How to Become a Steward

Per the original proposal that initially set up the League, anybody can become a Steward with a consensus vote from existing stewards. That means you, too, dear reader. To re-iterate, we expect a few things from stewards:

Expectations of Stewards

• some available time to at least read proposals and provide any input on them you feel is necessary

  • having time to at least skim chats would also be helpful, but efforts will be made to synthesize or copy over any important points to a more accessible venue

• the willingness to speak up, even if you might be the only one who will for an issue you feel needs addressing. the point of a consensus system is to incorporate everyone's concerns--otherwise, there's no sense in it versus regular voting

• an openness to changing your mind when other people give feedback

• the willingness to sometimes make compromises, especially about ideas you feel attached to, without feeling attacked or taking it personally

• the ability to handle and regulate some level of frustration; it is likely at least some conversations in the process will be painful, irritating, frustrating, or long-winded and this will grate on you.

• the ability to work in good faith with people (even if you might personally not like them for one reason or another)

and adherence to the Zapatista principles of “good government” that are the basis of everything else so far, which are:

• to serve others not oneself;

• to represent not supplant;

• to build not destroy;

• to obey not command;

• to propose not impose;

• to convince not defeat;

• to go below (to listen to the people we are building this for) not above (toward the accumulation of our own power as a group)

This is with the ultimate goal of working for the survival of the collective Website League, and fulfilling any responsibilities that are defined by the communities in the League. 

Joining

If this sounds interesting to you, you should start by creating an Authentication account. Anybody can do this, even if they aren't looking for any extra responsibility, but this is the thing that will grant you access to all the steward-y stuff later.

With that, you should request an existing Steward put up a vote for you. Whoever you pick as your sponsor should at least do a bit of vetting, so if you already know one you can ask directly, and save a bit of that time. Otherwise, you can post a new topic in the #Governance Zulip Channel and explicitly ask for a sponsor.  

Either way you should prepare an intro statement for your sponsor to include in the vote. this should include, at a minimum:

• Who are you? Do you already have an account on the League, or some other kind of public presence?
• Why do you want to be Steward?
• What would you like to focus on as a Steward? If applicable, you can mention existing experience, but this isn't a job interview or anything.

Here's a real-life example of this kind of vote, with intro statement:

And then the vote will go through. Consensus means that of all the people that vote, nobody should have an objection to you joining. Good luck!