Karma weight decision making

This IMO sounds unlikely. Ultimately token-holders can choose whichever delegate they want. It’s up to them to consider or ignore different data points in making that decision.

As of today, it’s not confirmed if any delegates will be compensated.

Lastly, I don’t have a strong statement as I don’t know how the score is determined, but for me, “forum activity” is not a strong linear indicator of being fit as a delegate - some is better than none, but more does not necessarily mean better.

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Thanks for jumping in. Of course anyone can delegate to anyone but are we going to have delegates that are chosen or advertised or listed by Aragon in anyway? If so, there should be some type of transparent threshold for being pushed out into the front. The purpose of this discussion is to determine how the score will be created, none of us know how the score is determined yet.

In any case, the only use case is not choosing delegates, thats just the one that stood out on the Karma call with the community. It would be good if you could join the next one

No clue if this will be the case.

If it is, I can only share my personal opinion: Delegates will have to make strategic asset allocation decisions - involvement in the forum and voting in the experimental AN DAO is a poor benchmark for having the necessary experience and expertise.

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In terms of Karma representing the delegate subset of contributors: diverse perspectives and the ability to communicate and provide substantiated, constructive feedback is fundamental to governance in any environment. Governance is a process or at least a collection of interrelated processes by which decisions are

  • discussed
  • made
  • implemented
  • enforced
  • re-evaluated

All of these require the ability to communicate which is what Karma currently represents in some form. @fartunov what do you believe are good measures of governance participation that can be effectively represented via the Karma dashboard?

The forum is currently the most open public therefore transparent record of resource allocation to date and benefits from the fact that anyone that cares can contribute here. Unless there is a move away from public discourse as a governance mechanism it will remain a valid data point and imo one of the most representative of AN DAO governance to date.

I think we need to remember that a liquid democracy enables people (ideally) to choose different delegates depending on the decision at hand, and for any reason they want. Personally - recognize my ANT holding is minimal but can contribute to collective decision-making - I would delegate to people with

  • technical expertise in technical decisions
  • financial expertise in treasury decisions
  • in general, to those that I see as upholding values that I believe are important to the success of DAO as an ecosystem. i.e integrity, transparency, accountability, constructive

Other people will choose for very different reasons and there’s no way to possibly provide information to inform all the variables at play. Yet information symmetry and transparency is what we could try to deliver. Karma is just one (tested and potentially effective) dataset, currently reflecting forms of governance participation in terms of time, context, and communication across a limited number of platforms.

Karma is better than the nothing we otherwise have and hopefully only one element in some form of profile that delegates could offer. I expect there will be delegates with sizeable holdings that prefer to remain anon and can achieve ends by operating through others, such is the world but in a Decentralised Autonomous Organization, we have the opportunity to provide some counter-point to the currently opaque means of governance typical of legacy organizations.

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This is a good point, specially since chances are that Delegates will be people that have not been directly involved in the project yet. We could still use karma to track their involment after they are appointed and set some requirements for an eventual second term.

Official Aragon Delegates Vs each person is a delegate only because they have a wallet. Lets make sure we are talking about the former as you can’t stop or limit the later.

This is a good point, specially since chances are that Delegates will be people that have not been directly involved in the project yet.

@Incandenza If people have not been directly involved in the project yet, they have no business being an official delegate… they wont know what the fuck is going on at all. I’d say once they have shown they at least participate in some fashion = understand what is going on somewhat, then they could be a delegate.

A poor benchmark

@fartunov What is the benchmark with all DAOs still being in an experimental phase? 1inch, Aave, Balancer, Ampleforth, Bankless, compound, Decentraland, ENS, Gitcoin, Lido, Maker and many more are doing this experiment and using it as a benchmark in some sort of fashion. I think I will reach out to some of them to see what they are using it for and how it is working out for them. Without any other alternative other than two or three people hand picking delegates, I don’t see any other competing solution that makes sense at this time.

@fartunov what would be very helpful is if you could help us determine the weighting of Karma. If you believe the forum should be only 2% of the factor in determining the weighting, please voice that. Karma might be only one of 10 factors determining an official Aragon delegate but it is a start.

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Maybe I am doing this wrong but here is an idea of weighting for Karma. Its very high level and would need refined a ton. But it’s something to start the conversation. I think if we can get the major categories set in a percentage basis, we can then have the discussion of each one on a lower level.

  • Discourse Forum: 50%.
    ** ----- Broken down -----
    ** Proposals: 30%
    ** Other governance channels: 15%
    ** Other forum categories: 5%
  • Discord: 15%.
    ** ----- Broken down -----
    ** Guild/working team channels: %5
    ** Governance channels: %10
  • Voice Voting: 35%

Now I know Karma is not done on a % basis. It is done on a point basis but this can help us figure out importance of different areas of value.

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@brent as a matter of principle I 100% agree.

But I keep on hearing/reading that ANT holders will have complete freedom to pick whoever they want as a delegate so if this is the case they might choose someone who might have been involved but has never been visible (= would have a very low karma score).

We could still use Karma to track delegate engagement, and at that point being actively engaged could become a requirement

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One last reply that will boost my Karma while effectively decreasing my impact on this project per hour spent on it.

As a data point, Karma makes sense (not in its current form of course), as a formal requirement, it probably will do more harm than good - but again, it’s for token holders to decide.

I don’t believe there is a simple quantitative number that can serve this purpose. The data
available has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. Putting it through a formula that spits out a single number doesn’t fix that. It can be harmful if portrayed as a “strong signal”.

Not sure what data inputs should go in, but certainly, if it’s about delegates tracking, these should start after the DAO is deployed.

Currently, a few people who applied for funding through the experimental AN DAO and people (myself included) whose role was to weigh in on funding requests are given a head start. It skews incentives - contributors on proposals will have to argue who to post it in the forum. If we weigh threads more than replies, it creates an incentive to start a new thread, where replying to an existing one would be a higher net positive. The more weight we give to the score, the worse it gets.

The same applies to discord - if I pick a bounty to stir up conversations in discord, I will get an amazing score. There are strongly advantaged roles that are completely unrelated to one’s competence to be fit as a delegate.

Token holders will be the ones to determine if there will be official delegates and how those delegates will be selected - as simple as that.

Precisely

Only if token holders choose to make it a requirement (hopefully not). Most projects, to my knowledge, are just presenting it as a data point, and then tokenholders make the judgment.

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I’ve got to agree with @fartunov on the fact that measuring these things is difficult. We had something similar happen with Sourcecred when I first joined. Since I was more visible in the community I was receiving 2-3x the amount of rewards that others were. I could see this happening with Karma as well. Those who have high visibility or have been involved with the project for a longer time will have higher scores. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are qualified for this position. Even if we have more context of what is happening within the organization, I think we have all seen how all context can be thrown out the window in a matter of days or weeks. There is also the experience of the person that is being left out with this measuring tool as well.

This isn’t to say we don’t need some way of gauging people’s engagement with the DAO. We definitely should, at least for DAO-level or community-level delegations. But to require anyone to participate to be a delegate or for their scores to be an accurate representation of what they have to offer may be a bit much.

I also think this tool would be just generally useful to have around. For people to be able to see others’ involvement or even their own would be a cool feature and it could encourage them to get more involved if they want to (in order to get their rank up).

We just need to clarify the purpose and be realistic with who will want to be involved. Does it make it right? Maybe, maybe not. Will us pitching a fit about it change that? Absolutely not. If we want to use it, let’s use it. Then let those who want to participate and those who want to opt-out be free to do that. Then the results will speak for themselves.

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Can you apply your weighting @brent and see how that looks? it might be easier for people to discuss actual weighting if we can see how that changes the current dashboard. Can Karma provide a list of the current items and their weighting for us to work from? (baseline)

If karma is an indicator of governance participation that is intended to help ANT holders determine who they want to delegate their tokens, then karma (as a “feature”) is serving token holders.

This conversation sounds like governance participants trying to quantify their own value rather than token holders discussing their needs.

In fact, I don’t see any significant token holders posting here or requesting this feature.

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This conversation sounds like governance participants trying to quantify their own value rather than token holders discussing their needs.

How is that constructive criticism? Is it that we are not sizeable enough token holders for your approval @evanaronson that you deride efforts to provide open feedback and communicate to reach some consensus? Pretty sure everyone here is a token holder and speaking for myself, I would like some information to inform who I delegate to.

This is an open discussion to try and demo a tool that all/any ANT holders can choose to support or not once there is a proposal. We cannot control outcomes, we can only set the initial conditions for certain qualities to emerge.

Clearly, qualities of people are emerging here, but at least some ANT holders still actually care about the Aragon Manifesto and remain committed to

A world in which every person can participate in these new organizational structures.

@brent can we exclude this category from the Karma dashboard, so the ability to have a conversation doesn’t impact “karma”?

This is the great, although challenging, thing about the manifesto. We all interpret it a little bit differently.

My interpretation is that we are all free to participate and free to exit. This liquidity will hyper-accelerate markets. It’s even “marketizing” governance itself, which I see as a prerequisite to “enabling everyone to experiment with governance at the speed of software”, which is Aragon’s vision.

To me, this doesn’t involve consensus seeking, but I appreciate that in your interpretation it does.

Back on topic:
We aren’t using 1p1v, and, in fact, we are using a token-weighted census. Therefore, future experimention within our DAO will be constrained by the assumptions. Karma adds a new dimension, using criteria that haven’t yet been market validated. Therefore, from a user research perspective, my “unconstructive” feedback was that we could cover more ground by focusing on our largest shareholders’ needs who likely have very different delegation criteria than, for example, me with only 50 ANT.

can we exclude this category from the Karma dashboard, so the ability to have a conversation doesn’t impact “karma”?

@lee0007’s feedback is exactly what we need. “Can we exclude this category so people can have a conversation” The answer is yes, we can.

Instead of complaining about how this does not work and why it is bad, we could try to figure this out for the best case scenario for Aragon. We might find out it is great solution or a horrible solution. Maybe it is best for contributors but def not delegates.

In fact, I don’t see any significant token holders posting here or requesting this feature.

@evanaronson I know you don’t you interpret that as token holders wish to be blind to accountability and transparency of delegates and don’t want anyone attempting to find a solution. I don’t see any major token holders here saying this is a bad solution and we shouldn’t push forward with something that brings transparency either.

Maybe if we put together the best case scenario Karma system in front of token holders they might like it. I am sure token holders are not happy with the solution of browsing discord, public notion, and the forum and trying to see who voted on what. If we can’t attempt to find or don’t have a solution, I am sure token holders wouldn’t like that more.

I say until there is another better or even someone challenging solution this is the best as it gets for now as it is better than blindness.

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can we exclude this category from the Karma dashboard, so the ability to have a conversation doesn’t impact “karma”?

I could ask karma to do this but I was trying to have an open discussion and have input from the community so it is US making a change. There are so many things to consider here from multiple point of views that none of us alone are able to think of.

I am refraining from being a dictator here and just applying what Brent thinks, it will be so far off what truly needs represented. The plan was after this initial input/attempt from the community, we could see the results and then adjust, maybe over 6 months until we have it pretty good. Maybe we will have to have workshops over weighting and not over viability or use case in order for this to go anywhere.

We are committed to" Building organizational forms that defend self-sovereignty — where a user can always exercise choice, either by participating or exiting

In terms of self-sovereignty and “participating or exiting” I agree that this does not need involve consensus.

The ability to communicate is integral to participation. How would anyone participate without communicating?

To be clear I questioned “constructive”, unconstructive is your own interpretation. Typically I trust your perspective to be balanced. In this case, I do not see how you equate "freedom to participate or exit’ with the right to present ad hominem fallacies and evaluate participation here based on ANT token holding. Token-weighting (1T1V) applies to voting, NOT to participation (communication) in public discourse.

If you sincerely believe the largest shareholders require tooling to help identify delegates please invite them to the conversation, as their input is equally valuable. Personally, I doubt they require tools to help them evaluate delegates given they have already determined the means of aggregating preferences in the new DAO. I trust they speak up when they see the need and that their on-chain and off-chain reputations already speak for them.

I do not see large ANT holders as the target audience for a karma dashboard and that just because they might not use it that it is not of value to others. This tool I imagine is designed to inform options for smaller ANT holders seeking to support the diversity of perspectives within Aragon DAO governance. Ultimately any proposal to fund Karma ongoing is decided at a vote. At this stage, we are simply trying to inform the Karma demo via collective feedback, THIS is a governance experiment being applied elsewhere

@brent it would be really helpful to know what the current dashboard variables and weighting are, so that people reference points to work from. A target to throw darts at…I recognize the following example has changed significantly in the interim but I am sharing a couple of examples of the variables that the Karma team provided to help with these decisions

In the forum, not all posts are equal. You can assign different weights to different types of posts. Today, the way we have it is

  1. If someone creates a proposal on forum, it gets 10
  2. If you discussed a proposal, 2
  3. General post in the forum 1
  4. You created a thread 3
  5. Like received 0.5
  6. Post read count 0.1

Gitcoin

  1. Offchain voting pct 0.7
  2. proposalsInitiated 1.5 +
  3. proposalsDiscussed 1 +
  4. forumTopicCount 1.1 +
  5. forumPostCount 0.7
  6. They divide the forum score above by Math.sqrt(days a contributor has been a delegate)

Apologies for the delayed response, extremely busy days.

I don’t believe karma should have any “official” status or impact on how delegates are chosen or portrayed as it has little correlation to a delegates impact or expertise within the DAO. I believe the team working on this are welcome to create this how they see fit. If it were to be implemented officially in some capacity in the future Aragon DAO, it should be voted upon by token holders. My vote however would be no as I believe token holders should delegate how they want and if they want to reference this they can unofficially. I believe there should be a disclaimer on it noting what it signifies and what it doesn’t signify (i.e. participation not impact, etc.)

Apparently I am one of the highest ranked without including any of my forum participation which is fun though!

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Thanks for weighing in everyone. Please join the call on Karma ( 2pm UTC Monday in the dTech Discord Voice Channel ) so we can set the direction of its involvement at Aragon.

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Just want to say thank you to the ShowKarma team for your sterling efforts to work with us, and your commitment to developing data as a service for DAOs. Despite the backlash here, thank you for your efforts to adapt your tooling to serve the Aragon DAO. I look forward to seeing your project continue from strength to strength and I hope that we might see a proposal in the future that would allow showkarma’s contributor dashboard to run as plugin for communities that value data :heart_decoration:

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