The concept, stage C2 (Part B), pass 1 (C2a-01)

The task is to name the one concept, two at the outside, that the literature has no adequate word for: not the largest theme, the one unaccounted for. The literature is held only from recollection until stage C3, and every nearest concept below is named from memory and says so.

The candidate chosen, provisionally: the one-line enrolment

What it is, in a sentence a stranger could use. A one-line enrolment is a public reply of one to three words ("I'm in.", "On it.", "Did my part.") by which a member answering a stranger's call joins the work. It commits the member and asks for nothing back, and it lets the room see its numbers when it has no list of members.

The nearest existing concepts, from recollection, and how this differs.

• Slacktivism, or token support (a term from writing on online activism, recalled). It names low-cost support that substitutes for action. The one-line enrolment precedes action: it answers a call to place, and the answers that follow it in the forest are placements and repairs.
• The pledge, or an assurance contract (Schelling's commitment; collective-action writing on conditional pledges, recalled). A pledge there is conditional ("I will if enough others do") and binds by its terms. The enrolment here is unconditional, binds nothing, and is useful because it is visible: other members read the room's mass off it.
• Gioia and Chittipeddi's sensegiving does not fit: nothing is explained.

The difference that matters: the enrolment is how a room with no membership and no way to compel knows whether a call has drawn hands. It is the room's own head count, made of replies.

How many communities carry it, and how I counted. The gate was written before the count, at C1's form pass (out/_analysis/c1_form_patterns.json): a reply whose quoted words are only a one-line commitment, done report, assent or refusal, thanks, or bare salute. Under it the form pass found 590 concept lines in 337 of 705 communities (finding FP-01 in form_pass-C1.md). That figure describes the search. The finding is never counted in the model's arithmetic and travels on exemplars (rule 5). It is also a floor: the coders dropped most items that carried no code, and many one-line replies are among them.

Three quotes, through cite.py.

• "I'm in." [sips/c0027, h44.92], answering "Let's draw sips from 'Spacemen' in r/place" four minutes earlier.
• "On it." [fivenightsatfreddys/c0483, h56.65], answering a call to clean the room's spot 22 minutes earlier.
• "Did my part." [TeamDignitas/c0017, h10.58].

What having it lets me explain.

• Why calls work at all where no one can be compelled: the cost of joining is one line.
• How a room reads its own critical mass (dimension D01): from the enrolments under a call, and from their absence, which is when doubt is voiced ("not enough people").
• Why the record undercounts participation: the enrolment is the act most often left uncoded.

In the model it is element P15 and arrow A12 (a call answered by an enrolment, shown on transitions and never counted).

The candidates rejected, kept here

1. Organizing without decided order (element C01; T4-011 with FP-08). Rooms aligned their placers with almost no decided element of order. Rejected as the concept: Ahrne and Brunsson's distinction between decided and emergent order (recalled) already names it. Here it is a finding about how much of each the rooms used, not a new concept.
2. The return to spot choice (finding F-002). A room that loses its spot goes back to choosing a spot, not to recruiting. Rejected: it is a dynamic, the model's material (Part C), not a concept.
3. Host framing (dimension D06, coined). What a standing community does with a passing event inside its own space. Rejected: it is coined for the structure, but its nearest concepts (frame analysis, boundary-work) handle most of it. What is new is the conjunction with April Fools, which belongs to this corpus.
4. The relay across time zones (T3-141 and FP-03): members keep the work by who is awake. Rejected: "follow-the-sun" work in distributed software teams (recalled) already names the practice, if not the volunteer version.

The candidate I came closest to choosing instead: organizing without decided order. It carries the theory question more directly, but its words already exist.

Part B's return, pass 1

• The concept in one sentence: a one-line enrolment is a public reply of one to three words by which a member joins a stranger's call, committing and asking nothing back, and by which a room without members can see its numbers.
• The nearest existing concept and the difference: slacktivism, which substitutes for action; the enrolment precedes action and is the room's head count.
• How many communities: 337 of 705 (590 lines) under the form pass's declared gate; never counted in the model, and a floor.
• The candidate I came closest to choosing instead: organizing without decided order.
• The literature a reader would say already covers it: writing on low-cost online participation and on conditional pledges in collective action (both recalled); the enrolment differs from both in being unconditional, followed by labour, and read by others as a count. This is provisional: stage C3 may show the literature has the word.

Part B's return, pass 5 (C2d-02), the last pass

Passes 2 to 4 left the concept unchanged. At the last pass the answer is the one-line enrolment, chosen. It stays marked as recalled against the literature until stage C3.

• The concept in one sentence: as at pass 1.
• How many communities: as at pass 1, 337 of 705 under the form pass's gate, never counted in the model. At pass 4 the call's boundary with it was read: at most 228 of the 1,980 concepts cited under the call's themes are joining lines, and stripping them out changes no arrow from the call.
• One more candidate, rejected: a tie the members had before the canvas naming the rival in the attack call (the claim C02, pass 5). It is rivalry with a known competitor and frame bridging, both named in the recalled literature (Kilduff, Elfenbein and Staw; Snow and colleagues). It is a claim in the model, not a concept the literature lacks.
• The candidate I came closest to choosing instead: still organizing without decided order.