governance: categorization of items

[mochet]

This issue is a tracking issue, I am working on some areas of governance and exploring topics (which is not on GitHub or any public space yet). I attempt for these to be neutral but they are obviously my own ideas written based on my own interpretations. Nothing is finalized at all--these are just topics and anything that may be introduced would follow the ordinary route that previous governance proposals have taken, including a discussion phase.

Limitations and Considerations:

• There is a labels feature that I haven't been able to access yet, which allows users to categorize proposals. I do not know when it will be implemented at this stage. Depending on how this feature works it may change what is required on this item.
• I believe one limitation of labels is that they cannot be retroactively applied to proposals which would mean it may not be possible to organize things in an ideal way.
• How exactly governance will be structured is a complete mystery. Depending on how that develops over time would impact this.

Why:

• On the current testnet, spending proposals are sorted into categories by the council secretary. This doesn't include any other proposal types and simply acts to inform participants of how funding has been spent. The council secretary doesn't use any system for this and sorts items into broad categories that are not clearly defined.
• Due to how many proposals have been created, and the lack of an organization system it is very difficult to access historic information.
• Even with a search feature to help, this still requires expensive time from council members. Over time the amount of decisions made by the DAO will increase and that will also obviously increase the amount of reading and knowledge required to make informed decisions.
• CMs may be elected and have zero knowledge of previous events and giving them the tools to access this information quickly and easily would help to save time and hopefully help to improve decision making.

Thoughts:

• It seems like it would be preferable to not only use labels as allowed for by the runtime but to also have a highly organized manual system for this.
• Categorization should be apolitical and shouldn't be structured in such a way that it infers an opinion or judgement on anything, nor impacts the decision making process of the council. It should be an informational tool.
• Full categorization should occur after the issuance of any item and not during voting or discussion stages.
• It would still probably be useful to categorize discussion stages of items, but perhaps it would work better for this stage to be limited in detail to maintain neutrality.
• Maybe or maybe not, relevant forum threads are also included in this system.
• Council Secretary or a similar role would maybe be responsible for doing this.
• Categorization might include scope (WGs, Leads, Workers, Payments), type (policy, item, rule, constitution), budget categorization (WGs, discretionary spending, council spending, specific projects) and many others
• Each item should also include date, author and other metadata

Extensions:

• If people want to create alternatives then they should be free to do so, but the aim with this would be for it to be neutral.
• At some scale, it could be worth having a dedicated worker in each WG who is hired specifically to do this task thereby providing multiple sources and hopefully ensuring neutrality as much as possible.

Summary:

• Every proposal or item should be categorized to help with organization. The end result should be that if there are a combined 28 threads, 14 approved proposals and 6 rejected proposals for runtime upgrade 16 then a council member and any interested user should be able to see these collected together to help inform them in a speedy way.
• It should be designed in a way that aims to be as neutral as possible.

[mochet]

Relevant: #509

[traumschule]

There is a labels feature that I haven't been able to access yet, which allows users to categorize proposals

I don't think this is correct. According to current release plan (https://github.com/Joystream/joystream/issues/2949) only threads will support labels from Olympia onwards: Joystream/joystream#2422
However proposals can have threads Joystream/joystream#2547 which could be what you are looking for?