One could argue that the most important aspect of a community is the way in which it is governed. The issue with contemporary social apps is that are plagued by the top-down systems and totalitarian control structures that are a relic of internet forum boards. The power of the community is consolidated in the hands of a few administrators and moderators who are not required to listen to the populace that they are supposed to be serving. This is often times coupled with proprietary and centralized service architecture and makes for a dangerous situation wherein if the administration goes downhill or the service goes downhill, everything goes down as well. To remedy this, Asveora is a Decentralized Democratic Constitutional Republic (also known as a “DDCR” for short) that has mechanisms in place to make it a phoenix of its own kind. If anything happens to Asveora, it has the tools and protocols to always come back from its ashes. This DDCR model means that Asveora has the ability to mirror the flexible scalability and freedom of movement that is seen in the ways which humans organize themselves offline.
The members of Asveora are referred to as “Citizens of Asveora” or more colloquially “Asveorans” and are given the rights such as voting, running for office, serving for jury duty, mirroring locations, and much more. No longer are the powers of legislation and direction in the hands of a few. Instead it is re-distributed to the general populace. Asveorans are given the means to participate in governing the environments that they dwell within so that they may determine the future of the digital world with their virtual neighbors. In doing so, transparency is also more prevalent than ever as everything is made public knowledge within Asveora. No more covert leadership meetings, shadow bans, secret processes of discrimination, etc. In Asveora it is mandated that the people ought to know what is happening and it is a virtue that all strive to exhibit. Not only does this mean a more informed populace but this means a digital world built on trust and honesty. If anything goes wrong, people are free to enact their ability to federate and save or grow the digital universe that they belong to. In addition to all executive processes being democratic, Asveora is home to a robust open-source culture. There are no pay-walled features, digital item marketplaces, or obnoxious advertisements.
Resources and content are made by the people for the people. And fortunately, digital goods can be infinitely replicated unlike physical ones! Whether it be the code of a web page or a holiday themed avatar frame, Asveorans contribute to the same public libraries that are constantly growing and encouraging creations from all! However, this is where one of the most important traits of Asveora’s society comes into place. The network puts a large emphasis on attribution and citation, two traits of honorable scholarship. Many people are very possessive of the content that they produce namely because they are more often than not witnesses to their contributions being used without them ever being mentioned. Not being credited can be extremely hurtful and very demotivating for humans. People find joy in knowing that they had a meaningful impact or contribution to something and not being properly credited takes that joy away. That is why attribution and citation is so crucial and why Asveorans oblige themselves to the task of ensuring no one goes unaccredited and left feeling unappreciated.
