On the Social experience design chatroom @smlckz asked about SX, copying the discussion …
@smlckz wrote:
if there was a newsletter for open source maintainers, in which maintainers could ask for specific help with specific issues, and subscribers would receive weekly or so - “this longstanding project is looking for help with this bug or this feature, here are the skills required”
How about decentralized Developers’ Guilds? Loosely based upon the idea of Adventurers’ Guilds (or Mage Towers, to some extent) of Western fantasy swords and magic worlds. Quests, Rankings, Parties and so on. Minor quests accrue points, successful quests build reputation, major quests come with monetary rewards and so on. What would be the precise rules, what governance model to follow, there’s a lot to be figured out…
What would it be like when the concept of social experience design gets applied to this?
Interesting question. The first part is where SX itself is focused. Every open source maintainer, esp. when a project becomes more popular, will get a lot more on their plate than the coding itself that perhaps they love most. There is a Free software development lifecycle where many different ‘stakeholders’ participate and have their own Need wrt the project. Here too is plenty opportunity to work together, and the affiliation and cocreation network that emerges over time will continue to streamline that by everyone’s participation and adding of their 2 cents. The idea is that gradually more native social networking support becomes available to support the FSDL. The vision is to work towards “Joyful creation” on the social web (which starts with software creation, but goes well beyond that).
The second part is the fun part. One of the core principles of SX is the Playfulness principle. Play is a great way to learn, to pick new things up, to get along with others. If there’s a core foundation and growing support for FSDL related activities, alongside of that, more themed experiences may grow along. I can imagine an audience who’d love this. Note that there’s already a SX formula called “Prosperity guilds” that focuses on chaordic organization of the commons based affiliation network. I am interested quite a bit in the idea you bring, though I think we are a ways off to getting there, generally speaking, and looking at the fediverse today. An nice inspiration is something like Spritely Fantasary, where - if that is possible on the social web - these kinds of social experiences are too.
@smlckz replied:
What aspects from your perspective hinders realization of this?
Besides, when I was writing that, I used the guild/quest concept as an analogy. When it’s a way of earning money, it’s no longer a game in a traditional sense, the enjoyment aspect gets diminished. How will such federated network of programmer collectives/cooperatives look like, function, interoperate and sustain themselves…
The current ecosystem of freelance job, the way it is designed, is not healthy. The platforms conduct themselves in technofeudalist manner [Varoufakis], the virtual ‘‘marketplace’’ making its users more like serfs… with understandable repercussions to freedom and autonomy. Then there’s the aspect of competition which makes it quite unhealthy, that we don’t have ideological immunity from such positive oppression [Byung-Chul Han, the Burnout Society]… I have hope from what I was able to understand so far that SX design can be fruitful in this regard.
You might say its the dance between participation and sustainability. What can be achieved vs. kept going. But well before that, its luck, chance, opportunity… emergent forces that make people with similar interests come together and decide to go this direction. What SX does is facilitate emergence. What Social coding commons does is focus on a social web that is able to become a future peopleverse. This commons exists only by affiliation of otherwise autonomous and independent parties, i.e. there’s no membership and “feeling a social coder” is enough to join. A groundwork can be laid where people can build upon what others built before. And that must be kept track of, in order to connect new puzzle pieces all the time.
The movement is ‘designed’ to only aggregate more value as time progresses, IF and only if sustainability can be maintained. And countless SOSS initiatives can be formed where people flock together on the basis of their self-interests and on that basis intrinsically motivated to participate with others. Which means they need to know about each others interests and dreams.
But the overall direction of this movement is fully determined by the valuable contributions of all these people together, where everyone’s 2 cents amounts to more than the sum of its parts. Finding synergies in the affiliation network, on an ongoing basis. The big challenge and applied research topic of SX is how to foster emergence i.e. still have the ability to keep on a healthy course of sustainable organic growth, and based on the intrinsic values of Humanity and Freedom.
And it is in pursuing these values that SX is able to set out on a healthy course for its participants, beyond the Gig economy that hypercapitalism has shaped to disempower people, for the benefit of the rich and wealthy owner class. What makes SX different is its holistic approach. The underlying philosophy and the soft and fluffy social side matter as much as the hard and concrete technology aspects. They must go hand in hand in a process of 
Evolution.
Also… You see me typing a lot in these channels, musing about all kinds of concepts, in long texts. And you might wonder, is SX just in the “endless talk, talk, talk” phase then. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It all depends on proactive participation and sustainability. I am most interested in elaborating the philosophy and make a bridge towards where a sound technology foundation can support it. But for everyone there’s a place where they feel most in their comfort zone, and able to pursue their passions and dreams. The ability to find such places is also part of SX, and they exist for everyone. In that sense SX is utterly pragmatic and applicable at any scale.
I found thus far that underlying all this is a system of beauty and elegance, and of simplicity. Comparable to Nature. The difference to nature is that we can use our human intelligence to influence and guide the evolution that takes place. There are refreshing insights, and mindset shifts that can help people directly. The challenge is that we are captive to an existing system, that serves as a prison for our minds. We need to break out with our imagination, look beyond to what is possible. And just “Dare to dream”… a SX concept 
TLDR of the above is that what’s needed is Sustainable evolution.
And there’s something of a paradox to achieving it. It would be very easy to put out broad Calls to Participate on websites, forum and chatrooms. Attract people on the basis of all the interesting nuggets in SX methodology that need to be explored further. We can use all the help we can get, as already our planet burns and technnofeudalism looms, there’s much urgency. But it would be failure mode if there’s the incapacity to handle the influx of people… things would devolve to chaotic commons again, which is what we already have, and which is incapable to deal with these wicked problems.
Hence the Mindfulness principles. The movement itself is timeless. Urgency is a force that participants can ‘inject’ by their participation. But only ‘sustainable urgency’, or the movement will tear itself apart.