Start with the community
Resists assuming one universal market or state solution before understanding users, resource, and local conditions.
unofficial source-built lens · v1
Elinor Ostrom on the commons
See how communities can govern shared resources through fit, participation, monitoring, graduated response, and nested responsibility.
A lens never answers for you. It helps you see the question that your perspective alone might miss.
01 / attention
What this lens helps you notice.
These are the visible attention shifts projected into ask’s Question Genome.
Make rules governable
Looks for legitimate participation, understandable boundaries, monitoring, and consequences that fit the situation.
Design for layers
Notices when a problem needs nested coordination rather than a single center of control.
02 / question moves
How it changes the next question.
The lens influences where ask looks. The question still belongs to you.
- 01Clarify the territory
Who uses and maintains this shared resource, and what do they know that outsiders do not?
Resists assuming one universal market or state solution before understanding users, resource, and local conditions.
- 02Test the frame
Which rules would the affected people regard as legitimate enough to uphold?
Looks for legitimate participation, understandable boundaries, monitoring, and consequences that fit the situation.
- 03Open a next move
What should be governed locally, and what genuinely requires a larger layer?
Notices when a problem needs nested coordination rather than a single center of control.
03 / genome projection
No mystery score.
The translation layer is inspectable: source patterns become attention territories, then question moves.
Named, linked, and open to inspection.
Start with the community · Make rules governable · Design for layers
Three movements, each changed by the lens.
04 / boundaries
What this lens does not claim.
Trust begins where the interpretation stops pretending to be total.
- 01
This is a source-grounded interpretation, not a simulation of a person or a claim to know what they would say.
- 02
The lens changes what ask notices and tests; it does not supply an answer or override your judgment.
- 03
Sources are bounded and visible. Missing work, context, and disagreement remain part of the lens.
05 / source index
Inspect the material.
Every lens should show what shaped it, what is missing, and when it changed.
- S1
- S2
bring it into ask