We appreciate the other delegates who have brought up rightful concerns about the lack of hard enforcement and ability to subvert certain proposed policies such as Responsible Voting. We hope the additional rationale below appeases some of these concerns.
To reiterate, the Arbitrum DAO Code of Conduct is a set of guiding principles for interactions between delegates, it is the standard we should hold each other to meet. These guiding principles were written in a “positive” framing as opposed to listing rules or prohibiting certain behavior; the only exceptions being the obvious severe violations, which are as follows:
The soft-enforcement proposed is based on the idea that a delegate who demonstrates repeated disregard for the Code of Conduct, say for example by repeatedly leaving toxic, non-constructive feedback or multiple instances of failing to disclose a COI, should not be receiving compensation from the DAO in the form of the DIP or an elected position.
Hard enforcement in the form of suspensions or bans from all DAO discussions would only be somewhat effective. As correctly identified by other delegates, any individual can just transfer their voting power to another address and make a new anon forum account. While social reputation can’t be transferred, it can be rebuilt under a new name.
Overall, our team strongly believes that hard enforcement of specific behaviors is not advisable and would be counterproductive. In addition to being difficult to fully monitor, we fear that creating an extensive list of prohibited behaviors will only grow over time, adding even more bureaucracy and eventually crossing a threshold where delegate speech/actions are too constrained, thus smothering healthy debate.
Conflict Resolution
We’d also like to also clarify which aspects of the Code of Conduct involve the Arbitrum Foundation. The Arbitrum Foundation is currently responsible for upholding the Community Guidelines. As explained in the proposal, we are proposing that their role be slightly expanded in two ways:
- Serving as a mediator in the instance of conflict between two (or several) delegates.
- Investigating reported instances of suspected collusion in elections where delegates may be seeking to subvert the Responsible Voting policy.
They are not responsible for enforcing the guideline principles of the Code of Conduct.
Our team is currently talking with the Foundation about updating the Community Guidelines so that they are a bit more comprehensive and also include the severe violations listed in the Code of Conduct. However, we view this as a responsibility of the Foundation and should be something brought forward by their team.
Once a party submits a request using the Conflict Resolution Form, the matter is in the hands of the Arbitrum Foundation and resolved through their own internal procedures. In general though, yes, the accused individual will have an opportunity for rebuttal and to present their side of the story.
Again, we encourage delegates and contributors to resolve conflicts privately. Once taken to the Foundation, their decision and resolution is final. The process has been designed in this matter so that the DAO is not involved in resolving or hearing appeals in regards to delegate <> delegate conflicts.
Additional Questions
This is a valid concern and Entropy does not wish to create redundant work for delegates. However, in this case, we feel it is important for a delegate to disclose a COI before voting. Some delegates wait until the end of the month to communicate rationale; it would be unfortunate if a COI that would have influenced the voting decision of delegates came out weeks later. This could be especially impactful in the case of elections.
This is a good question, when drafting the Improving Predictability proposal, our team considered if it was worth preventing proposals from even being posted on Tally during the Holiday Break. After weighing the tradeoffs, we deemed that it was not worth sacrificing the flexibility to post an emergency proposal if for an unforeseen reason it was necessary. We’ll refer to our response above for additional rationale:
We are proposing weighted voting for only elections, not for all proposal types.
This would only apply to DAO approved initiatives going forward, but Entropy has been working on a transparency page for funds in the MSS and other multi-sigs. While not part of this proposal, we can do a quick audit to see which programs are not yet delegated to the Exclude Address.
Updates to the Proposal
We have updated the proposal to include some of the suggestions from @raam. This included extra language and instructions about how to delegate to the Exclude Address, adding a COI section to the recommended proposal structure, and updating the Due Care and Attention section with a few suggestions on how delegates can stay up to date with DAO initiatives.
Additional language was added for both the Holiday Break and for how contributors should report suspected collusion in elections (participants teaming up to circumvent the Responsible Voting policy) to the Foundation:
Lastly, the following line has been removed:
And replaced with the following guiding principle under the Civility and Professionalism section:
We will be posting this proposal to Snapshot shortly.