Value exchanges
Ensuring equity in community interactions
Last updated 1 October 2018
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Examples
From our “Taxonomy of value exchanges:”
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Clarity
Articulating your value exchanges helps you sharpen your community interactions and contribution pathways (let me tell you how we recognize contribution…).
It makes your thinking about exchanges open for critique, feedback, and negotiation (what do you mean by…?).
It also gives you another piece of your project to evaluate when things go especially well or when things fail to meet your expectations (maybe it’s the value exchange…).
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Equity
Articulating your value exchanges helps you evaluate them for equity. Do they seem equitable to you on first review?
Feedback and critique are key here, as well. Do your contributors find these exchanges equitable?
Evaluating the equity of your exchanges and comparing what you get with what you give helps you understand how equitable they seem compared to those in similar community, organization, & project cultures.
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Honesty
Articulating your value exchanges keeps you honest. Is this really what you’re asking? Is this really what you can offer in exchange?
Being honest also helps you and your contributors manage expectations and set well-reasoned goals.
Honesty helps you under-promise and over-deliver more than over-promise and under-deliver.
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Storytelling
Articulating your value exchanges helps you collect contributor and user stories that show people pathways through your your community and help you develop personas.
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Design
Following a design process or human centered design process can help you develop clear, equitable, and honest value exchanges.
Research → draft → test → revise → repeat. Talk with people about what they get from contributing to your work and participating in your culture.
Value exchanges can and should change over time as you learn more about - and with - your contributors.
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Documentation
Share your value exchanges through multiple, accessible channels.
A CONTRIBUTION doc in a GitHub repo is great if your contributors love GitHub.
You may also need a Google Doc or mobile- or print-friendly webpage or a community handbook and other channels for answering questions (e.g. Signal, Telegram, Twitter).
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Consistency
While each value exchange is current, you should follow through on it in the same way for each contributor.
You should let people know when - and why - value exchanges change.
Use the principle of consistency to help you plan for clarity, equity, and honesty. Be mindful of the quantity of each exchange you can fulfill, whether its a sticker or a stipend.
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Recognition
You can also think of recognition as acknowledgment or gratitude.
It’s crucial to be equitable and honest here. Be systematic and thorough in recognizing people. Make it a habit and part of your culture. Avoid missing or overlooking contributions.
Have a process and place to attribute contributions and acknowledge the roles and responsibilities people share in your culture.
This - along with delegation - is what you can most often give contributors who insist on doing more than you can compensate (until you can).
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Pathways
Inviting people to move through different pathways in your culture can be a form of value exchange.
You can articulate different exchanges at different levels.
You can focus on the levels where the value exchange is most interactive and profound.
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Licensing
Your license reflects your culture.
People who fork your work or otherwise adapt and use it are contributors like ambassadors or evangelists.
How permissively you license something relative to its value gives contributors and users clues about your culture.
There’s a balance, and your license can change over time so long as you keep contributors aware and allow them to opt into or out of new agreements.
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Thank you!
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