Democratic User Governance In Action — How The Decision Pipeline In WeCo Works

WeCo is social media platform cooperative that is governed democratically. Here’s a brief explanation how the decision pipeline works. I have marked with red lining a proposal as it goes through different phases of the decision pipeline. Any user can submit a proposal and vote on others proposals.

• Phase 1: Any user can post a proposal in b/betafeedback or its childbranch, b/beta-suggestions. All users can comment or give a point to the proposal. If more than 1% of users give a point to the proposal (currently, 7 or more users), it’s moved to phase 2.

• Phase 2: The proposal is posted as yes no-vote poll open to all users in b/wecoproposals by WeCo admin user. If the proposal receives more yes than no votes, and over 1% of the users give a point to it, it’s moved to a Loomio group.

• Phase 3: New proposals are prioritized by members in the Loomio group with a dot vote (you are all welcome to join the Loomio group). Each 5 new user submitted and approved proposals are put to a list, with 25 points given to each member to distribute between the new proposals.

Once the proposals have been approved democratically, any developer interested can implement them on the platform.

Hopefully WeCo can become a playground for people with ideas for better social media and developers who want to pursue those ideas, even if those features don’t maximize the next quarterly profits. We are very enthusiastic about the project, but don’t feel like it would be “hijacked” if there are users and developers who want to take it to a new direction, as long as it happens through a democratic process.