Parity's position on forum moderation

Polkadot Forum Meta
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>No (concern-)trolling or otherwise incendiary and/or negative comments and narratives. Keep it constructive and positive.

The threads in question were all becoming violations of this. There is a good way to ask questions and less good ways to ask questions. Yes, we all want the questions answered, and I agree with Basti on this, but hard evidence is required and until that is produced by the parties involved who are privy to the information there is high potential for the discussion getting out of hand due to speculation. If you’d like to lend credence to your arguments, it would benefit to be more neutral in both language and conclusions. It would have taken a really long time to pick apart all of the threads in question, time the moderators currently do not have, so the decision was made to lock them and let people start them anew in a bid to try to encourage more kindness between members. It saddens me to see this is not what happened.

I do not mind answering things publicly, but it was clear that the discussion could, again, quickly become unproductive if people start piling on, which violates the neutral/positive sentiment of the forum. If people have a problem with me or my decisions specifically I would rather them message me first so we can hopefully resolve it rather than posting it in a public forum which is not meant for this sort of thing.

Not sure why ChaosDAO is brought up in any of these posts as they have nothing to do with moderator decisions.

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44

The original post is delivering the on chain proof. Person 1 says X. Then Crane delivered his view of the situation, person 2 says Y. The rest of the thread is about other random things. No one was actually working on checking if X or Y are correct. I can tell you that I’m working on this to finally solve this question on X or Y being correct. I’m tired to see every thread falling apart in accusations and whatever.

I’m happy that you are able to use chatgpt. Not sure what random questions to an AI will bring to this thread, but yeah I’m probably deflecting and distracting again.

If you have all the evidence collected, I’m happy that you have done it. Not sure you already have done it, but maybe start a thread with neutral questions on why this money was paid. Ask for proof and I will also support you in this.

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Its quite simple:

  • You and Remy are both members of CD
  • CD DAO Contributor Crane was getting questioned by the DV’s and wider community
  • You and Remy proceeded to close the topics
  • You personally then directed DVs to operate over DM’s in an attempt to diminish the community access to the information. Are you new to the Web3? Do you understand concept of transparency?

Noone is saying you did this “on purpose”, what we are saying is, this is a conflict of interest. Do you want to be:
a) employed by Parity + Forum moderator
b) member of Chaos DAO

  • Choose one.

You cannot claim objectivity when one of the leaders of your DAO is getting questioned and it is not providing any answers. Also, you cannot claim neutrality - both you and Remy are highly active in CD and therefore as every human open to suggestions or other side effects - herd instinct.

Before closing the topics, did you ask yourself:

  • Am I in conflict of interest?
  • Should I consult DV’s whos job is checks&balances?
  • Have you consulted opengov responsible people at W3F?
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No. And your post is both incorrect and off topic for this thread.

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47

I was going to avoid these topics because 1) I was already in favor of decentralizing the forum because I didn’t agree with the existing rules 2) It’s a waste of effort and time and 3) I don’t know anything about any of these on-going issues.

I was invited to CD and progressed to the highest level of CD, helped organize a few efforts in an attempt to motivate people to do things in the ecosystem. I was later demoted and recently have left all together.

However, when I was the “daoist” level – I invited several W3F members. My logic at the time was that the DV delegations were owned by the W3F and they were within their rights to request to be able to view the on-going governance discussions. I still believe this and still believe that W3F is fully within their rights to request access into any groups receiving DV delegations.

However, the response that I received from the individuals that were invited was that they were concerned it would show preference. I replied that they could apply that for all groups. They were not interested :frowning:

SO — I just want to say, AGAIN, a lot of these dramas could have been prevented if the W3F would just implement a rule that W3F members should be invited to the locations where DV recipients are having governance discussions.

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48

You ask about jurisdiction, but first, let’s look at the data. We need to distinguish between two very different metrics:

  1. The Validator Nakamoto Coefficient: This is high (~132). This measures consensus security (who can halt the chain).

  2. The Governance Nakamoto Coefficient: This is the number of entities required to pass a Root Referendum. This is the metric that matters for antitrust.

Between the Web3 Foundation, Parity, the Founders’ wallets, and the top 3 VC holders (plus their delegates), the Governance Nakamoto Coefficient is effectively < 10.

When fewer than 10 entities control the “legislature” of a multi-billion dollar network, that is not a “sovereign digital nation.” In the eyes of regulators like the DOJ or EU Commission, that looks less like a DAO and more like a General Partnership or a Cartel.

That is why I mention “antitrust.” You can’t claim “permissionless neutrality” when the voting power is this concentrated. The “Eagle” I proposed is necessary precisely because this coefficient is so low.

To answer your Cayman claim and dismantle the utopian argument of “code is law” for the more realistic “law is law,” let me explain the “Effects Doctrine” (which you may have missed in my previous comment):

The US DOJ, SEC, and the EU Commission apply the Effects Doctrine. If your “Cayman” entity takes money from US/EU citizens, or if the decisions (voting) affecting the network are made by individuals sitting in Berlin, London, or New York. The Cayman registration for this matter is irrelevant for the application of US and EU anti-trust legislation.

We have seen this precedent set clearly in the Ooki DAO case: DAOs can be treated as unincorporated associations, meaning voting members are personally liable for the entity’s actions if they violate local laws.

If you want to insist on this line of argument, I would be happy to step outside this thread (intended for moderation purposes) into a new topic specifically addressing this collusion risk.

I am raising this here because moderation policies are a reflection of the “Community’s” intent. If that “Community” is actually just <10 accounts deciding on treasury spend, inflation, and rewards, then silencing dissent isn’t just “moderation”—it is a compliance risk.

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Hi Erin, thanks for the reply. I agree that some of the comments and the back and forth in the original threads in question was becoming toxic.

I think a better way to signal that creation of new threads was encouraged would have been to mention it when closing them down. I think a simple message could have prevented most of the headache which seems to follow the decision. I would remind everyone that nothing of the sort of seems to have been implied when the threads were locked down and a PSA was posted in the Forum Meta category. I’m also a bit skeptical if that was the original intention to even begin with as one can simply investigate the timeline of the activity on all the threads and see that they were originally completely unlisted and after a ~30 minute hiatus they were listed back, implying a pivot in the decision making process and it wasn’t an uniform decision or well-thought out one might say.

In any case, if I’m understanding some of the replies on this thread correctly, there seems to be some people digging into the issues raised by the original posters. Looking forward to the conclusions of these efforts, hopefully in a timely manner.

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The original unlisting of threads was done to ensure access to them was still available but so they wouldn’t appear on the front page. It was nothing deeper than that - we then decided to relist based on feedback from community members. I have never unlisted a thread before so it was a new mechanism to me and seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but heard the feedback and had no issue with the relisting. The threads were only unlisted for a very short period of time.

We also clarified this in the original PSA when the threads were relisted that new threads were encouraged to be made in their place with hopefully more polite interactions:

”The threads are still available to view, however replying to these have been restricted. We encourage the community to continue on their discussions in new threads, keeping the discussions civil.”

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A minor correction to make here would be that the section you posted was added later with an edit and wasn’t available on the original post.

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Yes, exactly as I said above:

We also clarified this in the original PSA when the threads were relisted

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Anyone can stand up a forum or move their assets to a different chain.

I don’t think you get very far with that way of thinking.

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If a central cartel (Hub) controls the network, rigs the rewards, or manipulates governance, telling users they are “free to leave” is not a legal defense. In fact, in consumer protection and securities law, implying a system is “permissionless” and “community-governed” when it is actually “centralized” and “moderated to hide dissent” is called misrepresentation.

I think it is more beneficial to practice Voice (Stewardship) than to call for Exit (capital flight) as you are doing.

Telling stakeholders to “shut up or sell” accelerates entropy and leaves the network with a smaller, more legally exposed group of insiders.

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It is both fascinating and troubling that instead of working together to build up and improve Polkadot, some members of the community choose to tear it apart, often through a combination of rumor and hyperbole. It is very depressing to see this behavior in a community which has gone through so much already.

In the absence of solutions being offered, in the absence of any efforts to collaborate or achieve any form of cooperation, and in the absence of people asking constructive, good-faith questions, the focus seems to be primarily on blame, suspicion and public shaming. This not only wastes time, but it actively destroys trust, pushes people away, and diminishes the innovative capability that Polkadot was designed to provide.

It’s disheartening for those who have committed themselves to this community by coming back day after day to build, support and believe in it. And, most importantly, it produces nothing but a cacophony of sound producing no value: no clarity, no progress, and no community, only noise. If we care about Polkadot’s future, we need to embrace curiosity instead of being cynical, employ dialogue instead of drama, and develop rather than destruct.

Less trust more truth, ok…

But if the future is “Polkadot People,” it will also need some kind of trust.

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56

To close my participation in this thread, I want to return to the theoretical framework I mentioned earlier. I believe it offers a constructive way out of the current “Moderators vs. Community” loop.

  1. Luhmann and the Trap of Binarization

As Niklas Luhmann shows, social systems reduce complexity through binary codes—Law operates on legal/illegal; the economy on payment/non-payment, voting systems on winners/losers.

At present, this Forum is enforcing a shallow binary—polite/impolite (or spam/not spam)—onto a discussion that actually runs on a deeper code: centralized/decentralized.

When moderation focuses primarily on tone, it filters out key signals about the system’s structural integrity. By smoothing the language, you smooth the information itself. You are not merely “cleaning up” the forum; but blinding the system to its own internal reality.

  1. Varela and Biological Empathy

This connects to Francisco Varela and enactivism.

For Varela, a living system—whether a cell or a DAO as a community of individuals—is autopoietic: it self-produces through its interactions with the environment.
Here, empathy is a biological imperative—the recognition that the “other” is also an autonomous center of the world.

If Parity/W3F, as the system’s core, treats the community merely as an “environment to be controlled” or “noise to be silenced,” the structural coupling between core and periphery breaks down. The organism stops adapting; it becomes brittle.

Path Forward:

The “antitrust eagle” and “legal liability” I mentioned earlier should not be seen as threats; they are feedback loops—the environment pushing back, forcing the system to update for its own survival.

If the genuine aim is a global, permissionless system, the shift must be:

From: Controlling the noise
To: Navigating the noise

Concretely, that means:

  • Reduce the cost of participation. Make it easier—not harder—for critical voices to be heard without being pathologized as “unconstructive.”
  • Stop filtering “truth” through the lens of “tone.” Strong or abrasive language often carries high-value information about structural problems—especially centralization.
  • Practice biological empathy. That “jerk in the comments” might actually be a pain signal—alerting you to disease (centralization, opacity, capture) in the main organ.

We don’t need ever-more intricate Moderation Guidelines layered on the same structure. We need better structural coupling between core entities and the broader community—so that entropy is reduced without killing the organism.

With that, I close my participation in this thread. I hope these lenses from Luhmann and Varela spark some fresh structural coupling for whoever carries the torch from here.

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Polkadot: permissionless for everything, except your opinions. The level of hypocrisy here is metastasized, and over the roof.

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I did a little review of @pierreaubert’s suggested inspiration for reform: the “Hacker News” forum managed by Y Combinator.

History:
Est. March 2007 - nearing 19 years of productive signal
2010: Y Combinator starts funding companies found on HN
Today: 300k daily visitors

How productive is this forum?

Y Combinator has used it as an onramp for funding 5000 companies worth $800B in March, 2025.

Products first discovered on the HN forum & funded? Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Coinbase

This forum of productivity has been shaped by the mods and their evolving commenting guidelines.

Imagine what a valuable asset the Polkadot Forum could be to Polkadot during this pivot from infra buildout to valuable product creation.

Productive discourse could be considered existential to Polkadot’s success.

I covered it (including my own transgressions) in today’s Kus at Three.

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I reviewed the entire thread and I don’t find any violations of this.

  • None fits the definition of concern-trolling. According to Wikitonary, concern troll means someone who claim to share its goals, while deliberately working against it. In this instance, it would require someone to either a) support keeping marketing bounty while secretly damaging it, or b) support the investigation of marketing bounty while secretly interfering with the investigation. None of the above happened.
  • The thread was kept positive. I didn’t find any instance which deliberately states that “Polkadot is bad”. The thread focused on marketing bounty only.

The entire reasoning of this moderation action is done in error.

If moderators disagree, please give me specific examples of comments that you think is of violation, rather than a blanket note that the full thread is in violation, which is untrue.

In your Code of Conduct, you also stated a protocol of “Reporting of offences”. Please share the actual procedure of reporting (the contact details, etc), which I’ll then publicly document. There’s a recent post that I believe is obviously breaking the rules (with vulgar remarks towards individuals) and I would like to follow this procedure.

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The CoC also states:

It is not an opportunity to call out for a specific individual to answer arbitrary questions.

I won’t be doing this.

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Yes we need trust, but trust is not created, trust is earned. With zero accountability there can be no trust.

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This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.