Wondering what the next steps for this proposal are, if any.
Considering nominations for term 2 have begun, it feels to me like this is proposal is now on ice?
Dissolve the Community Working Group:
- Yes
- No
0 voters
This might be a counter productive suggestion, but perhaps there should be some type of Twitter Space or Discord Voice chat where proposals might be discussed verbally. Iām sure this was discussed on one or more occasions in the Steward Google Meets, and maybe that is sufficient combined with the Forum threads, but it becomes difficult to follow and probably not the most genuine form of communication where people often just speak past each other.
As a preliminary matter I support @alisha.eth @Coltron.eth and @slobo.eth, if those 3 Stewards support the change, Iāll defer to their judgment as I think they are in the best position to make the determination of the DAO needs vis-a-vis the WG organizational structure.
However, I do understand some of the objections and concerns. First, it is a big change to modify the structure of the DAO and understandably some want to take an engineering approach of measuring twice and cutting once. Personally I like the willingness to experiment and as a lawyer I praise @alisha.eth for having the confidence to do that, primarily as it seem itās her and her alone that bears the brunt of any objections. Her work speaks for itself, even if you donāt agree with this proposal, please remember you are still supporting her work (the original WG proposal).
Second, reading between the lines, I think some are frustrated with some of the Steward involvement/activity during the first term, related specifically to the perceived or actual lack of funding for community lead initiatives/projects. I think this leads to fear that dismantling the Community WG is only going to result in less opportunity for the community. To compound this issue, real or perceived, the counter-arguments to these concerns from the community appear to be coming primarily from those in the community that have no issue obtaining DAO funding and are typically supported every step of the way.
Moreover, the Community WG is the only WG that symbolically, if not actually, represents the people that makeup the DAO. While I support the proposal, I hope we donāt lose all sense of humanity in favor of algorithms, smart contracts and on-chain voting. For that reason Iād push for a Twitter Spaces/Discord Chat, if nothing else just to give people the opportunity to speak directly to one another, sort of like āhaving oneās day in court.ā Itās not about winning, but Iāve seen time and time again in horrific cases that go well beyond anything the ENS DAO will ever contend with, that the simple act of giving someone the opportunity to be heard and speak directly to one another is often the most powerful thing we can do to recognize the humanity in others and ourselves.
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Adding more steps to an already onerous proposal process would probably be counter-productive, yea 
There was a community WG call last week where this was the top agenda item, that was a clear opportunity for anyone that wanted to have a sync discussion, and that did happen. People are also welcome to reach out to anyone for in-sync calls!
Iām not sure a DAO-wide call would be very productive, those are very hard to get signal from.
This isnāt really that big a change, given this working group is the only one that isnāt even required to exist by the constitution. This change is literally just āreduce the number of multi-sig wallets by 1ā. The Community āgroupā function would still exist, just as a sub WG of Ecosystem rather than its own working group with a separate budget proposal.
This is a reason to vote yes on this, I think, because we really need to tear down the perception that you need to be an elected steward in order to contribute to the DAO. I donāt think passing this proposal would reduce opportunity at all, since itās not trying to eliminate a Community group in general, just trying to shift it to a sub-group of the Ecosystem WG.
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I think we can agree to disagree.
We do have a lack of active contributors, but I didnāt mentioned contributors, I mentioned āworkā.
Itās not for the sake of acting slow, Iād like to see a data based rationale, thatās it. In general, I am against proposals that are put forward for solving problems, when there isnāt a clear stated problem. Here it has been mentioned, that the overlap is the problem: I agree on that. But, wouldnāt it be easier have a done a boundaries check before attempting dissolving a WG? . As you mentioned, one of the possible points of a DAO is the ability to act quickly but, this is a new DAO, with barely any consensus on the processes (the processes were given to us). We can be quick, yes, but that would mean an informed community, that have maturity in their cultural and governance model: we donāt have that.
Or at least, do an exercise of re-writting if needed the mission of both WGās to avoid overlap, and then for example, migrate sub-groups to Ecosystem if they fit there more. Iām just stating an example (there are other possibilities, but just for the sake of this conversation) that would have come prior to this step, and that would actually surface a fact based rationale.
Iām sorry if Iām coming strong on this, I do believe in the good intention and healthy conversation that we are having here. And it sets a good example of how balance can be achieved on consensus.
As @spencecoin mentioned, this surface the challenges of who facilitates this kind of conversation after this temperature check, and I hope that even if this proposal is pushed forward, it is first with an updated version that considers incorporate the feedback that has been given.
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Iām not yet knowledgable enough to voice an informed opinion on this but the one thing that stands out in all these posts is just how much people care.
These are early days but if this strength of feeling remains in the community, it augurs well for the future.
Edit : augurs
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If this proposal goes to a vote, I will be voting for the dissolution of the community working group.
As @alisha.eth stated in the original post, I was consulted on this topic. I believe that the Ecosystem and Meta-governance could undertake the work being done in the Community Working Group.
One of the issues with the current structure (12 stewards) is that I donāt believe we have a broad enough pool of nominations. We need individuals in this role who are present, not only qualified. Something we ran into the last term was stewards with undoubted experience but with varying degrees of activity in our DAO.
This was not beneficial for the first term of the DAO and resulted in the CWG working out of scope, reinforced the āsafe betā mentality, and allowed for steward bystanders.
CWG Working Out of Scope
Nobody wanted to take drafting a proposal to remove Brantly, but from my view it required active handling by DAO leadership. Considering the governance precedence, it should have fallen under the Meta-Governanceās scope of work. Similarly, the Code of Conduct should have begun as a joint effort but was only initiated because the CWG picked it up.
I donāt care about the who, whats or whys of this situation, but if certain stewards in the CWG were in the Meta-gov working group, we would not have needed to operate out of scope. Weāre spread too thin, consolidating WGs would be beneficial.
āSafe Betā Mentality
We canāt expect superstar contributors to work in all areas of the DAO at once. Instead of worrying about bad actors filling in the talent gaps, we will be compelled to nominate a āsafe betā who has a lame-duck termā¦ the lesser of two evils. Although safe, this outcome is a net-zero impact for the DAO rather than a positive one.
My hunch is that if we chose a safe bet it will likely be a core team member who could otherwise be working on the protocol. Removing the CWG may contract steward seats to a smaller number that can all be filled with high-quality stewards without burdening the core team, and reducing the need for safe bets.
Steward Bystanders
A low-quality steward may remain with more stewards because someone else will pick up their slack. Working groups operating out of scope and safe bets compound the risk of bystander stewards.
With extra people to take on the work we may avoid governance mechanisms that remove a faulty steward.
Edit: I suppose the case could be made to keep the Community Working Group for some of these reasons, but Iād rather see us consolidate.
To address some concerns about what happens to existing contributors, this shouldnāt impact the existing subgroups. Everyone still has a home, and I would advocate for that even with these changes.
The case can be made in favor this proposal to make changes early in the DAOās life while we are still nimble and able to restructure without larger impacts. We usually want to scale up to meet a demonstrated need, but we may have started too large.
3 Likes
I want to take a minute to address Community sentiment. Iāve closed the social poll and want to comment on the results:
A majority of voters do not want to dissolve the Community Working Group. I understand that the pushback is mostly because core contributors were not privy to the matter beforehand. I will be forthcoming and say that through conjecture I surmised that there would be an organizational reshuffling at hand. While I am still in favor of the roll up, I want to re-emphasize that I believe it important that proposals like this be co-written by Stewards and/or core contributors, so that they represent the interests of the Community, broadly speaking.
According to the poll, and based on my analysis of the discussion on this matter, there should be more done to align Community interests before drafting a proposal.
How can we do a better job of ensuring that the voices of those with with a vested interest in the DAO (not just delegates, Stewards, or TNL) are heard, acknowledged and considered in these organizational processes? I understand there is a Temp Check period, so how did this proposal get so much push back this late in the drafting process?
I agree with this sentiment as well. For the first half of the term, the Community Working Group was over-deliberating on how to fund Community ran initiatives. Note that core contributors such as myself @daylon.eth @vegayp and others only received funding nearly halfway into the term. This is partially due to indecision on arranging a method to distribute funds. That solution has arrived, weāre using Parcel and from here on out there should be less an issue to fund worthy projects. I think that @carlosdp Small Grants program will remove bottlenecks for funding, too.
Iād also like to see a standardization of Lead Contributor compensation. I think this has been discussed but there is no written statement on the matter.
Totally agree with this sentiment. Although I enjoy speed and efficiency, we need to tread the line between a machine driven approach and human centric approach. One of my initiatives for Term 2 will be to highlight the people behind the DAO and also to intersect with other Communities online (especially in music, fine arts and culture) by co-authoring articles on ENS Utility and more with leaders from other Communities like @NicolasMadoeryās Futurx.
I have to admit that I am also guilty of this thinking, but I understand now that Stewards should be responsible for selecting and funding projects, not the operations of the projects itself. I think that there can be more done to educate contributors on how to participate, write proposals, and request funding as well. Not everyone understands how to do this, and I think initiatives like @zadok7ās Learn Docs and Localization efforts will help a lot, but we can also think about creating more educational resources as well. This Community is only as intelligent/competent as its weakest link.
I think that this DAO relies on āSafe Betā Stewardship because there is a lack of confidence in contributorsā ability to manage the responsibilities of a ENS DAO Steward. Being a Steward of the ENS DAO comes with major responsibility and Core Team members are right to be reluctant to delegate their agency to newcomers, especially this early on in the history of this DAO.
We can divide participants of this DAO into two categories:
- In group participants - those that have been involved with ENS and/or TNL before the inception of the DAO
- Out group participants - those that have never been involved, have no background or existing relationship to ENS and/or TNL and joined since the inception of the DAO.
I belong to the latter, and I think @Coltron.eth is as well, AFAIK. If there were a way to identify those that belong to group 2, and create some Steward Training program or something of the like, I think it could help to ease the anxiety of delegating agency to out group participants while increasing the quality of Steward nominations.
Thank you for taking the time to read, I hope we can push this to a vote!
5 Likes
Just to put this into context, I donāt think that poll is representative of the broader ENS communityās opinion, itās representative of the small subset of the community that actually participates in this forum and would take the time to scroll down this (now very long) thread. Those people tend to skew toward voting down everything proposed, in my experience thus far.
In terms of governance, the ultimate decider on these matters is the DAO and itās delegates, represented by the $ENS token. Unfortunately, due to low forum participation, the only real way to gauge their interests accurately is with a public snapshot, which would be the next step in this proposalās process.
I agree with most everything else you wrote! I just want to express that I think itās inaccurate to draw any conclusions about community sentiment from a poll thrown in the middle of a forum thread. The forum is not representative of the ENS DAO community at-large. 
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Can you expand on this please? Iām the only person that voted against EP13. All recent proposals have had >99% agreement.
Sorry, by āvoting downā, I mean on the forums. Many of the people dissenting to the proposals on the forums donāt actually have many (or any) $ENS votes, which is kind of part of the problem when it comes to gauging whether a proposal is a good idea / would be passed
Gotcha, I think that people who are writing here care the most about what is going on within the context of dissolving the Community WG and so I think it is important to give them equal consideration as well. I understand what you are saying and while you are technically correct we should not overlook the voices of those participating in this discussion, yours included.
You are right, the ultimate decider are the delegates and the DAO; and those participating in the discussion are also part of the DAO, whether or not they have voting power. I have 2 ENS, does that make my voice less relevant? Anyway, I am with you Carlos and I am for rolling up the Community WG for the sake of accountability and efficiency.
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I get what youāre saying, but isnāt this the only practical place to express dissent?
I have no problem with people dissenting, on the forums or anywhere! My point just was, taking a poll on the forums (or drawing strong conclusions from number of dissenting posts on the forums) is not a good way to actually measure whether the DAO itself thinks a proposal is a good idea (and therefore would pass or not).
You have to engage delegates for that, sparingly little of which engage on these forums right now
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Very true. Every time there is a snapshot poll Iām pretty confused where so many big delegates come from, and where they get their information from.
But Iām getting off topic. Sorry.
I agree with the proposal to merge the two workstreams. However what is the point of having these forum discussions if the opinions of ordinary active contributors/builders donāt count (just because they are not popular enough to accumulate thousands of delegated tokens). If that is the case then proposals should go directly to snapshot where the actual decision makers can make a choice.
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I agree. But why are we having all those temperature checks and discussions here if only a few main delegates with a massive amount of votes matter in the end, and many of them are not engaged here as you pointed out?
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All opinions count and are useful imo. What I warn people against is drawing conclusions about community-wide consensus from the forums, given they tend to make things seem more controversial than they tend to actually be when things go for a vote.
Good question 
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But why are we having all those temperature checks and discussions here if only a few main delegates with a massive amount of votes matter in the end, and many of them are not engaged here as you pointed out?
This is pretty much a fundamental problem [edit: of ALL governance systems] that has no easy solution.
The conversations here are deep and important, but only engaged by a small percentage of people with power.
Thatās why politics have so much marketing behind them - to get the message out. This is also why I shared this thread on Twitter, because these things need to be broadcast to a wider audience, otherwise voters generally go with the popular side or the most-marketed side, or, God forbid, they just vote āyesā without reading anything.
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Something is getting lost in the back in worth of the active forum members. Someone skimming this thread could feel that the community is against this proposal. The data does not support this.
There have been 25 users active in this thread, the majority of which support this proposal.
Support:
nick.eth
slobo.eth
coltron
avsa
carlos
alisha
limes
cthule
serenae
royalfork
bobjiang
keneeze
enspunks
stevegachau
Iām happy the DAO has a place where folks can voice their perspective. More people read these forums than you may think. This does influence delegates in their ultimate decision. This is one of the reasons I post.
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