User:Doug/Onboarding

Onboarding as the introduction, integration and empowerment of people into Kanthaus over time. This page is a collection of personal thoughts and ideas on the matter, dedicated to Seth (see his piece What if all governance is onboarding?) and Kate.

Stages

The following lists the idealised stages a person goes through from somehow hearing about Kanthaus to eventually becoming a member, and existing resources I think would make sense to know at those stages (📜):

1. <positionless>
   1. becomes aware of existence of Kanthaus (e.g. through some public media, word of mouth, etc)
   2. (possibly finds way to our own media (e.g. website, wiki, mastodon, facebook))
   3. contacts individual or collective (e.g. email, mattermost, workaway, warm showers, trustroots, phone, mastodon)
   4. communicates with possible host
      1. 📜 Website: Visiting (links to Hosting)
      2. 📜 Website: Collective Agreements #Relevant in the first couple days
      3. 📜 Hosting#Before arrival (linked from Constitution, aimed at hosts)
   5. (reaches a hosting agreement with specific Vol-Mem)
2. Visitor
   1. first steps through the door
      1. 📜 Hosting#Upon arrival
   2. first day
      1. 📜 Hosting#First day
   3. first 7 days (before first check-in)
      1. 📜 Website: Collective Agreements #Relevant after the first couple days
      2. 📜 Meeting culture
      3. 📜 Additional norms
   4. next 7 days (before second check-in)
      1. 📜 Emergency protocols
   5. next 7 days (before third check-in)
      1. 📜 User:Doug/How to make changes (? Doesn't need to be this, but some deeper talk about practicalities of empowerment seem like a good shout)
   6. before Volunteer application
   7. (successful volunteer evaluation)
3. Volunteer
   1. first week
      1. 📜 Volunteer induction
   2. first month
      1. 📜 Website: Constitution
   3. before Member application
   4. (successful member evaluation)
4. Member
   1. first month

Each stage represents a point at which information should be transferred. Assuming our critical information is largely monotonic (that is, there is an order which generally makes sense) we should define suggested stages, the sum of which is then required for position transition (i.e. a formal or informal requirement for position transition).

Information architecture

Our information is still in disarray 🥲 Specifically regarding positions, I did some digging in User:Doug/2025 position system proposal and it seems we have already reached XKCD 927 so one more standard can't hurt.

I'm thoroughly biased the wiki should be the medium. I think it makes sense to have one page perhaps called Visiting (with a similar scope as the website page of the same name) and one page for each position. Some information should not be public, the pages can internal link to Nextcloud markdown files. (I am tempted by enabling private pages, but it strongly recommended against)

We should aim to design and write in a way that people can self-educate as much as possible: while we may need to put in more active effort with some people, we certainly shouldn't hold anyone back!

Documentation as of 2025-07-27

• Hosting is linked to from the constitution §5a.4. and is therefore canonical.
  • (The content of Hosting was previously called Hosting checklist (which now redirects))
• (There was a page called Newbie induction which I deleted since it was just duplicate.)
• The collective agreements still has section Hosting Duty - assimilate to Hosting then delete.
• The website has:
  • Visiting which was/is the default entry point
  • The embarrassingly named Visitour (I thought it was funny at the time!) - assimilate to Hosting then delete.
    • Page moved to Wiki: VisiTour and removed from website.

Volunteer and Member expectations

I think of this every time I think of the positions...

We've never had an official list of requirements for volunteers or members, but there are clearly factors and phenomena which make achieving these positions more likely. In no particular order:

• making an account on mattermost
• posting an introductory message on mattermost
• becoming a maintainer of some piece of infrastructure
• presence in regular meetings
• raising first point in CoMe in an appropriate way
• multiple social connections to existing vol-mems
• becoming a contact person between Kanthaus and another group/organization in Wurzen
• leading a communal meal, using 'best practices'
• noticing when rules/norms get broken, and constructively raising awareness
• expressing self-criticism
• bringing up a critical point with someone
• learning something
• teaching something
• being on time to meetings
• improving designs, signs, systems, etc
• ...

It seems to me that for volunteer and member status, there are things which are required (all), desired (some, fuzzy) and bonus (any are nice). This could be two lists for each status, or some kind of table... Or a big bingo, and you need a certain number of points lol.