The Tyranny of Structurelessness is a classic essay by Jo Freeman about power structures, community accountability, and formal vs informal structures. While she wrote it in the context of the 1960’s women’s movement, it really points at dynamics that pop up in lots of contexts. I’m posting it here because I think that it has very good insights for us in the Haskell community as we find ways of working together on various projects. It’s worth a read!
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Thank you for sharing this link. I think this ties well into our discussion about Haskell organizations and their assignments.
A quote from the article:
Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk about their lives; they aren’t very good for getting things done.
In my opinion, specially the last section about the “Principles of democratic structuring” constains excellent suggestions about how to “democratically structure” a group. The Haskell Foundation seems to make use of most of these.
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