Amend AIP-66 (ApeCoin Newsletter) to Prohibit Grant Winners from Publishing Opinion Pieces on other AIPs

Withdrawn AIPs
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Proposal Category: Process

Abstract | Two or three sentences that summarize the proposal.

AIP-66 granted three awards to write ApeCoin Newsletters. It has since been discovered that a grant awardee has written an opinion piece against an AIP, presumably for their own benefit due to their own competing proposal.

Writing opinion pieces should not be permitted. Violations should terminate the awardee’s grant.

Motivation | A statement on why the APE Community should implement the proposal.

“Opinion” is not included in the scope of AIP-66. Per the AIP, “The motivation behind this idea is to help the community develop trusted sources of information from decentralized channels and provide benefits beyond a single information source. It should be an aggregation of ApeCoin specific ecosystem news, AIPs, conversations, opportunities and content sourced from Discourse, Discord, Twitter and other internet destinations. The newsletter should promote and educate all things related to the ApeCoin DAO.”

The specific situation occurred in an August 18th newsletter. The newsletter author wrote a specific section titled “Discord & The Case Against AIP-77”. To my knowledge, they wrote no other opinion pieces on specific AIPs, however have offered their opinion elsewhere from time to time.

In the newsletter they wrote, “My problem with it: Who are the mods? Not me.”

The newsletter author is a member of ApeComms. Apecomms was developing a competing proposal which included building an official ApeCoin Discord server.

On August 19th the newsletter author commented on AIP-66 writing, “There is an existing DAO discord community & moderators that would benefit from this funding. I do not support AIP-77 going forward.”

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Rationale | An explanation of how the proposal aligns with the APE Community’s mission and guiding values.

It is clear that there is a conflict of interest.

Utilizing an ApeCoin grant-funded newsletter to write opinion pieces against other community member AIPs is NOT aligned to ApeCoin’s Guiding Values. It is even worse when you presumably do so to thwart support for a proposal that competes with your own.

We should clarify the ability for grant authors to write opinion pieces before it happens again.

Key Terms (optional) | Definitions of any terms within the proposal that are unique to the proposal, new to the APE Community, and/or industry-specific.

n/a

Specifications | A detailed breakdown of the platforms and technologies that will be used.

TBD. I’ll collaborate with Cartan Group then update.

Steps to Implement | The steps to implement the proposal, including associated costs, manpower, and other resources for each step where applicable.

Cartan group shall designate a form for receiving complaints. If a complaint is valid, the grant is immediately halted and revoked.

Timeline | Relevant timing details, including but not limited to start date, milestones, and completion dates.

Immediately upon successful vote.

Overall Cost | The total cost to implement the proposal.

TBD. Likely $0 or negligible.

Proposals submitted to the AIP Ideas category can be vague, incomplete ideas. Topics submitted here are not required to be submitted as a formal AIP Draft Template, however, you may still use the template if you wish.

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Like & subscribe to AC Watch for unbridled honest opinions on both AIPs and Candidates during election season. Support free speech, journalism etc etc. Thank you!

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/acwatch

p.s don’t support people who come into this space just to break down others, cash grab, or play politicians. Builders support builders.:handshake:

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Note that I didn’t name you in my original post, but since you decided to announce and plug yourself…

For the record, do you believe it is acceptable to leverage your ApeCoin-funded Newsletter to write opinion pieces against proposals that are in competition with your own proposal? By own proposal I mean AIP-142 - which would have granted you an additional $110,000 in annual salary?

There are a lot of new people here for elections. It would be good to clarify a straight answer here.

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I hear your concerns. I received similar feedback after the August 18th article was published, and have since improved on how I cover ecosystem news. In the interest of collaboration I’m responding here, but you have taken my quote out of context. My newsletter has never represented the views of, or promoted, the ApeComms initiative.

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Thanks for commenting and clarifying. I’ve read your newsletter and enjoy it.

I also will clarify that if this proposal gained traction and passed, I suggest it be forward-looking only and not retroactive.

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I truly believe we are all here to do good. I’m prone to making mistakes, and I dont want to be above accountability for that. At the time of, I wasn’t looking at it through that angle, and I’m by no means a pro-journalist. It matters to me. I will continue to do better, and you will see the results of that. Thank you.

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I have drafted a rough idea for an OVERSIGHT TEAM, a kind of internal codes and conduct authority I guess, that would be looking for and discussing and dealing with this kind of behaviour [if it was deemed this was outside of the rules ofc, rules we all agree to have in place].

I’ve seen a lot of questionable things lately and tbh there is no real way to address it, stop it, report it or even whose attention do you bring it to, pretty crazy when you think about it. We need to address this before the DAO is flat broke and there’s nothing really built out properly.

I think another good thing we need to have is a clear visual of the teams within the DAO, their roles and brief job descriptions, so that it is easy for DAO members to identify the next port of call if they are stuck, while we get this OVERSIGHT TEAM discussion going. Who’s in charge of what, who do they work with and who’s in charge of them etc etc.

Maybe some people don’t even realise what they are doing wrong? They maybe don’t notice the bias in their articles or that they are treating others unfairly, but I also suspect there are people who know exactly what they are doing, either way, we need to have a team tasked with looking at and stopping these kinds of things.

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Your ‘HIT PIECE’ is disgusting, it is bias reporting, full of assumptions and self-promotion, you should be ashamed of yourself tbh, a conflict of interest is the original poster going lightly on you - you know exactly what you did and why imo.

You write “there are DAO members in the community who would better benefit from that grant” - what does that mean, “better benefit”?

You also shoot down the opposing proposal from your own as it is costed at 500,000 a year, but hold on a minute, your proposal is costed at 650,000 approximately revised down from over 900,000 dollars a year.

You also cite “outside moderators” what do you mean by this? I saw no mention in the proposal of names or how the moderators would be chosen.

Let me just clear something up for you, any one who owns one apecoin is automatically a DAO member; the fact you don’t know who the mods are and it’s not you, as you write, does not make a proposal unworthy.

I am to say the least annoyed with your hit piece [i agree with that term btw], I think you are unworthy of writing for the DAO and will do my best to make sure you do not get reelected to write again next time.

WE MUST DO BETTER, AND THIS IS A VERY BIAS ‘HIT PIECE’ TO FURTHER ONES OWN AMBITIONS AND IS NOT WHAT THE DAO IS MEANT FOR.

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This topic was automatically closed after 7 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

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Hi @NFTC,

Your topic will be automatically closing in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received, or do you wish to extend community discussion for a further 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-Escape

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Content - thank you. Please move forward.

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This topic was automatically closed after 18 hours. New replies are no longer allowed.

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Thank you @NFTC for your ideas and the ApeCoin DAO community for the thoughtful discussions. A moderator will get in touch with the author to draft the AIP in the appropriate template. Once the AIP is drafted and meets all the DAO-approved guidelines, the proposal will be posted on Snapshot for live official voting at: Snapshot

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @NFTC please see your messages for the next steps.

-Escape

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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

This Topic has been rejected based on the DAO-approved guidelines due to no response in the last 30 days. The Topic may be submitted again by any user and upon approval, will be open for 7 days for community discussions.

This Topic will move and remain in the Withdrawn AIPs category.

-Escape

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