Requesting ENS DAO to float an RFP to provide funding for research, drafting and management of Wikipedia pages of ENS.
Scope of Work:
Research on ENS (& ENS DAO) and its history
Technical and exhaustive description of ENS (& ENS DAO) and its evolution over time, including the EIPs
Collaborate with TNL, ENS Foundation, Developers, Ethereum Foundation and WGs in ENS DAO for inside and up-to-date knowledge
Keep the Wikipedia pages updated at all times
Possible spin-up into a āLiving Wikipediaā of ENS
Possible overlap with the overall EVM environment and other prominent DAOs e.g. Maker, Gitcoin
Selection Criteria:
Knowledge of ENS & EVM
Good handle on technical writing
Be able to support the descriptive text with visual and graphical components
Be able to function autonomously and stay up-to-date with ENS ecosystem
Be able to collaborate with TNL, ENS Foundation, Ethereum Foundation and the people involved in ENS
Budget:
Preliminary budget: 25,000 USDC (or equivalent in $ENS or $ETH) for the first exhaustive set of Wikipedia pages (50,000 - 100,000 words + graphics), then 100 ENS/month afterward for management of the pages.
Timescale:
3-6 months + rolling management afterward
Please suggest more ideas for this RFP! I have kept it intentionally short and lightweight so far. The end goal is that ENS and ENS DAO should have a self-contained, self-referring and exhaustive documentation of itself.
I calculated the budget as follows
Wikipedia page on āCancerā is roughly 10,000 words. I expect the entire set of ENS and ENS DAO documentation to be 10 pages of similar depth. This equates to 10 individual pages of 5,000 - 10,000 words each on average at 2500 USDC/page, or 2500 USDC per 5,000-10,000 words.
I have done lots of internal Wikis for LIGO and at AEI-MPG. Unfortunately most/all of it is confidential and gated except whatever is in public domain in form of academic papers. Nothing on Wikipedia so far.
I had put us in and we are listed under Other Uses for āENSā with the hope that we would put in more detailed information. Because wikipedia allows for editing of pages, we can get something basic up now and update. Ens - Wikipedia
Broadly supportive of the idea, but Brantly wrote an ENS page before, and it was removed as ānot notableā. Given the deletionists on Wikipedia Iām not confident this wouldnāt be a waste of time. Anyone whoās paid to work on something has to disclose that too, and thatās often used as a reason for deletion.
Yes, I am sadly aware of the wreck of deletionists on Wikipedia. However, if approached through proper channels, they can be reasoned with. I am personally aware of pages written by employed people as part of their documentation job, although these pages are scientific in nature. Is there a link to what Brantly wrote, or what channels he followed specifically?
Alternative RFP: Make decentralised SIWE-only democratic Wikipedia
First, can we have a t-shirt that says āENS, not notableā?
Second, would a good first step be to see if we can get that page reinstated? The attempt wouldnāt require much investment, and it would be a good litmus test as to whether or not we should move forward with the suggested broader initiative? Nick, do you have what Brantley wrote that was pulled down?
Irrespective of how Wikipedia responds now, I still think it is worthwhile to have a full-fledged Wiki of ENS. ENS can host it on its own servers + IPNS (wiki.ens.eth) with credible and updated links to the Governance docs, ENS ecosystem, ENS-related news, EIPs, events/community, R&D etc etc. Iād personally like the output of this to be equivalent to 10 decent papers in as extreme detail as possible. It should become the one go-to place for all things ENS, and serve as a portal to the deeper ultra-technical things. Similar to the Lord of the Rings Wiki but obviously better. It is possible that in the course of this, some core concepts of EVM may also need to be detailed in references e.g. smart contracts. I also foresee pages of TNL, ENSF, EF.
In the end, if not now then sometime in the future, Wikipedia will fold. When it does, weāll simply need to copy-paste. Build for the possibility of success.
ENS Docs are not particularly layman-friendly. In fact, they are highly technical. For instance, this is the second line in the introduction: ENSās job is to map human-readable names like āalice.ethā to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. ENS also supports āreverse resolutionā, making it possible to associate metadata such as canonical names or interface descriptions with Ethereum addresses.
This is already too technical and specific, and I donāt expect any layman to continue reading as they would on a good wiki page, where such information wouldnāt start before a basic, historical and layman context. In other words, ENS Docs lack easy readability.
ENS Docs are not navigable; it is a continuous scroll without any cross-referencing. If someone is really motivated to learn, theyāll have to do a lot of googling on the side. Ideally, there should be as few distractions as possible and the text should flow with the aid of cross-referenced navigation.
ENS Docs can use a lot of visual graphics, including animations. Chain.com does this really beautifully where most of their docs have some sort of nice intuitive visual components.
TL;DR ENS Docs are fine for technical audience but fall short by a lot for laymen.
The Learn docs group has written documentation thatās oriented towards users with no particular background experience. Iām not sure why it isnāt published yet though.
I was exploring websites on IPFS that donāt have associated ENS names and stumbled across the Distributed Wikipedia Mirror Project. Like the name implies itās essentially a mirror of 6-7M Wikipedia articles on IPFS.
Itās probably to far outside the scope of this PFP, but I thought I would mention a rough idea of a potential ENS+IPFS Wikipedia mirror (or at maybe just a mirror of the ENS wiki using ENS+IPFS at wiki.ens.eth).
Learn Docs are good and definitely more layman than Technical docs, but they are still Community on-boarding oriented. But it is nice that a lot of documentation for the ENS DAO already exists, which will make the work under this RFP somewhat easier, if accepted.
Yes, I think thatās a great observation. Even though the technical docs cover a lot, the Learn Docs are written in a non-technical nature as much as possible. It also has some helpful education sections to explain why there are 3 Steps to registering, and topics like what are gas fees, etc.
Getting these these docs up and running was a little bit of a hurdle. Working out better coordination layers atm.
Again any contributors reading this and wanting to help with the future of Learn Docs, please reach out. Any feedback welcome as well. I wonāt take up the space on your pRFP post. But just putting this out there since it came up here.
Wouldnāt it make sense to continue to fund the learn docs, and other docs where needed, rather than starting a new documentation effort using a different platform?
Yes it does! I have come around to the same conclusion. We can start by bringing Technical Docs and Learn Docs under a unified structure, include cross-referencing, adding content to it, expanding it for layman even more, and work on it from there
After a short conservation with @Coltron.eth and seeing @zadok7ās comments, the rough timeline in my mind is as follows:
I will begin writing the missing pages in the Learn Docs in Q2 along with the current contributors/translators.
I will begin writing introductory pages, historical context etc in Q2 in wiki style.
Starting Q3, we will attempt to
a) Unify the Technical and Learn Docs
b) Migrate the Docs off Gitbook to a good front-end with cross-referencing enabled
Happy to hear guidelines or thoughts on this roadmap from @Community_Stewards
