Community Lexicons

Some Lexicon types created for Smoke Signal are moving into a community-managed lexicon group.

Some changes are coming to the Smoke Signal lexicon, impacting the application and record consumers.

I strongly oppose creating another walled garden that locks users into Smoke Signal for event and RSVP management. I wrote about this in the Why ATProtocol¹ and For Communities² posts. I'm fortunate that Smoke Signal has started to grow, and I recognize that I'm still accountable and need to stick to my values.

The phrase "credible exit" has received much attention lately, and I feel that everyone building ATProtocol applications and systems needs to recognize its impact on us. For me, and with Smoke Signal, it means building with the idea of a protocol platform in mind. Although the code that powers Smoke Signal isn't open source, the data structures, system design, and behavior are built openly with the goal that they live beyond the application.

In an early Smoke Signal presentation³, I had the slide "Smoke Signal Is The Answer To A Question" leading to the next slide, "How can communities outlive the platforms they use?" I believe this, and thinking about it often led to forming "lexicon.community."

The goals and mission of "lexicon.community" are two-fold:

• Collectively own and develop a stable and thoughtful Lexicon that can be used by application, system, and SDK developers in the form of a Technical Steering Committee, recognized collaborators, and general contributors.
• Be an active participant in the greater ATProtocol development community by being an example of community ownership of Lexicons.

With regard to Smoke Signal, several of the core types are migrating to it. The core event, RSVP, and location types will move away from the "events.smokesignal" NSID and to the "community.lexicon" NSID.

Traditional wisdom would say this is not in Smoke Signal's best interest, but this form of adversarial architecture will lead to a better outcome for the project and its users. By moving the lexicon out of Smoke Signal and into a shared community and committing to using it, communities will have more confidence in my product by recognizing that alternative tooling could provide them with a better experience with their data.

Learn more about the lexicon, governance, and join the discussion at https://lexicon.community/.