Utopian Think Tank Proposal

Due to the quick growth of Utopian interest, author contributions with varying quality levels get posted at an ever-increased frequency, causing a tremendous workload for a relatively small group of moderators trying their best to separate the wheat from the chaff and doing that as objectively and swiftly as possible. On top of that, many authors not satisfied with a contribution moderation or simply not understanding the current Utopian rules of what's to be perceived as an "acceptable" contribution or not, discuss moderation assessments with moderators, causing an even higher workload. And last but not least, moderators themselves frequently discuss how to handle individual edge-case contributions, and from that if current rules should be changed or not, and if so, then how. This in effect causes the average review time to grow, causing even more author complaints on how come their contribution was not yet moderated.

In the last week, in an effort to deal with this ineffectiveness, Utopian has internally re-organized somewhat, via the concept of "Teams", where each team of moderators is assessed by a Utopian Supervisor. The distinction has been made, this way, to let moderators assess content / contributions and to let supervisors assess moderators.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? == Who guards the guards?

We have, with the new Team-approach, already addressed how to assess "potentially corrupt or incompetent" moderator behavior. (Please note that all moderators (seem to) have good intentions and that everybody works as hard they can). The next question is, who should assess the Supervisors? And maybe even more important: how to effectively combat inefficiency, turmoil, and confusion about Utopian contribution rules?

Therefore I hereby propose the following concept of a "Democratically Chosen Think Tank" as a means of organization:

1. Periodically (every 3 months) an odd number of people (5) are chosen, by the public, in a democratic way, to address Utopian issues like "Supervisor assessment", "Filter proposed rule set changes", "moderator rewards", "platform functionality" etc.;
2. Every Utopian contributor may volunteer as a Think Tank Candidate, can be chosen to act as Think Tank Member for a period of 3 months, can be re-chosen by the public indefinitely;
3. This way we have a democratic mechanism, that guards the guards, and using that, we can stop the quarreling and improve efficiency and quality;
4. to let the moderators moderate content;
5. and let the supervisors assess moderators;
6. and let the current Think Tank assess supervisors and filter proposals like ule changes and platform functionality;
7. we can all co-exist peacefully and harmonically to let the Utopian ideology thrive.

Example of how to volunteer as a Think Member

If I - or anybody - would want to volunteer as a Think Tank member, please review both my proposed implementation rules as well as the design mockup how that would look (in the mockup I displayed how the front-end would look if I volunteered).

Technical Utopian.io Think Tank Front-end software implementation

• the Think Tank voting functionality should in my opinion be placed at the Utopian website mid-end,
• only accessible to and retrievable by all active Utopian / Steem users,
• once logged in to the Utopian mid-end, a dedicated area accessible via the menu-item "Think Tank" located at the top mid-end menu bar, should be clicked to access the "Think Tank platform area",
• at the Think Tank platform area, a sub-menu should be shown, including: "Candidates", "Proposals", "Polls",
• at the subsection "Think Tank Candidates", functionality needs to be added to let every Utopian volunteer themselves as a Candidate via a button "Add myself as candidate",
• below that button, a list of current Candidates is shown, ordered descending by the number of current "thumbs up",
• every Utopian user that has at least contributed one accepted contributions are allowed to vote upon candidates, to effectively deal with multi-account / bot voting,
• 5 candidates may be thumbed-up per logged in Utopian contributor, thumbing-down is not allowed on candidates,
• the Candidate voting period is open for elections until the next Think Tank period begins,
• at the subsection "Proposals", current Think Tank members may add new Think Tank Proposals,
• below each Think Tank Proposal, every logged in Utopian has the possibility to add their thoughts, possible pros and cons, regarding only that proposal, as a means to address possible consequences and new ideas,
• only Think Tank members have the possibility to moderate Proposal Comments,
• at the subsection "Polls", voting rounds are held, with large-enough time spans, regarding proposals,
• every Utopian that has at least contributed one accepted contribution is allowed to vote upon proposals, to effectively deal with multi-account / bot voting.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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