I’m excited to introduce you to OpenGov.Argumentree.
The projects purpose is to improve OpenGov decision making processes and decision quality, by making it easy to follow the logical flow of arguments and counterarguments.
OpenGov faces challenges due to the prevalent use of social media, Telegram, and Discord groups, as well as traditional discussion forums, which exhibit certain limitations e.g: Lack of structured debate, no argument visualization, potential for echo chambers, inefficient fragmentation of community discussions, risk of misinformation, decision making intransparency, tendency for off-topic discussions and risk of misinformation. These reasons and the lack of transparency in the opinions and views of OpenGov user/voters can lead to user disengagement and potentially bad and expensive DOA decisions.
I would like to suggest a new way of discussing OpenGov proposals.
We should aim for a discussion forum designed to facilitate structured, thoughtful discussion on a wide range of topics. The discussions should also be in a clear, tree-like structure, making it easy to follow the logical flow of arguments and counterarguments. It should offer a unique debate format that allows users to constructively explore arguments for and against various positions, with the aim of promoting critical thinking and a deeper understanding of complex issues.
The setup should encourages users to contribute thoughtfully and to consider multiple perspectives, enhancing the quality of discourse on the platform. The discussion platform should integrate a system for tracking and reflecting changes in consensus, allowing users to see how opinions evolve over time. We should be fostering structured and focused debates, and significantly enhancing the quality of online discussions and decisions.
In my opinion we don’t need ANOTHER governance UI. We need features to be added to existing ones.
I think you should make a live prototype / MVP before going to the treasury for big spender funds, but even better to work with existing teams and integrate these ideas there.
EDIT:
I think another approach for an MVP would be to take the existing comments on Polkassembly, and manually organize the comments into your structure to show an example of what a controversial proposal might look like with this kind of tooling.
I suspect the best way for your tool to exist would be as an alternative view to the chat in Subsquare / Polkassembly, which could be activated by the user.
I’m supporting the idea to improve OpenGov.
Just like you, I thought the the Pro&Con approach is more than interesting,
and I would like to move this forward in whatever way.
From the beginning it was my intention to enhance the existing platforms, which you can see from my initial slidedecks, in which I already mention that it should work for existing platforms.
Link: Contact Attempts Screenshots
Please see also in the attachment, my attempts to reach out to the Polkassembly team, asking them several times to work together on this topic.
I never received any answer, and then decided to move on, on my own…
Regarding your edit: Yes it was my plan to show real examples, but I had to do something after your X post.
Again its still my idea to be able to at least integrate this new way of discussing topics into existing platforms, showing it in a frame, or activated by user…
Argumentree is NOT about voting, its about improving decision making processes and improving decision quality.
You don’t really need anyone’s permission to start scaffolding ideas on top of these projects. Definitely building some kind of standalone prototype makes sense to get moving fast, but it is super important to me that the outcome of your work is not yet another way that we fragment the community.
I am sure I don’t need to tell you how hard it is for people to already onboard into Polkadot and navigate the hundreds of open source projects we have spawned.
The second feedback, which I have given to everyone in the Polkadot ecosystem going to the treasury is to start small, and show us results.
I am uncomfortable approving a $100,000 direct treasury spend to anyone who has not shown a history of successfully delivering smaller project for Polkadot and through the treasury.
My recommendation for the best way forward is to build an MVP using as few resources / hours as you can to show the direction of the idea, and to gather initial public feedback. Ideally you track the time spent to execute that work (in a publicly verifiable way), and you request retroactive funding for that time. I have a hard time thinking that our treasury would not compensate someone for 2 - 4 weeks of work with provable output.
If you want to make a proactive treasury request, that could work, but it must have much smaller scope, clear outputs, and smaller in size and timeline.
One of the goals of Argumentree would be to bring the community together,
instead of fragmented discussions here and there and on Discord and X.
I understand your concerns related to the amount, I consider myself as part of the Polkadot Community, and I would like to work with developers from the Polkadot community to help to improve OpenGov. If you can recommend/assign 2 Polkadot developers of your choice then they will get the money.
Thats the idea.
Please also consider that improved decision quality will safe a lot of treasury money over time, compare 100k to that.
I also understand that you want to see more than just screenshots, which was my initial plan, but here we are. Unfortunately not everyone is a full stack developer or talented frontend designer, which makes it hard to deliver something after 2-4 weeks.
I will try to present some features I worked on in the Monday Kusama “Attempts at Governance” AAG Call.
I’m trying to support, trying to improve OpenGov, with the goal of improving decision quality…
I would support your 3 month retroactive payment request if your code is open source and available to the Polkadot community.
I think you should start there with the 3 months retroactive funding, and then present a second proposal for the next 4 month vision, with your plan on how you want to integrate this product into the existing Polkadot ecosystem.
For example:
PolkAssembly / SubSquare
Polkadot Forum (Discourse)
Twitter
etc…
I think if you are requesting funds for 2 developers, you probably should already have their names and profiles listed to get that funding. I don’t think I feel super comfortable with speculatively funding 2 devs that do not exist yet.
I am still quite firm on the fact that I would not support a proposal for future work to build a new site. At that point, why wouldn’t we just use Kialo directly?
there is no GitHub yet, open source is of course planed but I thought a little bit later.
I would like to integrate it with a link, exactly as you have said:
“I suspect the best way for your tool to exist would be as an alternative view to the chat in Subsquare / Polkassembly, which could be activated by the user.”
We are one community, and its for all our benefit if OpenGov succeeds and also tries new things.
Regarding the 2 developers, I think it would be great, if you could provide me with two names that you believe are best suited for this role please? I would really like to include them in the proposal.
Kialo directly will not work in my opinion, OpenGov is special, that’s why I have started…
Can you understand the problems with having the treasury pay for closed source code?
You cannot go to the treasury to be funded, and keep your code closed source. If the treasury has funded it, it becomes a public good, and must be accessible by everyone. If you want to create a proposal which retroactively compensates you for 3 months, you must provide a GitHub.
Additionally, without an open source repo, there is no way to audit your claims about the time it took, the code being your own, etc…
Regarding 2 developers, it is your job as the proposer to provide the developers, but I can make suggestions that the Polkadot Blockchain Academy generates lots of high quality developers who should be able to do this kind of work. You can post a job listing here:
But do you also see the concern of pre-funding you for two engineers that literally do not exist yet?
I understand. My feedback is intended to help you make a successful proposal to get more work done, and to give you the perspective of someone who is trying to protect the treasury from malicious actors. You are the one who opened a $100,000 treasury proposal on Kusama, and I am trying to explain why it will likely fail.
I want to help you navigate the treasury properly.
Here is my recommended steps which I believe will have a high chance for success (and certainly support from me):
Open source your repository.
Make a new proposal requesting for retroactive compensation for the work done in that proposal.
The proposal / repository should show evidence of the compensation you are requesting.
Work on new proposal outlining 4-6 months of work which involves either just you (assuming you do not have 2 devs) or you and 2 devs (assuming you FIND 2 devs first!)
Explain how that proposal is going to do work to integrate your existing project / ideas into existing platforms like the ones I listed above.
Create a clear goal / outcome from that 4-6 month period where the community can evaluate the work of your team, and then feel comfortable to approve the next proposal for work.
I think with these steps, you will find success in both this project and treasury funding.