[PROPOSAL][ABANDONED] Use the Forum to Improve Governance Process

Update After receiving feedback, we have reworked this proposal to be a community spend pilot project to activate and steward the Cosmos Hub (Discourse) governance forum for the next six months. Consolidation of governance discussion is important for effective communication. Moreover, consistent and formal governance proposal stewardship must be a dedicated responsibility of stakeholders who are compensated in contrast to an inconsistent community, volunteer operation. To explore this pilot for compensated governance forum champions/stewards we are asking for ~1000 ATOM to be managed by a multisig representing Cosmos Ecosystem stakeholders: an independent 3rd party (such as Hypha Co-op who is leading this effort), Validator, Cosmos Hub developer, and potentially opt-in community members. The funds will be used to compensate the steward and operations required to support moderation, facilitation, engagement, and guidance: 1. Moderation: Format, edit, and categorize posts; Standardize titles and tags; Enforce standards; Monitor and approve new posts; Archive posts. 2. Facilitation: Ask clarifying questions in post threads; Summarize discussions; Provide historical precedence…

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I am really happy to see the proposal about Governance process. I am preparing related proposal such as [PROPOSAL][ABANDONED] Input reasons for the votes in the ‘memo’ Hub Proposals One of the vital yet easily overlooked aspects of governance is not on action of voting yes/no but the discussion of why members chose to vote so. Although discussions on forums and other channels precede the votes, they may not reflect the official position while voting. As of now, each validator can declare one’s official position on twitter, telegram, etc. but such information is not readily accessible for all community members. Furthermore, it is difficult for the proposer to determine th… and [PROPOSAL][ABANDONED] Proposal for Prevention of Absent Voters Hub Proposals Proposal #57 failed to reach quorum. Although such phenomenon is not a big problem as of yet, it may become a problem if vote absence continues or increases. Failure to reach quorum results in failure to reach a decision which obstructs network development and adaptation to changes. Cosmos network’s governance proposal process takes min. 2 weeks as it is and this issue of failure to reach…

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Obviously very much in favor of this idea! I have some feedback on the text itself:

1. Although useful information, the deliberations in the “Alternatives” section creates doubt about the proposal itself. I would suggest presenting a proposal with much stronger conviction. Possibly even removing the entire section altogether.
2. The proposal is too long and complexly worded. Would suggest considering a shorter, easier to understand rewrite with a focus on the target group we’re trying to convince (validators, delegators & proposers) and carefully weighing the pros and cons of keeping all this extra context in this proposal.

I’m also happy to hear and discuss more on the topic of enforcement.

Agreed on focusing governance communication on the Discourse and establishing it as the place for validators and their respective protocol specialist teams to engage with. Not just on Cosmos, but on many other PoS chains that we at stakefish have been validating and engaging on, there has been a difficult non-standard governance communication process with many different venues to get eyes-on opinions. I agree that moving away from telegram would be a good approach because the fluid and stream of consciousness chat there is not effective for scaling discussions and having high signal conversations.

This falls firmly in line with a lot of the conversations that were brought up when we met to discuss issues around governance in Lisbon as well (https://twitter.com/stakefish/status/1457444981782765568, https://twitter.com/StableNode/status/1457437949327552522).

Thank you for putting this together!

I believe there are also conversations to have discourse champions to moderate adherence to proposal draft formats as well. Looking forward to getting this shaped up!

Thank you all for the feedback! I’ve also received input from other channels and 1:1 convos. Summarising what I’ve heard below: Merits of this proposal • A single venue for deliberation increases engagement and accessibility. It allows both ecosystem newcomers (who won’t otherwise know where to look) and busy validator teams (who aren’t in a position to track multiple venues) to engage in these discussions. Participation in governance engages the community and builds culture such that people are excited to stick around long term. In a sense you can think of it as a complement to marketing: marketing attracts, governance retains. • Committing to standards around the proposal discussions unlocks the possibility of new governance tooling to exist that’s broadly beneficial to the community. • It has opened the door for discussion around meta-governance and the scope of the on-chain governance itself. It has surfaced questions like: How are governance processes changed? Who decides? What kinds of decisions need to be made on-chain? These are important questions to answer as the Cosmos Hub grows. Criticisms • The idea in its current form (a signalling proposal)…

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Thanks a lot for putting this proposal together!

I’m in favor. Cosmos really needs to organize communications better, especially for governance. Of course we can’t enforce anyone on following this signaling proposal even if it passes, but it’s a great way to shout out the intention.

I don’t think setting up Commonwealth will require too much extra effort (a lot of new chains are going for it without many issues), so I’m fine with either using this forum or Commonwealth as main point of discussions.

Looking forward to the follow-up proposal. I think having a paid governance moderator would be a good idea, as long as the job of the moderator is to use soft-power to enforce the location and structure of governance discussions and not the content of those discussions.

Yes agree. Part of the work should include documenting a transparent moderation guide/framework that’s being followed

Hi, I just noticed this and I wanted to ask if there’s anything from it that I should incorporate into the proposal that I’m currently working on.

This draft eventually became Proposal 63. I wasn’t around when this draft was being written but I think including some additional norms in-use on the forum would be helpful. In particular, using the tagging system to show which stage a proposal is in, and posting to the appropriate category to help people find content.

A lot of people will post an idea in larger Hub Proposals category and then never move to the more specific category (e.g., Community Spend). This makes it harder to find old proposals and while I’m happy to do that sort of operational support at the current level of activity on the forum, it could get unmanageable if we get a lot more proposal drafts!

Except that this part of the proposal was not reflected in 63, and there is no currently enforced policy on waiting periods.

So I went and made one, and I will be on the Wednesday chat to discuss.