===== Vision =====
An alternative to Facebook Groups that can be used by specific local organisations and collectives, and offered to others - to support existing and emergent groups.

===== Example user personas =====
 
These groups exemplify our primary target user organisations. These can shape our evaluation and comparison of alternative platforms. 

  * Brunswick Tool Library 
  * Good Karma Network
  * Gig Guide
  * Radical Socialist Base
  * Muslim Women’s association
  * Radicle Roots
  * Balam Balam 
  * Library services 

===== Example user stories =====
We can prioritise these to identify core functionality and non-essential functionality (e.g. MoSCoW prioritisation)

For more detail, see [[Use cases for digital town squares]]

**In an emergency** 
  * Community emergency announcements
  * Organising / coordinating volunteers (e.g. community gardening, food parcel delivery)
  * Alerting neighbours and groups to people in need of assistance
  * Coordinating community response to requests for assistance 

**Business as usual** 

Being used regularly as part of everyday community activities will mean that the platform is familiar and useful to many in an emergency / blackout scenario. 
  * Advertising events, workshops and groups' initiatives to the community
  * Offering and requesting items, services and assistance (per e.g. Freecycle / Good Karma) 
  * Requesting advice and recommendations regarding local businesses and services  
  * Seeking social connections with neighbours
  * Community organising: including formal groups and adhoc groups e.g. neighbourhood activities 
  * Discussion of local politics and current affairs ?

===== Essentials for successful launch and uptake =====
These could be provided by the platform itself or by supporting services and capabilities 
  * Onboarding plan and functionality 
  * Discoverability: pathways to find things (and the groups and people users new are interested in)
  * Ability to manage multiple overlapping circles of community, e.g. micro-locality, specific interests etc.
  *   Options for sign-up, sign-in  and account management (including provisioning and password resets)
    *   using email and / or mobile
    *   and when email and phone not available 
  *   Initial user experience and visual appearance must be acceptable to non-technical users  
  *   Needs to be FOSS, standards based, interoperable, robust

Beyond these, here are several big categories of issues that need to be addressed for successful community-run digital spaces, including:

  * Online vs real-world identities: policies and enforcement
    * mitigating bots, bad actors
    * removing and banning users who behave badly
    * allowing anonymity for stigmatised and sensitive topics
    * allowing anonymity for illegal topics, people who would want to hide identity from police, whistleblowing?
    * meeting U16 social media requirements (legislation and duty of care) 
  * Ease of signup and sign-on vs security
    * reduce usability barriers for platform signup and sign-on
    * balance with security: password strength, 2FA, password resets 
    * requirement to provide validated email address? 
    * ability to change email? 
  * Moderating online discussion
    * establishing enforceable rules that balance community expectations 
    * addressing disinformation / misinformation 
    * encouraging decent behaviour 
    * recruiting, training, retaining volunteer moderators 
    * compensating toxicity vs decent behaviour 
  * Tech skills and capabilities 
    * What skills and capabilities are needed of our tech ops teams? admins? community moderators?
    * minimum viable workforce to run things? (assume e.g. 
  *  Ongoing viability and financial considerations
    * potential uptake for Merri-bek residents: ~20% of 180,000 = 36,000 users. 
    * Ongoing hosting / data centre needs (balancing with contemporary user expectations)
    * recruiting, training, retaining volunteer mods, admins and tech support ongoing
    * compensation for workers?
    * how many mods / admins needed per 1000 users? 
  * Long-term user engagement and utility 
    * main factors that would drive uptake (signup?)
    * main factors that would drive ongoing use?
    * success factors e.g. 
       * Info & comms platform of choice for Merri-bek non-profit groups; 
       * Merri-bek residents use as platform of choice for connecting with neighbours (e.g. freecycle / good karma group equivalent; asking for local info or recommendations)  
       * platform of choice for Merri-bek Council to inform & engage with community
       * new Merri-bek arrivals sign up as a way to access community info;