Growing a healthy Holochain community

General Chat Suggestion Box
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#21

Art I beg you to take this seriously. You are one of the smartest people on the planet and build systems based on an in-depth knowledge of the human condition…there is no way this should be of any surprise.

Below is a link to a token I minted that makes visible my value generating activities. This token highlights my learning and serves as a show-dont-tell understanding of narrative control and transparency. I will be the first to admit it is horrible content in many way–nothing in my background prepared me for daily social media. However, the opportunity of making complex information more consumable was too obvious for me not to make my best attempt. Your words needed to be read out loud, they are that important. I started with “Unenclosable Carriers” through the “Green Paper” and the “The Developers Guidebook” (It wasn’t completed at the time of my reading).

To be clear about my perspective–you shouldn’t have to “look into it” too hard. There is no data to point you to not believing my experience and you should have a mountain of personal data telling you this is a very possible outcome given your knowledge of your team.

My literal token of cooperation:

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#22

We are taking the challenging step to ban kerrgreg and pqcdev from the forum.

Carolyn and/or I have had individual conversations with greg and pcqdev related to code of conduct issues on this forum. Unfortunately, those have not led to resolution, and there continue to be infractions. Continued conversation to reach more understanding was offered with both of them, which have been declined. The Code of Conduct for the Holochain Forum was reviewed and adopted by a group of community organizers that are all leaders here on this forum. While it’s difficult to use the admin powers of banning people, and we’ve never done it before, it’s an integral part of governance in managing shared community spaces.

This ban will not necessarily be forever. There will be mechanisms through which Greg and Pcqdev can reengage to be readmitted as participants.

These conversations are hard because as somebody with admin power, I’m afraid of being perceived as some kind of authoritarian fascist autocrat, and I know that other community admins are also hesitant to take these sorts of actions, but we have discussed the issues related to these bans for many weeks and months, and have determined that this is the right action to take to uphold our responsibility for the community.

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#23

I’m appalled that these people have been banned from the forum. Wow. Censorship. Did anyone even look into what Greg was saying? These are serious allegations. That should be taken seriously. I’ve heard similar stories from others as well. I think it’s time we take a better look at what is going on here.

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#24

And I’m paying attention to whether his posts get taken down or not.

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#25

Indeed. I believe a lot of people care about the success of the project and whatever the underlying issues are, if they are not dealt with then they will get worse.

I’ve only just seen this as I thought I’d drop in on the onboarding session where I was immediately shut down - they certainly don’t like the possibility of awkward questions being asked!

Image 23-03-2021 at 15.17

If this were simply about me asking a question, that would’ve been covered when he said at the end of the session “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to answer all of your questions today”. After all, the questions are mostly being asked in the doc and the chat, and if I was waving my arms around trying to get attention to ask a question then that would be a good time to assess whether there was time to answer anything I asked.

Disappointing.

My hope is it’s just education that’s needed and a bit more communication. Sometimes to my detriment I have faith in most peoples intentions.

I know I suffer from Rejection Sensitivity Disorder and as an Autistic person I take things literally, but I can sense ‘atmosphere’ and being someone who also wants to be part of this community I want to ensure as much as I can that my time and energy is spent building something that’s going to be a force of good in the world, not further oppression. I am still undecided.

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#26

{wonders how long before gets banned lol}

Hey ho…

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#27

WTF?!? Care to explain more while I sit on my rant and cool off?

I’m seriously concerned that if I share the impact witnessing this conversation has had on me that I too will be banned from the community.

Given I’m a closet hothead, and overreacter, I set my comments aside to calm down. I don’t have the full picture, but at the moment you have done significant damage to my sense of the integrity of the Holochain team.

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#28

To be fair, they were being pretty provocative which is why I was trying to discover the root of the issue in as ‘gentle’ way as possible.

It’s incredibly hard to do what they’re doing and it’s easy for us to sit and comment from the sidelines and I know it’s quite tricky as to what can and can’t be said from the “inside”.

I’m quietly hoping that at some point there will be a statement made, but obviously there’s a lot gone on so perhaps we’ll just have to make the decision ourselves as to whom to trust.

Personally I’m a fan of putting the past firmly in its place and being open to change. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop asking awkward questions though lol.

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#29

@stephenpurkiss thank you for facilitating this difficult conversation here, your 20 years of experience being part of Drupal Community, being played out here is quiet pleasant to read.

Just for reference @erlend_sh used to be part of Discourse community, who helped me with getting a free discourse tool for PhoneixFoodCooperative, which I managed for few months, just to realize, the wealth is not in the features of a tool, but the social interactions that take place via this or other plethora of mediums, creating a Social Capital over time, where the real Value rests!

For example - I remember my early days in the community, where Greg and @polyannie01 were suggesting how they could make ArtisticBadges (which are customizable) to add more Culture and drive engagement in the community and thereby creating some kind of mini reputation currency experiment.

Not sure if those ideas originated from @artbrock currency design workshop or after they help promote the $150 CurrencyDesign udemy course which they had completed or after “Pay As You Can” @GraceR currency design workshop

But clearly being a peer with them on @GraceR Third or Fifth Workshop Cohort (dont remember which one - but she has run several iterations of it), I could clearly see the depth of knowledge and ideas they possessed as our HolochainCommunity CurrencyDesign trailblazers!

Only after being friends with Greg for a year, did I realize this guy use to freaking report to a man, who would directly report to President, drawing quarter million for his Service to the Nation! I am proud owner and re-seller of his 21.2 ETH worth VeteranCoin offering his “Tier 4 Service”.

Often times people who are deep into a particular domain - may not necessarily have knowledge of the other domain - and here we are talking about someone who served the nation for almost 2 decades, rising up the ranks to reach almost the President, upon retirement choose to go to work with Former ChildSoliders in a country where cannabalism was meted out as punishment during Civil War days, he was over there, with the help of his comrades setup few BioChar PowerGeneration plant in Liberia.

Instead of continue to drum “Thank You For Your Service” song in memory of dear brother Greg, I will instead focus on promoting myself, for my posts have been recategorized in the past, as well as my posts have been flagged, and I was even banned until the community manager could speak with me heart to heart, to set clear expectations and learn about my background as well.

In response to this thread, I choose to create a medium article Holochain’s Community of Practice instead of engaging here, because clearly I suffer from “Once Bitten Twice Shy” syndrome, as the Feeling of Being Here at times does give “Not One of Us” vibe! As we were honest enough to admit, we are not developers to @hedayat @guillemcordoba @sidsthalekar who use to hold Weekly Hackalong space during those days, for the Community as volunteers!

The $HOT investor mentioned in the article is @Daya, from Gardunha Portugal, is one of the most humble and a good facilitator of human relationships, who took upon himself to create a “Welcoming Map” for the community, since a clear path for enthusiasts dint exist!

He managed this process very well, by taking the community managers onboard, which was executed by him very tactfully by building and nurturing personal relationships in that space, which he held for 8 weeks (apologies, if it was more). I was part of those conversations with many familiar faces, who use to show up at Hackalongs!

Though Hackalong space was facilitated with a different objective in mind, while his calls were done with a different objective, which resulted in a cocreated artifact. Which is available here with permission (not sure from whom!? as I also now don’t have permission to something I contributed my hours to).

Clearly Hackalong space ran out of steam, as DevCamp7 picked up (led by @e-nastasia and team), though due to lack of reciprocation (i.m.o) from other community members, resulted in key originators of the space, losing interest? as they were having to continue service without support and love in return!

If it wasnt for them and the space they created, I would have never met Greg, but also many others such as Joel, Jim, Thomas, Josh and many more! List is countless and their Service is Precious!

Though we did face challenge in that space and personally in this forum, as this space and application medium (namely developer discourse) has its own specific objective. While people like us who like to talk and analyze end user interaction in context of hAPP development and HoloPort computation utilization, as I clearly wanted to understand the relationship as I have plans of building a hAPP for Vegan Climate Activist as well as own 2 HoloPorts.

Currently I am now an owner of 5 PolyAnnies Pilot $HOT Game NFT and 1 AgentFirst rarible NFT, which makes me invested in Holochain ecosystem even more! Apart from countless hours contributing in Hackaongs, Welcome Map initiative, Online Global Meetups, hAPP Project support groups, Currency Design circle and workshops! For which there is currently no #metacurrency existing yet!

For that dimension of deep wealth we all brought in, is clearly under recognized, under appreciated, and definitely Not Respected! (i.m.o) As the focus of community building was “Build it and they Will come”, unfortunately now operating in Ethereum world for last 6 months tells us that doesnt work, since waiting for Holochain clearly has “Opportunity Cost” on real world doers, who are trying to pay their bills, with Alternate Current~C systems, while here we see not even simple to execute Reputation Current~C experiment, with custom badges, not being encouraged in a meaningful way to engage Artist and non Coders - towards Philosophical and Analytical exploration of Current~C space!

Thus I am left wondering, What is Rich?
Being banned from the discourse tool and sidelined from community, or instead understanding the depth people with different perspective may have to offer to make us Wealthy - Socially speaking, unlike Socially Grumpy each time we meet!

Please check out some recommendations provided in my medium article. Please power through it, as I am not a good content creator like Greg or Poly and do consider leaving a comment behind or atleast helping us, by sending your love our way too!

“We are in this Together”

Come to TogetherLand as RegenEra is here!
With Bretminster FullOfIT

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#30

From what I understand, no attempts have been made to either Greg or Zeek for “continued conversations to reach more understanding”.

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#31

This is one of the reasons why I believe it is important to have these discussions. Personally I’m continuing because it is my time I am investing and it is an important issue for me, I could and probably should be doing something else right now given my financial circumstances however in order to solve that problem this community currently plays a part, as I mentioned previously somewhere I leverage my passions in order to create conversations which lead to more connections and from those I create currency and cashflow.

Only 13% of people with my ‘diagnosis’ are in full-time work so I count myself as very lucky being able to leverage passion for profit. But that also means I tend to give a lot, take a lot of sh*t as happens when anyone raises their head above the parapet, but I know nobody knows what it’s like to be ‘me’. I’ve tried many times to fit into the ‘neurotypical’ lifestyle without success and I have decades of experience leveraging tech in order to live my multidimensional experience and quite happy so going a bit beyond my comfort zone here selfishly because it’s projects like this that will help me and of course others to do similar. Every time I have to switch that camera on or interact synchronously it’s a nightmare, I’m literally 24/7 anxious about it when the neurotypicals are like “yeah like let’s see your faces you don’t have to but y’know it’s great if you do” or “let’s run around and stretch and do exercises”. I don’t do IRC or that flashy UI proprietary version, I am weird, and nothing’s going to change that.

So, with that prelude as to why I’m even bothering to respond as I feel some might think I’m just stoking the fires when actually I have good reasons, what I saw previously was a “Community Working Group” was formed (in order to “work” the community lol - PDA people love wordplay!) to deal with issues like this but still suffers from top-down influence and hierarchy. See https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg

The issue here is the need for independent mediators in order to provide the level of trust that would be needed for a system to be as scalable as project members propose i.e. going up against AWS and the likes. At the moment we have the choice of trusting “inside” or “outside”. Then there’s the “outside” like yourself @polyannie01 who I only “know” because when I looked up Greg on the net I saw his twitter account and it was basically just you all the way down. So you’re not exactly “independent” from the situation. And that’s fine, but not everyone reading this will know that.

So we currently have two stories, one “inside”, one “outside”. What will probably happen is a continuation of what seems to have happened as this community is not “born yesterday” and seems quite set in its ways and pretty happy about it. The fact I’m coming in here and being “loud” about this seems to be both accepted and not accepted, and much like the previous community I was in there will continue to be that core group of people who live in happy land yet a far greater community on the outer who are both part of the community but also excluded. In my mind, that’s a shame and perhaps my own traumas and self-sabotage and rejection sensitive disorder are clouding my judgment but nothing has shown me so far that this is going to change. I hope I’m proved wrong, because for all the years I’ve been following the work of @artbrock I’ve been looking forward to the day it sees light. It’s bloody hard to do this stuff, as it is for me to write this.

Peace and prosperity

sbp

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#32

@stephenpurkiss thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience. Greg introduced me to Holochain last year when I was dealing with censorship online. I’m an advocate for freedom of speech and expression… I could no longer ignore what was going on once I saw they had been banned from the forum. I admit I’ve known of the issue for awhile but wanting to stay out of any conflict, I chose to stay quiet. But I can no longer act like this isn’t happening. Greg is an intelligent and accomplished human. He’s been spreading the word of Holochain, making content, participating in the community in every way available to him. I’m not sure how Greg’s post went against the code of conduct, but I do know it’s no longer an issue we can skirt around.

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#33

Thanks for clarifying and trust me, I would prefer to stay out of conflict but somehow I seem to find it, and what’s more it’s that entire attitude of wanting to stay quiet that results in being where we are today. That is kinda precisely the point I am trying to make when you say this:

We can, because we have a choice, we either like it or not, we freely choose to be involved in someone else’s business, and thus we can shout and scream all we like but we know what the setup is and still we choose to be here.

So we either trust and keep being here, or we don’t and move along. Cos I’m not seeing much response and interaction from many others either way so am assuming/presuming everything’s ok and nobody else has that big an issue with it, and we’re just throwing our toys out of the pram lol!

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#34

i find this rhetoric to be extremely cowardly and i too am appalled like my dear sister @polyannie01 — it is bizarre that this kind of rhetoric would even be attempted to be used in this context — as if the people here are some kind of idiots who can’t perceive orwellian doublespeak when we see it

from my perspective, while greg was certainly illuminating points which could be triggering, nothing he said was “out of bounds”, unacceptable, or overly hostile — i too find him to be an extremely intelligent, creative, and well-intentioned human and he was bringing up legitimate concerns that should be addressed with respect rather than dismissed with indignity

until i hear further explanation, i will conclude that there is something going awry with the inner workings of this organization that has brought so much hope to people and a belief that things like what is happening here in this thread would not happen

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#35

Given:

…I am guessing the decision wasn’t based solely on the recent interactions I’ve been involved in so like yourself I’m eagerly awaiting further explanation and I guess just seeing how it goes. I realise these situations aren’t easy to deal with and I can feel issues on both sides so not ready to throw in the towel just yet. And if I’m wrong then well, at least I learned a little Rust along the way lol :wink:

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#37

A community for decentralized social applications banning people from participating in a discussion is a little like a snake biting it’s own tail.

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#38

You know, I think you could be right on the money there!

Ouroboros:

In Alchemy and Gnosticism
Chrysopoea_of_Cleopatra_1

Early alchemical ouroboros illustration with the words ἓν τὸ πᾶν (“The All is One”) from the work of Cleopatra the Alchemist in MS Marciana gr. Z. 299. (10th Century).

Its black and white halves may perhaps represent a Gnostic duality of existence, analogous to the Taoist yin and yang symbol.[13] The chrysopoeia ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist is one of the oldest images of the ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the alchemists, the philosopher’s stone.

In Gnosticism, a serpent biting its tail symbolized eternity and the soul of the world.[14] The Gnostic Pistis Sophia (c. 400 AD) describes the ouroboros as a twelve-part dragon surrounding the world with its tail in its mouth.[15]

In Jungian psychology

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw the ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the ouroboros to alchemy:[22][23]

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feed-back’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which … unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious.

The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego “dawn state”, depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[24]

In Cybernetics

Cybernetics deployed circular logics of causal action in the core concept of Feedback in directive and purposeful behaviour in human and living organisms, groups, and self-regulating machines. The general principle of feedback describes a circuit (electronic, social, biological or otherwise) in which the output or result is a signal that influences the input or causal agent through its response to the new situation. W. Ross Ashby applied ideas from biology to his own work as a psychiatrist in “Design for a Brain” (1952): that living things maintain essential variables of the body within critical limits with the brain as a regulator of the necessary feedback loops. Parmar contextualises his practices as an artist in applying the cybernetic Ouroboros principle to musical improvisation.[28]

Hence the snake eating its tail is an accepted image or metaphor in the autopoietic calculus for self-reference,[29] or self-indication, the logical processual notation for analysing and explaining self-producing autonomous systems and “the riddle of the living”, developed by Francisco Varela. Reichel describes this as:

‘…an abstract concept of a system whose structure is maintained through the self-production of and through that structure. In the words of Kauffman, it is ‘the ancient mythological symbol of the worm ouroboros embedded in a mathematical, non-numerical calculus.’ [30] [31]

The calculus derives from the confluence of the cybernetic logic of feedback, the sub-disciplines of Autopoiesis developed by Varela and Humberto Maturana, and calculus of indications of George Spencer Brown. In another related biological application:

It is remarkable, that Rosen’s insight, that metabolism is just a mapping…, which may be too cursory for a biologist, turns out to show us the way to construct recursively, by a limiting process, solutions of the self-referential Ouroborus equation f(f) = f, for an unknown function f, a way that mathematicians had not imagined before Rosen.[32]

Second-order cybernetics, or the cybernetics of cybernetics, applies the principle of self-referentiality, or the participation of the observer in the observed, to explore observer involvement in all behaviour and the praxis of science[33] including D.J. Stewart’s domain of “observer valued imparities”. [34]

In Holochain discussion forum

holo-3d
(/ht @TyeRish)

The Holochain discussion forum is as you say:

It is not however a decentralized social application, so suffers from precisely the same problems as it is attempting to solve.

Perhaps the only way for it to survive in this form until the transition to decentralized is complete is to utilise the feedback loop and endure the riddle of life, birth and death as best it can knowing there are infinite possibilities in the way others will perceive actions, knowing some will come along from time to time where tough decisions will need to be made.

We live in a world of central points of failure, we are (well I am I guess I shouldn’t speak for everyone else!) here to change that however are stuck in it for the time being, it is going to be our ability to recognise, understand and deal with it that is going to be our success, whether individually, as our own groups “inside” or “outside” or not at all. Gosh, amazing times we live in, no?! What an opportunity we have to rise above our own assumptions, presumptions, projected traumas, and so on and take a minute or ten to consider how much of ourselves and our own issues we are splattering out over someone else’s efforts to change things we align with too. And yes, I’m talking about myself a lot here as I write yet another huge comment response lol!

For me, the response so far from both “inside” and “outside” communities has been impressive and encouraging. This can’t be easy for all involved - but I didn’t get interested in this community in the first place due to the easiness of the problems it’s trying to solve. I wasn’t quite expecting to be typing this a week on from discussing beginners learning exercises though, and whilst I have my own reservations about how I have approached the issue, what’s done is done and I can only believe it will strengthen everyone and the project whatever happens.

But then again maybe I’m just an old deluded techno hippy :wink: Guess we’ll see, thanks for sending me on this Saturday tangent @toledoroy, as someone who’s clinically classed as “Pathological Demand Avoidant” (that’s me saying the “misunderstood” line on the 1min intro video on that site lol) I’ve particularly enjoyed this morning of avoidance tactics!

#39

A community for decentralized social applications banning people from participating in a discussion is a little like a snake biting it’s own tail.

Not really, IMO.

Note before I say anything more that I’m not taking any particular side in the current conflict, this is just a general comment.

But as I understand it, the intentions behind Holochain are to enable the creation of social organisms with membranes, meaning an outside and an inside, and rules for participating or not. So it is perfectly consistent with the Holochain/Ceptr ethos to ban people from participating if they participate in ways that detract from the well-being of the rest of the organism.

People who are banned would always have the power to create their own decentralized social organism, of course, with rules they prefer.

It’s kind of like the meme: “If you don’t like it, fork off!” In other words, forking is a feature, not a problem.

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#40

The title caught me from my e-mail and the longer conversation led me to dig in. Thanks @stephenpurkiss for facilitating a discussion in a reasonable and seemingly neutral way. This thread seems generative.

So we currently have two stories, one “inside”, one “outside”.

So, I believe I may be the middle ground - hence chiming in. For context, I’ve been orbiting this project since about 2019 and have attended hackathons in Prague, Barcelona and Lisbon. As such, I’ve met a number of the core team and community managers. I’d consider a number of people around here as friends. I’ve also had a good deal of tension with a core team member thanks to a misunderstanding that continued to compound for quite a while.

I mention this misunderstanding because despite our unpleasant interactions being expensive for both of us, the bitter taste IS fading (though I’ve certainly taken some distance). IMO this is because despite our interactions agitating the hell out of each other, it seems pretty certain we were both operating from a place of positive intent; albeit from different value sets. I feel what happened is probably similar to whats currently causing the frictions mentioned in the thread above.

I must say that I don’t think things have turned quite as darq as they sound and seem like the usual growing pains in group endevours; there’s conflict, controversy, confusion and contradiction. I’ve enough lived experience to know this, but am certainly still learning to handle it in an effective manner myself. What I can say though - with relatively large degrees of certainty - is that at the meta level this is likely part of a relatively ‘normal’ unfolding process of a growing open source project (or organism/organisation in general).

I’m tempted to pick out a number of specifics above, but wont. The facts of whats happened and said are probably what they are, but I don’t personally think there’s enough data to say much is actually evident yet (inclusive of my own experiences, sorry yours have sucked too Greg). I really don’t think anyone in either the “in” or “out” group are acting with malicious intent (though I do reckon both have f**ked up in various ways as humans tend to).

I’ll just ask the two questions that count; how could things be improved (without impacting future optionality)? Who’s motivated to do it?

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#41

That’s an interesting interpretation. I remember that part from the HC videos :slight_smile: I guess we could look at social norms as definitions of a social protocol.

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