[Non-Constitutional] Let’s improve our governance forum with three proposals.app feature integrations

Proposals Finalized AIPs
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Thank you for the proposal.

We agree that there should be more focus on supporting governance tooling. Disjointed governance is a pain point for a multitude of DAOs and is a significant barrier to entry for newcomers. Having said that, we’d recommend putting a pause on this proposal for now, for the following reasons:

  • Wider strategic proposal needed.

    • Several governance tooling platforms are lobbying for funding in the DAO and directly to AF.
    • We should not be funding initiatives based on service asks, but instead we should treat governance like a product. Get user feedback, put together product requirements, and fund to alleviate those issues.
    • Internally at the AF, we are starting that process, and it should be an iterative process to continually improve the governance experience.

  • Proposed cost structure.

    • $120k is paid immediately without the delivery of any milestones; maintenance & hosting should only be paid after delivery of milestones. It should also be paid over time and not all at once to ensure it is maintained to satisfactory standards.
    • $86k is very expensive for the forum features offered; it also isn’t clear if it is actually technically feasible since our discourse space is not self-hosted.
    • Overall, $206k is significantly expensive for what is offered which is delivery of 3 features, 3 days per month maintenance, and hosting costs.

  • Technical implementation restrictions.

    • The current forum is hosted by Discourse, which means the ability to customize the forum, including adding novel features, is limited. This could be alleviated by moving to a self-hosted Discourse instance, but this would take some time. A question to the proposals.app team (@paulofonseca @andreiv) is whether a theme component-based approach, instead of plugin-based, is confirmed to be achievable now, and would it be compatible out-of-the-box with future themes and theme components, such as a visual forum redesign?

This proposal might be a good opportunity for the DAO, including the AF, to start thinking about how to improve governance UX as part of a wider strategy. Accordingly, we believe this conversation should be moved to the ‘Technical Discussion’ category. It is important that, we avoid vendor lock-in via the governance process, and believe OpCo might be in a good position to help navigate the evolution of governance.

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