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-# Collective Action Protocol
-
-The protocol was written to make possible a generic adoption by groups but at
-the same time it attempt to solve specific problems that aren't necessarily
-shared by a gvin group. Then, it's not intended to be "The Collective Protocol"
-but instead a suggestion about how to shape a collective protocol.
-
-Suggestion is to read it as how could a collective protocol look like instead a
-sugestion of adoption, especially because usually the needs for a process are
-different as here we're trying to solve a different set of problems.
-
-The Collective Action Protocol seems to be both a stateless (at it's informal
-part) and stateful (at it's formal part) protocol. It has some inspiration
-from:
-
-* Games, altough it's unknow how a parallel with game theory could be traced
- (could this protocol be considered a game where the objective is a win-win
- outcome attempting to maximize the collective effort?).
-* Free and open source software development processes (although this protocol
- makes the 'benevolent dictator' obsolete as behaviour, purpose and telealogy
- turns to be mean properties emerging internally from the processes and
- peoples' wishes and mutual relationship). It can be thought as a social
- software (culture).
-* Ways labor division can be organized to better fill collective needs and
- autonomy while encouraging people to work together.
-
-Characteristics
----------------
-
-For sinthetic purposes, most of the discussion was split from the protocol
-text. Perhaps this compression let a lot of helpful information to be missing,
-so here comes a list of the main properties this protocol tries to achieve:
-
-* Resilience, robustness and failover.
-* Ensure some collective autonomy is guaranteed (through formal process having
- responsibility attached) while not blocking the self-organizing efforts using
- to kinds of processes (formal and informal). This means in some way to
- overcome the [The Tyranny of
- Structurelessness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_Structurelessness)
- while not failing back to over-structuration, bureaucracy, etc and at the
- same time tries to deal with apathy and missparticipation.
-* For formal processes, splits decision-making (i.e, the step where the
- collective evals if a given proposal is pertinent an deserves the collective
- moral support) from the resposibility assignment (step where people actually
- volunteer to do the tasks) in a way that just formal processses that are
- under responsibility can be counted as processes that will very probably
- happen, so if in the proposal/discussion/decision steps just the content of
- the proposal is evalued, the responsibility assignment is a filter where just
- processes that finds people to achieve them are able to pass.
-* Leting a process be also a registry eases the integration with a ticket system.
-
-Limitations
------------
-
-Some limitations of the protocol are:
-
-* Not sure whether it's scalable. Maybe it was set for usage inside a small
- affinity group so it might not fit to big groups where people has not
- affinity between themselves.
-* It does not deal with connections/disconnections, i.e, the protocol do not
- define how someone joins or leaves the group.
-* As all protocols depends on it's usage, it is not a guarantee by itself that
- things are going to happen in the collective. The protocol just states how
- the energy is spent in the collective process but have no influence in the
- desire to act or not to act.
-* It does not state what are the communication channels (both for formal and
- informal communications) and how they should be used. In fact, as this really
- varies a lot from collective to collective so it was chosen to leave that
- specific communication structure out of the Collective Action Protocol so it
- would be easier to share and have another protocol taking care of
- informational channels.
-
-Formality and informality
--------------------------
-
-In this protocol, what is a formal and what is an informal process really
-depends in how the collective wants to extend it's autonomy, so it's not a
-thing defined withing the protocol. Examples of formal and informal processes
-can be:
-
-* Informal processes: meetings, dinners, researching, write texts, code, talk
- with people, wikifarming and everything else that the collective thinks that
- does not changes the collective autonomy.
-* Formal processes: the main activities the group is commited to do and what is
- crucial for them to happen and to keep the collective autonomy.
-
-Collective Action Protocol
---------------------------
-
-* Version: 0.1.
-* Raw english translation version (related to protocol version): 0.1.
-* License: Sarava Content Distribution License (no translation for now :/)
-
-Processes and autonomy
-----------------------
-
-Everything that happens in the Collective is a process. Processes has different
-manifestations but are mainly fluxes and the registry of these fluxes
-(memory/information).
-
-There are two kinds of processes:
-
-* Formal processes
- * Shape/form predefined by collective consensus AND
- * Needs/use the collective autonomy THUS
- * Needs to be followed by a minimum responsabilization so the process do
- not fail
-
-* Informal processes
- * Shape/form not needed to be predefined AND
- * Do not need/use the collective autonomy THUS
- * Do not need to be under the resposability of someone, i.e, an informal
- process that do not happen doesn't affect the collective autonomy
-
-Activities without information in the collective cannot be considered by
-processes (formal or informal) as these activities do not have information
-equality/isonomy in the collective. To have information about a process is a
-requisite for participation and then an activity without information inside the
-collective cannot be considered as process.
-
-The basic autonomy of the Collective, i.e, the minimum autonomy that allows
-it's existence according to this protocol is the existence of secure and
-private communication channels that allows the existence of collective
-processes (formal or informal). Without these channels, the basic collective
-autonomy is seriously damaged as well as the application of this protocol. All
-aditional autonomy in the collective (i.e, autonomy that is not contained in
-the basic autonomy) should be defined with formal processes.
-
-A collective member act inside the collective when use it's resources or the
-collective name. By the other hand, a collective member act outside of the
-collective when do not use such resources or the collective name. Collective
-members do not make actions (inside or outside the collective) that
-consciouslly can cause damage to the collective autonomy.
-
-Formal processes
-----------------
-
-Each formal processs is an instance of the following state diagram:
-
- .------------------->-----------------.
- / .----------<--------------<-------. \
- | ' \ \
- | | .------>-----. \ \
- | | | \ \ \
- Proposal -----> Discussion ->-. \ \ \
- | ^ | \ \ \ \
- | | | \ \ \ \
- | `----<-----' | \ \ \
- | | | \ \
- `------>----- Decision --<--' | \ \
- | | | \ \
- | | | | |
- Responsibility --<---' '------> Archiving --->---' ;
- Assignment --------->---------' ^ \ /
- ^ | ___________/ `---<-----'
- | \ .'
- | `--> Achievement ->--.
- | | | \
- | | | /
- `----<-----' `-----<---'
-
-* Proposal: step where an idea of a formal process is presented to the
- collective. The idea -- or description -- can come for the Archive, from a
- previous Discussion, from an informal process that needs to be formalized or
- from a person or group from inside or outside the collective. General
- recomendation is to give a good explanation of the idea containing: deadline
- sugestion, process life cycle, responsibility assignment criteria and
- deadline and recomendations for emergencies (when appliable).
-
-* Discussion:
- * It's not a mandatory step, but has importance anyway.
- * Changes to proposals make the formal process go back to the Proposal
- state. Proposals that do not follow to the Decision step or do not get
- changes until it's deadline should be archived.
- * Changed proposals that come from outside the collective or that have
- external groups or persons participation should be sent back also to the
- external group/person, despite these persons/groups do not participate in
- the internal discussion at the collective. If these external
- people/groups agree with the changed proposal, then the formal process
- proceeds with the discussion using the changed proposal. If that doesn't
- happen, i.e, these external people/groups don't agree with the changed
- proposal, then the formal process is archived (except if the external
- parties provide another changed proposal or more arguments to the
- discussion).
-
-* Decision:
- * Through consensus and the active participation depends in following the
- information required by the proposal.
- * If there's no consensus about the decision of a proposal it's
- automatically blocked with the possibility to extend it's deadline.
- * Silence regarding a proposal is considered as an agreement.
- * Deadline: general recomendation is to set deadlines relative to the
- average time needed by active people in the collective to take into
- account, discuss, make changes and ask for eventual postponing. Processes
- are elegible to postponing or advance it's deadline with an explicitly
- request from someone from the collective. If there's no such request, the
- initial deadline is assumed.
- * Approvals from proposals coming from outside the collective or that have
- external people/groups involved are communicated about the approval just
- after the responsibility assignment.
-
-* Responsibility assignment
- * Concerns the minimization of points of failure.
- * Responsibilization is a volunteer action but requires the submission of a
- commitment/responsibilization term affirming that the person:
- * Has knowledge about the procedure in question.
- * Is gonna achieve it under the estimated deadline and is gonna keep
- the collective informed about the task.
- * Will inform the collective in a reasonable timeframe if cannot
- continue to be involved with the process so the collective can keep
- the process going, assign new responsibilities or finnish it and send
- to the archive.
- * Non-accomplishment with a process compromises the ability of someone to
- be responsible for other tasks.
- * Formal processes that are approved but, after the responsibility
- assignment deadline, have unsufficient responsibilization assigned,
- should be sent to the archive. Proceesses in the archive were previously
- approved cannot be sent back directly to the responsibilty assigment and
- should instead go to the proposal step.
- * In case of proposals coming from outside the collective or that have
- external people/groups involved, these people/groups should be informed
- of the approval just after the responsibility assignment, i.e, at the end
- of this step.
-
-* Achievement
- * Just formal processes with sufficient responsibility assignment can go to
- the achievement step. Processes that were already achived goes to the
- archive.
- * Formal processes that were not achieved in the deadline should come back
- to the Responsibility assignment step. In a similar way, processes whose
- assigned people cannot doing it should come back to the Responsibility
- assignment step if the number of assigned people is smaller than the
- required.