[DRAFT] BDAO Discord Channel Code System

Grants/Funding
1

Bankless Discord Channel Code System

Authors: metamynx#1759
Squad: Above Average Joe (champion), angyts.eth, Bpetes
Date Created: 2021-10-28
Date Posted: 2021-11-19

TL;DR
This is a “Dewey Decimal System” for the DAO. It is intended to radically organize all the channels to make participation and navigation in the DAO far easier for all members, as well as create a standardized naming convention system for future scalability.

SUMMARY

  • Codify all channels with an alphanumeric code according to Classification, and Sub/Category to enable better organization and structure of the Discord community;
    • Classifications: A-Z;
    • Sub/Categories: A-Z;
    • Channels: 00-99;
  • Append the first two characters of the Classification and Category to the Discord Category name with an affix for easy reference;
  • Append assigned 4-character codes to every channel in the Discord server;

Examples (sorry, no emojis in this example):

265×624 22.7 KB

  • Reorganize Discord Categories
    • Split up some categories that can be grouped into new, more intuitive categories;
    • Reorder Discord Category listings, grouped by their classifications;
    • Organize Categories with ~10+ channels into coded Sub-Categories, grouped by relevant fields;

1149×681 114 KB

  • DAO-Wide Channel Code Standardization

    • Classifications:

      • Class Codes A-G = reserved for “Community Base” categories:
        • Onboarding (First-Quest), Community Base, Community Calls, Members, General Chats;
      • Codes H-L = “Infrastructure & Operations” categories:
        • Administrative, Legal, Public Relations, Dev & Ops;
      • Codes M-Q = “Intercollaborative & Support” categories:
        • Data & Knowledge, Guild Support, Intercollaborative, Projects, Fight Club
      • Codes R-W = “Education & Services”:
        • Education, Services, Translations, Global;
      • Codes X-Z = reserved for System & Archive.

    • Categories:

      • Category Code A is reserved for the “top-tier” “base” category within a Classification, whenever possible, with the exception of categories under Class codes A-G.

    • Guild Channels:

      • Channel codes 00-03 are reserved for “universal” guild channel codes:
      * guild-start-here_aa00;
      * announcements_aa01;
      * calendar_aa02 (separate proposal to come);
      * general_aa03.

BACKGROUND

Back in mid-October (a month ago), as a relatively new user to Discord and a newly-minted (yes, I’m punny) guest of Bankless, after I finished the First-Quest, I found the community Discord channel list to be both overwhelming and confusing (read: mildly anxiety-inducing). There didn’t appear to be any kind of order, organization, or clear procedure on how to actually get started.

I got suuuper lost. And I know I’m not the only one.

With the rapid growth of the DAO, I couldn’t imagine how much more crazy it would be to navigate in just a few months. It’s fairly painful as it is, right now. It will be almost unrealistic down the road when Bankless reaches critical mass.

My proposal hopes to primarily target a fundamental onboarding and navigation issue that nearly all users (level members, and new guest-pass holders alike) seem to be plagued with, as well as an inherent scalability issue that exists with the DAO’s current community infrastructure.

Operating in tandem with the upcoming Sobol rollout, it will hopefully, honestly, just relieve a lot of pain & frustration for everybody.

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

The Bankless Discord Channel Code System may:

  • Help make onboarding new guests and members friendlier to navigate the DAO slightly more intuitively, enabling a faster, more accessible path to participation;
  • Increase ability for community to scale as the membership and projects continue to rapidly grow;
  • Mitigate potential pain points for inter-guild collaboration & support by enabling quick-search in-channel code queries;
  • Enable streamlined channel and role mapping for Dev/Ops projects, and for future community integrations, Sobol auto-population, etc.;
  • Aid in increasing transparency as channels become archived - by adding context-at-a-glance, and maintaining linkages to the relevant Guild Category.

SCOPE OF WORK

Objectives & Goals

  • Make navigating the ever-lengthening Discord channel list easier and more accessible by providing a vertical, text-based “map” of the DAO.
  • Channel names don’t have to be as long in order to identify.

Features

  • Easier to search for channels by # .
  • Channels become “machine-readable”;
  • Easy to split off Channels into their own Sub-Category
  • Completely scalable, allowing for up to 66,294+ potential Channels in the future.
    i.e., Up to 99 Channels per category, 26 Categories per classification, and 26 Classifications.
  • As an affix to the readable channel name, potentiality of lengthening code characters remains to be an option in the future, if/when the time arises.
    893×497 44.7 KB

SPECIFICATION

Squad:

  • Primarily working from within the Ops guild, but also working with:
    • First-Quest;
    • DevOps;
    • Ops’ DAO-cartography;
    • Degen.
  • Renaming channels will not break existing queries. E.g., Degen, seshbot, etc.

Implementation:

  • AAJ suggests implementation may require 1 special temporary Admin role to be created;
  • All Discord Channel names will be affixed with an underscore, and the designated alphanumeric code:

_[Classification Code][Sub/Category Code][Channel Code]

  • All Discord Categories names will affixed with their designated 2-character alphabetic code:

[ [Classification Code][Sub/Category Code] ]

  • Some channels will be “split” from their existing Discord Categories and grouped into new Discord Categories;
    • Guilds will need to further discuss and vote on how their guild’s channels can be ordered
  • Estimated time to complete project: a single 6-hour session;
  • First-Quest guild will have to introduce a new section to explain the code system.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS

  • Member feedback;
    • Frequency and time spent to assist new members on navigating the discord and coaching them how to start participating;
    • Time it takes for a Guest-Pass member from being granted their pass – to when they begin to contribute;
    • Speed of general discord navigation user journey paths;

NEXT STEPS

  1. Retrieve a full listing of the Discord server’s channels as a text file to begin code mapping;
  2. Individual guilds to discuss & vote on:
    • Proposed channel renamings, if shortening current channel names;
    • Possible sub-category channel grouping splits;
    • The order in which they would like numeric Channel codes to be assigned.
  3. Post full listing of proposed changes to a new Notion proposal page, and gather DAO-wide consensus.

SQUAD BACKGROUND

I am a general interdisciplinary designer, with my Diploma of Fine Arts in Digital Media and Public Art, as well as an Associates of Arts degree in Social Sciences. Where most of my history in that regard has been in visual art and visual design communications, I have had lifelong passions for Systems Design, UX design, Information Architecture, and Community-Building, among many, many other things. Though Design is mostly about practice and process, I really enjoy trying to develop solutions. I am passionate about contributing truly impactful value to communities, in whatever way I can, using my diverse skill set and unique perspective.

After spending a couple days working out my idea in Figma, I initially suggested my idea to the various random guilds (as I was still starting out, and wasn’t sure where to put it), and received a lot of positive feedback. With the support of AAJ, and NFThinker, and assistance of others in the Ops guild, I have pushed this project forward to now be discussed on Notion.

Additional Notes
Figma working draft (read-only, sorry): Figma

Notion Proposal google doc: Discord Channel Code System - Google Docs

  • Yes! Let’s finally make sense of the chaos!
  • No, not yet - needs further improvement (comment below your thoughts)
  • No. I live for eternal chaos & unending confusion, so everyone else should too.

0 voters

4 Likes
2

I think just alphabetizing the categories and having a one message channel with the instructions for the category would be a significant step towards organizing. The naming convention seems mildly confusing as well

1 Like
3

No doubt that the naming convention is mildly confusing at first glance. First-Quest has agreed that if this proposal does reach consensus, they will have to create some kind of instructions to explain the codes.

I also suggested letting individual guilds choose the first two letters of the code, as an alternative to the ascending-ordered route, but some pointed out that in terms of scalability, my original sequential alphanumeric option would work better, and be less confusing in the long run.

4

As discussed in Ops yesterday, I’m a fan of this action but would implore you to consider using a Mnemonic device for any coding. Other than that, I’m on board & voting yes.

1 Like
5

I’m from the First Quest Team. I think ultimately something like this will be needed.

  1. Because at the very basic, DEGEN does need to know some logic beneath the channels, so that we can direct new people to the most appropriate channels.
    So yes, one advantage would be that our channels are “machine-readable”.

  2. However the naming conventions could be made easier to remember: Like E for education, N for NFT, D for DEGEN and Defi.

4 Likes
6

I like the proposal, but is there no financial implications for the DAO?

7

I can see how this would be useful for very active users. We’ll pretty quickly memorize codes and can move around easily with search. I don’t really see how it will help new users. Instead of scrolling through channels they’ll look them up on a chart and search for a code. Doesn’t seem intuitive. If anything I expect a lot of questions about all the weird channel names.

Unless it has been updated recently level 3 servers have a max of 500 channels.

I think there should be guidelines for proposals on voting choices. The poster’s opinions shouldn’t be in the options.

3 Likes
8

Yes, I completely agree. From a user-based perspective, a mnemonic code would be far easier. I was considering splitting the poll options from just “Yes” to something like:

  • “Yes - code by ascending alphanumeric”
  • “Yes - code by two-character alphabetic mnemonic and numeric code”

with associated explanations in the proposal.

9

lol fair about the options. The template said to appeal to emotions, I think? Also, I guess my sense of humour gets lost in translation since none of you know me.

10

The potentiality of that number of channels per server presumes loooong-long term scalability - if/when Discord ever allows that number of channels in the far future. Who knows if BanklessDAO is still based on Discord in say, 5 years? 10 years? 20?

11

With the way the Classifications are currently laid out would, for example, the Education Guild’s general chat channel be _ra03?

12

Yes, the Education Guild’s general chat channel could be coded _ra03.
Bankless Academy’s general chat channel could also be coded _rb03.
And Fight Club general chat could be coded _qa03

13

I have mixed feeling because I question the utility to new users, but I’m confident it will be useful to bots and regular users. I think the top level classifications could be improved to make them easier to memorize, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
Voted For.

2 Likes
14

Want it needit NOW and can fix and improve it on the fly and as we go. This would be really helpful to at least 2 generations of folks coming to join or movement. Help the Boomers (who need it, not you Chris);and the 2 or 3 if that in the Silent Generation. #daoversity. Inclusive please

1 Like
15

I’m not sure how this would help anyone but the OP. Search, in general, has replaced systems like the Dewey Decimal system. DAO members new and old In fact, I would be more supportive of this if the categorization system were based off of an existing standard rather than an ad hoc setup.

Further, Bots already have a numerical ID for channels, as well as the hierarchy from the underlying data structures, so there would be little advantage there.

3 Likes
16

Numerical IDs in Discord are only useful to bots if the values are hard coded in advance. There’s no way to script something like “Post this message in the Announcements channel of each Guild”.

17

I voted no. I’m all for adding some clarity to the mess of Discord channels, but I don’t think this proposal actually solves that issue. I don’t really understand the classifications and question if new users would be able to understand them (i.e. what is a “Community Base”?)

Maybe if you answered these questions I might understand

  • Why were these particular classifications chosen? Why are they better than the current classifications?
  • What are categories? Are they analogous to Discord categories or something else?
  • How is this system BETTER than the current system? Honestly it seems like a lateral move to me.
    • I understand that it could help with some bot automation efforts (i.e. post this message in all Guild general channels), but is that actually a problem that’s happening right now?

I’m also uncomfortable with the opinionation on how Guilds organize their own channels. I can see start here and general, but does EVERY guild need an announcement and calendar channel? Why not have an “incoming requests” channel? I see this as a thin edge of the wedge to standardize guild internal workflows, which I am against.

3 Likes
18

What classifications? There currently aren’t any. I determined classifications based on a top-down hierarchy, grouped by relevant category. It makes more sense if you look at the Figma.

They echo the discord categories, but further break them down into the sub-categories when the categories get a bit unwiedly.

What system? We don’t have any kind of system right now.

It’s not a problem right now, but it is a feature for the future. Bpetes and I agree that machine-readable codes will be extremely helpful for auto-populating Sobol, when we move to fully integrate Sobol and Discord with each other, after the initial rollout.

1 Like
19

Have you seen the main calendar? And tried to check for your relevant notifications? Only to be met with walls of text that has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re interested in attending? And then tried to scroll through all the messages, trying to figure out which message was relevant to you? And then gave up trying to find it?

As mentioned in my proposal, the separate Guild Calendar will be in an upcoming proposal.

However, in short:

  • each guild will have their own sub-calendar.
  • all sub-calendars will feed into the master calendar.

This maintains relevance to a member’s chosen roles/guilds, and ensures event notifications don’t get lost.

As for Announcements - the same thing can be said. It may not be a big deal right now, but if you consider Scalability, it is important to consider future guild needs. Already, some guilds have their own announcements channels. Who’s to say other guilds won’t do the same in the future? Standardization offers the option. That is why the annoucements channels in my Figma draft are white. All white post-its are “optional suggestions”.

20

Hi metamynx, I don’t think it’s accurate to say there isn’t a system right now - the current channel organisation is based (albeit loosely) on broad categories of entry-level / general information, members only, and then by guilds and projects, with some funky stuff down the bottom :wink:
I have been part of the DAO for only 3 months but I was able to understand the intended navigation from the moment I joined. The most confusing part of the onboarding process for me was why First Quest seemed to be somewhat circular.

Personally, apart from the number of channels (and associated scrolling) I have never had a problem figuring out where to find information or how use the calendar. I like seeing the whole calendar - it means I can see an overview of meeting activity and pursue something that might be outside my current scope of interest.

As a librarian, I can’t identify anything about this naming convention that improves comprehension for new users. In fact, I think that if it needs a special explainer then it’s not achieving the goal. I work with data so I completely understand and support the idea of machine-readable channel names, but I don’t think this needs to impact the human-readable versions.

Instead of this proposed action, I’d like to see increased focus on providing the channel topic information for each channel e.g. the no-stupid-questions channel provides this information: ‘Think you have a dumb question? You and probably 100 others. Ask away!’ Many channels don’t have this descriptive information but it could help orient people to what the purpose of the discussion is.

L2s can create channels themselves, so would this proposed system mean they would not be able to do so without checking the naming convention? I can see this being a barrier to the kind of organic growth that happens when people want to pursue a particular discussion.

8 Likes