CEStocism in the DC Baltimore Corridor's Nomic (coordinations)
[1]. The orienting ideas (the entailment mesh) and this nomic are open for all to see and will be linked from https://cestoicism-dcbaltcorridor.neocities.org
2. To become a member, create a reddit account, then go to https://www.reddit.com/r/cestoicism_dcbalt_1 and click "Message Mod". Tell us a little about yourself and why your interestedin joining (a few sentences is good).
3. As we heavily rely on Reddit, we follow their ‘Reddiquette’: https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439
4. The cycle of CEStoicism is 3 months. A new cycle begins at noon on the solstices and equinoxes.
[5]. The group must have at least 10 members for any proposal to be voted on. A member can make proposals and cast votes in a cycle if they were a member before that cycle began (in other words, a person cannot propose and vote in the cycle they become a member). During a cycle, a member may make up to 2 separate proposed changes. A change can be proposed to the orienting ideas (the entailment net) or to the group's rules (this nomic itself). Each proposal will be submitted as a separate post, and its subject will start with either “[PROPOSAL-ENTAILMENT NET]” or “[PROPOSAL-NOMIC]”. All proposals must be posted before the mid-point of the cycle. Proposals will be open for voting one week* before the end of the cycle. Each person gets 1 vote per proposal per cycle.* Votes are anonymous and will be a Reddit poll.* At the end of a cycle, changes with enough votes will be approved. Proposed changes to the nomic need 2/3 (rounding up) of the total membership in votes to be approved. The entailment mesh is out reason for existing as a group and thus are harder to change: Proposed changes to the mesh need 4/5 (rounding up) of the total membership in votes in each of 2 consecutive cycles to be approved. If there are changes to the nomic or entailment net, the previous versions will be archived and accessible to members.
6. We will use a Reddit subreddit as our forum. This forum will be private (viewable only by members), will have unlimited post size and frequency, and will not be anonymous (usernames will be stable and we will wear name tags with our usernames at our in-person meetings).
Eventually, CEStoicism may add another forum or change its forum, to possibly encourage multiple and different types of communication. There are several forum characteristics that might be useful to explore:
- Anonymity vs Identifiability -- Having stable and known identities allows for the building of personal histories and reputations, which may encourage for more accountability and civility while possibly restricting candor.
- Visibility to Public -- How might posters modify the style and substance of their posts if the posts are only visible to members, or if the entire public can see them? Do we want to share our dialogue with the public?
- Frequency of Post and Post Size -- When unlimited, may allow for easy opportunities for expression and conversation, but when restricted may incentivize greater post quality and lower the cognitive/time burden for reading all the posts (if there are many).
7. Towards our goal of building an in-person community, we will have an all-members in-person meeting, in a public place, outdoors (due to Covid concerns), at least once a cycle. At this meeting, name tags will be provided and everyone will wear a name tag with their subreddit name. We will use doodle.com to collectively schedule a meeting place and time. We will schedule meetings one cycle in advance. These meetings will be used for the following activities: First and foremost, we are interested in talking about the entailment net’s ideas (like a book club). With enough interest, we might collectively do fun activities (like a social club) and meaningful activities (like a service club) that align with our ideas.
- Book club activities might include informal discussion, topical talks, presentations, show-and-tells, ...
- Social club activities might include walks, hikes, bike rides, shared meals, visiting museums related to our topics, …
- Service club activities might include stream cleanups, volunteering at soup kitchens, doing letter-writing campaigns on topical issues, ...
8. If ½ of those present at one of the group’s informal discussions so choose, it can be turned into a structured discussion, which take this form: Each person will get 4 speaking token. Using a token lets a person speak uninterrupted for up to 45 seconds.
- There will be a timekeeper, who will make sure no one speaks for more than 45 seconds for any single speaking turn. The timekeeper raises some recognizable object when the speaker has 15 seconds left, and verbally lets the speaker know their time is done after the 45 seconds. A speaker gives the time keeper a token each time they speak.
- There is also a queue keeper that keeps the order of people to speak, and watches for people's raised hand which signals their wish to be put in the queue. After one speaker ends the queue keeper says who the next speaker is. A single person cannot be listed in the queue more than once at any given time (They can get back in the queue after they speak).
- Participants do not have to use any or all of their speaking tokens. If they wish, at any point during the discussion a participant could (a) give some tokens to other people directly if they wish, (b) add tokens to a container by the time keeper for use by those who’ve already spent all their tokens can use (people with no tokens can line up to this jar. Person at the head of this line takes 1 token and leaves the line each time a new speaker speaks), or (c) place them in a 'trash can' that removes their time from the overall discussion thereby making the entire discussion shorter.
[9]. A 'guard' can be placed on a rule. The guarded rule must have its guard removed before the rule can be changed. The text of a rule whose guard was added or removed in a cycle cannot also be changed in that same cycle (changes can be made in the next cycle after a guard is removed). A guard is placed or removed by making a proposal. Guarded rules have brackets around their number.
[10]. No changes (other than putting in missing links and fixing spelling mistakes) will happen on the entailment net or this nomic unless there are more than 5 unique members of CEStoicism, each of whom have been active in the last and present cycle (active = created at least one post).
11. This rule (imprecisely) tries to limit the nomic’s complexity. There will be no more than 50 rules in the nomic. Each rule will have no more than 1,500 characters.
* = these things are fixed by Reddit. So changing these rules will be dependent on finding/making bots or another system.