Governance Model for a Community Bot
There is a lot of talk about Community here on the STEEM platform but what does Community really mean? Do we need to replicate real-world communities and have official Community Leaders and some sort of Hierarchy, or are we capable of self-governing autonomously? I think that technology and specifically the STEEM platform could enable the latter and I touched on this a bit in my post this week Anarchy is a Cool Idea…But can it Actually Work.
Source
When it comes to Community Voting Bots here on STEEM though the waters get muddy because at the end of the day somebody holds the Private Keys and so collective or even just joint ownership is technically problematic. I wrote earlier about one way of returning value to Communities and at the same time reducing the risk of having an expensive central point of failure by keeping the Community Voting Bot Powered Down. But I want to go a step further by suggesting a Governance Model for a Community Voting Bot that I believe might be a step in the right direction.
Source
When it comes to running a Community Bot it is important to have a Framework and I’ve tried to split it into 2 parts. The first part is what I would categorise as Governance, which I think of being a bit like a “Constitution” that outlines some of the safeguards and rules for how decisions are going to be made. The second part is a bit more like Policy or Parameters that can change and be more flexible according to how the Community involved might want to manage things. I might try and cover that second part tomorrow as it needs to get a bit more into the nitty gritty of things and it needs a bit more thought but for now here is my ideas for the Governance part.
EDIT : The second post about Policy Parameters is HERE
i) Any Community Member can initiate a Petition For Change by posting a Comment under a recent Community Bot Post on the STEEM platform
ii) Once Petition For Change has 20% of Community Member Upvotes it initiates a formal Proposal for Change and a Community Membership Vote
iii) A Proposal For Change is formally drawn up by the Community Bot Operator who Posts it on the STEEM platform and it is voted on voluntarily by Community Members
iv) If over 50% of the Community Members who vote are in favour of the Proposal For Change then the Community Bot Operator makes best effort to implement the proposed changes
v) Community Bot Operator holds the Master Key for the Community Bot Account
vi) Community Bot Account has a pre-determined Power Down Threshold and once that is hit a Power Down is initiated on the Community Bot Account to prevent wealth accumulation
vii) The proceeds of the triggered Power Down is returned to the Community Members via purchase of a Delegation Lease to boost Community Bot Upvote value
viii) Community Members may decide to change Community Bot Operator via Petition For Change and the Master Key for the Community Bot Account will be transferred to the new Community Bot Operator
ix) The Active/Posting Keys of the Community Bot Account can be Granted/Revoked for Community Members via the Petition For Change process
This type of Governance is a form of Direct Democracy that can empower the Community Members to have the ability to ensure the Community Bot is managed appropriately and in the continued best interests of the Community Members. It also provides the Community Members with some Redundancy for holding Keys to ensure funds are not lost as well as Safeguards against the loss of the Community Bot Operator due to misappropriation or tragedy.
Source
I would be very interested to get some feedback on this as it is a very current issue for one of the communities that I am involved with and I am hoping to come up with a solution. If you are from that community then your opinion is even more important and valuable so please speak up.
https://www.quora.com
https://www.loveandsayings.com
https://dailytimes.ng
Haha. You want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes? So do I :)
Sounds great in theory as long the master holder can be trusted (can anyone?)
100% worth trying out with a review after 2 or 3 month period.. . ?
Thanks. At the moment it is only theory but it might get a run at some point.
This is a very good start. Along with vi (PowerDown) and vii (PurchaseDelegation), let's remember that rewards of STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS exist and a similar threshold is needed. So, when STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS reach the threshold, PurchaseDelegation occurs.
This is a really good point I hadn’t considered. The trick here is to limit wealth accumulation via liquid assets without causing a difficult cashflow problem for running the bot. For instance, with a monthly membership drive and people contributing in Liquid STEEM the account might become flush temporarily. Or the community might want to save up for a longer term lease maybe a 6-12 month lease. I’d be tempted to make it proportional to the Power Up Threshold (since it’s related) eg, Liquid assets not to exceed x% of Power Up Threshold. Alternatively put a time limit on how long liquid assets can be held, eg, Liquid rewards from posts need to be reinvested in Delegation Leases within 1 month. It’s a tricky one that needs to allow for reasonable bot account operability as well as prevent wealth accumulation that could lead to misappropriation.
Do have any suggestions on some legalese type words to put into a clause?
I have thought about it all night and I don't have a great answer / legalese . . . maybe it's just to modify vii (change in italics):
vii) All proceeds from author rewards, curation rewards and the triggered Power Down are returned to the Community Members via purchase of a Delegation Lease to boost Community Bot Upvote value
Ok, sounds good. How about this modification :-
vii) All proceeds from Author Rewards, Curation Rewards, Membership Contributions or Powered Down STEEM are returned to the Community Members via purchase of a Delegation Lease to boost Community Bot Upvote value unless an explicit contingency expense has been approved via a formal Membership Vote.
Plus a new item :-
x) Any extra voting contingencies must be approved via a formal Membership Vote
Yup! All sounds good to me, worth the consideration of all. Great Job!
I like seeing this transparency! @ironshield
What you are proposing is a Smart Contract...EOS will be able to handle this...Which makes me nervous for the long term viability of Steem if @dan releases an improved social meadia platform on EOS.
It is hard to know if, when or how a new EOS based platform might come about. My thinking is that the community groups could potentially span multiple platforms, or if one dies it could migrate to the other. At the end of the day a community is made up of people, so while we operate here on the STEEM platform now we actually don't need to and if we're strong we could easily transcend it.
Agreed...but I like where your headed on a proposal
I'm also at the point where I started thinking more about community initiatives and upvote groups / bots. I came up with a new type of model for it myself rescently which should be fair, very transparant and win-win for nearly everyone over time. (I'm still tweaking everything and waiting for hard fork 20 to probably try the model out) The only real issue is the centralised private key. thinking about it, if I was a malicious fuck it would be easy to run a big bitconnect type scam on Steemit.
You bring up some very interesting points about governance I hadn't thought of before. Thanks for the ideas!
Can you quickly explain what Steemsilvergold is exactly?
Steemsilvergold is a tag used by precious metal stackers on steemit, to share info on the metals, places to get them at better prices, show off new items gained.... That kind of stuff 😀
Makes sense, thanks for the info darkmrmystic !
Yep, what he said. It is one of the bigger (and stronger) communities I've come across here on STEEM.
That's one my concerns. Crypto is awesome tech but it can easily be exploited by the unsavoury types so if it's going to work for our betterment we need to wise up a bit and come up with social/political systems that utilise the technology advantages and protect against it's failings. Would be happy to advise or even directly help you with your own community initiative if you like.
This looks very doable my friend. As long as the rules are in place before the start, there should never be any major issues. Great post @buggedout. Thanks for putting the time into this.
Thanks Ray. A lot of us give back to the community in different ways and this is just my way.
HIT. NAIL. HEAD! springs to mind. Open and honest, for the many not the few.
Sounds good. But how will you enforce it? What if the community bot operator doesn't hand in the master key and takes the fund out? I'm just thinking...The framework is smart. Just want to see how you propose to limit the damage if the operator mucks around.
That is the purpose of the Power Down Threshold - To limit the damage caused by a recalcitrant Community Bot Operator who refuses to hand over the Master Key. They might get away with some funds by clearly fraudulent means but the community is protected from a large scale misappropriation.
Sounds good. I think it makes sense now. The only issue is trusting the operator and yes this is a good approach to limit the damage. It's the same with business accounts: How do you give an account key to a s staff and invest in it if at all? Powering down after every 500 steem power is a good option
I think so as well...it needs to not beable to gain to much power so it's bigger than our biggest members and deffo not for profit...But i dunno if we need a bot as it upvotes content regardless of the quality and that can be bad for the group.
That is a good point that I hope to touch on with todays post about Policy Parameters. There is no reason why a community could not require some minimum standard, handle complaints and even issue sanctions (deny the upvotes) for people making poor quality posts. My feeling is that it's up to the community to decide.
Indeed the community should decide. all we can do is come up with idea's and really put out good content.
We up against it anyway as Pm's not so popular and we kind of always be a minnow group. until Pm's go mainstream like crpyto.
“Ultimate power, ultimate corruption” .... no one person should have so much power.... always a check and balance system.... there should be a term limit.
For the Bot Operator? I had not considered a term limit since they can get booted at any time, but it's an idea with merit. Thanks.