A Kusama Forum - Place for longform debate and healthy discussion

[XyloDrone]

Gm. I think it is worth considering creating a separate tab, toggle or tag for the Kusama forum within this one;

• Less scattered information, easier for the community, etc to follow up on everything.
• Kusama definitely deserves its own section/tab/tag due to the unique culture which has grown around it.
• If we have positioned both chainsin a way that they are sovereign but part of the same brand, our UIs should replicate this even in the basic and less important instances such as forums.

IMO, Kusama deserves a bit more love from everyone and this tab/section/toggle could be a good start.

[JoakimEQ]

Seems like the sentiment is pretty clear / overwhelming. Let’s say we wait until 7 days has passed and then enact the result?

Sounds good? @rhee ?

[rich]

Toggle makes most sense as these are two definitively different tones per the way we see Dotreasury flip between distinct treasuries but that doesn’t quite nail the issue.

.

I think perhaps the real issue is in the blurred lines between Kusama/Polkadot’s protocol components where one is a precursor to the other and share common code (with some parameter shifts) and the treasuries which are definitively different entities with their own independent agency.

The separation of interests/sites therefore makes most sense if we begin at a funding level.

[rhee]

Yup, we heard the demands and voice from the voters.
One thing I want to ask is, do you think simply adding kusama tag just like what you did for this post is not enough to differentiate the topics between Polkadot vs. Kusama?

I’m just asking before finalizing our thoughts and proceeding to the action here: Is this seriously important and crucial for the purpose of exchanging information async through this async forum platform? Cuz everyone knew that this post is about Kusama, when you put the tag on in.

[shawntabrizi]

I do not think it is obvious that sentiment is clear / overwhelming, and I don’t think we should be hasty with actions.

There is a Kusama tag.

At the moment, there are a total of 7 posts tagged with Kusama, of which, I think I was the one who added the tag to 5 of them.

What would be clear to me, is if there is a high influx of traffic tagged with Kusama, that is would justify creating its own Forum Category. This push back is NOT unique to the idea of a Kusama category, but has been the suggested path forward for ALL suggested categories:

• New categories for Marketing & BD

Our approach to the forum has been to minimize categories until categories are dense enough to merit a split. This is a common tactic for community building - limiting the number of channels to create density.

• How to propose a new Category

Note, we got feedback that there were too many sections already in the forum, so we reduced many of the sub-categories, and tried to keep things simple for now. To organize posts, we should use Tags.

• New forum topic: Philosophy

Instead, I have created the “philosophy” tag for you, which you can add to any post, no matter which section it is written in.

You can get all threads with this tag here: Topics tagged philosophy

I hope this will be sufficient to start with, and if there are indeed a huge number of posts, then we can consider creating a section.

I too have proposed categories which have not been implemented yet.

• New Section for the Polkadot Fellowship

It is hard to come up with definitive metrics which would justify a new category created, although I think it would be more obvious than the situation we have right now.

A suggestion might be, the tag must have greater than the average / median number of posts than existing categories on the forum.

@rhee i do not think a poll hidden within a specific forum topic is justification to take any site wide action. The number of active users is much higher than the number of votes collected. I don’t suggest you take actions in general using polls, but instead using hard data and metrics well defined in the rules of the forum.

Before we start adding sections to the forum, you as an administrator must define the process of the forum which everyone follows to make those things happen. Perhaps even an on-chain vote if it comes to that.

[rich]

@shawntabrizi

At the moment, there are a total of 7 posts tagged with Kusama, of which, I think I was the one who added the tag to 5 of them.

i’ve just tagged a few more and i can’t add tags to others that i’ve posted which are Kusama (or DotSama focused) if you were able to Profile - rich - Polkadot Forum

In general though I would put this issue down to people just not using the tagging system correctly - if we search for Kusama in the search and filter via title there are 31 posts with Kusama in the title.

If we drill down into posts that feature Kusama heavily in the content, but not in the title - and really should have kusama tagged, then we’re over 50.

This means it is more popular a topic than a number of pre-existing categories including Polkadot Adoption and Governance.

[shawntabrizi]

Content which heavily includes Kusama does not mean that it should be categorized as such. It would likely make more sense to be tagged as one of:

• Tech Talk
• Governance
• Ecosystem
• Miscellaneous

And then tagged with Kusama.

In fact, this kind of approach scales to many blockchains / parachains in our ecosystem. For example, we could have a Tech Talk conversation about Moonbeam, versus scaffolding new categories for everything.

[rich]

This is getting into semantics - the simple fact is Kusama is a peer of Polkadot, where different stuff happens - reducing it to a tag still feels misjudged imo.

We’re clearly not aware of internal policy / positioning which has moved to focus attention on Polkadot, so I’m going to assume that some of this push back is due to that rather than more general issues.

Rather than debating this on specifics, I think @XyloDrone made the best high level point:

@XyloDrone

If we have positioned both chainsin a way that they are sovereign but part of the same brand, our UIs should replicate this even in the basic and less important instances such as forums.

In the end, per original conversation I had with @bill_w3f, these are permissionless systems and anyone is free to kickstart a new domain and interpret the state as they see fit.

[MrishoLukamba]

Not really, If people would want to discuss things concerning Kusama they would just open up a new discussion named Kusama.

let us not fragment the network traffic

[JoakimEQ]

I believe that what you and @shawntabrizi are talking about relates to “searchability”. Basically answering the question “Can we find a list of topics in the forum that have been about Kusama?”. If you know how to use the forum, yes you know how to search by tag and you know a kusama tag exists. Most users dont.

But searchability is not the issue me and other passionate Kusama community members are bringing up here. We are bringing up the need to rally our community around longform, well-thought-out ideas and intiatives, ones that are aimed at creating large movements of change. We are bringing up the need to pose culture level questions to the community, inviting constructive back and forth that is impossible in IM.

So the question is not “what topics on the forum are about Kusama”
Its “What are the most current and most talked about discussions in the Kusama community at the moment?”

Sure we could get somewhere by just directing to Topics tagged kusama in a bunch of places like https://kusama.network/ etc. but for organic discovery, it requires its own Category page, which allows for sorting by “recent” and “top”. Only then can it be discovered by the Kusama community organically and take its deserved place as the canary chain of Polkadot.

[rphmeier]

We have to operate on the principle of density - never create new channels until the old ones are bursting at the seams. For that reason alone I don’t think we need a Kusama forum. We like to put things into boxes, but there are hidden overheads to every new channel or topic we add that could take away from the liveliness of the community as a whole.

[rich]

Beware of greeks bearing gifs.

As you wish

[rhee]

Yup, got what you mean.
If you go to sidebar, you will see a clickable kusama tag directly from now on.

[JoakimEQ]

yooo! Awesome!

[rich]

An economic argument as to why the Kusama ecosystem will move inevitably towards greater independence from Polkadot - economically, culturally and technically.

@shawntabrizi

the only voting system that makes sense is one which incentivizes token holders to make decisions which are beneficial to making their token value grow.

• To access the treasury, more and more projects are shifting to ‘common good’ strategies where DOT is the primary fee token.

• Teams without traction on Kusama are moving to Polkadot in the hope of getting traction.

• Kusama and Polkadot parachains are diversifying, rather than standardising.

Kusama token holders will naturally move towards a focus on using KSM as a fee token / core to a parachain / product’s economic system.

This clearly positions the relative strategies of KSM and DOT holders as independent cultures that will progressively separate.