Make membership repo publicly readable

[tvanepps]

Summary

The membership repo and its accompanying nomination/discussion process should be publicly readable. This would apply to both future discussions and ones which have already concluded. Write access would remain for members only.

The curation process is a key part of what makes Protocol Guild so unique. Having this available invites prospective members, the broader community, and potential funders to participate as external observers.

History

The Guild curation process has changed over time, but always towards more transparency and increasing member agency within that process. Here’s a brief overview:

From Dec 2021 to the launch in May 2022, the initial bootstrapping of the membership took place through private conversations. This was largely carried out by me soliciting core contributors :

• for feedback on the draft project proposal
• to gauge interest in their potential membership
• for any recommendations for any fellow contributors that should be included in the initial outreach or other projects that should be eligible

In the cases where their interest was confirmed, I would collect relevant onboarding info.

Starting in July 2021, the membership repo was created and initialized with the existing active membership. This repo allowed the membership to fully participate in the process. Instead of funneling all additions, removals, and deliberations through a single person, existing members now had read and write access to a shared list. The repo also included guidelines on what kinds of accompanying information each nomination should include, eg. project, description of or links to relevant contributions. During this time, we also fostered the norm of having the existing member who made the nomination share the onboarding links, explain the project and its expectations to the new member. Previously, onboarding would have been carried out exclusively by me.

Over the course of the Pilot, this process produced a rich yet non-public representation of what it means to be eligible for Guild membership.

However, we still lacked a cohesive framework to locate these local descriptions within. The gaps hiding in the unspecific and inconsistent framework for core protocol stewardship were forced to light in several discussions, including ones regarding:

• MEV Boost: June 2022
• Solidity: Oct 2022, May 2023
• DVT: May 2023

These discussions produced the only other major changes to the curation process since the start of the Guild: a more explicit eligibility framework and the distinction between members and projects. Details of the proposal can be seen in this PR.

Survey

In June 2023, members put together a survey which included a number of questions about the Pilot outcomes and organizational processes. This survey output was not formal governance, but instead meant to act as a snapshot of member sentiment and start conversations. One question asked about the visibility of the membership repo:

Just under half (45%) of all respondents preferred more transparency than the status quo.

There was also discussion of the survey results on a few Ops calls and in the PG discord. While it only featured participation from a subset of the membership, it was generally agreed it was good for the repo to be publicly readable.

Why the membership repo should be publicly-readable

As outlined above, the curation process has become more accessible and transparent to members over the past 1.5 years. Here’s some expanded reasoning on why it should continue to evolve:

Greater transparency benefits the Guild

• Prospective members should be able to use the repo as a measure to compare against. Right now, prospective members are required to trust the word of their nominating peers about how the process works and what level of work is necessary for nomination. This is the best demonstration of eligibility and governance norms that we have. If our public docs define the starting framework and the public onchain updates are the outcome, we’re missing the private link between the two ends.
• The mechanism only works if the broader community trusts it. Transparent processes allow external observers to suss out internal inconsistencies, and in doing so, co-structure the mechanism they are asked to place trust in. To borrow Eric S. Raymond’s famous quote “given enough eyes, all inconsistencies are shallow”

Pilot settings may not suit the Guild post-Pilot

• As we scale the mechanism in terms of funding and/or members, the need for transparency becomes more crucial. It’s better to apply transparency proactively rather than reactively when negative sentiment surfaces.

Transparency is already a norm in and around the Guild

• In Ethereum governance: open repos, access to ACD agendas, publicly broadcasts, text thread summaries
• As of the previously mentioned Eligibility PR, changes to the project eligibility framework can now only happen through a public process. To date, this topic has comprised almost all of the internal discussion ( ie. MEV Boost, Solidity, and DVT) - not the eligibility of individual nominations, which is what this proposal is focused on.

Conclusion

In the same way we put serious care into stewarding the EVM and Ethereum protocol, the mechanism and processes we structure the Guild within should similarly reflect our highest ideals of good governance. I’ve been proud of PGs ability to adapt when needed so far - hopefully the reasoning above convinces you that this particular aspect is worth changing.

This proposal should be up for feedback for at least a few weeks or until there’s some rough consensus from participating members. Looking forward to your thoughts on this proposal 🙏

[potuz]

+1 on more transparency. I have a strong suspicion that the numbers in the survey may have been skewed due to the misinterpretation that an open read would also mean that addresses would be open.

We all advocate for open source software and development in the public, we wouldn't even accept any contributor to closed source software. We should act accordingly on our own repo.

[cheeky-gorilla]

Strong +1! Pasting notes from the survey discussion in case people missed it:

1. Although responses indicated that the status quo should be maintained (private Github), this is not aligned with the ecosystem - transparency is the norm in Ethereum.
2. Transparency is also useful for curation, because people can see why others have been accepted or rejected in the past. This becomes more important as funding scales!
3. Funders / ecosystem deserve visibility into process.
4. There should still be places that are private (internal channels in Discord), but good to have one place thats public
5. If PG is to work on a small and large scale, then people need to be comfortable following this very basic set of rules publicly - shouldn't be controversial / shouldnt make anyone uncomfortable. We should also be comfortable with expressing disagreement publicly.
6. Public read but permissioned write would lower moderator burden on members
7. Can look into having masked DAO votes in the future, so discussions are public but votes are not.
8. More discussions on Discord here: https://discord.com/channels/795514951376568391/1133807078813736980/1133816030075039837

[mkalinin]

+1 on making reads publicly available

[fredrik0x]

+1, it's my opinion that additional transparency will be better for the guild

[barnabemonnot]

+1, transparency and accountability are important for a group whose stated purpose is to work for the (Ethereum) public

[MariusVanDerWijden]

While I do like to make as much public as possible, I think discussions about member eligibility should be somewhat anonymous/private. I don't really feel comfortable saying no to admitting someone in a public setting since I might need to work them in the future and don't want to put a strain on our relationship/cause a shitstorm on twitter

[potuz]

Any contentious discussion may happen in a more private setting and then a distilled anonymized version can move here

[james-prysm]

+1 but same reasons as marius for discussions

[jflo]

+1, I appreciate the need for privacy as well, and believe that we have other venues to reliably have more nuanced discussions.

[gabrocheleau]

Agree with making the repo publicly readable. I also agree that contentious discussions could be also kept in more private settings (and if needed a summary could then be posted publicly).

[mehdi-aouadi]

+1 for public reads and private discussions

[lucassaldanha]

+1 👍🏼

[rolfyone]

+1

[AgeManning]

+1 - Echoing others in that private discussions are likely still required with public responses on the outcome.

[cskiraly]

As I understand it is also part of the proposal to make past discussions public. In my view, in is bettter to avoid changing discussions that were private (or group visible) in the past to publicly visible. For me, in general, that would be a step that needs extreme caution and unanimous consent.
Don't take this wrong, I'm not speaking about discussions in the future, and I'm not even opposing the change for the past discussions based on discussions I had. It is just that I think it goes against some principles.