Rules of Participation

The guidelines, norms and expectations a particular body sets for how its people work together — written locally, assented to on joining, and improved over time.

Every group already has rules of participation. The only question is whether they are written down and agreed, or unwritten and enforced by discomfort. Writing them is the move: it makes the expectations visible, checkable, arguable, and improvable, and it lets a newcomer know what they are walking into before they walk into it.

They are defined locally. No higher body issues them, because the specifics of how a given group communicates, decides, resolves conflict and allocates what it has depend on who is in it and what it is for (Sovereignty At Every Scale · Subsidiarity). They typically cover communication, decision-making, conflict resolution, resource allocation, and whatever else this group has learned it needs to say out loud.

They are assented to. Anyone who wishes to join must agree to them; that assent is what makes them binding rather than imposed, and it is why they can be binding at all among sovereigns (Consent · Voluntary Association · The Invitation). It also means that a rule nobody agreed to is not a rule, and that withdrawal remains available (Withdrawal Of Consent).

And they are improved. They are held at current best understanding, revisited when they stop serving, and changed by the same consent that adopted them (Continuous Improvement · Current Best Understanding · Proposal).

The near neighbour is the Field of Agreements, and the difference is worth keeping. A Field of Agreements is the whole live set of what a body has agreed — including its aim, its roles, and its promises to one another. Rules of Participation are the conduct layer within that: how we behave here. In practice a small Cell writes one short page that does both; a larger body separates them.

Also called: rules of participation · group norms Stands on: Consent · Field of Agreements · Agreement · Voluntary Association Opens onto: Governance · Charter · Decision Making · Conflict Transformation · We Do Not Tolerate · Circle Coherence · Agreement · Pillar II — Sacred Governance and Stewardship In play: the door, where a newcomer reads them before joining; the table, where they are used; the look-back, where they are revised Sources: Rules of Participation (root page, draft) · Template For Rules of Participation (root page, an instrument) · Field of Agreements (root page) · lionsberg.wiki: Rules of Participation Open: The root page and the Field of Agreements overlap heavily and neither says how they relate; the distinction drawn above is a reading, not the canon's own. · The canon promises "guidance and best practices" for writing them and the guidance is a template sheet, not a practice.