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@nicksellen sounds really interesting! What's Karrot for exactly? There's no description on the site and I'd like to read something before signing up

@michel_slm hey, thanks for the interest. You're right that page doesn't explain much. We chat with groups first in person or via email rather than random people arriving on that page, but it would be nice to support that too.

The focus is on grassroots community food saving - collecting excess food from being wasted. Similar to foodsharing.de in German-speaking countries.

But the features are general purpose so can be used for other things.

A bit more info is on https://foodsaving.world/karrot

@nicksellen @michel_slm

@appleseed check this out. Wonder how it compares to the Robot

@Matt_Noyes @michel_slm @appleseed we (as a project) exchanged emails before, differences from what we can remember is that robot:
- is for bringing food to centralized food bank
- has multi-level user roles
- is available in English only
- no messaging/app

Could be misremembered/wrong/outdated though!

Important principle is that communities can input into the software - to support plurality of approaches.

Software should follow the community not the reverse. Not one tool for all people.

@nicksellen @michel_slm @appleseed Thanks, Nick! I am eager to see my friends at Colorado Springs Food Rescue networking with like-projected folks here.

@ntnsndr sure! You can read https://community.foodsaving.world/t/info-how-does-the-conflict-resolution-feature-work/254 and https://community.foodsaving.world/t/info-karrot-trust-system-and-user-levels/108 which explain the system. It took a lot of discussion to get to this point. We always resisted adding normal admin features.

@nicksellen thanks for this—really interesting. Seems to have resemblances with reputation-based decentralized networks. But since this is a self-hosted system, what special powers does the hoster have other than pulling the plug?

@ntnsndr the hoster has no special powers within the application. Currently all groups use our hosted instance as they tend to be small low tech volunteer groups.

We don't attempt to solve the problem that people with server access can do anything. That's a tough one to solve and have usable software.

We're trying to get some sort of co-op model to oversee the project and server/data ownership/management. Stalled a bit recently though.

@nicksellen really interesting. I just ask because the disproportionate role and cost of the hosting role tends to correlate with governance powers. Cooperative hosting seems like an important prerequisite.