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-# Amsterdam Web Communities System
+# The Amsterdam Web Communities System
 
-Amsterdam is a system allowing for the hosting of multiple virtual communities, each with services such as conferencing.  A user on
-an Amsterdam site may join multiple virtual communities on that site.
+Amsterdam is a web-based system allowing for the hosting of multiple virtual communities, each with services such as conferencing.
+Users on an Amsterdam site may be a member of multiple independent communities, all on the same site.
+
+Amsterdam is intended to become a modern platform styled after the first generation of online communities, designed for
+resilience, autonomy, and human-scale interaction.
+
+The first public version of Amsterdam has feature parity with the platform that successfully hosted the original Electric Minds
+community from 2000-2006, but rebuilt in a modern environment with updated rendering.  Future versions will extend the functionality
+from there.
+
+## Why now?
+
+Communities like Electric Minds were largely supplanted by the major social media sites, which built huge systems for global
+interaction at massive scale.  They pushed smaller communities out of existence the way Walmart drove smaller shops out of business
+in cities and towns across America.
+
+Now we're seeing what happens as a result:
+
+* Networks that use algorithms to prioritize feeding users ads and propaganda over genuine human interaction.
+* The gradual "enshittification" _(to use Cory Doctorow's term)_ of services, first to benefit business customers over users,
+  then to benefit shareholders over both.
+* Entire established social networks being taken over by billionaires or co-opted by governments to promote their political agendas.
+* A loss of trust, safety, agency, and democratic control.
+
+We need _human-scale_ community again.  Amsterdam can be a baseline for bringing that back...because its heritage lies in those
+older systems that _worked,_ and sustained _real communities_ in the process. It was built by someone who's _been there,_ who not
+only wrote the code, but was an active participant in the community that used it.
+
+## Project Vision & Values
+
+Amsterdam as a project intends to prioritize certain things:
+
+* Human-scale over global scale. Hundreds or thousands of users, not billions.
+* Resilience over growth, and _especially_ over growth for growth's sake.
+* Many smaller sites, not one big one. These sites should work _together,_ not act as more silos.
+* Tools that serve _community members, moderators, and hosts,_ not shareholders.
+* Contribution quality over ideology or factionalism.  Contributors of _all backgrounds_ are welcome, with a focus on the quality
+  of the final product.
 
 ## Why "Amsterdam"?