Agree with all of @alisha.eth 's proposed amendments! I think reducing the steward count should be fine. For those worried about participation, a reminder that you don’t have to be a steward to participate in working groups. The meetings are open, and they are very friendly!
Against this. These kinds of things never work in practice. Either a steward is good and they care, or they are not. “Requiring” them to post on the forums is not going to change that, elections are the proper way to handle a bad case.
Yea, but think of it this way: imagine this past term was 1 year long. We’d need to wait another 6 months to reboot the MetaGov WG, for example. I think the term length is fine for now, let’s try one more term before considering this.
Hard no from us. This has been discussed ad-nauseum, I think I basically agree with everything @nick.eth says on this topic, so I’ll just refer my reasoning to what he’s written.
I think we need to worry less in general about delegation and all that stuff. That’s not really a huge issue for the DAO right now, in my mind. Our top problem we need to solve is getting a pace of execution from the DAO-side going. I think @alisha.eth 's amendments go toward that from a position of her experience in working groups in ENS, and in other DAOs.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that nobody had any hesitations about accepting a role called “Steward,” had no reservations about passing budgets to pay themselves, but the idea that they perhaps write a small monthly summary of what they did about as long as this post is out of the question.
To @slobo.eth@cthulu.eth@neiman@inplco and others - great discussion on steward lead responsibility and accountability. Just want to add my take to move this forward productively and close this out:
If we believe there’s a need for a “steward lead” with some increased level of responsibility, accountability (and presumed compensation), I think it makes sense to explicitly outline the responsibilities of this lead in EP4.
However, I’d prefer to stay away from prescribing specific word count summaries (e.g., 200 word summary X often). Instead, keep it general and flexible such as, “Keep DAO informed on status, progress, blockers of initiatives/projects.” Just an opinion - but we don’t want to be too stringent with how work is done within a DAO. Distribute that decision-making out to the edges and let stewards/contributors figure it out. Prescribe the outcome we want (e.g., visibility on progress to ensure accountability).
For reference, the Orca community has defined social and technical roles and responsibilities that must be filled by pod members. It’s available in our governance charter here. I think following a similar model within EP4 is valuable.
I agree with everything here proposed on the initial post.
I am against delegates being able to vote for themselves. One thing is having a open governance, and the other is having a popularity contest, I don’t feel there is enough information to make a real vote based only on a forum postulation (that applies for delegates and for stewards too). There could be the consideration to have something like token-log for token gated votes for stewards only, so anyone willing to engage in governance can do so, without the risk of people taking advantages of a delegation made months ago: the votes given to delegates when there was no DAO active at that moment, shouldn’t be able to impact the present state of the DAO. I am not implying a re-delegation process, I am stating that the delegation process time is different than this one. And if there is no possibility to use something like token-log (which I highly doubt) (https://tokenlog.xyz/) then there should be a campaign to inform about the election of stewards, even as a simple Q&A open to anyone, in order to let know the tokenholders what’s going on.
The second point regarding accountability, I highly encourage, adding a certain level of “commitment”, in the form of an agreement with the DAO, that even if symbolic, will help with the expectations of the role. Right now the subjective frame of the steward role has induced certain level of limbo and lack of coordination, mainly because very few stewards are committed to the real demands of a DAO such as ENS. So I’d set certain levels of expectation and objective responsabilities to the role such as: monthly updates, bi-weekly public sync of the stewards on discord and so on.
Apologies if any of these have been said before, I’m ranting a bit.
Because it wouldn’t make a difference, simple as that. Implementing a rule that naively seems like it would make a difference that wouldn’t actually in practice make a difference is silly.
If a steward is inactive, “requiring” them to post 200 words in the forum regularly isn’t going to make them suddenly care. On the contrary, it gives a really low bar for potential stewards to meet.
Also, let’s say there’s a really good steward that legit just forgets to post on the forums regularly because they are so busy doing real things for ENS and other DAOs. Are we going to remove them because they forget to post 200 words on the forum? Obviously not, so the rule would never actually be enforced. It’s a placebo.
I am in favor of this, and agree with the logic Alisha has presented that, “with fewer stewards, each steward is likely to feel a great sense of responsibility for the role.”
If this is the case, I would really like to identify a clear line of communication with the TNL team that works for both groups. We should make sure there is a collaborative relationship between the TNL and the DAO so that neither body becomes a black box, which I feel is our current status at times.
I don’t see an issue with this, but I with the objections, I wonder if a mandatory “mid-term” report might be more appropriate?"
It would make it a lot easier for people who aren’t stewards to follow the work that stewards does at the very least. If a steward were to suddenly start making up work I’m sure that’d be quite noticeable, and if a steward forgot to write something it’s not like they would automatically be terminated. That might cause someone to reach out and see what’s going on, and if something needs to be done about it.
Just for some perspective on my frustration, let’s look at when I started the newsletter. With the exception of @Coltron.eth and @slobo.eth, every other Steward(!) completely ghosted me when I asked for updates on their WG. I asked publicly and privately. Absolutely no response. Several attempts. They couldn’t even click the heart. The fact that they could stick around until budgets were passed though is just sad.
Oh yea, to be clear I think we need more communication from stewards moving forward, not arguing against that!
I just don’t think the solution is to encode a rule into the Constitution. This can only be achieved in practice at the culture level. People need to vote for stewards who demonstrate willingness to keep everyone informed!
Agree that it might not be best to enshrine in the constitution, but we absolutely have to articulate the expectation that any Steward update the community regularly on the various things that they’re doing to serve the DAO. Ideally we wouldn’t have to spell this out formally, but we do, and clearly defining the expectation has no real downside.
100%. This. Keeping the community informed might be one of the most important parts of a Steward’s responsibilities. The forum isn’t perfect, but it does serve as the historical record for most of the DAO’s activities. Any community member should be able to come here asynchronously and find updates that keep them in the loop on what’s happening in each working group.
Placebos work. I know it wouldn’t make a massive difference in the grand scheme but it sends a signal that the DAO expects you to work. It costs us nothing.
In my experience, these kinds of provisions do nothing I would vote against it.
I think pressuring stewards to communicate more is fine. I think establishing a more regular community call that is a formal place to give those updates with Q&A is better, and the Community WG is already starting that up.
I understand the objection to this proposal, it reminds me of micromanagement (which I despise) and gives stewards some extra work to do for a position that is already not as rewarding as it is.
But it’s important to remember that this proposal didn’t came out of nowhere. It followed @inplco effort to wake up the meta-governance WG. So your proposals should also consider this incident, and I don’t see how it would have affected it.
That’s a neat idea @itsdanwu. Something like a role description right? I think @Coltron.eth’s been the exemplar of Steward Leadership this term. I’m actively profiling his contributions on the Contributor Spotlight series to be featured on the newsletter. His experience is a good paradigm from which to outline Steward Leadership.
Also a neat idea. Perhaps newly elected stewards can hold a POAP that symbolizes their Stewardship. This can serve as a symbolic (social) agreement re: accountability.
While I mostly support @daylon.eth “200 words” proposal, I also understand the objections to it.
Rules are normally meant to be abstract, such that they could be applied in a wide range of situations. The “200 words” rules may work in most situations, but what happens with a steward who has difficulties with English? Who has physical limitations in typings?
Hence I like to propose a generalized alternative:
When stewards submit WG budget, it also specifies monthly conditions for the stewards to get their compensations. It can be the “200 words” rules, attendance of more than 50% of the calls, voting on more than 80% of the decisions, or something else.
In a month where a steward does not meet the conditions they set, s/he/they don’t get compensation for this month.
This forces the stewards for some form of accountability while keeping the conditions general so that they could be implemented appropriately in each WG.
I’d like also to make a second proposal, decision-making process in a WG. In this term, it was not only unclear how decisions are made within a WG, but it was also unclear what constitutes a decision.
To improve this I offer:
2. Decisions in a WG would be made in a 2-of-3 of stewards. Next to each decision it will be published how each steward voted.
I would also like to remind another proposal I made, to change the public goods WG description:
3. Public Goods: funding public goods within web3 but outside the ENS ecosystem.
I’ve been following the replies, and I am generally for having some kind of language in the amendments to make sure DAO Stewards at least keep the community informed with a regular status update or something.
I agree with @itsdanwu that we shouldn’t prescribe specific word counts or anything though. Rather prescribe the outcome we want – for DAO community members to know what’s going on, what progress is being made, and importantly what blockers there are. Perhaps a community member will see that and think “Hey I have a contact at xxx, maybe I can help with that blocker!”, you never know.
The “regular status update” outcome seems like it’s at the WG level, not individual Steward level. So I don’t think it matters which steward gives the update, just as long as someone does. Of course, it would be nice if we heard from all stewards now and then.
I didn’t know about that, that’s not good. I mean it sounds like the DAO newsletter could be the perfect place to include those status updates from each WG. But if a WG contributor like you cannot even contact the stewards at all, there’s definitely something wrong, that shouldn’t be the case. The stewards should be managing the operations of the working groups, and that should include having open communications with the contributors of said working groups.
I also agree with @neiman in that this shouldn’t be micromanagement, and to @carlosdp’s point we don’t need to encode anything specific into the Constitution. In my view these are just some extra lines in the Steward Responsibilities list outlined in EP4:
4. Working Group Stewards
…
Stewards are responsible for managing the operations of each working group.
The responsibilities of Stewards include, but are not limited to:
… 7. Maintaining open communications with other stewards and contributors 8. Keeping the DAO up-to-date on working group progress, achievements, and blockers with regular status updates
Does that seem fair and general enough? No specific prescriptions, nothing micromanage-y, and they can decide how regular “regular” should be. And the voters can decide if Stewards fulfilled their responsibilities during the next election.
I would vote against it.