Overview
Currently some of the most popular approaches for collaboration and discussion happen in after town halls, X, work shops and the Cardano forum.
X is suitable for higher engagement and helping many people share quick opinions about different topic areas. Town halls and work shops are more useful for more highly engaged discussions and debates.
The Cardano forum is highly useful for long form communication and enabling debate and discussion about a certain topic area over a longer stretch of time. It is also useful for maintaining information for longer periods of time and making that information more easily accessible. This suggestion focusses on the importance of further encouraging and supporting more long form discussion as a highly suitable location to collect and retain a diversity of feedback, discussion and preferences from the community.
Problems
- Lack of ongoing discussion & debate - Many of the topics and decisions involved iterating and improving the Catalyst funding process require a significant amount of thought and reflection. The Cardano forum is currently not being utilised to its full potential to encourage more ongoing discussion and debate about specific decisions and topic areas that are focussed on how the Catalyst process is operated and functions. Long form communication tools like the forum offer a more effective way for community members to participate when they have the capacity and time to join important conversations.
- Lost & ephemeral discussions - A major issue with X is the information gets lost over time due to posts not emerging in a timeline as newer posts emerge. Town halls and work shops can be recorded however this doesn’t make them easy accessing the information and ongoing discussion or feedback. Due to this a lot of information and debate can become lost and difficult to continue and further develop.
- Feedback forms are time consuming - Currently the Catalyst team uses a feedback form to gather feedback which makes it more time consuming for community members to provide feedback. If this feedback was broken down into topic area sections community members could add in their own opinions and agree with existing ones more easily than repeating this same information in a text form. Forum posts that utilise voting polls would again help to make it easier for community members to indicate that they agree with a certain suggestion.
Suggestion option #1 - Use Cardano forum for more focussed discussion & aggregation
Ongoing discussion and collaboration could be increased through the usage of more long form communication. The most suitable location for this at the moment is the Cardano forum which has a Project Catalyst section.
The Catalyst team could use the forum more themselves to post their own thoughts and discussion points for the community to engage in. They could also encourage other community members to use the forum to discuss specific topics that would benefit from ongoing discussion and feedback from the community. Stating that the Catalyst team will respond to discussions and votes made on the Cardano forum would make a clear indication to the community that this is a suitable way to encourage discussion and potential changes to the process.
If the usage of the Cardano forum grows over time around the topic area of Project Catalyst the forum could be updated to increase the number of Project Catalyst focussed categories & topics instead of having everything under one category as it is currently. This could help with better structuring the discussion and feedback to make it easier to find and traverse the information. Some example categories could be “Product development”, “Feedback” or any similar ways to break down the discussion.
Some potential next steps:
- Start utilising & promoting the forum more often - The Catalyst team could use the forum more to bring together existing information or questions about different topic areas that otherwise may have stayed as internal communication. Most if not all areas of Catalyst and how it operates will benefit from further participation and discussion from the community.
- Encourage community usage of the forum - When any product development plans are made the forum could be used by the Catalyst team to post any intentions or updates and then encourage community discussion. Posts could also better engage the community by adding polls or asking questions that people can vote on or answer so the communities current sentiment and feedback can be better gathered.
Suggestion option #2 - Have another suggestion
Comment with your other suggestion below.
Suggestion option #3 - Disagree
The Catalyst team don’t need to use the Cardano forum anymore than they are. Provide any rationale in the comments below.
- #1 - Increase the usage of Cardano forum for long form discussions and feedback
- #2 - Have another suggestion
- #3 - Disagree
Relevant resources
- forum.cardano.org - Where the Catalyst team could encourage more long form discussion.
- forum.cardano.org/t/category-scoping-catalyst-community-discussion/121718/38 - This is a good example of long form discussion where the community is contributing to an ongoing topic around funding categorisation. People are able to catch up with the content easily and contribute whenever they want to this discussion.