First some general points:
-
We do not deal with an “activism process” here. This thread is scoped purely to a “technology standardization process”.
-
There are discussions on SocialCG mailing list and here on how this process can be shaped, but characterizing this as an “undeclared fight” is inaccurate. People are thinking about improvements in the way we all collaborate. That can’t be to everyone’s satisfaction, so there will be some concessions and people that’ll have to accomodate.
-
The FEP’s “legitimacy” comes from how the process allows anyone to create FEP’s on any Fediverse-related subject. All that the FEP editor team does is ensure that minimum requirements outlined in the lean FEP process are met. It is the responsibility of the FEP authors to gain social/community ‘buy-in’ as they are brought to FINAL status.
-
FEP’s have no autoritative powers. They are merely recommendations and provide guidance for specific technical matters that are encountered when building federated software. Anyone in the ecosystem is free to either adopt them or not. So FEP’s are good-practices / best-practices at best.
-
Where FEP’s see popular use and uptake, in the proposed 3-stage standardization process, they become candidates for the W3C SocialCG to be picked up for closer examination. This may lead to the creation of W3C Notes or even adoption in next versions of protocol standards. If that happens the FEP will likely be SUPERCEDED and point to the W3C artifact that replaces it.
-
The FEP and W3C are only “black boxes” in the sense that they are figuring out collaborative processes, and can make those more easily discoverable. When it comes to SocialHub one way to do so for instance is by revamping the ActivityPub Rocks Portal. W3C has its own processes. Everything happens in public with full transparency.
This may be a good idea, though it is not really on the topic of this thread. FEP-a4ed: The Fediverse Enhancement Proposal Process is where the discussion is on-topic.
Nonetheless I think it may be good to document “Externalities” of a FEP, so that implementers become aware of them. One big disadvantage is the additional friction it adds to FEP authors. There’s already a barrier to writing a FEP, where many developers just skip the effort. The social implications of the technology they build is also discussed at length throughout the decentralized Fediverse on an app-by-app basis. And that is where people are actually affected by the particular technology implementation. So, I would prioritize the idea as a Nice-to-Have, and only when the FEP Process itself reaches more maturity and uptake.
Lastly…
You view everything on this forum from a perspective of “activism” and try desperately to enforce your activist framework onto this community. Many times before members have indicated they have no affinity with your methods, and by still pushing them you are not doing this community any good. In this light you should see the current Well-being procedure started by the @well-being team. Your comment above proves you can engage in fruitful substantive discussion.
In times when this forum was less active, queries to the member base led to conclusion that SocialHub currently works best as “just-a-forum” + “do-ocracy”. Here are some of these previous discussion topics:
While we can aspire to be more than that (and this topic is part of that effort), the SocialHub being a body that is purely scoped to the technical aspects of the Fediverse ecosystem is fine as well. As mentioned above deep social and cultural aspects are discussed at length everywhere. That’s decentralized discussion, from where the Fediverse emerges organically from grassroots movement.
From that perspective I am totally fine with the purely technical scope on this forum. If you want to shape your activism, you are advised to do it elsewhere where it is more appropriate than here.