Teamspaces and Props

The Ethosphere is a (currently imaginary) collection of online places and communities where decisions are made, conclusions are drawn, and progress is achieved. These are places where all sorts of non-physical endeavors can be carried out, and where productivity scales with the number of participants.

The Ethosphere allows users to create teamspaces around any desired topic or charter. A teamspace is basically a structured web site together with a community of members. Membership in a teamspace is completely controlled by the existing team members, as is most every other aspect of the teamspace.

Members of a teamspace can publish short opinions, ideas, resolutions, proposals, referenda, plebiscites, or propositions for consideration by the team. Such documents are referred to generically as Props and to publish one for consideration is to "put up a prop." Most activities in a teamspace revolve around the life cycle of props, their publication, acceptance, ratification, repeal, and/or amendment by the team.

Whether a prop is allowed to transition to another state, like accepted, ratified, or repealed, is determined by the team as a whole using a specialized voting procedure. The exact parameters of each vote depends on the type of transition (acceptance generally will require a weaker consensus than ratification, for example) and may be customized for different teamspaces. Similarly, the amount of time a prop is allowed to stay in a given state will vary by state and is customizable by teamspace. The consensus procedure is designed to keep props moving through their lifecycles and to encourage timely decisions be made about them.