coc

The code of conduct for the stacks advocates program

Stacks Advocates

Code of Conduct

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This is a living document, which means we welcome feedback at any time and will attempt to integrate and respond to feedback on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Purpose

In the Advocates DAO, we onboard members from all the diverse communities within the Stacks ecosystem to provide a truly representative and accessible base for governance practices. We want to design a system that communicates to members they are taken care of while in pursuit of their aligned projects in the ecosystem. We also aim to provide Stacks advocates with a feeling of certainty in access to community STX pool rewards when contributing to and impacting the future of the Stacks ecosystem.

Our Pledge (as per the Stacks CoC)

We, as Stacks community members, pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation. We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Channel Guidelines

Taken in part from the Code of Conduct of the Sourcecred Community and in addition to the guidelines for the general Stacks Ecosystem

We are transparent with Advocates DAO contributions and community rewards gained in the Advocates stacking pool. The distribution of STX from the DAO recognizes the efforts of Advocates supporting and improving the Stacks ecosystem. Ultimately this aims to expand aligned participation in the community. Every contribution big or small is recognized with weekly STX reward distributions from the community pool.

Mission

The Advocates DAO builds relationships, fosters resilience in core values and grows the community.

With this in mind, these are our commitments:

Turtle, Wolf, & Bear: Relationship, Governance, & Sustainability

Intro:

Important to our governance & bottom up organization efforts is our direct dialogue with a historical indigenous council, The Kanienke'ha'ka (Mohawk) of The Five Nations Longhouse Confederacy. Early settler colonists were exposed to their matrilineal protocols of organization, which catalyzed modern concepts and language of Democratic values, Federalism, three branches of government & much more.

We have rare access to these protocols in pre-colonial form. We realize there was an entire culture of checks & balances omitted from our modern systems of social organization & representation, precisely due to lack of peaceful dialogue with Native nations.

Turtle, Wolf & Bear are our first steps on a path to a decolonized dialogue that can enable authentic alternatives to conventional governance, which is often easier said than actually achieved. TWB is the three tiered clan system of the Kanienke'ha'ka, which for millennia carved empowered paths of bottom up representation for entire Native nations. Speaking to deep cosmological functions of organization, the protocols are designed to maximize modularity for any collective of autonomous organizations.

Even though not all of us are interested in governance, accessible structures designed for empowered voices & representation are fundamental to fair power distribution. With TWB tapping into deep functions of the STX ecosystem, we can leverage autonomous organization well beyond just governance benefits & into blockchain innovation sustainability. Bottom up power here includes built-in structures for innovation decoupled from top down, value alienating control.

As STX advocates, we recognize this as a historical chance to achieve distributed power in blockchain based systems. An important means for long term sustainability in blockchain systems. Hope you are as excited as we are to learn and build together in this indigenous dialogue for sustainable protocols of organization.

How to get involved?

See our new Advocates onboarding flow in the #start-here channel on Discord.

Join us on a Stacks Governance Call 10am PT every 1st and 3rd Thursday.

Contact Harold#5025 via discord DM to attend Two Row Wampum council.

Turtle:

Commons Loop Closing —

We can think of the Turtle clan as master architects & engineers that hold the blueprints …but in this case the house is on a planetary scale. Key characteristics or functions of Turtles in a system are observation & validation.

Whether in formal decision making or informal organization, Turtles are the ones who observe deliberation between Wolf and Bear and validate whether protocols were followed. In an informal interaction, for example, the Turtle will be the quiet one during a dialogue, waiting until the end to weigh the dialogue against the core values of the system.

Discord One step removed from direct facilitation of the other clans, and with a keen engineering eye, Turtles make for the ideal trackers of closed loops of values. So Turtles are tracking the dialogue and sensemaking between clans to ensure integrity of the system, to ensure value is circulated to where generators of that value work and live, and to ensure that there is no pure extraction in the system design.

So this speaks to the sometimes abstract closed loops of governance protocols or community value circulation. It also includes the tangible closed loops needed in ecological sustainability the world over. Ensuring long term Commons sustainability of many variations is built right into our Stacks Advocates system. Turtles validate that these variations are aligned with core values.

Wolf:

Commons Accessibility —

Wolf clan can be thought of as initiators, the constantly moving facilitators of Commons accessibility. The sparks for deliberation of important issues or actions; the guides for empowered paths of information dissemination. Key function being to gather the minds and voices of generators of value in consensus. In formal decision making protocols it is a Wolf clan representative who initiates processes; bringing issues to the floor. Deliberation, if at all needed, happens between Wolf & Bear clans while the Turtle clan observes before validation or further deliberation. Wolf clan’s informal social organization function revolves around providing direct access to Commons to anybody interested. Whether the Commons of empowered bottom up consensus decision making or the Commons of innovation and value(s) circulation in the Stacks Advocates ecosystem. This empowered accessibility functions as a regenerating catalyst to push ecosystems forward.

Bear:

Commons Evolution —

Bear clan is simple, just think of it as effective medicine. Then think of medicine in all its possible forms; even the function of good friendship or guidance. Bears are the masters of transformative potential and effective transition. Key for our Stacks ecosystem, focused on OSS in Can’t Be Evil design & engineering, for a user-empowered internet. Transformation away from conventional models is fundamental for folks coming into our ecosystem, but just as important for our system too. The Bear clan’s key functions are ensuring the growth or evolution of complex systems are healthy. Bears are responsible for the bridgework away from harmful structures… but they are also responsible for ensuring we don’t move too hastily into paradigm-shifting innovation. Bears are the medicine necessary for slowing down the process of change while doing due diligence to harvest and repurpose institutional leftovers on the careful terms of the community.

The recursion of Turtle, Wolf, & Bear —

Turtle is first in the ordered sequence, with all the elements of Wolf & Bear therein. Wolf & Bear are twins. Wolf coming before Bear in the sequence. This hints at a dynamic use of the three tiered system design rather than static. All three clans have a kind of “memory” of one another, to be executed when needed in formal or informal social organization. Although one may be Turtle clan officially, in a given interaction, they may be best suited to assume their Wolf or Bear functions too.

Kindness, Empathy, and Honesty:

• Be generous in your expectations and perspectives of others intentions.

• Don’t assume what is driving another’s actions, especially when you disagree with them: just ask.

• Honesty is the highest form of respect.

• We honor each other’s emotions as they come up and name them as best we can when they come up for us.

• We understand that humans make mistakes and find value in collective and interpersonal growth.

Naming harmful behavior:

• It is encouraged to name harmful language or behavior when we see it; this is a learning experience as we all make mistakes and have things to learn about how to treat each other better.

• If you notice harmful language or behavior, please use your judgment on whether you think you should:

  1. Talk to the person privately in a 1:1 chat
  2. Ask for support from a trusted advocate
  3. Seek moderation or
  4. Calling it out publicly would be best

• What will result in less harm for those who may be affected, and high likelihood of learning? If you feel harmed and frozen on what to do, please reach out for support from moderation

• Dogpiling: If there’s a moment of conflict or harm, practice discernment in whether or not you get involved. Many people hopping in during a moment of tension can sometimes make the situation worse. Are you getting involved to express an opinion or showcase your knowledge / stance? Or because there’s a genuine, collective need, or a need for allyship?

• Harmful behavior mentioned here does NOT include the behaviors listed below, which will result in an immediate ban

Response to naming harmful behavior or to receiving feedback:

• We have a commitment to learning and noticing our own defensiveness or discomfort
• We do our absolute best to listen and reflect.
• We practice curiosity about what is being brought to us

Consent: When interacting with someone whom you don’t have a prior connection with, practice consent in all aspects. For example, ask before sharing about a heavy topic or delivering feedback. Make time to learn another person’s preferences and communication styles.

Behaviors that will result in an immediate Ban, with no warning:

1. Any non-consensual sexual advances, attention, or harassment in server or in personal messages to current server members
2. The use of slurs or other hateful language directed at oppressed groups
3. Doxxing, i.e. publishing private contact or identifying information, like physical or email address, phone number, etc., without the person’s explicit permission

Behaviors that will result in Moderation warnings, and then a Ban for repeat offenses:

1. Posting any sexual or religious content outside of appropriate Content-Notice Channels
2. Gaming: Intentional or unintentional repeat behavior to earn Cred in ways that does not represent actual contribution to the Advocates community.
3. Trolling, i.e. continuously provoking angry or negative reactions from server members. Note that calling out harmful behavior / language or giving constructive criticism is not trolling.
4. Contributions should consider OSS & Can’t Be Evil values of privacy & web3 user empowerment. Repeated contributions that seem to ignore this alignment without engaging in fair dialogue will result in a warning system flow between community reps. This warning system will check thoroughly whether a warning is deserved, instead of conventional moderation or decision models. After a third warning has been determined, a server ban will be applied.

Important note for Advocates: Bans and Kicks from the channel will result in a loss of participation in the Didathing and Props payouts.