Soma
Communities

Features and settings

The features a community turns on, their settings, and how members can stop a change they don't want.
Draft. This page is a preview of the new guide. Its illustrations are drafts still in review.

A community chooses which features it uses: family history, a clan, storage, safety, market deliveries, and the community apps such as Inzira. Some features have settings, such as how long something waits or how many people must agree. Features and settings are under Members → Community features.

Custodians turn features on and off and change their settings. Each change is signed with the community's own key and kept in the community's private log. It's never published to the directory. For a family community, these features are what the family tree in iwacu unlocks.

Changing a feature, and stopping a change

No custodian can change how the community works without the others noticing. Every change is shown to everyone, and a second custodian can stop it and hand the decision to the members.

Six scenes: a custodian flips a switch on a laptop and stamps a sheet; members get notifications on their phones; a second custodian raises a hand and a pause sign; members drop green and red cards in a ballot box; the switch shown on a laptop as members react; the decision written in a shared book.
  1. A custodian changes a feature
  2. Everyone is told
  3. Another custodian protests
  4. Members vote
  5. Keep or revert
  6. Recorded

A feature change takes effect at once, but any other custodian can put it on hold and let the members decide.

  1. A custodian changes a feature. They turn a feature on or off, or change its settings. It takes effect straight away.
  2. Everyone is told. The community page shows who changed what and when: what was turned on, turned off, or had its settings changed.
  3. Another custodian protests. A different custodian (not the one who made the change) chooses Protest and call a vote. The change is put on hold, and the features and settings from before it apply again.
  4. Members vote. Every member can vote Keep the change or Revert it, for seven days. If you vote twice, only your latest vote counts.
  5. Keep or revert. The vote ends early once one side has a majority of all members. Otherwise it's counted when it closes. Keeping the change needs more keep votes than revert votes, and at least one custodian among the voters. Anything else reverts it: a protest stops a change unless the members back it.
  6. Recorded. The outcome stays on the page ("the members decided to keep it" or "revert it") and in the community's history.
Only the latest change can be protested. To change something again after a vote, make a new change; it can be protested like any other.

Storage needs two custodians

The storage feature (your own S3-compatible bucket for the community's files) can only be turned on when the community has at least two custodians. With only one, a lost phone would lock the community out of its own storage. See Custodians and the community key.

Protocols

The written rules and practices a community adopts, from agreements to rituals, and how one is drafted, ratified, published and retired.

Custodians and the community key

Who holds a community's own key, what happens when someone leaves, and how a family hands over when someone is gone for good.