Process for Nominating to Contributor

[frogmonkee]

Title: Process for Nominating to Contributor Status
Read the proposal: N/A
Authors: @frogmonkee
Date: May 25th, 2021

SUMMARY

A process for nominating and granting Contributor status to community members.

BACKGROUND

So far there have been two ways to the Contributor tag in Discord:

1. Invitation from genesis team
2. Nomination + vote from existing Contributors - This method came up organically in the first week as people began contributing heavily

MOTIVATION

We need a more equitable way to grant Contributor status. One that is not gated by an inner circle.

NOTE: This proposal only defines a process. We need to have a separate conversation about what contributor status really means.

SPECIFICATION

• Anyone (except yourself) can nominate a member for contributor status in #ops-general in Discord
• Someone else must second your nomination
• 72 hour poll is created
• Every level 1 member has a voting weight of 1 and every contributor has a weight of 5.

Contributors have a weighted vote because they have know the effort it takes to get earn the label and the expectation that comes with it.

NEXT STEPS

• Iterate/Vote
• Implement and include in DAOisms on Wiki

CONCLUSION

Proposal for nominating future contributors:

• Anyone can nominate
• Anyone can vote
• Level 1s votes as weighted = 1, current level 2 weight = 5 (knowing the effort it takes to get earn the label and the expectation that comes with it)

POLL

• For
• Against

[0x_Lucas]

Been thinking about this as well! I believe Collab Land is going to allow us to assign roles to addresses with an ERC20 + NFT combo soon

With that I’m thinking a basic way to allow access for Level 2s + beyond is to issue POAPs for attendance to a community call. We’ve been doing this already for the weekly calls but instead we’d issue the same community call POAPs every week and change them on a seasonal basis.

This would mean if you attend a community call in Season 0, you can claim the Season 0 Badge and earn basic level 2 access for the duration of that season. This is a very open, on-chain mechanism for anyone to get involved if they want to contribute while also allowing for periodic resets to filter out some of the contributors that have fallen off.

This system can also work for all the guilds as well (attend a writer’s guild call and get access to the writer’s guild for season X). So from a high level this system would look like:

1. BANK Membership + Season X Community POAP = Level 2/Contributor Role (Write access to DAO Ops)
2. BANK Membership + Season X Writers Guild POAP = Writers Guild (Write access to Guild channels)
3. Etc.

The drawbacks here are that it may be too open compared to the nomination system. That said it does provide a bit less overhead on a daily basis and from dao members. I think we could even tighten up this system in the future by increasing the amount of community call attendances required to earn the badge claim and access the level/guild (just need a system to manage that ).

[Kouros]

I think it’s a bit vague the “someone else must second your nomination” like 1 more person?

I also think that when you nominate someone you need to state why you are nominating this person, on what basis.

[Silver4k]

I love this. This is a step in the direction of rolling back our social governance layer centralization. It’s not permissioned by an inner circle and it is rewarding of contribution/participation.

[Silver4k]

@frogmonkee I love where this is going. Obviously I’m all for steps to reducing social-layer centralization.

Isn’t this just hardening the centralization we created with the initial inner circle though? If you give the inner circle heavier voting weight you establish a link between the current inner circle and the new.

If there will be different voting weights I would almost argue that it should be the reverse, where outsiders have more voting weight than insiders.

Thank you for writing this and I’m interested to see where this goes!

[frogmonkee]

Thanks for reply everyone!

@0x_Lucas

I’m going to sit in the dissent chair on this one.

This would mean if you attend a community call in Season 0, you can claim the Season 0 Badge and earn basic level 2 access for the duration of that season. This is a very open, on-chain mechanism for anyone to get involved if they want to contribute while also allowing for periodic resets to filter out some of the contributors that have fallen off.

Yes, it’s very equitable. But, Contributor status shouldn’t be so easily attainable. I think we need to fork this convo and start talking about what Contributor status really is… but in my mind, Contributor is a badge of contribution, not participation.

Hence the nomination + vote workflow. It’s earned, not given.

This system can also work for all the guilds as well (attend a writer’s guild call and get access to the writer’s guild for season X).

At first glance, I like this idea.

@Kouros
Yes, you are absolutely correct. We will need a template, I neglected to mention that.

@Silver4k

Isn’t this just hardening the centralization we created with the initial inner circle though?

This method would still be somewhat centralized. Much less than it is now, but there is still power discrepancy.
The weighting mechanism exists because there is a cost to becoming a contributor. Like in my response to Lucas, contributor status is earned. The only people that know what “bar” for Contributor status is are Contributors right now. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing!

Could Contributors form a cartel and block access? Well, sure. Culturally, I don’t think we’re at a point where that is likely to happen, but we will need some power balancing rules in place. Like Members can revoke Contributor status or something like that.

[Silver4k]

@frogmonkee

Yes, it’s very equitable. But, Contributor status shouldn’t be so easily attainable. I think we need to fork this convo and start talking about what Contributor status really is… but in my mind, Contributor is a badge of contribution, not participation.
Hence the nomination + vote workflow. It’s earned, not given.

“earned” = permissioned by a special social class?
“given” = permissionlessly recognized via measurable on-chain indicators?

If the contributor class is able to perfectly and objectively recognize contributions made by outsiders I would support your proposal.

I wonder if incentivizing broader participation will actually lead to more emergent contribution than strictly incentivizing what a special class considers “contribution”. I think there are groups of DAO members who might not feel highly incentivized by the latter scenario:
Those currently on the fringes feeling “impostor syndrome”
Those with contrarian views
Those unable to give the DAO as much time as others
Those of a differing cultural or language background
Those tired of popularity contests
Those who are motivated by decentralization itself
Those entering the DAO after formation

Beating a dead horse possibly, but I believe we must dismantle the centralization at our social governance layer by embracing on-chain incentives and governance. Until we do, claiming the “Decentralized” descriptor in our name seems a bit ill-fitting.

[frogmonkee]

If the contributor class is able to perfectly and objectively recognize contributions made by outsiders I would support your proposal.

I think this made me change my view. I see contributor status as a high bar, but I have a conflict of interest, obviously.

What’s your counter proposal? Just 1 vote per person?

[Silver4k]

What’s your counter proposal? Just 1 vote per person?

I believe @0x_lucas’s concept of looking for POAPs is good. If we continue slinging POAPs for participation we will have more ways to measure this.

If we set the bar low for contributor status we do need to makes sure we are still incentivizing high quality contribution. We have at our disposal BANK, NFTs, POAPs, recognition, other things.

[frogmonkee]

That does away with the voting mechanism altogether though.

I agree that contributors shouldn’t have weighted votes, but I don’t think we should use the contributor as a participation trophy.

Perhaps it’s a vote process with 1 vote per person and POAPs are issued for them?

[Silver4k]

I agree that contributors shouldn’t have weighted votes, but I don’t think we should use the contributor as a participation trophy.

I think we’re looking at this from different angles. I’m not viewing contributor status as a kind of reward or trophy. It’s just a way to indicate who is active and restrict certain roles or access to communications channels to only those people.

Allow me to play with the participation trophy metaphor in terms of a baseball team roster. Contributor status = who is on the roster. To be on the roster you will need to show up for team meetings, events, practices. A trophy (and possibly a participation trophy) is a separate thing that doesn’t give a person extra rights or access. It’s a token that confers bragging rights and memorializes achievement. Perhaps having a number of trophies from past seasons could give someone extra points toward getting on the roster, but they’re still a separate thing.

Now, I need to point out that I don’t like this analogy because a baseball team has to limit the number of people to fit their roster size. Since we are a DAO, we should continue expanding the roster to fit everyone who has been showing up vs cutting people out. In the chaos of having too many people involved to be centrally managed, contribution will emerge. On-chain metrics and governance replaces central management.

I think the rewards incentive you’re talking about is a different thing that is related. Let people be rewarded with POAPs, NFTs, BANK tipping, etc. We should absolutely be slinging participation trophies. As more of these things pop up, we have more ways to measure activity on-chain to grant contributor status.

Now, how to make sure contributions are “good”? I don’t think this is the time for that. In Tuckman’s model various parts of the DAO are in the forming and storming phases. In later stages, once it is clear what we are actually doing, can we begin measuring the quality of one contribution over another.
Ranking the value of individuals’ contributions before we have broadly agreed-upon criteria for doing so will only amplify the problem of cliques and power struggles inherent in the forming and storming phases.

[frogmonkee]

@0x_Lucas had an idea of a single POAP per season. As long as you attend one community call, you can claim the seasonal POAP. We could give contributor status based on this?

The crux of the issue was what contributor meant. I like your roster analogy.

[Kouros]

Exactly what is the meaning of contributor?
Also, a contributor poap just for attending a community call I think is quite an oversight.

[Silver4k]

Exactly what is the meaning of contributor?

I think we’re talking about a special class of DAO members who have access to exclusive communications. Perhaps there are additional perks. @frogmonkee brought it up in relation to having tags in Discord, and @0x_Lucas mentioned access to level 2 only comms channels.

The suggestion that we should push power down and lower the barrier to entry by expanding the roster is going to be a tough sell, as we again run into the problem that those with special recognition have an incentive to block others from receiving the same recognition, as it results in dilution. This is a dangerous trap.

If we were a startup, absolutely we should run a small roster and shut everyone out that doesn’t seem to be the brightest, most aligned, and most likely to be a good fit on the team. To do otherwise would invite heartache and disfunction. But this is not a startup and I don’t believe we are going to achieve One Billion Bankless by running as if it were.

To have an exclusive level, you have to exclude. What are we gaining by excluding people who would otherwise be involved? What is the goal of a level-2 only access communications channel? There have been some things brought up like protection of IP and identity. These are legitimate concerns, but there are other ways to handle it. I would love to hear from proponents what value we gain by creating a small roster for what it costs us.

I think it’s obvious where I stand. I think we would do well to expand the roster and embrace the chaos rather than leaving people off who are showing up and excited to get involved. Let’s find some other way to praise and recognize those who are working hard and doing a great job. Rewarding our most popular contributors with special exclusive class for their hard work and success makes a powerful incentive, but this small-roster thinking is poison for the DAO in the long run.

[0x_Lucas]

I think the goal with contributor status is to filter the people that want to contribute and be active participants in the DAO and those that want to just be passive participants (by simply just holding BANK).

The separation is meant to reduce noise to allow contributors to focus and coordinate on the task at hand. I don’t think there’s a perfect solution so we’ll have to strike a balance between this filtering/exclusivity with open/welcome-ness for those that are interested in getting involved.

[frogmonkee]

There’s also the problem of discord permissions. Right now, contributors have rights to change peoples roles, create channels, and pin. That’s a necessary distinction we need to make