Governance

Project circles have the ability to decide and act on matters in their domains, subject to the oversight of the director.

• Values
  • Purpose MEDLab seeks to advance community accountability and democracy in media economies, and we should seek to do the same in our own processes.
  • Transparency The director and fellows should have full access to documents, processes, and finances, though these materials should be shared externally only with discretion. Participants should aim to document and share their work to facilitate coordination.
  • Do-ocracy Those who step forward to do a given task can decide how it should be done.
  • Friendship Participants should seek to cultivate a convivial community.
  • Design justice We work in a spirit of including and centering the participation of those too often left out of design processes.
• Membership Participants join by invitation of the director. They may join any project circle that they would like to work in, subject to the director's oversight.
  • Roles Participants may hold roles including: director, research fellow (for students), faculty fellow (for faculty members), and community fellow (for external collaborators). These roles are determined by the director.
• Committee Most work occurs through project circles made up of MEDLab participants.
  • Delegation A project circle can create roles for its members and assign authority over specified sub-domains.
  • Lazy consensus Project circles use consent to make decisions. Consent means that nobody presents a serious objection to a proposal.
• Autocracy The director's oversight consists of the right to reject any decision or role of a participant in MEDLab. This right should be exercised only rarely. The reason is that the director holds ultimate responsibility for MEDLab's activities, in the eyes of the university and external stakeholders.
  • Finances All financial decisions, such as spending or revenue, must be approved by the director.

Fork the current version at CommunityRule, a MEDLab-created Web app for designing community governance.

On a provisional basis, we adopt the Contributor Covenant, a widely used CoC for technology projects. The critical tenets:

Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:

* Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
* Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
* Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
* Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
* Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community

Examples of unacceptable behavior include:

* The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind
* Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
* Public or private harassment
* Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
* Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

• Design Justice and antiracism

• Tips for getting involved, ladder of engagement
  • Understand the budgeting
  • Communicate in chat