💡 In simple words: this page explains who makes the big decisions for WikiDeal and the rules they follow, so everyone is treated fairly. The idea mixes three good recipes: Wikipedia, where everyone can help write the rules; cooperatives, where the people who use a service own it together; and Switzerland, where small teams, not single chiefs, lead at every level.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): WikiDeal's governance is intended as a hybrid of three proven sources. From Wikipedia and the free software movement (Debian): a fully open legislative process (social contract, code of conduct, policies, committees, Condorcet voting, user groups), where anyone willing to work can propose and evolve the rules, with no election needed to legislate. From cooperatives: at-cost financial management, user ownership and redistribution. From the Swiss institutional structure: collegial executives of 5, 7 or 9 members at each of the three levels (User Groups, Rings of Trust, global governance), elected by an assembly of delegates. The detailed decision mechanics live on the Decision-Making page. The whole is proposed as a basis for discussion, within an Exit to Community trajectory of progressive deprivatisation, with the Ynternet.org Foundation as legal anchor.

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Governance

Status: initial hypothesis, proposed as a basis for discussion. Nothing on this page is adopted.

Governance summary:

Model	Hybrid of three sources: Wikipedia and free software, cooperatives, Swiss institutional structure
Legislative	Open to all contributors, no election needed
Executive	Collegial, 5, 7 or 9 members per level, elected by the assembly of delegates
Membership	Monthly subscription (CHF 1/month)
Legal entity	Ynternet.org Foundation
Trajectory	Exit to Community, progressive deprivatisation

An innovation: a hybrid of three sources

WikiDeal's governance model is an innovation of assembly: not one more invented system, but a hybrid of three sources that have each proven themselves for decades.

Source	What WikiDeal intends to take from it
Wikipedia and the free software movement	Social contract, code of conduct, policies, committees, open editing for all, Condorcet voting, user groups. Above all: an entirely open legislative process.
Cooperatives	At-cost financial management, ownership by the users, redistribution.
The Swiss institutional structure	Collegial executives at every level, elected by an assembly of delegates.

Source 1: Wikipedia and the free software movement

From Wikipedia and the free software movement, notably Debian, WikiDeal intends to take the whole open governance toolbox: a social contract (compare the Debian Social Contract and WikiDeal's Ecopol social contract), a code of conduct, written policies, committees (starting with the Steering Committee), a culture of open editing for all, Condorcet voting and user groups.

The central point: the legislative side is intended to be entirely open. It would be run directly by all the contributors willing to roll up their sleeves. No election is needed to legislate: anyone bringing solutions can propose rules and make the governance evolve, exactly as anyone can improve a Wikipedia article. This foundational hypothesis has its own page: Wikipedia Governance.

Source 2: cooperatives

From the cooperative tradition, WikiDeal intends to take the financial culture: at-cost management (services priced at their real cost), ownership by the users and redistribution of what is not needed for operations. Classic cooperative mechanisms, such as equal voting weight for members, would also exist in the model. In practice, a very small minority of users gets deeply involved: deliberating, doing community work, joining celebrations. The model recognises this through the Civic Incentive: light but real advantages for those who roll up their sleeves.

Source 3: the Swiss institutional structure

From Switzerland, WikiDeal intends to take the way the executive is appointed at every level. The analogy runs across three levels:

WikiDeal level	Swiss analogy
User Groups	The communes
Rings of Trust	The cantons
Global governance	The Confederation (the country)

Each of the three levels would have a collegial executive (in the spirit of the directorial system) of 5, 7 or 9 members, depending on the scale of what it governs. At the global level, the working hypothesis is 9, a number estimated for a country-scale institution; the exact figure remains open. What matters is the principle, not the number: an odd, manageable group size, building on existing institutional experience and reflection rather than reinventing the wheel. A Swiss anecdote illustrates this: the Swiss Federal Council has 7 members; proposals to enlarge it to nine members, argued to improve representation and concordance, have been repeatedly submitted to the Swiss Parliament without success, from a 2010 motion (motion 10.3129) to a 2025 parliamentary initiative (initiative 25.424): the reform never passed. WikiDeal would start from that assessment, with 9 as the working figure at the global level.

The executives would be elected by the assembly of delegates, the WikiDeal analogue of the Swiss Federal Assembly electing the Federal Council. The assembly of delegates itself is described on the Decision-Making page.

Who decides what

The detailed decision mechanics (open legislative process, assembly of delegates, role of the delegates, collegial executives, voting methods, money) are on a dedicated page:

→ Decision-Making: who decides what at WikiDeal.

Subscription as Governance Right

Participation in WikiDeal governance would require possession of at least one membership, valued at CHF 10. This membership serves as the foundational unit of both economic participation and democratic rights. It can be acquired by purchasing it directly, by accumulating fractional memberships through platform use (e.g. ten CHF 1 Commissions from babysitting sessions), or by receiving one as a gift from a foundation programme, an ambassador, or another user.

A major financial funder with thousands of memberships would have exactly the same formal vote as a community member who earned their first membership through platform use. This is a deliberate architectural choice, not an oversight. It aims at preventing plutocratic capture, the drift toward governance-by-capital that has afflicted many "community" projects including some blockchain governance systems.

The model would, however, distinguish between economic weight and governance weight. Funders who commit more capital would receive proportionally more redistribution potential (more memberships, more potential Rewards). They would not receive more votes. This separation is what would allow WikiDeal to attract meaningful financial funding without compromising governance integrity.

Exit to Community

WikiDeal is designed as an Exit to Community programme. Exit to Community (E2C) is an approach developed by the Media Economies Design Lab (University of Colorado Boulder) in partnership with the Zebras Unite cooperative movement, describing a transition path for organisations that want to move from founder or contributor control to community ownership. The concept was developed in response to the dominant "exit to acquisition" model of startups, where the goal is always eventual sale or IPO.

In WikiDeal's case, the transition is built into the founding architecture. Ynternet.org Foundation (illustrative example) holds governance authority over the platform. This authority is meant to be transferred progressively to the user community as the platform grows, as governance tools mature, and as the community demonstrates the capacity to manage complex decisions. The foundation is meant to ensure the public-interest mandate is respected, while operational governance moves to users.

The founder (see credits) has committed in writing to surrendering all intellectual property rights to the foundation, receiving in return 50 million memberships (under the same Personal/Community mechanism as all funders). His formal influence over retained prototypes is limited to a minority share, ensuring that no single person (including the founder) can override community decisions on the model's direction.

Deprivatisation as a Process

WikiDeal uses the term deprivatisation to describe its long-term trajectory. Privatisation in this context means the concentration of ownership, value, and control in private hands. Deprivatisation is the reverse: a deliberate, structured transfer of those three dimensions back to the community that generates value. This is distinct from nationalisation (which transfers to the state) and from traditional mutualism (which often struggles with commercial sustainability).

The deprivatisation process is intended to be incremental and transparent. At each stage, the foundation would publish metrics on community ownership percentage, governance participation rates, financial flows, and infrastructure autonomy. The goal is not a single moment of "handover" but a continuous gradient: at every point, the community owns more than it did the year before.

Open Call competitions are a key mechanism envisaged for accelerating deprivatisation: by inviting the community to propose alternative models, WikiDeal intends to institutionalise the idea that the current governance structure is always provisional, always open to improvement. No rule would be permanent except the rule that rules can be changed by the community.

See also: Decision-Making: who decides what · Voting at WikiDeal: methods, rules, research (draft portal) · Is WikiDeal a DAO? (the organizational nature of WikiDeal)