Ecosystems

A university's clubs, an association's branches, the separate teams inside one organization — when each of those lives as its own community but they need to be seen together, that is what an ecosystem is for. It is a layer above communities: its own page, its own identity, and a feed showing the events of every community beneath it.

An ecosystem does not replace a community. Each community keeps its own page, members, events and plan exactly as before; the ecosystem only connects them.

The ecosystem page

An ecosystem has a public address. The page carries its logo, its description, the communities under it and their upcoming events. Sharing one link is how you say "all of our events are here".

A visitor can move from there into any individual community's own page.

Requests to join

A community is never added to an ecosystem silently — it applies to join. The ecosystem's manager sees the request and accepts or declines it.

It does not work the other way round: an ecosystem cannot invite a community under its roof. The approach always comes from the community, so nobody appears beneath a banner they did not choose.

The ecosystem panel

From their own panel, an ecosystem manager can:

• Pending requests — see which communities want in, and decide.
• Member communities — read the list, and remove one if it comes to that.
• Identity — the ecosystem's name, description, logo and public address.

Who can do what

The request to join is sent by the community's owner. Accepting or declining it is the ecosystem manager's job.

When a community leaves an ecosystem it loses nothing — its page, members and events stay exactly where they were. It simply stops appearing on the ecosystem's page.