How GROUNDWORK governs itself

No one role does everything

Different institutional functions sit in different bodies and remain capable of reviewing each other procedurally.

• Co-owner assembly

  Constitutional authority
  Amendments to the GROUNDWORK charter, rules of the register, and platform constitution.
  Constraint

  Two-thirds supermajority of active co-owners; 14-day public discussion period before any vote.

• Stewardship team

  Operational administration
  Day-to-day maintenance, on-call response, infrastructure decisions.
  Constraint

  No constitutional authority. No moderation authority. Recallable by co-owner vote.

• Review circle (rotating)

  Moderation & verification review
  Verification escalation decisions, report adjudication, anti-sybil enforcement.
  Constraint

  Cannot amend rules. Decisions appealable to the appeals circle. Members rotate annually.

• Appeals circle (separate seats)

  Appeals
  Final review of contested moderation, verification, and removal decisions.
  Constraint

  Members cannot simultaneously sit on the review circle. Decisions published with reasoning.

• Co-owner assembly

  Treasury & dues
  Setting annual dues, allocating operational budget, financial transparency.
  Constraint

  Quarterly public ledger. No single role controls disbursement.

Who is forbidden from doing what

Separation of powers is enforced in the database, not just on paper. The verification table refuses any row where these overlaps occur.

• Hard rule The requester of a verification cannot decide it.
• Hard rule The original reviewer cannot also decide the appeal.
• Hard rule The appellant cannot decide their own appeal.
• Hard rule Appeals are final once decided. A new verification request is the only path back.
• Hard rule A reviewer cannot resolve a manipulation report they themselves filed.

What the platform is bound to

• • Constitutional changes require a 14-day public discussion window before any vote.
• • The stewardship team is recallable by co-owner vote at any time.
• • Review and appeals circles are staffed by disjoint sets of people.
• • All amendments to the platform charter appear on a public changelog, same format as initiatives.
• • Co-ownership ledger remains public and anonymized at /co-ownership/ledger.
• • Founders do not retain veto authority. There is no founder veto on file.
• • Live drift counters on /self-audit make integrity legible in real time.

What this page is not

We do not claim to have solved governance capture. treats anti-capture as an iterative process, not a finished design. What we commit to is keeping platform power legible enough that ordinary co-owners can perceive how it works — and challenge it.