sharing part of the community.

From the looks of things, Web Revival as an interest can exist regardless of the community. The interest in it existed before there was a term for it, before Melonland, before Yesterweb, before Neocities, and some of its tenets are even cited a decade ago as reasons Neocities exists at all!    Because people don't really use the term "Web Revival" much outside of these spaces, it makes it feel like it's a parallel to "Rainbow Family" when it's probably more of a parallel to being a hippie in general. You can be a Web Revivalist without being in these particular communities, just like you can be a hippie without being part of the Rainbow Family.

As such, I don't feel that the responsibility of a form (or non-form or anti-form) of governance really falls onto "Web Revival" in the bigger picture as a group of communities. In the way that one music collective or musician can't define all of music, I think each Web Revival community & individual can also do their own thing independently, without every person expressing it even being aware that there were communities around it in the first place!