Story 12: What is a Protocol?

Cultural protocols are one of the three core elements of every Mukurtu site and provide individual users with appropriate access to specific content.
Each cultural protocol exists within a community, and each community can have multiple cultural protocols. Community Administrators are responsible for creating new cultural protocols.

There are two types of cultural protocols: open and strict. Digital heritage items within an open protocol can be viewed by anyone (including anonymous site visitors), while items within a strict protocol can only be viewed by members of that protocol. Multiple protocols can be layered to ensure more granular access. For example, if an item is part of the two strict protocols ‘Women Only’ and ‘Elders Only,’ then only users who are members of both the ‘Women Only’ and ‘Elders Only’ protocols can view that item.

Some examples of cultural protocols could be gender-based (male only, female only), age-based (elders only, no youth), seasonal access only, clan or tribal affiliation, secret/sacred, community only, or public access/open.