What is the mission of lexicon.community?

[essential-randomness]

Context (same for all related discussions)

As projects I ran transitioned towards community governance, the most effective action we took was to clearly define our vision, mission, and aims. These help make sure that people are aligned towards a shared "north star" and help groups prioritize work and make shared decisions, especially as diverging opinions arise.

Recently, we had a (very good!) discussion in the lexicon Discord channel that showed people's mental models for this group diverge in subtle and sometimes less-subtle ways. It convinced me it'd be good to bring this discussion to the forefront. Nick already wrote about the group's goals in #3, but since those are "from the top", I wanted to hear from the community itself. Discussion is always good, even if we end up in the same place we started from!

I'm going to create 3 discussions, one for each topic. I'd love if people could reply with their thoughts on each. Even if you think it's not up to you to decide, or you have nothing worth saying, hearing everyone's agreements and disagreements on these matters will make the initiative stronger. I encourage people to participate!

This discussion's question

What, in your opinion, should be the mission of the lexicon.community project?

Here's the definition of a mission:

A mission is how you will contribute to making your vision come true [see #37]. While the vision is a dream, the mission is action focused. While a vision is an inspirational place of where we want to be, a mission is the overall strategy your group will work on to get closer to the vision.

I'll give my own thoughts later on, and encourage others to do the same!

Related discussions:

• vision (What is the vision of lexicon.community? #37)
• aims (What are the aims of lexicon.community? #39)

Clarification: Mission vs Vision vs Aims

If people need further help understanding the difference between the 3, here's a framework that might help:

"We are dreaming of a world where is true that [vision]. To this end, we work to [mission] by [aims]."

Note that multiple groups can have the same vision (world they wish to create) and mission (what they work towards), but still have different aims (how they work towards the shared goal).

[ebwinters]

Given what I commented in the vision thread, that I see this as a place where people can get support getting their idea off the ground and potentially begin integration with other apps, a feasible mission for this vision would be to use a community lexicon inside of Bluesky, and support all necessary steps along the way.

I would have started with a smaller-scale mission like use of a community-lexicon in any app with traffic, but we are already seeing that with @ngerakines migrating his smoke signal lexicons to this project, as well as recipe.exchange and probably more to come.

[essential-randomness]

Summarizing your thoughts and mapping them better to the general concepts: "One mission of the lexicon community is to support developers in getting their ideas off the ground and integrating them with other apps. To support this mission, one of our current aims is to work with the Bluesky team to define the steps needed and requirements for integration, and to include one community lexicon in the Bluesky app."

This mission and the current aim would obviously need to be agreed on both by any governance system, and (for this specific aim) the Bluesky team. One of the benefits of clear mission and aims is indeed to make sure we have agreements from all parties on what we're working towards.

If a governance team did end up accepting this as a current aim to support the mission , one of the next steps would be to create and bring up a proposal to the Bluesky team for how we intend to proceed. If they say they aren't interested (at this stage or in the future), then the mission of "supporting developers in getting their ideas off the ground and integrating them with other apps" would stay, but the way we decide to aim to achieve it might change.

[ngerakines]

"lexicon.community" is a community of developers that collectively own the "community.lexicon.*" NSID.

There are two goals with formalizing it:

• Collectively own and develop a stable and thoughtful Lexicon that can be used by application, system, and SDK developers in the form of a Technical Steering Committee, recognized collaborators, and general contributors.
• Be an active participant in the greater ATProtocol development community by being an example of community ownership of Lexicons.

To distill that into a mission, I'd start with something like this:

The mission of Lexicon Community is to provide a structure of governance, process, and tooling around lexicons that are collectively owned by individuals and organizations that are developing in the ATmosphere.

That probably needs some wordsmithing.

[essential-randomness]

Let's see if I can wordsmith it a bit:

One mission of the lexicon community is to create an effective, active blueprint for collective ownership of Lexicons in the ATMosphere, and build a stable and thoughtful lexicon that can be used by application, system, and SDK developers. It currently aims to do so by creating a Technical Steering Committee, and by inviting both recognized collaborators and general contributors to work on a shared Lexicon.

What you say here actually bring up quite a few questions for me, in that I think the aim of creating a Technical Steering Committee has an obvious next step at this stage, but working on a shared lexicon requires additional clarity before we can even imagine how to get it to where we want it to be.

For example, to decide what working on a shared lexicon means, I'd like to define:

1. What type of apps and developers would be the ideal targets of this lexicon at this stage? (e.g. developers of apps with at least [amount] users, apps in [this specific area], or experimental developers who're pushing the limits of what's possible).
2. What use cases would we be seeking to help with in the short term? (e.g. common cases with at least 5 non-ATProto apps that could benefit from, non-foundational lexicon elements with long-term impact that are better suited for a more mature ecosystem)

The answer to each of these would change what set of lexicon a "strapped for resources" Technical Steering Committee would use its time on, as well as what would be an accepted PR by regular contributors. Eventually, making this a successful effort is going to be as much about what we choose not to focus on, as it is about what we choose to make a priority.

[ngerakines]

Closing this as we've recently overhauled our governance repository.