{"path":"research/session34-the-unconference-arc.md","content":"# Session 34: the unconference arc — the constellation lands, the first blob, a community's whiteboards as maps\n\n**Dates**: 2026-09-19 → 2026-09-20, worked remotely while the founder attended a two-day\nunconference of a participatory community that decides by advice process.\n**Type**: public-surface work, one new mechanism (blobs), and a plan. Deliberately short: almost\neverything below already lives at its own home, and this page is the index to those homes plus the\nfounder's words. The community is not named here, and neither is the address of the page made for\nit; both are in the private notes.\n\n---\n\n## 1. The arc in eight lines\n\n1. The constellation of convictions went onto the landing: all 45 stars, the 31 unruled ones marked\n   as drafts, then a description under every star.\n2. The founder asked how Deliberus could be tested inside a community that decides by advice\n   process. Answer: **blobs**, compartments with their own rules and lifetime, and a ladder of six\n   rungs ordered by exposure.\n3. Two workshop whiteboards he photographed became an unlisted page for that community, and the\n   first blob (a separate graph and database behind one switch) was built to hold them privately.\n4. One hand-made example map went above the constellation on the landing, so the page shows before\n   it tells. Three rounds in one evening.\n5. `www.deliberus.com` had been dead (no proxy rule, no certificate). Fixed in both halves.\n6. Day two: three more whiteboards, then **four whole-board maps** generated from the blob's own\n   data files, which replaced the prose examples.\n7. The community page's opening was rewritten twice on his word, ending on: what Deliberus is, where\n   it meets what the community already runs, what changes for one ordinary member.\n8. The community formed a working group on its own decision-making and he signed up. The plan for\n   what follows is private; its general half is in the blobs doc.\n\n## 2. The founder's rulings, in his words, each with its home\n\n| His words | What it settled | Home |\n|---|---|---|\n| *\"better to have them present than to leave them out\"* | Unruled stars go on the landing, marked as drafts | `specs/landing-redesign/constellation-map.md` § DISPLAY STATE |\n| *\"I want the landing page to open on The constellation\"* | The August hero and the three worked examples are hidden behind a flag, never deleted | same |\n| *\"simply a different database maybe is simplest\"* | A blob is a separate store, never a hidden flag inside the public graph | [blobs doc](blobs-community-sandboxes-and-the-advice-process.md) § 3 |\n| *\"Could you connect up and flesh out the Alex side of the map to the premises/claims that the Sam side boil down to?\"* | The example map is a mirror: each side runs down to its own weighing of the same two things | `specs/landing-redesign/tasks.md` item 14 |\n| *\"'answer this question'? Which question exactly?\"* | An open question is written out beside its mark; a prompt never points at something the reader cannot see | same |\n| *\"I don't mind if the phone version of the map contains less elements than the desktop version, if need be to keep it readable on phone\"* | A phone map may be leaner than the wide one | same, and `BoardMap.svelte` |\n| *\"Oh, sure, fix that.\"* | `www` answers and redirects to the bare name | `docs/architecture-reference.md` § Deployment |\n| *\"be diligent about the ontology being true to how we imagine Deliberus to be used, yet somewhat of a pragmatic overview\"* | The rules for a hand-made map (§ 3 below) | `web/src/lib/boardMap.ts` and the maps' own test file |\n| *\"The visual maps are more engaging than long flowing prose that you have to trudge through, obviously\"* | Maps lead, prose follows, on any page that explains | [ux-principles.md](../ux-principles.md) P1 scope note |\n| *\"They feel more like walls of text anyhow so less pedagogical\"* | Two step-by-step prose examples dropped once maps of the same material existed | blobs doc § 5b |\n| *\"The constellation of connections section should come first since it's more general I think\"* | General before particular | blobs doc § 5b |\n| *\"This is unimportant nitpicking … just leave it out.\"* | A page never opens by correcting how a room described the tool | blobs doc § 5b |\n| *\"I can take APs including their long comment threads and make maps to illustrate how Deliberus could help … even before making ppl go directly to Deliberus themselves to use it\"* | The look-back: a finished advice process mapped after the fact (Claude's design on his direction, unruled) | blobs doc § 4 |\n| *\"the ideal would be to develop the UX/UI to the point where I'm comfortable and proud to expose it to anyone\"* | His bar for letting members in; the smallest surface that could meet it is proposed, unruled | blobs doc § 7 |\n\nTwo rulings from the same two days belong to the horizon arc and are recorded with it\n([session33](session33-the-horizon-vocabulary.md)): how loud a provisional reading may be, and the\nrequirement cap accepted for now.\n\n## 3. What a hand-made map owes the ontology\n\nWorked out while drawing five maps in two days, and test-enforced for the four whole-board ones:\n\n- **A solid box is the source's own words. A dashed box is ours, and carries a note saying why it\n  is there.** A region of proposals holds only proposals.\n- **Every line is a proposal.** Nobody in the room drew it.\n- **No strength badge and no verdict anywhere**, because nothing on a fresh board has been tested.\n  The test file refuses the words.\n- A question mark is an open question and says what the question is. A pill is a word that means two\n  things. A small scale marks a weighing.\n- **The page is generated from the same data files the private store holds**, so the two cannot\n  drift. The generator refuses a claim that is not placed, a line to an unknown claim, and any name\n  on the list of names that must not be published.\n- On a phone: two columns, lines routed in three channels so they do not pile up, and fewer elements\n  where that keeps it readable.\n\n## 4. Corrections made during the arc\n\n- ⚠ **Three docs said the example map and the star texts are present without JavaScript.** False:\n  the site is client-rendered, so nothing on any page exists with scripts off. Corrected the same\n  night in the architecture reference, the landing task list and the wall component's comment. What\n  crawlers and agents can read is what the server renders itself: `llms.txt`, the markdown docs, and\n  the `.md` twin of every claim, concept and extraction. Never a page of the web app.\n- ⚠ **A reading made from an unfinished whiteboard broke on the finished one.** Effort and\n  information had looked like the two barriers to joining; the finished board added a third, who you\n  already know.\n- ⚠ **The example map blinked on hover.** An entrance animation was cancelled by a dimming class and\n  replayed each time the dimming lifted. Hover now moves one box's lines and nothing else.\n- ⚠ **A deploy lock from 28 August was stale** (that deploy was cut off after boot, before its\n  release step). Confirmed from the audit log, then released.\n- ⚠ **Caught in drafting, not shipped**: the first version of the look-back section claimed it *met*\n  the structuring-gradient principle's condition for people pointing at claims. It does not: a\n  look-back is a finished artifact handed back, which is exactly what that principle says people\n  argue with as a document. It would have been the fifth time that principle was walked past. The\n  look-back is an illustration and never the test.\n- ⚠ **The community's forum was described as mostly members-only, on a live page.** False. The\n  forum's data interface refuses a logged-out caller everywhere, and that refusal was read as\n  privacy without a thread's page ever being opened. Measured from the forum's own public group\n  list: 66 groups keep every thread public (1,080 threads), 31 keep them private (570), and the\n  land's advice processes are among the public ones. Found when the founder asked *\"Are all APs on\n  Talk public or just that one?\"*; corrected on the page, in the plan and in the notes the same hour.\n  It also changed the plan: the first look-back can be one of the community's own finished public\n  threads, with nothing to export.\n- **A near miss on privacy**: a sign-up sheet with phone numbers arrived as a photo. The private\n  notes folder syncs to a private remote, so the numbers were written nowhere, a folder that git\n  ignores now exists for material that must stay on the machine, and the rule is in the blob's\n  written rules.\n\n## 5. Still open, all the founder's calls\n\nThe voice pass on the community page and on 44 of 45 star descriptions · which finished advice\nprocess gets the first look-back, and the rules for using a members-only thread · whether a blob is\never hosted for members, which needs a login in front of every read and the community's own yes ·\nthe three door cards on the landing being in capitals by accident (`tasks.md` item 16) · the blob's\nend date (2026-12-31 in Claude's draft of its rules). None of it jumps the ruled order: the four\nreviews first.\n\n## Cross-references\n\n[blobs-community-sandboxes-and-the-advice-process.md](blobs-community-sandboxes-and-the-advice-process.md)\n(the design, the ladder, the look-back, the explaining order) ·\n[ux-principles.md](../ux-principles.md) P1 scope note and P20 ·\n[architecture-reference.md](../architecture-reference.md) (blobs, the shared wall components, the\nwhole-board maps, `www`) · `specs/landing-redesign/tasks.md` items 12–16 ·\n`specs/landing-redesign/constellation-map.md` § DISPLAY STATE · `SESSION-HISTORY.md` (the narrative).\n"}