Outsiders Village: Use and Abuse of Power
Content updated: September 21, 2026 at 5:50 PM MDT
Purpose
Power exists in any group of people whether we name it or not. Outsiders Village does not try to pretend everyone has exactly the same power. People have different resources, relationships, skills, ownership, access, roles, confidence, money, technical ability, and willingness to act.
The goal is not to eliminate power. The goal is to make power visible, keep its scope limited, respect individual autonomy, make feedback possible, and preserve real ways to leave, refuse, replace, or build something different when power is used badly.
Contents
• Power over a resource is not ownership of a person
• Types of power in the Village
– Ownership, funding, and resource power
– Administrative and infrastructure power
– Authorship and creative power
– Expertise and information power
– Collective and committee power
– Abuse of personal or participant power
– Abuse of relational or social power
– Abuse of host or facilitator power
– Abuse of ownership, funding, or resource power
– Abuse of administrative or infrastructure power
– Abuse of authorship or creative power
– Abuse of expertise or information power
– Abuse of collective or committee power
• Responding to misuse or abuse of power
– When a participant or socially influential villager is using power badly
– When a host or facilitator is using power badly
– When an owner or funder is using power badly
– When an administrator or infrastructure operator is using power badly
– When a creator is using power badly
– When a committee or collective process is using power badly
– When expertise is being used badly
• Reducing concentrated power over time
• The final protection is exit
• This document is a starting point
Power over a resource is not ownership of a person
Owning, funding, creating, hosting, or administering something can give a person legitimate control over that thing. It does not give them control over other adults.
A person may decide how to use their own time, labor, money, home, equipment, creative work, software, account, or platform. Other villagers may give feedback, ask for changes, decline to participate, or create alternatives. They do not become entitled to someone else’s resources simply because those resources have been shared before.
The reverse is also true: owning or administering a resource does not make someone the owner of the Village or the people using it.
Feedback is not command
Anyone with power should be open to feedback about how that power affects other people. Being open to feedback means listening seriously, asking questions when needed, and considering change.
It does not mean becoming an unpaid employee of the Village. A request, group preference, vote, or committee decision does not automatically create an obligation for another person to give labor, money, creative control, or time unless that person has explicitly agreed to that arrangement.
Types of power in the Village
Personal autonomy
Every villager has power over their own participation, body, time, labor, money, attention, relationships, creative work, and capacity.
Healthy use includes saying yes, saying no, changing a commitment, setting a boundary, leaving a conversation or event, choosing where to contribute, and deciding what not to give.
Participant power
A participant does not need a formal role to have power. Showing up changes a space. Speaking, withholding participation, giving feedback, offering support, challenging behavior, inviting others, leaving, or asking others to leave with them can all affect what happens.
Healthy use includes participating honestly, making room for others, naming needs and problems, interrupting harm, proposing activities, and creating alternatives when something does not fit.
Relational and social power
Friendships, popularity, reputation, charisma, confidence, social networks, and the ability to influence other people are forms of power.
Healthy use includes welcoming people, connecting people who may help one another, amplifying quieter voices, sharing information, and using social influence to reduce isolation rather than create it.
Host power
A host has practical power over a particular gathering because they arrange the place, time, access, and logistics. A person hosting in their own home or using their own resources may have additional ownership-based power.
Healthy use includes being clear about the gathering, setting reasonable limits, communicating access needs and expectations, and making decisions necessary to keep the gathering workable.
Facilitator power
A facilitator can shape conversation through questions, timing, topic changes, invitations to speak, and decisions to pause or redirect an activity.
Healthy use includes making room for different voices, protecting consent and boundaries, keeping the conversation useful, and remembering that facilitation is a practical contribution rather than authority over participants.
Ownership, funding, and resource power
Ownership is a fact of life in the Village. Someone may own a home, vehicle, account, subscription, domain, equipment, software, documents, money, or other resource that villagers use. Someone may also be the person paying for something that would disappear if they stopped.
That creates real power that other villagers may not have. Healthy use includes being clear about what is being offered, what limits exist, what the owner is willing to keep paying for or maintaining, and what may happen if they stop.
Owning or funding something may include making final decisions about that resource. It does not make the owner the boss of the people using it.
Administrative and infrastructure power
People who administer Meetup groups, websites, servers, domains, databases, event listings, membership systems, shared documents, or communication tools may be able to approve, reject, remove, publish, hide, suspend, edit, or shut down things that affect other villagers.
Healthy use includes acknowledging that power, limiting access to what is actually needed, explaining consequential decisions when practical, protecting privacy, avoiding retaliation, keeping records and processes understandable, and making portability or alternatives possible where practical.
Authorship and creative power
People who create documents, software, art, designs, workshops, processes, or other contributions have creative power over what they make.
Healthy use includes inviting feedback, listening without promising agreement, crediting other contributors, making the scope of collaboration clear, and allowing copying or adaptation when the creator has chosen an open-source or similar model.
Feedback does not automatically create shared authorship. The creator may decide that a suggestion does not fit what they are making.
Expertise and information power
Technical knowledge, professional experience, specialized skills, access to information, and familiarity with systems can give someone influence over people who know less about a subject.
Healthy use includes explaining rather than mystifying, sharing knowledge when willing, naming uncertainty, and avoiding the implication that expertise in one area creates authority over another person’s life.
Collective and committee power
A group, committee, or voting process can have real power when people have agreed that certain decisions will be made collectively.
Healthy use requires a clear scope. Collective decision-making can govern genuinely shared resources, shared agreements, or responsibilities that people have chosen to place under that process. It should not quietly turn into authority over an individual’s separate labor, property, creativity, relationships, or participation.
A committee is not automatically less controlling than a single person. Concentrated collective authority can be abused too.
How power can be abused
Abuse of personal or participant power
A participant may use hostility, coercion, retaliation, persistent disruption, intimidation, repeated boundary violations, or attempts to seize control to make mutual participation impossible. A person may also use threats of withdrawal, social pressure, or constant demands to try to control what another villager does.
Abuse of relational or social power
Social power can be used to isolate someone, create cliques that control access, spread private information, punish disagreement, pressure people to take sides, or recruit others into retaliation.
Abuse of host or facilitator power
A host may use access to exclude people for retaliatory or coercive reasons, impose unrelated demands, or treat hosting as ownership of participants. A facilitator may silence disagreement, favor particular people, steer conversation toward a preferred outcome, shame participants, or use the role to claim authority they do not have.
Abuse of ownership, funding, or resource power
An owner or funder may use money, property, or access as leverage to force agreement, demand loyalty, punish criticism, or control unrelated decisions. They may hide the fact that continued access depends entirely on them and then use sudden withdrawal as a weapon.
Abuse of administrative or infrastructure power
An administrator may remove people, block events, hide information, change records, monitor private activity, deny access, withhold data, or shut down systems in retaliation for disagreement. They may design the system so people cannot realistically leave without losing everything they built.
Abuse of authorship or creative power
A creator may claim other people’s work, erase contributions, refuse agreed attribution, use ownership of a shared artifact to silence discussion, or try to prevent people from creating legitimate alternatives after promising that adaptation was allowed.
Power can also be abused in the other direction: people may treat a creator as an unpaid employee and insist that feedback, popularity, or group preference gives them authority over what that person must build.
Abuse of expertise or information power
Expertise can be used to intimidate, manipulate, diagnose, obscure choices, or present opinion as unquestionable fact. Information can be withheld to make other people dependent.
Abuse of collective or committee power
A group can overreach by treating majority preference as authority over individual autonomy, assigning unpaid labor without consent, punishing dissent, demanding access to privately owned resources, or turning a committee into a de facto boss over people who never agreed to be managed by it.
Responding to misuse or abuse of power
These are options, not a required sequence. No one must exhaust every option before setting a boundary or leaving.
When a participant or socially influential villager is using power badly
Possible responses include naming the behavior and impact, asking for a change, bringing in a buddy or another trusted villager, limiting contact, changing who is invited to a gathering, asking a local village to address the pattern, leaving the space, or inviting others to create a different space with you.
When a host or facilitator is using power badly
Possible responses include giving direct feedback, asking another villager to help with the conversation, asking for a different host or facilitator when the group has that option, declining to attend that person’s gatherings, creating a separate gathering, or moving the activity elsewhere.
When an owner or funder is using power badly
Possible responses include asking for clearer terms, naming coercive conditions, declining the resource, finding or contributing an alternative resource, moving the activity elsewhere, or creating something that does not depend on that owner.
The owner still retains autonomy over what they own or pay for. The protection against abuse is not forcing them to continue providing it; it is reducing dependence on resources that come with unacceptable conditions.
When an administrator or infrastructure operator is using power badly
Possible responses include asking for the reason behind a decision, giving feedback, requesting review by another trusted person when one is available, asking for exports or copies of data, moving communication to another tool, creating a replacement system, self-hosting or forking open-source software, or leaving the platform entirely.
When a creator is using power badly
Possible responses include giving feedback, declining to use the work, creating a new version when licensing or ownership allows it, using a different tool or framework, withdrawing your contribution, or building something separate.
When a committee or collective process is using power badly
Possible responses include challenging whether the decision is actually within the group’s agreed authority, refusing demands on personal labor or resources that were never consented to, proposing a different process, withdrawing from the committee, creating an alternative group, or voting with your feet.
When expertise is being used badly
Possible responses include asking for the reasoning behind a claim, seeking another perspective, treating expertise as information rather than command, declining advice, limiting that person’s role, or leaving the interaction.
Urgent situations
When there is harassment, coercion, credible threats, retaliation, serious boundary violations, or another situation that requires an immediate response, people may set boundaries or limit access first and review the decision later. No one is required to confront a person alone.
Reducing concentrated power over time
Some concentrated power may be necessary, especially while something is new or when one person owns or maintains a resource. The goal is not to pretend that power can always be evenly distributed.
Where practical, people with ongoing administrative or operational power should make its scope visible, share knowledge, document important processes, consider backup people, and periodically ask whether a handoff or different arrangement would serve the Village better.
No one is required to surrender personally owned property, money, labor, or accounts. If villagers want a resource to be collectively governed, they may need to create a genuinely shared replacement rather than treating someone else’s property as collectively owned.
People with power may offer to step away. Other villagers may ask them to continue. Either way, the person doing the work still gets to decide whether they have the interest, capacity, and willingness to continue.
The final protection is exit
No structure can guarantee that power will always be used well. Outsiders Village therefore treats the ability to leave as a real protection, not a failure.
People may leave a gathering, stop using a platform, withdraw their labor, move to another village, invite others to join them, adapt openly shared documents, fork software, or build something entirely different.
No one should have to remain under power they no longer trust simply because leaving would mean losing access to one person’s tools, relationships, or approval.
This document is a starting point
This document names patterns to make power easier to recognize and discuss. It is not a complete constitution or enforcement manual. Different villages may adapt it as they learn what kinds of power actually arise in their own relationships and structures.