59 upvotes, 11 direct replies (showing 11)
View submission: The next phase for Donuts
To avoid any unintended consequences, going forward governance polls will be considered as signaling tools, rather than absolutely binding.
What types of "unintended consequences" are you worried about from governance polls right now u/jarins? We have been using Donuts as a governance mechanism for close to a year now. How will moving the tokens on-chain affect the use of Donuts as a governance tool in any way, and why introduce this restriction on governance polls right now?
Can you offer other examples of types of governance polls which would be valid or invalid? Who will make the decision on which governance polls are valid or invalid?
For example, does this mean that if the community votes to discontinue this experiment or affect the functionality of Donuts, that this moderators of this sub-Reddit and Reddit itself will not honor those results? Can we get your commitment that if such a vote were to be issued and passed that you and the moderators would honor it?
Otherwise, I see no reason to continue with a charade of using Donuts for governance which "may or may not be binding." It seems dishonest and like a waste of time for this sub. The governance functionality should just be explicitly removed (versus hiding behind "not absolutely binding") and Donuts be used purely for non-binding signalling and whatever economic purposes centralized authorities deem appropriate.
You can't allow people to issue governance votes and dismiss the results simply because you don't like them.
Either respect the governance process (which is what Donuts were originally intended for) or eliminate it entirely.
Comment by SpectacledHero at 21/06/2019 at 22:16 UTC
18 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I imagine the unintended consequences are the formation of a cabal that controls most of the voting power. With low voter turn-outs you only need one or two people with millions of donuts to guarantee that decisions will be made the way they want them to be. There have been many arguments about such voting mechanisms in Ethereum (the post Jarins links below is a good read on this) and these mechanisms only serve to create the illusion of democratic voting. Also, once donuts become trade-able on the blockchain, I imagine it becomes difficult to use the current system of only earned donuts counting towards governance.
Comment by aminok at 21/06/2019 at 21:08 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I see no reason to continue with a charade of using Donuts for governance which "may or may not be binding."
Maybe we can change the tag from "GOVERNANCE POLL" to "SIGNALLING POLL".
Comment by krokodilmannchen at 21/06/2019 at 23:58 UTC
10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
u/jarins is probably afraid that people will vote to end this experiment altogether. I was on the call and the binding -> non-binding was not brought up at all. I wanted to help wherever possible but this direction, and especially the blanket "well, in the end, Reddit is a private company so whatever" reasoning is very disappointing. He (or they) should open a freakin' governance poll to change governance, ffs.
If anyone wants to signal that the donut experiment in its current form should stop, they have my vote.
Comment by mikey4eth at 22/06/2019 at 03:20 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Eight months ago, when community points were introduced, there is no mention of governance in the OP, and in fact *you* are in the comments arguing against introducing governance. Now you want to shut it down because of the lack of governance? I don't understand your perspective.
"I like it better than blanket karma which floats across all subs"[1] - You
"how cool it’d be if the community had a way to see how contributors felt about things"[2] - /u/internetmallcop. Keyword here is felt, not demanded.
Comment by RukiCingulata at 21/06/2019 at 22:28 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reddit admin here
centralized actor
​
avoid any unintended consequences
monetizing by 3rd parties
​
Who will make the decision on which governance polls are valid or invalid?
reddit admins?
​
reduce the dependence of online communities on centralized actors and make them self-sovereign
because that reduces the dependence on centralized actors
Comment by jarins at 21/06/2019 at 21:30 UTC
13 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Vitalik had a good post[1] explaining this. He argued against binding on-chain governance and said that signaling is more useful, because it doesn’t have the same cons. “It is very useful for coin voting to be one of several coordination institutions deciding whether or not a given change gets implemented. It is an imperfect and unrepresentative signal, but it is a Sybil-resistant one”.
1: https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/17/voting.html
This is the approach we mentioned in the post.
Comment by [deleted] at 21/06/2019 at 20:36 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Pretty much. It's him nicely saying "hey we are gonna monetize donuts, the subs opinion doesn't actually matter". Its now similar to voting red or blue team in the United States.
Comment by carlslarson at 22/06/2019 at 03:01 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The Reddit team involved in this project have expressed strong concerns that there are fundamental flaws involved with on-chain voting. These seem centered around the issue of bribing[1]. I cannot say I share those concerns and as the project moves forward will advocate for continued use of donuts as a governance tool. Frankly, it's *always* been signaling within this centralized context - but I remain as committed as I always have been to honoring the choices of the community.
1: http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/07/02/on-chain-vote-buying/
Comment by DCinvestor at 21/06/2019 at 20:46 UTC
5 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Hi u/carlslarson, I'm just curious, do you agree with the restriction u/jarins mentions here on the use of Donuts for binding governance in this sub?
This was the original functionality you worked hard to introduce, and I'm surprised to see suspended, and in practice, thrown away.
I'm sure the entire sub would like to hear your thoughts directly on this matter as the "first moderator," as well as a cogent explanation for why Donuts' governance rights must be suspended in order to continue with Donut development.
Comment by DeviateFish_ at 21/06/2019 at 21:18 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You can't allow people to issue governance votes and dismiss the results simply because you don't like them.
Sure he can. Like any politician, he's not actually bound by any promises he makes, because there's no effective way to remove him from power. His promises of letting Donuts determine governance were never more than just promises, because there was no formal binding obligation to go with them.
TL;DR he told people what they wanted to hear to get them to buy into the idea, then went and did what he really wanted to do with it, which wasn't what he promised :)
Comment by andyrangus at 26/06/2019 at 18:57 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
ok, now this is epic.