It doesn’t say or include the following in the Polkadot DAO Constitution - Second draft by Hope Clary
- That there is a requirement for “symmetric conversational patterns”, where the punishment is being blocked.
- Suggest writing “statements” (based on “assumptions” that accompany them) as suggested here by @alice_und_bob instead of first asking clarifying “questions” to establish whether your “assumptions” are correct before making potentially false “statements”, and accompanying those “statements” with a disclaimer that your statements may be incorrect if you haven’t been able to clarify their truthfulness privately.
- Examples of expected “symmetric conversational patterns” that represents good and bad behaviour.
- Examples of “passive aggressive” behaviour that represents bad behaviour.
- Mention how many legitimate “questions” (whether they are invited by the person being questioned or not) to challenge a proponent you are allowed to ask without it representing “passive aggressive” behaviour or an “asymmetric conversational pattern”.
Example
Given:
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Two actors Person A (proponent of an OpenGov proposal associated with a media empire) and Person B (independent news reporter and impacted OpenGov community stakeholder of the proposal by Person A)
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Two conversational approaches 1) and 2) below that Person B could take toward Person A and their proposal.
Approaches:
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Write statements that are based on assumptions and invite stakeholders to correct the assumptions in order to change the statements.
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Write questions that mostly involve only a Y/N answers to promote two-way conversation when you have a concern, and invite stakeholders to answer them too before doing Approach 1), otherwise you risking making incorrect statements based on incorrect assumptions.
Assumptions:
Case Study:
In this case study Person A is @alice_und_bob, and Person B is myself.
Person A posts this question, asking whether their audience has any comments by asking the question “Comments?” (plural, inviting >1 comment in response).
Person B in their audience answers their question, not initially realising the question was associated with Polkadot Referenda #1166 by asking two clarifying questions (one of the two questions invited a simple Y/N answer) over an 8 min period by using Approach 2).
Person B in their audience finds another comment in the same thread by Person A here that mentions the “new marketing bounty”.
Person B assumes that this other post from Person A is associated with the “new marketing bounty” of Polkadot Referenda #1166 polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/1166. Person B then asks a further five questions (four of the five questions invited a simple Y/N answer).
Person A threatens to punish them here by blocking them on X for asking clarifying questions by adopting Approach 2) instead of making statements using Approach 1), since they consider Approach 2) representative of bad behaviour (“passive aggressive” and “symmetric conversational patterns”).
Person A avoids answering any of the questions from Person B by making a “statement” that is based on incorrect assumptions, claiming that they understand that the hobby of Person B is to “just shoot out questions all day long as your way to interact”, which is a complete exaggeration and not true. If Person A adopted Approach 2) instead of Approach 1) by asking Person B a question then they would have known it was not true and avoided spreading false information about Person B.
Person A appears to adopt a hard-line approach in their belief that interaction through questions and answers using Approach 2) to openly establish the correct assumptions upfront “is not how interaction can work”, and they state their reasoning is because it “is impossible to answer all the questions popping out of your imagination because it would take up half my day”, even though Person B only asked them those questions over a 38 minutes (not “all day”), asking them five questions that invited Yes or No answers in response, and two questions that invited a longer answer.
Person B writes three posts as “statements” to defend themselves, including this, this, and this.
Person A writes another post here with a exaggerated “statement” that is false by stating “95% of what you do is post (sometimes endless) lists of questions” because they didn’t first ask Person B a clarifying question to determine precisely what they actually do, and claiming that “multiple people have already made you aware that the way you do it is not constructive”, which is true, a few have pointed that out, but as far as I am aware all those people were ChaosDAO members, but a preference for “statements” using Approach 1) and selective transparency and disclosure of responses to answers to questions from the community that wish to adopt Approach 2) is not representative of the wishes of majority of the community.
Person A also states in that post in response to this question from Person B that “implying criminal behavior is a serious matter. expect serious responses”. Person B assumes that Person A said that because of this question x.com, which was raised because of the potential issue that was raised by this comment in defence of the ecosystem x.com, where Person A had explicitly invited comments. Unfortunately Person A has not responded to either of those questions, and Person A was not willing to write them as a “statement” because they didn’t know if they were true or not.
The fact that Person A refuses to answer any questions, brings into question concern over whether Person A is restricted somehow from answering certain questions, clearly they are time constrained, perhaps their budget is too constrained at the moment, otherwise they could just delegating the task of answering the questions from stakeholders in the community to @jeeper or someone else who is able to answer them.
If Person A doesn’t have the budget to hire an assistant to delegate the task of answering questions from the community to, and Person B does not believe they will receive an answer to their question by just adopting Approach 1) and issuing a “statement”, particularly since they do not want to be pressured by Person A to only engage in conversation through “statements” that could be incorrect or based on incorrect assumptions, but Person B is willing to pay for someone to find out the answer to their question or questions, then perhaps it would be more appropriate for them to create an on-chain bounty with their question where they reward whoever in the community is able to find out the answer to that question for them, or even crowdsource funds from other stakeholders in the community that wish to fund a bounty to have their question answered, since that would avoid them upsetting Person A by asking them a question directly and being blocked by them on X, and also allow them to avoid being forced to only issue “statements” to engage in conversation with Person A, which they may not be able to do without it being based on the correct assumptions.
Alternatively, rather than openly commenting in response to that thread about issues that are relevant to the community on X or as a comment in the proposal, Person A could instead ask the questions verbally on AAG or OpenGov Office Hours, but by doing that they could be at risk of selectively not being chosen to speak, or having their questions and answers censored from being publicised, in which case they may feel the need to just openly comment in response to that thread on X or as a comment in the proposal as they originally intended, as they originally intended, or in an on-chain system remark, when it may be more ideal to ask their clarifying “statements” privately with the proponent first.
Initially there appears to be a risk associated the hard stance that Person A in their expectation of others to only engage in written conversation with them using Approach 1) instead of Approach 2), since they a Head Ambassador (HA), involved in the Marketing Bounty 2.0 proposal, and involved in ChaosDAO, which provides them with a lot of influence on enforcing that culture across the ecosystem.
If Polkadot was built on the premise of free speech but Person A elected to limit the range of expression that the Polkadot community is allowed to use (particularly those that wish to challenge OpenGov behaviour), where they might try to ban the asking of “questions” (only allowing “statements”), or social media bans preventing those that prefer to write multiple questions from receiving a response or preventing them from participating in OpenGov Office Hours and AAG or censoring them incase they do not want their legitimate story to be heard that could be important for the ecosystem.
The community needs to be careful what influence they have on restricting the culture if they have a large say on what gets included in the Polkadot constitution, where they may introduce laws restricting OpenGov participation unless their freedom of expression is filtered, similar to today’s news that is filled with examples limiting the allowable range of expression.
If they have the power to restrict freedom of expression from the community that participates in OpenGov by only allowing them to post “statements” instead of “questions” and filtering and censoring their comments so only “statements” from the community may be viewed by proponents and also censoring or preventing them from providing their “assumptions” and any “disclaimer” by providing a word limit by adopting Approach 1) rather than being open to adopting Approach 2), then this could upset and trigger inappropriate behaviour from proponents since they could be reviewing “statements” based on incorrect “assumptions” if community stakeholders weren’t allowed to ask clarifying “questions” using Approach 2), and the proponents could choose to ignore or selectively answer the questions that were phrased as “statements”, which may not help resolve community issues, leaving the community with the incorrect assumptions that they started with.
It may not be healthy to restrict freedom of expression, making those in the community feel pressured to only write “statements” in order to engage in written conversation based on incorrect assumptions. It may force them into thinking that the only way they are allowed to engage in conversation if they have a lot of questions without being labelled as a troll is through being forced to write false “statements” (fake news), which they may not want to do, but it may be the case that it may not be possible to first ask the proponent any clarifying questions privately to determine whether their assumptions are true or not.
Proposed solution and “conversation” steps:
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[Optional] “Private” conversations first. First use Approach 2) by privately asking the proponent (i.e. Person A) the “questions” along with your “assumptions”. If you know they are opposed to “questions” or they say so, then adopt Approach 1) by writing “statements” and your “assumptions” instead. It may be necessary to even avoid “private” messages if Person A has already warned by Person B that they could be blocked if they make a false more, or if they have already been blocked.
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If they ignore your “private” messages or you want to skip asking them, and the community only allows “statements” to be publicised (Person A’s preference), then you could publicly post the “statements” along with your “assumptions” even if both are incorrect, whilst also providing a “disclaimer” disclosing that your “statements” could be incorrect because you have not been able to or do not wish to engage in private conversation with them to clarify what is correct, since you want to do that to protect yourself from making a false statement.
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If Person B is not able to obtain a response from Person A, they could pay for someone in the community to find out whether their “statements” are correct or not, by creating an on-chain bounty or bounties with their “statements”, accompanying each with their “assumptions” and disclosing that their “statements” could be incorrect because you have not been able to engage in private conversation with Person A to clarify what is correct or not. Person B could even crowdsource funds from other stakeholders in the community that wish to fund a bounty to determine whether the “statements” are true or not.
