Title: Choice_principles
Category: Magicians

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-21T18:36:29.373Z

Short epigrams, mantras, and other brief reminders can serve as choice principles.  They don’t necessarily tell you what to do, but give you things to consider because they matter to - even define - the community.  Some I like are these

We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.
– David Clark
Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.
– Alcoholics Anonymous
Anarchy is law and freedom without force.
– Immanuel Kant

What are yours, and why?

Author: boris
Date: 2018-08-21T19:48:09.787Z

“Let’s make things suck less”
There is work every day in getting out of bed, as there is in writing things down, suggesting improvements, dreaming of the future. There is an understanding and agency linked in part to open source and open dis-organizations that gives us both permission to make changes and a responsibility of adopting a code, a document, or a process and maintaining it for our own sake and utility, as well as for others.
“Free as in puppies”
This expands on the classic “free as in beer” (this thing doesn’t cost anything) and “free as in speech” (you have some rights around this thing) to underline that free code (or anything) means that you need to put in the work to care for and house train the puppy over time.

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-21T20:34:04.326Z

On the “suck less” side, the top level of this forum is horribly cluttered.  Is there any hope of refactoring into a stable set of top level subjects, and organizing mostly by rings below that?  @jpitts

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-21T20:37:09.489Z

“Free as in puppies”

Ming used to call the younger devs “puppies” 
They’re free to attempt what they don’t yet know to be impossible. And sometimes succeed.

Author: AtLeastSignificant
Date: 2018-08-22T15:45:25.970Z

“Be the freak you wanna see
Just don’t follow me”
– Death Grips, “Hacker”
This reminds me of the old Pantera “be yourself, by yourself” line off of “Walk”, but slightly more directed at actually standing out and being “the freak” you wanna see in the world, and not to blindly follow idols. It definitely resonates with the cyber-libertarian in me.

Author: jcyr
Date: 2018-08-22T19:35:32.883Z

“down with the elite”

Author: boris
Date: 2018-08-23T14:25:54.980Z

Hey Greg! I wrote up some things on options that people have to control their experience of the forum:




Controlling what you see, what you get notified by with Discourse categories and tag notification settings Site Feedback


    There are a ton of different ways to view the forums, which are specific to the person logged in. The default view is “latest” – so whatever topic has last been posted to will show up, which perhaps looks cluttered to you  
You can also view by categories: Categories - Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians 
Also, per category, you can choose whether or not it shows up for you in Latest. The circle in the top right hand corner defaults to “Normal” I believe. You can mute it, get an email…

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-23T14:58:37.151Z

Ah yes, the Categories view is much better organized.  Then the question is whether it can be the default for non-member – putting our best face to the world.

Author: boris
Date: 2018-08-23T15:07:25.491Z

Filed as an issue here: https://github.com/ethereum-magicians/scrolls/issues/19
I don’t know if Discourse has that setting, I’ll experiment on my own site.

Author: leonprou
Date: 2018-08-26T14:50:35.006Z

“Code is Law”
One of the important ones

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-26T15:07:24.645Z

Code is code.  Law is law. 
“To live outside the law you must be honest.” – Bob Dylan

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-26T15:18:35.301Z

Yeah, as a user I can get what I want, my concern is newbies coming by and just getting lost.  I guess if they just click “Categories” it gets more clear.

Author: AtLeastSignificant
Date: 2018-08-27T13:22:38.315Z

“Consensus is Law”
Code bends to our will, not the other way around.

Author: jpitts
Date: 2018-08-30T16:58:34.192Z

My principles appertaining to “blockchain”:

Find understanding before judgment.
Understand something with different intellectual lenses.
The key properties of blockchains exist on a spectrum. They include:

Reliability, Transparency, Immutability, Liveness


The key properties of public blockchains also exist on a spectrum. They include:

Decentralization, Incentives, Non-Interference, Commons


Management of a commons requires cooperation.
Cooperation can be improved if has a well-designed governance process .

Humans are in charge. But we should be open to widening participation as it becomes practical

Author: jpitts
Date: 2018-08-30T17:01:48.416Z

@gregc I was recently looking into a navigation top bar, this should not be too difficult but a matter of time/effort. In the meantime we can revert to the category view.
This is the issue for the fix: https://github.com/ethereum-magicians/scrolls/issues/19

Author: gregc
Date: 2018-08-30T17:54:33.070Z

Thanks @jpitts (thanks to 20+)