Deliverable 5.6: inDICEs model for digital community participation

This deliverable describes the activities carried out during the first year of the inDICEs project within Work Package 4 (WP4) and Work Package 5 (WP5) by the different partners and describes the results achieved by these work packages.

This deliverable outlines the work explicitly in connection to creating a sustainable participatory platform. Sustainable in this deliverable refers to the facet of management, community engagement, as well as user experience. Since the inception of the project, the end goal has been to create a digital space for cultural heritage institutions, organizations, and actors around Europe where they can connect, share information, and collaborate together using a host of tools, resources, and data generated by the consortium partners.

The inDICEs Open Observatory aims to be a digital space for innovation with diverse participation across Europe. To create an environment where participants from various backgrounds, knowledge, and capacities can connect, share, and collaborate is paramount to developing an ethical compass and praxis to follow. An ethical compass along with actions that follow ensure that there is a space to consistently maintain the health of the platform as a safe public space for digital community engagement freer of discriminatory attitudes and obstacles. This deliverable captures the work that has been done thus far to create ethical pillars for the platform and the progress to establish how those ethical pillars might also work in tandem with governance and incorporated into the platform’s modules. Whether this might lead to the development of governance policy such as community guidelines or a code of conduct is still undecided.

As in deliverable 4.1, this deliverable researched various case studies such as Wikimedia and Creative Commons to inform the governance of the platform. The case studies also focused on existing platforms and digital communities. However, rather than focus on technical functions, this deliverable focused on digital governance, community engagement, and ethical standards. The case studies were selected according to their capacity and commitment to safer, more equitable digital spaces. Technology in itself does not resolve issues around accessibility and participation. Active governance and measures to ensure ‘friendly’ or safer spaces from harassment ensure that all participants can engage and collaborate with greater freedom of discriminatory attitudes and behaviour. The cases outlined take inspiration from existing communities such as Wikimedia, Decidim, and Creative Commons.