Dear @daco, the files of your collective live in a hidden folder on Nextcloud that is mounted into the home directory of each member of the collective. That’s similar to how groupfolders work. And that’s also the reason why collectives folders are handled as external storage by the sync client.
I see your point that’s a bit unexpected to have them excluded from sync per default.
Thank you very much for your response. That explains why the collectives are shown as external storage.
And regarding the question of whether it is ok to edit the .md files as normal files? For example on the desktop synced with the desktop app or from a markdown editor on a phone?