https://luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.181/

# Introduction: democracy in the wild

* Online communities are different to in-person communities.
* Online politics in the small reflect in the large.
* Online communities must explicitly be democratic, self-governance instead of top-down authority => governable spaces.
* Democratic erosion in the world is influenced by online communities.
* Users of online communities perceive arbitrary rule enforcement, unaccountability.
* Online movements have not resulted in lasting gains.
* The design of online spaces has atrophied everyday democracy skills.
* Garden club from 1960 with eight pages of bylaws => more successful than most only communities that will not live as long.
* Fervent US enthusiasm for forming associations observed by Alexis de Tocqueville in 19th century US.
* Tocqueville: democracy requires education, democracy in education requires political engagement.
* Tocqueville: associations can serve the social order.
* Will bad players behave better if they care about mini-democracies?
* Online spaces are different, more churn, faster, distributed, diverse.
* Participating in online spaces correlate to political participation.
* Author unclear about his disagreement with Tocqueville's conclusions, author is more optimistic.
* Democratic self-governance is harder in online spaces, but possible.
* Design to achieve self-governance, refuse corporate control.
* Technical solutions are not sufficient.
* People do not believe their governments are democratic.
* People are more willing to change due to technological progress.
* Governments use technology as an "unavoidable excuse", but it doesn't have to be this way.
* Introduction of citizen voice happens even authoritarian governments (!)
* Crypto ledger structures have new power structures, even though it's often antidemocratic, but presents an opportunity.
* For many, democracy is something that was created for them before they were born, or something they won't have in their lifetime.
* Online communities are closer to most than their democracy.
* Designing online communities offers chance to learn how to shape the larger government.
* No single design can work for all scenarios.
* Design should be based on accountability.
* Democracy on a small scale gives hope that it's possible on a bigger scale.
* From server control to community control.
* Implicit feudalism: power derives from founders and admins.
* "Governable stacks", "modular politics" to learn from.
* Widespread participation => burdensome, elitist, uninformed governance? Overwhelming to participants.
* Sometimes governable spaces should be highly participative, in others, use representation.
* Governance designs sensitive to economy of attention.