A formal process for status changes of NEPs #42
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@erikzhang I spent some time on what community acceptance means. The idea is we can make a pool of NGD, NEL, NeoResearch, NEO Tracker and CoZ (are these the main communities I believe ?). Maybe one of each, and each has something like 45 days to provide a feedback into a proposal. |
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It's okay for me. |
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I think it's good to have a votation. Perhaps, before migration of status, (Draft->Accepted, Accepted->Final) we can have a formal round of voting like Canesin said (don't know which rules will apply, how to count, etc), but I don't believe the most important thing will be the votation process per se (I hope most will be unanimous or almost). In my opinion, it will work as a kind of mechanism (imagine like a blinking red light) just telling everyone "it's time to decide", otherwise good ideas that are already accepted by many may be stuck here forever (just waiting to be final, or approved). |
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The voting can't be limited to walled-off, gated communities of developers. Community voting should be completely open. |
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I agree voting must be open , and will continue to be open. The problem I see is not an excess of votes, but a lack of votes and participation. Obviously your participation as individual is strongly valuable here Michael, no one questions that , but it would also be nice to have representatives of CoZ and other dev teams voting as a whole agreement, or partially agreement... that has much power as well to see the topic was well discussed and validated. |
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Digressing a bit... The original NEO community model has resulted in huge, giant positive steps forward in terms of documentation, technical capability, tools, community growth, etc. It's all been very good. But more recently, these communities have turned into walled-off, gated communities with their own internal membership, projects, initiatives, discussions, etc. At one point they were "the community" but now they've walled themselves off from the broader community. I believe this is why we see less and less visible participation in the actual broad NEO community (e.g. standards discussions, platform reliability discussions (neo-project/neo#272), etc). I assume many of these community members feel they've already discussed many of these issues ...but only in the privacy of their own tribe - it hasn't been with the broader NEO community. I hope this will change. @dahongfei, @PeterLinX, @lerider, and @erikzhang, the preceding comments also apply to the non-volunteer communities such as the NEO Foundation/NGD. NEO Foundation/NGD is also a walled-off, gated community with its own developers, projects, initiatives, discussions, etc. that, for the most part, are not shared and discussed outside of the NEO Foundation/NGD tribe. Here is an example: neo-project/neo#272. NEP-7 is apparently a second example of this behavior (and one of the original issues that instigated this issue). The design and implementation of NEO Smart Economy voting is a third example. The NEO ecosystem is lacking in terms of a broad sense of community and community involvement. NEO has devolved into a collection of tribes. How can this be fixed? Best regards, |
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CC: @Relfos @igormcoelho @fabwa @lllwvlvwlll @deanpress @birmas |
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Michael, again I dont think there's an issue here... in Nep7 case for instance, I see many people discussing towards a better standard , but arguments are very high level so only few of the few people will actually understand.. in this case I dont see as a lacking of good will, its just a hard problem to solve (Nep7). In my opinion on the subject I liked the original proposal from Erik, some people seem to.not have liked it.. Im still trying to.understand the reason, its not easy (for me at least). Voting is even harder , but we just created a new channel on discord for this , but ideas are very variate, topic is hard, thats normal. |
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@igormcoelho Maybe I should have left that example out but based on @canesin 's opening comment, it sounds like it was implemented before there was a level of consensus that Fabio felt there should have been. If you are the proposer (proponent?) of an idea, you have an obligation to make your proposal understood and acceptable and accepted. It doesn't really matter how elegant or correct the idea is, you need to be able to support an acceptable proposal ...with the help of others if necessary. This was just one of several examples ...however, you've missed key point regarding the NEO ecosystem being a "collection of tribes/walled-in, gated communities" and not a broad, fully functioning community. How do we fix this? |
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If people are creating tribes, I dont know why. The ideas Vitor and I always defended are to be fully open to ideas and open to contributions. We have successfully suggested and contributions accepted at CoZ projects and Neo core projects. Some of our contributions have been rejected as well, I see no fuzz about it.. But its sad that you see things splitting apart, I hope thats not the case, perhaps its just a big fragmentation on projects as the ecosystem grows bigger... I can be wrong. |
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This root issue is tribal fragmentation ...not project fragmentation (except when a one project has a dependency on the work of another tribe). The people that need to work together on a project find ways to work together inspite of the walls and gates. But the walls and gates fence in many of the community conversations, broader discussions, and consensus building opportunities that should and need to take place ... as well as stifle progress on less interesting topics like standards. |
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There is no need for some sort of clear voting structure for NEP's...that is silly, and defeats the purpose of a decentralized project. If people have a strong objection to it then it will appear in the conversation of the github issues. If something goes into the codebase, that you do not agree with, but did not seriously argue against then it is too bad. However! I do agree that some changes need a longer "incubation" period. NEP-9 went through about 5-6 months of discussion for a change that was relatively inconsequential in terms of the core protocol. Some of the changes that are much more significant in terms of protocol are going into production with much less discussion. Let's allow for more incubation periods for releases. Things that would be helpful in my opinion.
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@saltyskip Exactly, in fact, today it appears we have no release process all. No technical roadmap, ... We're missing many things that we need to ensure we have a reliable software platform beyond the NEO Core that NGD produces. |
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The other thread seems to list many problems without mentioning any solutions. I'd prefer small incremental changes that can contribute to the health of the protocol, like the one I described in my previous comment. |
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@saltyskip that is a good idea, a formal process can mean anything .. don't need to be requiring votes from anyone and thinking through it is a good idea to not depend on that. We are not stopping of using git anytime soon, so making a proposal amendment for what is the process using it seams okay. One thing is sure: protocol changes and breaking changes need more maturity .. |
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@mwherman2000 Developers are going to pool together one way or another. Development tribes will occur as a natural consequence of cooperation. I think this is a different issue (if it is an issue at all) than the lack of wider community involvement. If you want broader discussion & potentially voting that involves the wider community, then it's time to start seriously thinking about how you can educate the community. Developers have the knowledge required to ideate and implement, but a community that is not informed about the process (and the decisions that need to be made) cannot be involved; there would be no point. As you said, anyone that proposes an idea has an obligation to explain that proposal. This needs to go beyond an obligation to other developers. It needs to be broken down in a manner that can be understood by the average token holder. An informed token holder has the ability to be a part of discussion and can propose new ideas, even without the ability to implement them personally. They also gain the ability to make informed decisions should we start using a voting system for proposals, which would hopefully resolve any issues stemming from low participation. A platform/community that exists for this purpose should be built. One that encourages discussion regarding any potential changes to NEO in a manner that is not intimidating for the non-developer community. |
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@Edgegasm, in addition, there is a third issue: the Gang of Zion needs to cease & desist from what has become their all-too-common and arrogant practice of censoring, shutting down, and silencing discussions initiated by people outside their walled-in, gated group of developers. @erik has addressed this issue and practice here: neo-project/neo#294 (comment)
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@mwherman2000 Wow, that was a really disappointing read. An educational platform separate from CoZ would go a long way in reducing CoZ's ability to shut down discussion. I don't disagree that Github is not the place for non-software discussion, but where else can other participants share their input? Bit of a quandary. I mean we could launch a forum that exists to keep the community informed, but if development communities make no effort to further expand on their proposals and be involved with it, such a thing would be doomed to fail. I think it's important to remind everyone involved with NEO development that this platform is neither the Neo Foundation, City of Zion or anyone else's pet project. It is owned by the token holder. Every relevant change or proposal should be communicated to the token holder in whatever form is appropriate. It is imperative that progress on this platform is not controlled by small groups. It is also imperative that the community should be involved in every possible capacity, whether they are developers or not. An informed community is an involved community. An involved community can be decentralized, and that is the goal, is it not? |
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@mwherman2000 Just like @erikzhang said
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@anthdm Explore with me then.
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@anthdm, until GoZ acknowleges and demonstrates that they are no longer going to engage in these practices, there's little to explore. This isn't a quarrel. |
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@Edgegasm @anthdm Who has the authority to label any member of the NEO community as an X, Y, or a Z? This is ludicrous. Why is segregation being discussed at all?
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@erikzhang I don't think that's particularly relevant here, though maybe I'm misunderstanding something. No voting system that requires input from both developers and non-developers is ever going to be perfect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make every possible effort to keep the community entirely informed. |
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@edgegasm |
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@kemargrant Seems to be specifically for multiple choices though. If it's a case of X or Y (yes/no) to a proposal, it shouldn't be an issue. We should still seek to educate our community. Keeping them ignorant is a terrible thing. |
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@edgegasm |
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hey @Edgegasm, can you be more specific about how CoZ is shutting down discussion? CoZ unfortunately has very little control here, but we do what we can to make things work speaking as someone who has personally poured 100s of hours into opening up the neo ecosystem on all levels (and behalf of many others in CoZ who have also done so), this bothers me quite a lot. you are speaking to people who built all the software every project on NEO now uses (neon-js and neo-python in particular underpin almost every project here), and who have across the board (and behind the scenes!) pushed very, very hard to open things up outside the core NEO team to community discussion CoZ is also an open community, the only thing we enforce internally is respectful discussion (not everyone can meet that bar, unfortunately) |
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@mwherman2000 can you stop bringing useless discussion into issues that are not meant for them. You are turning this issue into a slandering and accusation thread. This is a discussion about NEP not your personal vendetta against CoZ. @Edgegasm
They should have some say yes, but many of them have no clue about what they actually need. Also currently there is no good mechanism to have this done
That is something that people should mostly work on themselves, if they are not interested enough even if we try to educate them it won't stick or interest them anyway
Only way I can see short term is releasing articles, however getting people to write them is another issue |
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@kemargrant Indeed, it would definitely differ between proposals. I agree that Github is the most suitable place until such a forum & voting system is created. @Ejhfast Hello Ethan. I'm well aware of CoZ's hugely significant contributions to NEO. I consider myself a huge advocate of CoZ. My comments are referencing Michael's post here , who provided a couple of examples of discussion being shut down. One example was a discussion on NEP-5 amendments. I personally don't see this as shutting down discussion (fair considerations on both side, but the majority were clearly in agreement), but I can see why Michael may feel that way. I do think he could have approached this in a less... passive aggressive manner, though. However, the other example I do take issue with. This post had the potential to provide the community with some information and perspective regarding the direction of NEO 3.0. You could argue that the community can simply wait for the refreshed whitepaper, but my understanding is that this has been in the works for some time. To me this indicates a lack of transparency considering the majority of the community is totally in the dark; clearly not ideal for an open, decentralized platform. Michael questioned this directly, and was shut down by @localhuman as it was a non-software related discussion. It's a bit of a messy situation. I don't disagree with @localhuman's logic for shutting the discussion down; this is Github after all. But where else is a community member outside the existing developer communities able to find this sort of information except Github, where the core & community developers can be found & questioned? As @kemargrant mentioned a moment ago, Github is the ideal place for such discussion until an alternative can be created. Clearly we can't retroactively apply this thought to previous discussions, but I'd like to see it taken into consideration in the future. I'm not trying to pick sides here. My main goals lie with ensuring we have an active, informed community, regardless of whether they are developers or not. @totalvm Thank you for your responses.
It's a lot easier to understand a concept than it is to implement it. I'm not saying we should value community input higher than the developers who clearly know better, but I don't think we should ignore a layperson simply because they don't have a detailed technical understanding. A lot of issues to be solved in blockchain can be boiled down to user preferences. These should be taken into account, which is why we need to educate the community so that they can understand how these decisions will affect them.
Indeed. I'd like to see one created.
Some people will be interested, some people won't. We shouldn't avoid making these resources available simply because one portion of the community won't care either way. Information should be open for all those who care for it. Right now it is simply too inaccessible.
I agree entirely, and I'm happy to help where I can in this regard. We have a lot of other community members with an above-average technical understanding. The information simply needs to be compiled in a place where it can be digested and processed. A well written (not overly technical) abstract & motivation section is sufficient for this purpose when a proposal is first made, but ideally the community needs a way to remain up to date with changes and issues regarding that proposal. The only option is crawling through Github, which isn't feasible for most. This could be as simple as having a channel where major changes to the platform or proposals are noted and briefly explained. Any writers could pick things up from there and communicate the issues to the community. |
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@Edgegasm Thanks, and I see where you are coming from, but I don't think you are aware of how hard it has been to make the progress we have in opening the ecosystem up. There has been enormous effort expended in non-public channels. In general Herman has not been successful in getting the progress we all want due to the way he has approached these issues (not just on github, but in other public and private channels you may not be aware of) I do agree with you in general that Github is a reasonable place for such discussions to happen. But there is some extra (hidden) context you should consider when evaluating @localhuman's actions. We are on the same page about increasing overall community involvement. The question is more, pragmatically, what is the best approach to achieve this? |
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@Ejhfast I have no doubt that I am incredibly ignorant to many of the things going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately I can contribute my perspective as a surface dweller, which will no doubt result in myopic comments on my part so please do forgive my ignorance. Clearly we don't want to take time away from developers, forcing them to walk the non-technical community through every change. But as I mentioned to totalvm, I'm sure we can find some willing participants who will help break things down for the community. The NEP abstracts are a good example of what I'd like to see more of on a larger scale; summarised breakdowns of upcoming changes. Perhaps still too technical for your average NEO holder, but not alien to those willing to learn and research. Any writers can then help bridge the gap. But we'd need to extend this beyond the initial abstracts. For example, if there is ever an ongoing discussion among developers regarding the best way to approach a particular dilemma, the options should be highlighted to those writers so that they can break it down for the community. Helps gain additional feedback for the developers and give the community some input, and shouldn't take too much effort for the devs. Something like this could be done through a semi-regular news post on the subreddit. |
There is no process for status of NEPs, there is already the case of NEPs that where accepted without any general agreement or acceptance from the broader community like NEP-7. There is need to formalize the process of how status are changed in NEPs.
When consulting NEP-1 (https://github.com/neo-project/proposals/blob/master/nep-1.mediawiki) there is just a generic description without an actual specification of what acceptance of community means, there is need to be a voting process and a balanced selection of voting participants.
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