The Ritual of Tips

Intention

To refine and expand the known "good tips" for navigating the scuttlebutt technology and community, and to provide new members of our community a low-stakes entrance to contributing.

Participants

• At least one(1) awesome-person who has noticed some useful tips about our community or technology that they think would help new members get acclimated to this scuttlepelago. You can have multiple awesome-persons.
• At least one(1) elder-butt who helps verify or refine these tips, to make sure they are as accurate as possible, based on the elder-butt's experience. You can have multiple elder-butts, but the ritual works best when the awesome-persons outnumber the elder-butts.

Time

This ritual can be initiated at any time, and happens basically when someone realizes "Oh! I'm an awesome person, who has noticed some great tips that helped me and could help someone else!" At this moment, they'd ask to start the ritual of tips, and seek out an #elder-butt who would want to help.

This ritual could also be initiated when someone posts in a channel "Oh, i'm finding all these cool things about scuttlebutt, is there anywhere we document this?" An elder-butt may see this and say, "Oh! you sound like an awesome person, and I'd love to help you with this ritual of tips!"

When the participants are in place, the ritual can take place upon the next phase of the moon. The ritual lasts until the moon completes its phase.

Materials for Ritual

A Chat Circle The Tapestry of Tips A knowledge of git The Scroll of Newness A cup of water for each participant

The Ritual

When the participants have found each other, and upon the next phase of the moon, the initiating awesome-person starts up a group chat on SSB with the other other awesome-people and elder-butts. The circle is cast with them saying "hey, let's talk about some tips!" Or some other nice greeting.

A link to the "tapestry of tips" is shared (this'll likely be a page on scuttlebutt.nz, a git repo, or some combination of the two). The tapestry contains all currently documented tips. Once shared, all participants read through the tapestry privately. This gathers their energy, but also helps them make sure their cool new tips haven't already been documented. The participants also read through the tapestry to see if there's anything written there that's unclear, and should be revised.

When a participant has finished their reading, they leave a pleasant emoji in the chat circle. For example: 🍃 is very pleasant.

When all participants have left their own pleasant emojis, then "the scroll of newness" is shared. This is shared by the elder-butt, to help pass on the tools we use. It'll be usually a hackmd.io document, a git-ssb page, a riseup pad, or some future collaborative doc built atop ssb. The scroll of newness should be easy for everyone to use, and see what each other has written.

The participants add their new tips to the scroll. They also reference existing tips that should be refined and how they'd refine them. The elder-butt reads through these new additions and adds comments or changes if needed.

All participants in the circle will feel when the scroll of newness is complete. When this is felt within the circle, then the scroll is merged into the tapestry through a git pull request.

The ritual is brought to a close by one of the awesome persons writing up a post in the #tips channel announcing this merging, and reviewing the new tips they included.

Lastly, everyone drinks a cup of water. This isn't directly tied to the ritual, it is just important for people to stay hydrated and I don't think people drink enough water!

See also

• It can be tough to track the phases of the moon, luckily @kas has been quietly maintaining a channel at #moon for exactly this!

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