Quest to "de-chattify" collaborative mutual-aid work?

November 7, 2024 7:47 PM

I'd like to try and help mutual-aid efforts I'm involved in to move away from the endless meeting that is chat, but afraid that it's not really very possible.

Many projects I'm involved in use either an array of Signal groups, or singular firehose Signal chat. I have my own personal perspectives on using wikis and simple PM tools like Trello to offload some chatter, but wonder if anyone has assembled any guiding principles ala the arrogant but IMHO insightful polemics over at 37 Signals..

Even with wikis, I've struggled in the past to onboard people into HTML markup, and the paradigms used in many of the tools can present barriers.

Not really looking for magic bullets, because I don't think they exist, but leads, thoughts, and experiences might be helpful.

posted by Jack Karaoke to Technology (6 answers total)

there's a script for html markup & helpful links at github

there's a wonderful mutual aid graphic novel
posted by HearHere at 8:43 PM on November 7

And here I thought “the polemics over at 37 Signals” was gonna link to a blog skewering how me and every activist I know are in like 37 group chats on Signal for different orgs and subcommittees of orgs and it’s infuriating
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:58 PM on November 7

Best answer: Hmm. A couple ideas.

1. One group I'm in split our main signal chat into two - essential and social. Essential is planning specific meetings, events, etc. Concrete tasks and decisions the group has to decide over chat. The other group is freeform. When folks start talking about astrology or freaking out about something or sending memes, we gently say something like, "moving this over to the social channel!"

2. Another massive signal group I'm in split into an "announcements" channel and a "Discussion" channel. When folks post their discussion in the announcements channel, there is a form response with lots of emojis that re-explains the different channels that gets posted. Moderators reach out directly on the back and and gently redirect people as well.

3. Consider holding an actual meeting to decide some norms around the Signal channel, and then post those agreed-on norms in the group description (linked in the Group Settings). Pick a couple folks to be vibe fairies or whatever to gently redirect folks to the agreed on norms.

4. IN PERSON MEETINGS. Nothing replaces this - nothing is as good at this for creating shared understandings, building trust, and getting shit done.

I'm not confident that starting a Trello or whatever is going to solve your problem (though I'm not positive I know precisely what problem you are trying to solve). People are social and they probably want to chat. But if you need a voting-specific location - somewhere folks can have more formal decision making together online, I think Opavote is pretty good. I also like Discuss. You can create a specific topic that folks have to make a decision about (or commit to working on, or whatever) and it's a bit more organized for formal decisions like that.
posted by latkes at 10:13 PM on November 7 [2 favorites]

Splitting is the way to go. Mutual aid groups are a community, communities are made up of diverse people, some of those people need to process in a way some of the rest of us find incredibly annoying.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:36 AM on November 8

Best answer: I have no real experience in this area and haven't yet read the book, but given the topic and the phrase "endless meeting" in your question, you might find the book "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements" by Francesca Polletta interesting.
posted by mcshaner1 at 10:56 AM on November 8

I'm desperately trying to remember an organization whose ~2021 post about how they ran remote meetings made its way around my Twitter circles at the time. They were holding meetings of several dozen people, I think in the mid Atlantic region of the US, using Roberts Rules with pre-distributed agendas. Possibly a nonprofit along the tech / policy axis? The first order of business for every meeting was to vote up or down the entire agenda, with strict time management about any items that someone wanted to talk out, and the goal of getting a lot of the business of meetings out of the chatty portion and into pre-meeting work and preparation. It was a really interesting read and I'm not doing it justice here, so if anyone remembers what I'm talking about and has a link please share.
posted by deludingmyself at 1:28 PM on November 8