Bylaws

Up to Mastodon

Vision

Draft

We envision building a decentralized cooperatively-governed global community of people who share our mission, and channeling our collective efforts (goodwill?) to push the boundaries of scientific discourse and communication (does that sound redundant?) as we know it.

Maybe we need to explain what we mean by decentralized and cooperatively-governed here?

[ social.coop's vision: We envision building, owning and controlling our own technology as a community, in order to achieve collective liberation and care for the intricate world of which we are a part.]

Mission

Draft

[social.coop's mission is a cooperative node of the 'fediverse' social network, pioneering an open approach to co-owning and co-operating our online platforms.]

Neuromatch is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization in the United States. We are an international online community of computational neuroscientists whose mission is to foster inclusive global interactions for learning, mentorship, networking, and professional development.

With our mastodon instance, our mission is to democratize science.

What does that mean? Democratization is the act of making something accessible to everyone. Neuromatch seeks to make science accessible to all by allowing all people from all backgrounds equal access to education, research, and networking opportunities, and providing everybody an equitable voice in scientific contribution.

Structure

general membership and working groups

general membership and working groups

further described in Mastodon/Governance

This instance was initially started with the idea of fostering the ideals and mission of the Neuromatch organization as described above, in addition to using its name and seed funding to run the server. However the governance of this instance is ultimately up to its users which means that the leadership of Neuromatch does not run the show. To help maintain the alignment of Neuromatch, the organization, and the principles of this instance, the Neuromatch working group will exist as an entity with the goal of serving as a communication channel for proposals suggested by the NM leadership (which may be accepted or rejected by the voting body). The one discretionary power of the Neuromatch WG is the ability to choose to sever the connection between Neuromatch as an organization, and this instance. This one power cannot be removed by voting. Severing would only require changing the name of the instance to a term that is not easily confusable with Neuromatch. If this were to happen before the instance becomes financially self sustaining, Neuromatch would continue to fund maintenance of the servers for an additional 6 months [This commitment is pending approval from the NM CEO].

The Coop itself can choose to sever connection with Neuromatch at any time of course, at which point the NM WG would cease to exist as well. This would also require a change of name for the instance. Funding from NM for the server would continue for a time period following the same terms as above.

Membership

membership requirements: eg. read the docs, abide by the rules, grounds for suspension or termination