Incorporate an initial community support level into AIP governance process

Withdrawn AIPs
1

Category = Process

Abstract

This AIP is to add an initial community support level into the AIP governance process so the AIP Idea must reach a certain number of votes prior to being able to continue in the AIP governance process. The purpose is to ensure that there exists community members that support the idea so that it is prudent and reasonable for the community to spend its resources to proceed with the idea.

Motivation

The motivation of this AIP is to concentrate community resources - both members and the Foundation’s - to ideas and proposals that are meaningful to the community. The intent would be to only exclude the AIPs that have no community support to using these resources.

The concept of adding intermediate thresholds in addition to the final voting is not uncommon in DAO governance. Some DAOs call this an initial temperature check; other DAOs require a certain level of engagement from an author prior to being able to submit a proposal.

The purpose of this AIP is to add that concept to the AIP governance process and in the form of an initial community support.

Rationale

The rationale for adding an initial community support is so that the community can focus all their energy, attention, and scrutiny to AIPs that have at least some initial community support.

This initial community support is 1 user = 1 vote, regardless of the number of ApeCoin held. It is not intended to have larger ApeCoin holders push through their proposals, but rather intended to not proceed with proposals that have limited or zero community support.

There may be concerns that an author can create more Discourse users and vote their proposal to meet the initial community support level. However, that would be no different compared to the current AIP governance process where an author continues through the governance process nonetheless. This proposed idea either (i) makes it a bit harder to do so or (ii) does some filtering for more engaged proposals to proceed forward.

Specifications

This AIP proposes to implement this concept on Discourse.

In a previously community accepted AIP, AIP-7 has already added the Discourse topic voting plugin to forum.apecoin.com. This plugin has already been enabled and users can vote on Discourse topics right now.

However, the AIP governance process does not use or take into account this number. This AIP proposes to include in the AIP governance process that an AIP Idea needs a minimum number of votes before it can proceed to an AIP Draft. The proposed threshold is 5 votes.

If the 5 votes are received on the topic, then it proceeds to the AIP Draft phase.

Steps to Implement

In the current AIP governance process, the steps to AIP Draft are as follows:

  • an author submits an AIP Idea, which is approved by the moderators
  • a discussion ensues for 7 days (or more if extended) before it is closed
  • after it is closed, the author ensures or submits the AIP in the AIP Draft Template
  • once received, the moderator moves the topic to AIP Drafts and the moderator review process begins

In the proposed AIP governance process, the steps to AIP Draft are as follows

  • an author submits an AIP Idea, which is approved by the moderators
  • a discussion ensues for 7 days (or more if extended) before it is closed
  • after it is closed, the author ensures or submits the AIP in the AIP Draft Template
  • once received, the moderator checks that the topic has received the minimum threshold of votes (currently proposed to be 5)
  • if 5 or more votes have been received, the moderator moves the topic to AIP Drafts and the moderator review process begins
  • if 5 or more votes have not been received, the moderator responds to the author that the topic must meet the threshold prior to moving forward

Furthermore, in the current AIP governance process, an AIP is withdrawn if there has not been a response in 30 days from the author.

In the proposed AIP governance process, it would add that if the AIP Idea has not received 5 or more votes in 30 days from when the AIP Idea closed, then the AIP Idea is withdrawn due to low initial community support.

In an effort to practice what is being proposed, this AIP Idea will not move forward to AIP Drafts unless it receives 5 or more votes on this topic. If it does not receive 5 or more votes within 30 days after this topic is closed, it will be withdrawn by request. I will not vote on the topic.

Timeline

The proposed timeline is to put this into practice immediately after it is accepted.

Cost

There are no direct costs to this AIP.

2

Thanks for writing this up.

On the surface it would seem like a good idea to help filter ideas that the DAO may consider not a good use of mods/admins resources.

But then again, there is also the strong possibility that getting to 10 votes could easily be gamed (I will not share the manners in which this can be done, but we all know the methods).

All that said, it seems that the more pressing issue within the current process is that any idea, as long as it passes admins filters, can seemingly make it to Snapshot without much change to the original post. Community feedback does not necessarily make it into the draft or live versions, thereby rendering this stage sorta worth less.

Twitter seems to have more sway than Discourse and Snapshot seems reactionary.

Is there a better method that can be utilised within Discourse to help shape an original post to truly incorporate community feedback and is this Discourse Voting Idea the only measure to address this issue?

Perhaps, this Discourse Voting Idea could be limited to members that have a certain number of days or activity within the forums to avoid “Sybil attacks” (darn I said I wouldn’t share the gaming methods)!

While I do believe we need better AIP processes overall, I am not convinced this is the way. Maybe once ThankApe or Catapult or Karma are integrated, some wondrous new flow will emerge.

Just some initial thoughts.

Thanks again,

SSP✌🏽

7 Likes
3

I’m aligned with SSP. I think improvements are necessary, but I’m not sure that this is the answer. The real problem is the friction of signing up for and posting in Discourse.

I do think we’d see people game the system instead of engaging outsiders.

Finally, everything you mention in “Motivation” is external. Is there any internal motivation? Just because it’s “not uncommon” doesn’t mean we should necessarily implement it.

ps. I appreciate your work @btang. I’m happy to see that you’re involved and seeking improvements!

2 Likes
4

I think we are in agreement that this is heading in the correct direction, even if this might not be the long-term temperature check/signaling we eventually settle on.

I’ve been thinking about this, and if it’s “good enough”, I believe we need start getting comfortable as a DAO to be experimenting. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time; we can always propose an amendment in 3 months time. This is how our governance structure will be built out. Hopefully we can find common ground with this AIP to push forward.

All the points @ssp1111 brought up are legitimate, but honestly if someone wants to game their AIP to that it can get to a vote, they’ll do it. So at this point, I don’t think we need to be concerned about those individuals/cases. Perhaps v2 incorporates the “certain number of days activity” or some other deterrent. What this does deter are the individuals genuinely looking to see if their idea is something the DAO is interested in. At least with this AIP, we are taking steps to let people know that there is a simple sentiment check we are implementing that we expect may change over time as well.

We all know that resources have been wasted on numerous AIPs that had no business going up to vote based on discourse sentiment alone (not needing to factor Twitter or otherwise). As we work on more substantive AIPs coming down the pipeline for the community, whatever we can do to potentially reduce those numbers going forward will be great.

Though does anyone thoughts on 10 being a high threshold? We may need to consider adjusting the vote refresh timing. People shouldn’t feel too constrained about limiting their voting when it comes to simply signaling for AIPs to move forward in the process.

2 Likes
5

Thanks for the feedback @ssp1111. The goal here is to make one small, iterative gain to avoid using community resources on certain ideas that do not have any community support. It is not attempting to solve any other issues or problems.

While I agree it can be gamed, I would argue that that should be reviewed relative to the current process. In the current process, any AIP can move forward to vote. In the proposed process, only supported AIPs or “gamed AIPs” can move forward to vote. This AIP would ensure that non-supported AIPs or “non-supported non-gamed AIPs” would not move forward to use community and Special Council resources.

1 Like
6

Thanks for the feedback @NFTC. I just want to reiterate that the attempt is to make one, small iterative gain. It is not attempting to solve the friction of signing up for and posting in Discourse.

The Motivation is internal as well. Reviewing AIPs takes both time from the community as well as resources of the community (i.e. Foundation’s resources and Special Council). I can update the Motivation section for this.

1 Like
7

Thanks @BoredApeG for the feedback. The purpose is not/was not to solve long-term issues. If we could make one small step in the right direction, evaluate, and then iterate (even if it means to abandon this AIP after 3 months) - I would consider this a success.

Happy to modify the threshold of 10. In considering this AIP, I thought 1 wouldn’t make sense (i.e. the author can just vote for it), 2 seemed too little. Possibly between 3-5 might make sense. What about 5?

2 Likes
8

Thanks Brandon. 5 seems reasonable - How long does it take for someone to receive their vote back?

1 Like
9

As @ssp1111 and @BoredApeG mentioned, the direction is good but I also doubt if setting votes number is an effective criterion. We will probably need to educate the forum users that if you support the AIP you need to vote on the forum, which they may not have had this behavior before. Plus, admins need to check sybil attack. I expect we come up with some more effective ways to improve the process.

2 Likes
10

Hi @btang,

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

1 Like
12

Hi @Escape please keep this Topic open for another 7 days

1 Like
13

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@btang has requested to extend the community discussion period for this AIP idea. This topic will automatically close a further 7 days from now. We encourage the community to continue to engage in thoughtful discussions through constructive criticism, honest feedback, and helpful suggestions.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

-Pearson

14

Hi @btang,

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

15

Thanks, please keep this open for another 7 days.

16

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@btang has requested to extend the community discussion period for this AIP idea. This topic will automatically close a further 7 days from now. We encourage the community to continue to engage in thoughtful discussions through constructive criticism, honest feedback, and helpful suggestions.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

-Escape

17

Cartan’s recent extension request has helped me to view this idea through a new lens. I support the idea of requiring some level of community support to be collected before an AIP can move forward. It will reduce the administrative work required of Cartan (and us) for AIPs that have 0 chance to pass Snapshot vote. Many AIPs fail with a 90%+ rejection rate and that is a problem that I think we should focus on solving.

However, :hearts:s in Discourse don’t translate to Snapshot voting power. As I mentioned above, people will easily game the system to get those :hearts:s.

I wonder if we can implement a soft Snapshot voting checkpoint between AIP Idea and AIP Draft. We make it clear to APE holders that they’re not voting to approve the AIP - only to allow it to move along in the process which will consume some resources for further due diligence and exploration. Perhaps the threshold is set at just ~20% approval needed.

I don’t want to get too off-topic or hijack the thread so I’ll stop here. I’m curious to hear feedback. If you all think I’m on to something maybe btang can edit this thread to reflect the problem statement while we build a solution, or, I’ll spin up a fresh AIP idea.

3 Likes
18

Thanks @NFTC for the feedback.

I’ve also updated the votes to 5 in the AIP Idea. Looking across current AIP Ideas, there are only a few with more than 5 votes. The intent of this AIP would be to seek additional engagement on voting in AIP Ideas while trying not to make the threshold too cumbersome. Open for feedback.

19

Hi @btang,

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.

-Pearson

20

This topic was automatically closed after 12 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

21

Thank you @btang 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. @btang please see your messages for the next steps.

-Escape