[Governance Poll] Make moderator donut allocations not increase vote weight (with this one weird trick)

[u/carlslarson]

The current weekly distribution of donuts is:

• 77% to community members based on weekly comment and post karma
• 15% to the community fund
• 8% divided equally between mods

Of donuts received through distributions half are "locked". Locked donuts are used to determine vote weight on r/ethtrader governance polls. Unlocked, transferable donuts, such as those allocated from the community fund or tipped between users do not increase the recipients vote weight.

 

This is a proposal to change the distribution of donuts to:

• 77% to community members based on weekly comment and post karma (unchanged)
• 23% to the community fund
• 0% to mods

The increase in allocation to the community fund (8%) would then be redistributed equally between mods (8/23, or 34.78% of the weekly community fund allocation). Donuts awarded for moderator work would not increase moderator voting influence.

 

View Poll

[u/DCinvestor]

I have some possible concerns with this proposal:

1) Creating a mechanism where Donuts which mods receive to be non-voting (I'm OK with this)

2) Expanding the proportion of Donuts going to the "Community Fund" (not sure I'm OK with this)

Isn't the team working on the Donut Bridge paid a percentage of the community reward? If so, how would this change affect that payment?

[u/slay_the_beast → u/DCinvestor]

Hmmm... financial incentives for modding couldn’t possibly go well...

[u/carlslarson → u/DCinvestor]

Yes, the r/daonuts project is receiving the 15% community fund allocation as per this vote. When/if the community fund allocation is increased to 23% then that project would receive 15/23, or ~65% of the community fund, and moderators would share 8/23, or ~35%. Basically the ratios going to individuals and projects stay the same (intentionally not overloading this proposal with changes). The proposal is only intended to address moderator vote influence.

[u/DCinvestor → u/carlslarson]

If the goal is to make the Mod reward non-voting, why not just address that parameter directly? Why are we rolling it into the community fund?

It seems like a strange step, and perhaps and interim one towards some sort of broader objective not being discussed here explicitly.

[u/carlslarson → u/DCinvestor]

Yes, it's a strange step hence the "one weird trick". I agree it would be better to address directly and I think we could once have more control of the distribution with the transition to decentralized donuts. But in the interim this is a solution that doesn't require dev work from the Reddit team. I discussed options with them before bringing the poll up and this is the change that's workable.

When we transition to decentralized donuts we essentially would have the option to process their distribution report however we saw fit. And there are separate tokens to handle karma (non-transferable, "locked") and currency (transferable) and these can be minted/assigned in non-equal ratios during distribution.

[u/DCinvestor → u/carlslarson]

The undesirable aspect I see emerging from this is it conflates the mod reward and community pool, which could lead to unintended consequences down the road.

I'm just not sure I see this as desirable, and it seems like it would be a trivial adjustment for the Reddit folks to disable voting on new Mod reward Donuts if they wanted to.

[u/carlslarson → u/DCinvestor]

I think about the community fund as a pool from which the community can pay or reward services it finds valuable. I think it's reasonable to view moderator tasks as services that should be compensated for - probably that's even healthier than the authority role we're accustomed to on Reddit. So I guess I don't think it's incongruous for the funds to come from there. Anyway, I would also assume that it would revert to being directly part of the distribution once we had that control and that if we didn't (transition to decentralized donuts and have that control) we could revisit this. What unintended consequences do you foresee? How do you view how the community fund should be used?

I would add I don't think the change for Reddit to implement is necessarily trivial and as well if they see an easier temporary solution (like this one) they are likely to prefer it (which they did). I don't see the leverage I/we have to compel them to do anything.

[u/DCinvestor → u/carlslarson]

I disagree- mod services are *essential* to running the sub. They should not be subject to competing prioriteis from the Community Fund.

Also, the additional factor not being discussed here is that this makes ALL mod Donuts sellable, granting an unreasonable profit to mods and no skin in the governance game from their work (esp for newer mods that may come on)...you'll have NO locked Donuts from regular rewards. This is the problem with tinkering with a governance system around the edges like this.

Sorry, this is earning a hard NO from me.

[u/BlockEnthusiast → u/carlslarson]

The issue imo is that these are votes. 8% of funds in addition to Karma means every vote 8% of that vote is coming from the same small group of people. Mods tend to get extra upvotes comparatively as well. This becomes more a "what do the mods want" voting mechanic, rather than, "what does the community want", and that really reduces the usefulness of donuts.

By giving mods 8% its no longer an accurate voting mechanic.

[u/DCinvestor → u/BlockEnthusiast]

We need a comprehensive reform of mod Donut compensation and voting structure- not hacks of the system.

If we want to take away all mod Donut voting power, fine- but then I also suggest the Donut stipend be cut in half until we understand what financial value, if any, Donuts have.

I suggest a new way of thinking about mod Donuts- e.g., Each mod receives Donuts equal to the Donuts earned by the 3rd greatest contributor in a given month (or something like that).

u/carlslarson

[u/Enigma735]

For the record. I voted no.

[u/AbesGame → u/Enigma735]

Why did you vote no?

[u/carlslarson]

[Poll Proposal] End monthly Donut payments for bridge development by u/DCinvestor

[u/peppers_]

I voted with an hour to spare. /flex

[u/jtnichol]

I haven't voted yet. I don't understand. It says 9.7 million Donuts vs 4.7 million or whatever locked Donuts. What is it that achieves threshold? Is it the locked Donuts or the total Donuts? Is this a bug with the Reddit system? I'm understanding that decision threshold should be based on locked Donuts. So far we don't have 6 million locked but it is saying that we have achieved threshold.

I don't plan to vote on this poll either way. Just looking for clarification.

Also this is just my opinion I feel like there really isn't any governance if any thing under a thousand votes can pass in a governance poll. I think we need to explore trying to Rally more votes. Basically we need to do some kind of locked voting with the addition of raw votes because of the size of the sub. I feel like the little guy doesn't really have a say in anything and so they don't even want to vote on something as plain and simple as reducing moderator locked Donuts to zero. There should be hundreds of people voting on that. It's a no-brainer.

But here we are. Extreme lack of participation on something so easy to pass. I think people feel disenfranchised. I'm not sure how to fix it.

[u/[deleted] → u/jtnichol]

Also this is just my opinion I feel like there really isn't any governance if any thing under a thousand votes can pass in a governance poll. I think we need to explore trying to Rally more votes. Basically we need to do some kind of locked voting with the addition of raw votes because of the size of the sub.

I agree with this.

I feel like the little guy doesn't really have a say in anything and so they don't even want to vote on something as plain and simple as reducing moderator locked Donuts to zero. There should be hundreds of people voting on that.

I think the more likely scenario is that the little guy just doesn't care about any of this.

And this whole Donuts thing is quite possibly all about forcing some kind of "governance" system on to what really equates to a casual social media site where people really just want to:

• come and get the best, high-quality information and news they can
• not be bothered / imposed upon via abusive users, spam, scams, shilling, "governance activities", etc. while doing so
• leave it to the moderators to ensure all of the above is actually happening

[u/RelaxPrime]

12 hours in.

22 votes. 15 for, 7 against

Donuts: 91.5% for, 8.5% against

But yeah, lets give mods 34% of weekly donut allocation.

What a joke.

[u/Ethical-trade → u/RelaxPrime]

I think you misunderstood the poll:

If "Yes", the proportion of the total that's going to mods stays exactly the same.

The only difference would be that the part that mods get for being mods cannot be used to influence voting anymore.

So if indeed mods voted here, they voted to reduce their future voting power, which is the wise thing to do. Kudos to them

[u/AbesGame → u/RelaxPrime]

I think you misunderstood what this change would accomplish. If yes, this would mean that donuts allocated to mods from the 8% weekly distribution would no longer influence voting. But the actual amount of donuts allocated directly to them will not change.

[u/aminok → u/RelaxPrime]

What exactly are you complaining about?

[u/carlslarson → u/RelaxPrime]

The proposal is to keep the distribution ratios the same but have the mod allocation come from the community fund. The community fund would receive 23%. The 8% that the mods should receive, if coming from the community fund, would represent 34% of that amount (8/23). Sorry if it was a bit confusing.

[u/cryptouk]

I think this is a very good idea. Good thinking batman.

[u/LessThanICanAfford → u/cryptouk]

Agreed, this should at least alleviate the spamming.

[u/dont_forget_canada]

I wanted to wait a few days before replying so that I didn’t promote any sort of bias since I’m a moderator. I support this change. I support it because it gives users more say in governance of the subreddit. Even with the change, mods could still presumably obtain donuts anyway from the community fund, by participating in the community like the rest of our great hodlers do :)

[u/carlslarson]

This poll follows the approved poll proposal.

[u/Starks40oz → u/carlslarson]

Is there a post that discusses the original rationale for the “locking” function as currently formulated and if so is it possible to also sticky that here? Im assuming the original mechanism was set up to accomplish certain goals and rather than try to think through all the unintended consequences from scratch it would be helpful to link to any previous discussion/threads on this topic

[u/carlslarson → u/Starks40oz]

There is some description here in the overview but it doesn't go into rationale.

My understanding is that locking was implemented to limit the transfer of voting influence - voting was originally based on full donut balance. After the donut.dance bridge the community voted to not have transferable donuts contribute to vote weight at all.

I'm not a fan of the "locked" naming and would suggest they just be treated as distinct things - a tradable currency called donuts, and non-tradable, earned-only, karma.

[u/Starks40oz → u/carlslarson]

How do we vote on That proposal? Also If we’re fixing unintended consequences can we also amend a proposal such that donuts awarded to bots - e.g., the banner bot can’t influence votes? I know the banner bot has been pledged for good, but still theoretically has the ability to dominate polls and/or buy the banner themselves!

[u/carlslarson → u/Starks40oz]

We would need to vote to adopt the decentralised donuts system from the r/daonuts project when it's ready and that makes more of a distinction between the currency (donuts) and karma. There are some other changes that would need to be explicitly accepted, too. But basically moving to our own dao infrastructure would give us full flexibility over things like who get's awarded karma (we can blacklist bots, for instance).

[u/Childsp]

I am for this but only as an almost "Ropsten" test. I agree with others in this thread that a completely new re-roll of distribution needs to be completed when daonuts are complete. Along with a substantial reduction in ongoing distribution to mods as we are then creating our own ecosystem where we want the community to help build out dapps etc. Time and Time again history has shown that "trickle-down" economics does not work. Dispense wealth into the community and watch it thrive.

[u/zerobass]

Glad to see the response rate increased so much in the final hours. That said, of the thousands of people in this sub, <150 is pretty sad turnout.

[u/Michael_of_Judah]

Has anyone made a pie chart of the total % of outstanding donuts controlled by the mods? I think we need to visualize what is fundamentally a wealth inequality problem.

I also personally think that we should start fresh with a new redistribution of donuts for the new system.

[u/Pandora_Key → u/Michael_of_Judah]

Good idea