The State of Steem Forums : what comes next, do we need committees?
During the second State of Steem Forum last Thursday Matt @starkerz of @oracle-d suggested I put out a 'sounding post' to begin the process of forming committees to build on the momentum of the forums.
In the decentralised, anarcho-capitalist, code is law world of steem the prospect of forming universally acceptable, centralised, decision making committees will be a challenge of the first order.
Although only partially representative and inconclusively inclusive the evident popularity of the two State of Steem Forums so far suggests there is a strong will amongst the community for there to be some process, some procedure, some structure to move forward with taking decisions for the betterment of Steem.
This post therefore is no more than an opening gambit. Posing some questions, making some suggestions.
Then it is over to you, the Steem Community, to praise it wildly, to shout it down loudly or just run me out of town.
Alternatively you are welcome to make constructive comment, so that we can refine and rejig until we can hopefully reach a consensus on what structure and process will be acceptable to the majority.
The first question to answer is whether we need some formal desicion making structure such as committees to move forward?
Alternatively we can continue as we are, with individual developers, community activists and organisations developing and building what they want on an adhoc and as-needs basis, and letting the 'market decide' what prospers and what falters.
Let's explore committees...
For the purpose of progressing my task I am going explore the route of establishing some form of formal structure.
Instantly of course with this route we hit upon some big questions...
What committees do we need?
How many people should be on each committee?
How should the committee members be selected or elected?
How should the committees operate?
What powers should the committees have?
What funding or budgets should the committees have?
and probably a few more that I haven't thought of.
I am sure we could easily spend the whole of 2019 just debating these questions.
That wouldn't be very useful.
If we accept the principle that some structure is needed then my feeling is to try something, see if it works, refine and tweak if it doesn't.
And please remember, while the decisions may be important, the committees will have no powers to declare war on other blockchains, they will not hold the keys to the World Bank, and they will not be negotiating with invading aliens.
So let's give it a go and see what happens.
Before we begin, I would suggest one basic ground rule ... after the initial membership selection process, everything we do should be open and transparent.
If we have secret societies and huddling in dark corners we are unlikely to produce decisions acceptable to all, or even a majority, without resentment and rejection.
We must remember we are few in number and have limited resources.
We must focus all our energy on discussion and decision around a common vision of improving the performance of steem, mechanically, numerically and financially.
Let's just do it.
I am not a witness, I am not a developer, I am not a community leader.
I have no authority to determine or to decide.
But I will take the liberty of having established the State of Steem Forums to offer a suggested place to start.
1. What committees do we need?
I divided the SOS Forums into six themes - will these be appropriate for an initial set of committees?
Technology (API & witness nodes, RocksDB, SMTs, RC Delegation Pools, Account creation)
DApps, Apps & Developments (nodes, business plans, delegations, marketing)
Steem Economics (steem inflation, attracting investors, revenue streams, advertising)
PR, Marketing & Onboarding
Communities, content creation, curation, retention
SteemCommerce, shopping with steem
Do these cover everything needed? Any major areas that can't be accommodated within these 6 committees?
2. How many people should be on each committee?
Too big, too small etc etc.
I would pitch in with a number of 15. Large enough to get a good spread of knowledge, experience and representation, small enough to not be too unwieldy.
Assuming people can only serve on one committee, then 6 x 15 equals 90 people in total - that might be around 1% of currently active steemians.
3. How should the committee members be selected or elected?
This is the toughie.
NO - SOLUTION - WILL - BE - PERFECT
We have no mechanism to elect members of the committees. It would not be worth spending the effort to try to set up such a mechanism. It would not work.
One possible solution to this dilemma...
A Committee Membership Selection Committee is formed initially.
This Selection Committee would consist of 50 'non-aligned' steemians. They would not be witnesses, nor developers of DApps or Apps, nor leaders of major communities.
They would be steemians that have been on the platform for at least 6 months, they would have a reputation of least 60, they would have at least 500 SP and not be powering down.
Just as examples some names that come to mind would be @steevc, @shanibeer, @papa-pepper, @canadian-coconut, @teamhumble, @carrieallen, @creatr, @taskmaster4450, @ericvancewalton, @imacryptorick...
This Selection Committee (SC) would operate as a 'blind committee'. Every member would be allocated a number.
For each of the six functional committees (FCs) the members of the SC would submit sealed votes for all the people that have applied to be on each committee.
Then for each of the FCs a random number generation process would select half of the SC members and only their membership selection votes would be used.
This selection process might be overkill and unnecessary.
Maybe first the SC could try selecting membership of FCs by consensus.
4. How should the committees operate?
Maybe... in a Discord, biweekly meetings, one person, one vote, simple majority, 50% quoracy etc etc.
Fine points to be determined.
5. What powers should the committees have?
The committees would simply have the power to decide on proposals put to them. Decide between competing proposals. Allocation of any funds they have access to.
There is and would unlikely be any pan-blockchain authority
6. What funding or budgets should the committees have?
To be determined. Voluntary contributions?
It is clearly evident this process is not going to be easy.
I do not have a magic wand. I just have a magic mic.
If people are interested I could set this running in 'dry dock' before it is ready to go full steem ahead.
I could set up a State of Steem Discord Server, with channels for each of the Committees.
I could then send out the party invitations and see who turns up.
If no one comes I'll be sad and lonely. But heck, that's life.
Comments please...
[ graphic by @pennsif ]
For all the positive intentions behind this, i think wer going in a wrong direction.
This would imo just create another power structure and power structures at their core are ineffective, create conflict and are slow.
Another thing is that a ordinary user will not care in the slightest about any of that.
What will happen is just a simple reshufling of the same people that have some kind of influence currently and they will be given a title, like a pin on a shirt.
This would just create another layer of confusion.
We dont need "apointed leaders", chosen ones based on stake or how many friends they have, how popular they are, we need action takers that dont need a title, but rather through their action will put themselves in leadership positions in whatever category that might be.
You may say: "Look this guy should be in a committee."
And my question would be:"If that person was an action taker and a problem solver already, what does this committee provide that he already didnt have at his disposal."
Appointing people to variously themed commities is no guarantee of action or that anything will be done.
We need to make things simpler, not more complicated and waste more time.
Users and stake holders react to good ideas and obvious effort, not titles.
To titles, they actually react badly.
I would not disagree with you on this.
I have considerable doubts about whether any 'structure' acceptable to enough people could be achieved.
And a lot of energy could be spent in the attempt.
General consensus on individuals merits can never be achieved imo. But a consensus about positive action can.
Lets not add more obstacles, wasteful discussions about "why him, why her, whos picking, why dont people care more, etc" on our way towards what ever goal we might set..
This is just one more thing we would have to deal with before anything gets done.. Lets just skip to the doing part. 😊
Just my thoughts, was to long to write elsewhere.
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This was the alternative scenario I offered in the post. It may well have merit ....
We may well need more individuals with initiatives than initiatives with individuals...
I would add to the "as is" contributions the ideas i put forth in my post a week ago.
A central account on steem where users can come and get rewarded for task completion...
Thats pretty simple, but needs to be done by someone that can convince large stake holders to back it...
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Sounds like a worthwhile addition. Not sure how to make that happen. Have you any positive responses to the idea from those who might be able to make it happen?
I have, but theyre shy. 😀
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Love these ideas!! I add my points as a separate comment. I don’t think committee is the right descriptor for what I have in mind. They are more resource and idea generation watering holes. No leaders. Only people who want to share solutions and get people on board to help execute the solutions. At an absolute minimum this will stop us from repeating work in isolation.
I think it is important to keep these things very broad and very open and open to interpretation:
In my view these things are not committees. They are task groups or watering holes. Language is key. Committee has too many centralised conotatations
these groups are open discussion forums and leaderless. Not committees. In fact ideally (but not practical) it would operate on the basis of No bias, pure ideas. Ideas judged on their merits, not on the user who proposed them and their influence.
anyone can join. If too many people. Great. People who are passionate about the issues will find the right people to work with even if they have to look through spam (however I don’t think spam will be an issue)
these rooms are idea discussion rooms and resource gathering only. They are places where people who care about the issues can work out solutions to those issues and find out who else is already working on those issues only. Nothing more, nothing less.
This will drastically reduce repeated work and resource issues as a minimum.
no voting. These rooms are for the formation of multiple ideas to solve the same issue. Let the market place decide which ideas are best in cases where there is conflict or disagreement. We should embrace competition where people cannot agree.
let’s use this as a chance to work in a decentralised way, after all we are trying to solve the problems that result from the inevitable corruption that comes from centralised systems. We have an opportunity to try something new. No leaders, no elections, but structures that allow us to work efficuently in an anarchic, decentralised way. Anything else surely returns us back to the world from which we are trying to escape. Anything else makes us as bad as the current day politicians who benefit from the well to do people who set up our political systems long ago.
in cases where a ‘representative’ is an absolute MUST and only when it is a must, we may want to elect an individual to represent us as a community. I am not sure if this is in the scope of what we are talking about here. I would need to be convinced that we need to have top down organisation and then convinced that we need a representative for a particular area. Even after that, these people would not have ‘decision’ making responsibility, but only the responsibility to represent the needs of a group to the wider community.
if we understand the so called scopes of these groups, or watering holes, it would be good to understand further what decisions are required by top down individuals that the market can’t make for us. Until then, let’s get action going by facilitating the place where ideas and resources come together, but nothing more. This is the fastest way to action in my opinion. Then as time goes on we will learn more about whether any one needs electing or what decision power needs to be relinquished to the individual (I expect this to be zero as we should follow the principles of decentralised, leaderless organisation as much as posdible)
steem allows the community to reward and bring ideas to the top via the upvoting mechanism. Due to bid bots and the interfaces on the block chain, this is no longer working well. It is hard to find the ideas and coordinate teams. The purpose of These rooms / watering holes would solve that problem, or at least vastly improve on the current situation until an interface that runs directly on the blockchain is implemented to allow the community to better coordinate itself
Thank you very much for inclusion in the "non-aligned" list, although I should say I haven't reached 60 reputation yet :).
Just a few thoughts on your ideas:
I like the proposals as a way of sharing out and co-ordinating work. I feel co-ordinating will be a big part of each working group or committee, rather than controlling. Perhaps a starting place for each one would be for them to set out a workplan and timescale and any help they need from the community (eg resources, sounding boards etc).
We've discussed this before: the State of Steem is very North American/European focused and that is not where all the users are. Perhaps the formation of smaller task-focused working groups or committees will enable better integration of a wider range of disparate communities or sets of users, and perhaps we (the community in general) should ask each working group/committee to look at how they could do that - what would work for them.
From a personal perspective, if I am being asked to cast votes, I would want to have a conversation with candidates, as well as any structured information-sharing arrangements that may be put in place. I know how difficult I have found it to select witnesses - an ongoing process that I am regularly reviewing - because I simply don't have enough information yet to make good choices. Having the opportunity to talk informally and/or as part of a forum would help a lot. While I like the random number generator idea, I have more expertise to offer in evaluating candidates in some areas than others - I don't know a node from a nail-brush. So if the community decides to go with this idea, perhaps it needs a little refining :)
Good starting place @pennsif, thank you for thinking about it.
Hi Shanibeer, thanks for the feedback and happy Christmas.
The concept and processes will need much refinining for sure. I am not sure there can be a perfectly acceptable system.
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I like the pointed way, you articulate the challenge, Steem community faces when introducing commitees.
In the decentralised, anarcho-capitalist, code is law world of steem the prospect of forming universally acceptable, centralised, decision making committees will be a challenge of the first order.
If you exchange "universally acceptable" by "broadly tolerable", "centralised" by "spontaneously evolving and cristallizing around common questions" and "decision making" by "joining forces voluntarily in a coordinated way" - this could work.
Checking scientific work on social policies for "democratic network governance" could be helpful.
Saying this, a committee explicitly dealing with governance issues, would probably make a lot of sense. This should not be just happening but be reflected regularly.
So much for today. Off to Christmas. Have a great time everybody!
Yes those phrase swaps could make it work...
I am wondering if Working Groups would be a better term than Committees?
Working Group is going to garner much more support (Ahhh, the psychology of titles and names!)
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An alternative could be focus group or circle/network. We'd need something that doesn't lead to the impression that there is a need of a formal mandate for co-creation.
Task force or work groups. These are not committees. Committees implies centralised decision making and we are all hear to avoid that. No leaders. Only watering holes for solutions, idea generation and to reduce the amount of repeated work and increase the amount of self organisation, resource sharing and cooperation
Great words!!
This is a great initiative but also a very challenging one as thoughts are gathered and debated upon. An important consideration should be that each community that in general currently have a role in the ecosystem should be adequately represented. There are also various perspectives for this as you have geographies to consider as well as the actual place they spend their time such as content creation vs curation or developing or just plain investing. The challenge will be how to create that balance to ensure that as many are represented in the committee because effective consensus will be difficult to achieve without it.
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Yes broad representation would be all important.
While small committee sizes might be the most efficient, that would considerably restrict the opportunity for wider representation.
Getting a good geographical / language to reflect the growing and changing diversity of Steem.
Curious!
The original committee should be from as far and wide a reach as possible. not from a group who all know each other.
Yes totally agree. Not sure how to achieve that realistically - particularly crossing language barriers.
I think making the Selection Committee up from as diverse and widespread a group as possible is a must, too!
I'll try to word my thought, even though I'm a bit sleep deprived right now.
In my post, I outlined a somewhat different distinction between committees, BUT, this is a minut issue to bicker over, so as far as I'm concerned the list of committees you suggested, is awesome.
A member selection committee sounds like an effective & efficient way to fill up the seats property. Although a disclosure is needed:
1: I'm one of the administrators of the Israeli community, dunno if we're considered a 'major' one.
2: I sort of started to work with a developer on a Steem App.
2a: He's too busy in the following weeks to code, and so far we just have some code that does a couple if things on the blockchain.
2b: So, maybe in 6 months there will be an alpha released, we'll see.
3: I have 55 reputation at the moment.
Regarding authority, budget allocation sounds like enough. Although I think we should have a list of volunteers, who are willing to put to fruition the solutions the committee recommends.
Funding actually seems easier than I thought. Each committee can publish posts about their work & progress, and set a fund account as the beneficiary. If enough people upvote those posts, the fund would contain a decent amount of STEEM, and serious worker proposals could get funded.
Lastly, I think the committees should be smaller, not more than 7 Steemians each.
And one thing that has to be decided is how public/private the internal discussions should be. And whether a committee should have some Q&A and/or brainstorming with the wider Steem community on MSP Waves.
Many good points here, and many tricky decisions ahead...
If any sort of Member Selection Committee did come into being, then I think the arbitrary parameters I gave would need more consideration.
I'm really interested in this project and would want to be on the Technology committee. I think the first thing to do would definitely to be set up a discord server for committees etc. to discuss this more in detail. Let's go forward with this!
Hi there, now done. Check for invite.
Hi @pennsif, some time ago I put together a proposal for a Steem governance system: https://steemit.com/steem/@borislavzlatanov/steem-s-governance-towards-a-continuous-improvement-system
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the desirability and feasibility of such a governance process. Thanks.
Interesting proposal. Did you ever follow it up? You don't seem to have posted since then.
Buy-in from the witnesses is needed in order to go ahead with this. So far, I've been able to catch only @timcliff's attention. Would you be able to help bring the other witnesses' attention to this?
If the witnesses agree with something along the lines of what I'm proposing, then we can set up a system for submitting proposals and tell the community about it. This will give us a pipeline for processing and implementing ideas.
Figuring out who freedom is...
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