Aragon Nest Proposal: better communication tools for effective governance

[mariapao]

Abstract

The role of effective communication in governance is key. We need to create the means of communication and the enabling factors for the discussions to happen. Good governance requires inclusive public space where dialogue and debate can take place in a secure, private and open way. Open debates and discussions where opinions, interests and expectations are expressed, on an specific issue, can help turn people into active participants in the decision making processes.

A discussion platform is an interesting communication tool we would like to see built. The discussion platform could use some decentralized communication protocol like Whisper and have the possibility to lock an action in time until there has been significant discussion during a given timeframe.

Deliverables

1. An aragonOS-compatible application (the discussion platform) that lets people discuss and forwards an action to another app (for example the voting app) if a given amount of discussion has happened
2. An aragonOS-compatible application that timelocks an action during a given timeframe of discussion and can forward actions after that given timeframe has happened

Grant size

Funding: from $50k up to $100k in ETH, split into chunks paid out over achieved deliverables.

Success reward: Up to $50k in ANT, given out when all deliverables are ready.

Application requirements

• Proof of concept implementation or well thought out technical design document detailing how project will be accomplished
• Details of the team members and time commitment
• Estimated average burn rate for completing the deliverables
• Legal structure to be adopted, if any
• Willingness to open source work

Development timeline

To be discussed or to be proposed by the team requesting funds.

[luisivan]

Adding a couple mockups of how this could look like. It could reuse a lot of code frontend-wise that we already built for the Survey app.

It'd implement a Forwarder so actions can be passed through it, and if multiple parameters happen, such as time or amount of tokens that have participated in the discussion (basically the token sum of everyone commenting) it forwards the action to another app, such as a voting app.

It could have granular permissions for:

• Who can post: Maybe we can use a Staking app so you have to stake tokens before commenting?
• Who moderates: This would allow an entity (doesn't have to be a person, can be a voting app or whatever) to slash people's deposits if their comments are spammy or not helpful and remove their comments.

This is just the way that I'd love to see it implemented, but of course there are multiple paths to arrive to the general goal of "better communication tools for effective governance".

[paula-berman]

@mariapao @luisivan

Hi, Paula from Democracy Earth here!

We have recently launched our platform on testnet.democracy.earth and it seems like a great fit for this proposal. It is actually ready to work with ANT token :) Here's a quick video demo and pic of ANT integration (which you can check on the live platform as well):

Currently discussion and voting go together - the idea is to make the experience as seamless as possible, but happy to explore other paths for this.

Timelocks, moderation and staking before commenting are all doable - we are working with a few crypto projects to adapt the platform to their specific needs and would love to provide this for you as well!

Let us know your thoughts?

[SDPyle]

Hello there! I've been thinking about how to facilitate quality discussions online, and I think an issue with typical upvote-downvote driven message boards is that they become dominated by a single side of the issue. I think a small design change could drastically reduce this issue - show both the for and against comments right next to each other, and rank them relative to their side! I think it could also be beneficial to only allow commenting or voting on comments for a particular side only if you've voted for that side, but I haven't fully considered the ramifications of that. Anyways, I made a sketch of what it could look like (building off of @luisivan's great design). Hope this helps!

[yeqbfgxjiq]

Closing as this no longer requires attention. An RFP for communication and social applications are is being drafted by the NestWG and there are several applications in the pipeline to help with this.

Also, the 1HIve Lock app allows DAOs to timelock an action during a given timeframe.