KOI Pond
Metagov is a laboratory for digital governance where people come to share knowledge and collaborate on "a governance layer for the internet that is empowering, creative, interconnected, and accountable". Knowledge-sharing currently occurs through seminars, written outputs and discussion (meetings or chat) and is integral to our development of new projects. Metagov's KOI aims for Metagov’s collective knowledge to be accessible and deployable through a wider network of people and their inventions.
Overview
What is a KOI Pond? ↵
KOI stands for Knowledge Organization Infrastructure.
The “Pond” in KOI Pond is motivated by the dual meaning of Knowledge Organization Infrastructure and the association with a data lake -- or in other words: a data pond. The project also plays with associations to the extrapolation of ideas from Elinor Ostrom’s governance of the commons and land based resource stewardship towards data commons research, as well as fish swarms and interactions in ways that can be traced back to research on collective intelligence.
Our KOI Pond (hereafter simply KOI) combines the technologies of a knowledge management system (KMS) and reference IDs (RID), resulting in a graph database to support relationships between knowledge objects, users and groups within Metagov. The KOI can be accessed by a large language model (LLM) as described in this BlockScience blog. Metagov’s KOI is based on the KOI architecture initially developed by BlockScience.
The intention for Metagov’s KOI is for it to be guided by Metagov's community and over time embody its emergent priorities and self-governance patterns. The aim is for these priorities to surface themselves through intentionally devised practices for incorporating knowledge into our KOI.
This project aims to do more than setup an LLM for Metagov's use; it is an experiment exploring:
- to what extent a community's priorities can be reflected in the rules, sortings, and boundaries defining our KOI, and
- to what extent this infrastructure produces a useful technological interface for propagating knowledge flowing into, through, and from Metagov
Technical development ↵
The architecture of KOI Pond was developed by our partner, BlockScience, who are already using their own KOI. We hope to eventually observe knowledge-sharing between organizations through peer-to-peer KOI interactions.
The technical team is currently working on the reference ID (RID) system that will provide our KOI with metadata on objects that live outside of it. Our expectation is that the RID system will eventually allow us to steer our KOI by weighting knowledge objects or specifying their relevance to certain uses (for instance, onboarding or for a specific team’s work). In the meantime, we are designing methods and practices that will enable Metagov members to evaluate our KOI at different points in its development, including the information it has access to and the boundaries that are placed on that information via weightings, timestamps, confidentiality etc.
See this FAQ around common questions about the technical infrastructure.
Where is this being discussed and tested? ↵
These discussions currently happen in our weekly Govbase calls in #govbase-labs and the #koi-pond channel in Slack, which anyone can join. Testing currently takes place in #koi-tank. Testing is happening in a focused manner in that channel, and we request that visitors and testers read the channel’s description before contributing.
What happens next (devised practices)? ↵
Koimunnity Cove Calls (temporarily paused)
- We will be organizing bi-weekly, 30-minute, community calls for anyone in the community to attend, ask questions about the project, and participate in steering the direction and governance of our KOI. Cove attendees will also make collective decisions about which type of information is ingested into Metagov’s KOI over time, and be able to interact with a progressive series of channels with a progressively larger amount of information as a way of seeing how the dynamics of interaction change over time based on data accumulation as well as order of data types ingested.
Knowledge Koimmons – Govbase Dataset (Mid-2024)
- A structured series of six events across three weeks that are meant to facilitate interactions between the Metagov community and our KOI Pond. The activity aims to engage community participants by having them contribute to Metagov’s shared knowledge commons, focusing specifically Metagov’s Govbase Dataset project. The events will happen over three weeks some time in mid-2024 (dates TBD). Each week there will be two 1 hour events, alternating between a) project introduction, background, and data collection goal setting, and b) events focused on interacting with newly ingested data in the Metagov KOI.
Koi Boarding (Mid-2024)
- Metagov is a not-for-profit organization incorporated in the United States and governed by a Board of Directors. The organization’s bylaws and other governance documents are available for public review here. The Board is responsible for reviewing the data policy that was put in place to facilitate the data collection that happens through KOI. As such, they have asked that Metagov’s research directors present a report of the KOI Pond project for their evaluation. Koi Boarding is designed to serve two purposes:
- To give the board a way to evaluate the current Data Policies see here and here] through a self-reflective encounter with Metagov’s KOI; and
- To introduce a possible interface for the Metagov community to become more engaged in Metagov's own governance activities, including incorporating into the KOI discussions in the #board channel as well as agendas and minutes from past Board Meetings.
- This activity is planned to run mid 2024, with regular opportunities and calls to actions made in the Metagov Slack. We will also invite the Board to interact with itself through the system, and submit reflections on the accuracy and quality of our KOI. A report of this and the activities above will be submitted to the board for review in the Fall of 2024.
Who is involved? ↵
KOI is led by Metagov research directors Ellie Rennie and Michael Zargham.
In addition to the project research directors, several people at Metagov are contributing to the KOI Pond project. Luke Miller is leading the development of Metagov’s KOI. David Sisson is a domain expert and the project coordinator from the BlockScience team. Brooke Coco is conducting ethnographic research on Metagov’s use of its KOI (pending ethics approval), and Kelsie Nabben has commenced ethnographic research from the BlockScience side. Joshua Tan has played an advisory role and shaped Metagov’s Data Policies. Cent Hosten is supporting community outreach and engagement as well as research design for devised practices. Cent also serves as a voice in support of more consensual data collection mechanisms. Elianna DeSota, Michael Price, and Henrik Axelsen have provided valuable input during Govbase Labs discussion.
Contributions and discussion of this project happen primarily through our weekly Govbase Labs calls and online discussions. The decision to proceed with KOI Pond has at times been controversial and some Metagov members remain skeptical. This project recognizes healthy skepticism as an input to development and governance of ethical infrastructures. The Metagov Board approved two data use policies (here and here), but the work of refining the boundaries of our KOI (IP, ethics, technical) are ongoing. A successful KOI is an infrastructure which can facilitate grounded discourse and a community steered evolution of these boundaries over time.
KOI Pond has received initial funding support through a Metagov DAO grant (for technical development to get the project off the ground). We are currently seeking further funding to enable us to develop tools, interfaces and processes that other groups using KOI may require and/or benefit from.
Questions / contact / collaboration / funding ↵
Do you have questions, want to collaborate, or possibly support this work through funding? If so, here are some avenues to explore:
- Questions about the project are being compiled and addressed in this FAQ document.
- Emails can be sent to team@metagov.org with the subject “Attn: Cent – Metagov KOI Pond”.
- We welcome readers to join our Slack where we discuss these and several other topics and projects in the field of digital governance. Once you join write a short introduction in #intros and come say hi in #govbase-labs and #koi-pond. Feel welcome to ping @Cent if you have any questions along the way.