Catalyst Suggestion - Start a simple voter knowledge resource

Governance Project Catalyst
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Overview

Progress has been made within Project Catalyst where a dedicated documentation resource has been started (docs.projectcatalyst.io) to document the important processes, policies and high level information about the funding process. This documentation better enables the community to become well informed on how to effectively participate in the Catalyst funding process.

Currently there is still a lack of aggregated ecosystem information for voters to consider when making their own informed decision on which initiatives to support. A resource that helps to bring together this information could be a useful way to record the different sources of information that exist and how they can be useful for voters.

Some resources exist in the ecosystem that can help with learning about the ecosystem itself such as Essential Cardano. However these resources are still limited in scope and do not fully inform the voters of all the resources that exist or provide all of the relevant information for Catalyst voters to consider when making their own decisions. The creation of an aggregated list of resources will be a good first step forward to better understand what sources of knowledge exist at the moment and what areas of knowledge could be further improved or introduced. The more informed voters are the more accurate and effective their decision making can become.


Problems

  • Lack of awareness of all relevant resources - Voters currently are not actively encouraged to view different resources that might be useful for making more informed voting decisions. Currently the funding process is reliant on the voters finding all of these resources themselves and understanding why they might be useful for improving their decision making.
  • Identifying what resources are missing - There are no currently efforts that help with identifying which resources currently exist and which resources need to be created to help with improving the knowledge that is available in the ecosystem and more specifically for helping improve the Catalyst funding process. Making it more well known which areas of information are lacking can help with inspiring the suggestion of new solutions to tackle those problem areas which can eventually lead to improving future voting decisions.
  • Uninformed voters - Voters that are not aware of resources that can help them improve their decision making would not be as informed as they could be when making important voting decisions on where to disburse treasury assets. This could easily lead to poorly allocated funds to less impactful initiatives.
  • Overly time consuming for voters - Making a list of knowledge resources can help the voters become more informed when making decisions. This will be useful for making it more apparent on how complex the voting process is and how much time would be needed to be well informed when participating. Understanding how complex and time consuming this information would be for voters to find and digest this important knowledge can be an important step in identifying potential improvements to how existing knowledge sources are improved so they become quicker and easier to read and understand. The faster it is for voters to go through important and useful information the more scalable the voting process can become.

Suggestion option #1 - Create a voter documentation section with all the resources

The current approach to the docs.projectcatalyst.io website could be extended to create a dedicated set of resources for voters. One suggestion could be to add a voters.projectcatalyst.io GitBook resource that will host all of the information needed for a voter to participate in the process along with any recommendations. A resource can then be added to this documentation that lists all of the useful knowledge resources that exist in the ecosystem that would help voters become more informed about what is happening and what initiatives might be the most promising to support in future funding rounds. Beyond this list it could also be useful to make a public document that outlines which areas of knowledge are currently lacking that could be useful to create in the future to make voters more well informed. This document could help with inspiring future initiatives to emerge that could help with addressing any of the knowledge gaps that exist in the ecosystem.


Suggestion option #2 - Have another suggestion

Provide your suggestion and any rationale in the comments below.


Suggestion option #3 - Disagree, this is not needed

There is no need for a knowledge resource that brings together useful information for voters. Provide any rationale in the comments below.


  • #1 - Create a voter documentation section with a list of relevant resources
  • #2 - Have another suggestion
  • #3 - Disagree, this is not needed
0 voters

Relevant resources

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Another risk of uninformed voting is that it makes the consequences of herd-driving behaviour & gaming the voting system so much worse. In Fund 10 we actually saw 100 million ada (vs. 240 million) vote against Cardano’s own standards process:

Our project only won by a narrow margin and the CIP process would have been scuttled without this funding. I doubt this would have happened if Cardano’s essential infrastructure components were at least broadly defined in a voter orientation document.

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Yeh potential herd / path of least resistance behaviour, when voting becomes too complex the voter resorts to finding easier ways to achieve a similar / close enough intended outcome. I think there is some evidence of this in fund 10 where people have focussed at a high level on the ideas and then focussed more on the people behind the ideas. The people with a track record / history in the ecosystem got selected more in fund 10 which was the easiest way to vote given the complexity of the number of proposals. This is different to fund 9 where the easy route for the voter was to rely on the low quality assessment outcomes.

The average voter trying to read and understand the range and complexity of the ideas is overly complex. Making resources available to better understand what data is available and about the ecosystem will help with better informing people as one thing but it also helps with making it more fundamentally clear on how severely difficult it is for voters to become well informed when making voting decisions.

This is why I want to continue spending time breaking down the complexities of using idea based funding and consider far more scalable, proven and simple solutions like the delegated idea selection approach where it focusses on the voters selecting priorities and contributors and not ideas. The voter needs far less information and knowledge to make informed decisions when selecting priorities and contributors.

I believe fund 10 starts to show some evidence of people already acting in a way that supports a focus on the priorities and the contributors involved in a proposal. They roughly need to know what the idea is prioritising and then they also know the people behind the idea. Just those two things alone are enough to make a decision. If the voter has limited time this is one of the best ways to make the many decisions that are required in voting.

The more you look into the complexity of what the voter would actually need to understand to properly compare and select ideas the more you realise the approach is excessively complex and near impossible to scale in a meaningful way to a more global audience. It must become simpler for the process to scale.

Speaking towards my own preferences currently, I care about expressing what I believe is most important for an ecosystem to focus on at the moment which means selecting the most important problems or opportunities that exist. I also care about identifying and selecting the right people who will help with addressing those priorities and executing ideas to a good standard. I don’t care that much about reading about every possible variation of an idea that is executed to address those priorities. I may want to read a few ideas and participate in some but I don’t have the capacity to understand 100’s of ideas fully let alone 1000’s. Delegation, accountability and aligned incentives! :heart_eyes: Contributors are more important than ideas.

contributorsideas

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Thanks @danny_cryptofay & Catalyst Team for addressing the adverse consequences of this general problem by removing the “downvoting” which had run rampant in Fund 10… I’m happy to see that the platform is able to adjust to these learning experiences :heart_eyes:

Project Catalyst Townhall - November 15th - #146 > Changes to Fund11

Town Hall 146, slide 26
Town Hall 146, slide 261450×794 139 KB

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