Jakob Possert-Bienzle · Meta-Curator
One desk cannot tend a library this size.
Knowledge commons like the Internet Archive hold more projects than any single office can garden alone. Meta-curation is how the tending gets shared. This page describes the role, and how I practice it.
For years, one desk decided what got described, checked, and surfaced across a commons' many unmanaged projects. That desk did careful work, but the collection kept growing past what any one office could reach. Requests queued. Whole corners went untended, not from neglect, but from scale.
Meta-curation is a change of shape, not a change of ambition: the same care, held by many hands instead of one. A meta-curator tends the gardeners, so the gardeners can tend the commons.
Two ways to tend the stacks
Model 1
The desk
One hub. Every proposal, tag and fix waits in the same queue.
Model 2
The commons
Many gardeners, each closest to one corner, linked by shared standards.
In the commons, local experts propose, describe and vouch for the projects they already know. Shared conventions, not a shared queue, keep everyone legible to everyone else. The lighthouse still coordinates, but it stops being the only hand on every file.
What a meta-curator does
- Convenes the people doing the work, so managers do not have to convene at all. The builders meet; the decisions travel with them.
- Resumes stalled conversations between projects that need each other but drifted apart, and stays with them until a concrete roadmap names which person from which project comes together.
- Maps overlaps: where two organizations' aspirations already point at the same missing piece, and neither has noticed yet.
- Keeps everyone legible: shared conventions, public briefs, monthly written updates and milestone-based check-ins instead of standing meetings.
- Weaves resources: connects the projects being coordinated with funders who match them, so the coordination also feeds the work it reveals.
Try it: the lighthouse and the gardeners
A lighthouse only reveals; it never moves an item itself. The commons below drifts, unmanaged. Click a drifting item and watch a curator, one of several, adopt it into a living collection.
0 of 12 tended
click a drifting item to send light its way
Threads in motion
Privacy full-stack
Coordinating initiatives across archiving and privacy infrastructure, such as OnionPress and embedding Arti, the Rust Tor client, in the browser.
Internet Archive · Tor Project · eQualitie · Ethereum FoundationDistributed curation
Community curators for a commons' unmanaged collections: local experts adopt the corners they know, held together by shared conventions.
Internet Archive · DWeb communitiesSemantic infrastructure
Profiles of who curates what, and semantic overlap discovery, so similar actors find each other before they duplicate each other.
QuestHub · open, transparent, by everyoneGrounded commons
The same craft applied beyond archives: dormant housing made visible, news unfolded across perspectives, open source carried toward everyday adoption.
Unlocking Housing · Unfold News · open-source adoptionHosted by many, owned by none
A meta-curator earns trust from many stakeholders by belonging exclusively to none of them. The role grew in conversation with the Internet Archive, and it works for the Archive. It does not depend on it.
Any organization that benefits from tended commons can host or fund a share of the role: archives, privacy projects, foundations, public programs, municipalities. A stable base retained by several hands keeps the curator independent, and independence is what makes the coordination trustworthy to every side of the table.
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Universal access needs many gardeners. Someone has to tend the gardeners, too.