PEP-45: Get a GRIP: Group to Review and Improve Proposals

[Jinx (Chris Jenkins)]

@Dermot

@jinx You’re a brilliant all-round guy (no need to be coy about this!) who comes across as very approachable. And with your significant presence on all pocket channels, it’s natural that you are the first port of call for many who seek input into their proposals.

Thanks!

@Dermot

My real question is how to enable others in the community to build up a reputation for being helpful. And to remove the friction between community members - new and old - to connect when they need help of any kind. In other words, how do we arm new community members with the best info about who can be/wants to be helpful in the community and concerning what domains?

I think we already have a number of other folks in the community who serve this role, and a number of the folks outlined in the proposal are representative of that. The biggest thing I see as an issue currently is that there is less access to those other people that those of us more established here already have. We DM on Discord or Telegram, or reach out to third party connections.

The GRIP group expands what already happens currently to more people, but others in the community still have the same opportunity to build reputation the same way everyone else here has; by participating in the conversations, and making helpful contributions along the way. Constructive comments on proposals, engaging on Discord and Telegram, even DMing a proposal author are all still on the table. Nothing about this pre-prod group changes the mechanism by which all of us built the reputation we have.

@Dermot

My natural bias is towards open collaboration and participation, so I assume that fewer back channels would lead to a more incredible culture of collaboration and participation. I’d love to hear the thoughts from you - and any one else from the group - on this.

Again, I agree with this in theory, and as a culture goal. But backchanneling is always going to exist. Why not support a mechanism that gives wider access to it?

@Dermot

An additional point re backchannels, people typically learn a company’s culture through osmosis in a traditional office-based working environment. However, we don’t have such an option in a digital-first community like this. Consequently, best practices around accountability, communication, transparency, and standards often need to be better shared and understood in a DAO. As this group is a high-quality group of contributors, the wider community can benefit from looking at how you all work together. As it will show many others how they can also lead by example.

This is an important point, and the public “pre-proposal” category serves to assist in that goal:

@zaatar

The Pre-Proposal category is a new public category in the Forum where ideas and rough-draft proposals can be published for consideration, review, and editing before they’re published to a formal Proposals category. It will be open to anyone to participate. The Pre-Proposal category is the brainchild of the core governance team.

And the amount of actual private conversation should be limited, by design:

@zaatar

We recognize that a small number of contributors may be uncomfortable going public with their ideas and writing, or publicly receiving criticism. To accommodate such contributors, and encourage their contributions too, GRIP, upon request, will privately review outlines, drafts and pre-proposals. Likewise, upon request, GRIP will confidentially relay its views to any contributor at any stage of the pre-proposal process. For transparency, GRIP will disclose its private contacts after the fact.

So, it’s not really about the gathering of relevant technical or economic input we see along the way that is the main concern, in my opinion. More important to your perspective is this:

@Dermot

My concerns about the private nature of this group mainly relate to the concern that new community members may view this group as the only relevant people to seek counsel from when many others could help. So this shouldn’t be the only channel used to bolster support for a proposal or to seek feedback. The more that others can help each other in this community, the better IMO.

…and I completely get the concern from this perspective. @JackALaing has made clear he doesn’t want to see groups with “special powers” so to speak achieving the opposite of the goal of this proposal: to make the proposal process easier and more accessible.

We all share that goal.

GRIP is not exclusive or preclusive to other groups/teams/guilds forming for the same purpose. But it IS a dedicated group of knowledgeable people in the ecosystem whose purpose is to be there for new proposers in a way that no one really is now. It seems counterproductive to oppose someone doing something no one else is doing now for fear that the someone will become known for doing the thing, and increasing their community clout because of it.

@Dermot

Can general community members comment on pre-proposals?

Yes. That’s spelled out in the quotes above.

@Dermot

We don’t want to exclude potentially valuable input pre-proposal from other interested members. Further, encouraging a culture of collaboration and participation is extremely valuable IMO…

Agreed completely.

@Dermot

others may realise that supporting pre-proposals without any pay may become a viable pathway to joining an existing coordinape circle, or simply building up a better reputation in the community more generally

Pre-proposals are not to be supported or opposed. They’re to be fleshed out, polished, refined, and revised, and solely at the request of the proposer. The group is not for lobbying. It’s for information gathering, editing, graphics creation, spotting technical difficulties which may need to be addressed, or unexpected economic impacts.

My turn to compliment:

You are a thoughtful participant in the community, hold a high responsibility as part of the foundation, and on every significant proposal since I became a DAO member, I have seen you make articulate and deeply considered contributions in the comments. This proposal is no different. Perhaps GRIP needs an additional member from the start to represent a Foundation view.