In this talk I’ll introduce WISDOM: an empirical framework for recognising and rewarding diverse contributions to autonomous organisations.

I’ll give a brief history of the framework’s development, beginning life as a numerical peer-review model designed for the Open Science space and evolving through active experimentation at gift-based festivals (think Burning Man, but smaller and more diverse), to become a domain-general model that is inclusive to diverse organisations and multiple use cases.

I’ll highlight the key innovation of the model: the use of self-referential meta-reviews to ‘close’ the evaluation loop and peg the system, generating a multi-dimensional representation of the diverse qualities that each contribution brings to the community. I’ll show how this information can form the basis for a circular gifting economy and platform for programmable politics, while incentivising everyone in the community to ‘watch the watchers’.

I’ll share some data from one of our own gatherings, where we validated the model internally, and preview some emerging collaborations with external communities that demonstrate the generalisability of the framework.

I’ll close with a vision for how WISDOM can connect communities with a common language of digitally-encoded values, answer any questions that arise, and open up a discussion on possible use cases for the Zanzalu community.