I’ve been thinking about how we can improve the quality of our referendum proposals. Lately, it feels like many of them are filled with buzzwords and unnecessary details, making it hard to get to the key points.
To help with this, what do you think about implementing templates that cover most of the typical referendum components per to be defined “ref categories”, along with a general text limitation? To initiate a brain-storming, an example:
Clear Objective: What is the main goal of the proposal?
Technical Feasibility: Is the proposal technically sound and implementable?
Economic Impact: What are the financial implications and funding mechanisms?
Stakeholder Impact: How will different stakeholders (developers, end-users, “investors”) be affected?
…
PLUS ref-category related questions
Personally, I believe this will make our governance process much easier, as we’ll get used to reading information in the same way each time to reach conclusions.
That wouldn’t be a problem if done well and with the right guidance. AI can assist inexperienced people who haven’t learned how to write papers/business cases for example, by helping them be concise and ensuring that each sentence contributes new information.
Maybe we should think about AI-assistance as well.
But the weakness here is that it’s not enforced in the process, is it? We need to find a way to ensure that it is. No one should be allowed to post, or the referendum should be rejected, if these information are not provided.
The goal for this would be to make it signable before posting in OpenGov. It is meant to be guardrails and honestly that website is off in the distance, not currently part of Polkadot.com or maybe its not easily findable because there is no search on the site yet ?
If you believe it should be in the constitution, then please add a comment in the location you believe it fits with the link and when I make the next version I will add it.
Enforcement comes through the actual voting of a proposal - if structure is a strong enough reason to aye or nay, it will be made clear by the outcome of the votes.
Currently, there is a basic template put forth by two trusted entities OpenGov Watch and OpenGov Tracker - following these methods puts a proposal in a more favourable light for review.
If you (or anyone else) feels a proposal does not meet a standard of structure / clear information - vote against it.
Policing and attempts to re-vamp the way OpenGov operates is not the way to go…
Permission-less cannot be the reasoning for everything. Then forget about „allowance“ and lets focus on „integrated assistance“ in the drafting process, to keep „permission-less“ the priority.
It is not the reasoning and you are missing my points entirely.
1 - If you feel that there can be improvements made to the existing templates, reach out to the team at OGW & OGT and propose your changes - discuss with the entities who have already made efforts to create standards for submitting proposals.
2 - Enforcement comes through voting. No matter how many ways we attempt to implement standards, there will always be outliers - just like how driver’s will run a red light even though there are rules / standards in place. Instead of trying to change the way traffic systems operate, get in touch and work on improving them through various ways (revert back to option 1).
It’s great to see so many active people looking to make things more effective, however, simply brushing off the work already completed and attempting new frameworks & enforcements without discussing these procedures with teams who have already put in time, ends up undermining the entire process.
This should not be enforced on-chain, as these kinds of rules and requirements change all the time, and will ultimately not be needed for on-chain consensus.
This could be enforced socially:
UIs provide a template
Voting bots which vote NAY on proposals missing this information
Individuals posting on the proposal requesting this information
DVs not allowed to vote AYE until this information is included
etc…
All of these social enforcement systems I support in general.
I would put most emphasis on the categories/tagging to improve ways of showing relevant proposals based on people’s interests and skills.
As for asking more specific questions, here is an example from Cardano Project Catalyst: Community
The Ideascale UI is horrible. Please disregard that (they are building an open source alternative called Catalyst Voices). This was juat to show the questions.
The community reviewers are then asked to rate each proposal based on their impact, feasibility and value for money.
?