Decentraland DAO Community Pulse — December 2022

Creator Spotlight: MetaParty

Welcome to our third edition of our Creator Series! Join us as we feature Decentraland DAO grantees: showcasing their journey — from concept inception to making the dream a reality.

This month we interviewed: Rezinator, fr1skybumblebee and JustT3 from MetaParty! With over 250 events to date including: Fashion week**,** parkour challenges, and mini games, this hardworking team have been crushing the event scene in DCL for a long time ❤️‍🔥

Check out the interview below to learn more about the Metaparty crew and get an inside look at what it takes to be such relentless creators. Our conversation with the Metaparty crew cover a wide range of topics including: current progress on their grant, team dynamics, DAO repayment, rabbit hole journey into Decentraland, plus so much more!

We are deeply grateful for the incredible opportunity that the decentraland dao has given us and we are humbled by the votes from the community. We couldn’t have achieved this without your support, and we are thrilled to have the chance to contribute to the decentraland community. Thank you for believing in us and for being a part of our journey — MetaParty Crew

🎬Enjoy this highlight Clip where they discuss their strategy to repay the DAO 👏🏽 🤩

🎬 🎥🍿👉🏽 Watch entire interview

We hope our new interview series inspires you to start engaging and becoming a more active member of our Decentraland DAO community. Join us to help build the future of Decentraland 💫

💡LEARN MORE

To learn more about MetaParty roadmap and goals check out their grant proposal here

To learn about all their upcoming events check out their twitter here

To check out their build jump into Decentraland here

Special thanks to Boomboxhead for his sick beats for our intro! 🙏💗

Governance Issue: Community Moderation

As the Holiday season closed in, and amid intense and ongoing discussions surrounding pause and restructuring of the Community Grants Program, the issue of Community and Discord moderation rose to the forefront of DAO discussions. A complicated issue in any setting, the question of community moderation is particularly challenging in a decentralized context. In this month’s governance deep dive we focus on the issue of community moderation, giving ourselves the opportunity to reflect and explore ways to deepen coexistence within the community.

Context

In mid-December, a member of the DCL community was banned from the DCL DAO Discord — by decision of the Facilitation Squad — due to what they interpreted as repeated transgressions of community rules and regulations. While there is broad consensus following the decision that the issue of community moderation requires significantly more thought and procedural development, support for the ban varies. Proponents of the ban argue that it has reduced toxicity and risk of personal attacks in the server; while others are concerned that it was a centralized decision by an individual DAO Facilitator responsible for moderation, and restricts freedom of expression.

Current Discord Rules contain a list of unacceptable behaviors and their respective consequences; however, this is the first instance that perceived violation of these rules has resulted in a ban, giving rise to demands for a more decentralized and clear pathway for future application and enforcement of these rules. In response, the DAO Facilitation Squad tabled a Pre-Proposal Poll to establish a Working Group in the DAO Discord to discuss ideas surrounding this topic. While the proposal passed, it did so without broad consensus, and instead of moving forward with a more formal working group process, an informal #🚫discord-moderation themed channel was opened to house ongoing discussions.

While this is the first time the issue of community moderation has come up relating to the DAO Discord and Forums, moderation of content in a decentralized ecosystem is an important topic, and the community has in the past started to approach how best to manage this inside of the Decentraland Platform, for example in a proposals for “A Scene Moderation System That Respects Plurality” and “Should scenes be able to block users inside them?”

Community Interviews

As part of our research for this report, we reached out to several community members to garner insights and reflections on the issue of community moderation: @ckbubbles and @SinfulMeatStick.eth shared their thoughts. Here you’ll find a summary and highlights of these conversations:

Do you think that DAO moderation should be thought of and considered in a different way?

Sinful: I would have to say, since we’re in a new space, I personally think that it should be taken as a case by case approach, as I understand, there will be trolls that will come into discord and they’re actual trolls. But there also may be other individuals coming to the Discord and may have genuine questions and may just not know how to go along with things, like how to ask things. DCL is worldwide, so there are many cultural differences as well.

ck: There are two sides: what’s my opinion and what I’m hearing from the community. Basically from my side, I think the current DAO moderation is fine as it is and I have not had any issues with it, since we’ve all been part of Discord and understand how moderation works with rules, banning, and all sorts of things. On the other hand, based on what the community is saying, maybe there should be a more clear process that involves the community in decisions instead of necessarily those who are facilitators.

There’s a debate about effectiveness and efficiency around decentralized organizations. In terms of moderation and the sanctioning decision-making process, would you prefer a centralized or decentralized approach?

ck: It depends on the situation. When we talk about a detrimental immediate harm, it’s more than appropriate for an administrator to step in and mediate or remove posts. This is something that already happened in the past, when things on forums have gone unnecessary, when things are said back and forth. Sometimes that can cause more harm than good, especially in a space where we aren’t physically in front of each other to understand behaviors and know what someone’s intentions are, so it can escalate things when it’s just text and it’s not being moderated. I think it’s OK at times to centralize information and responsibilities. It will be useful and efficient, but it’s also important there to be checked against, so no one can have too much power influence

Sinful: I think I wanna answer decentralized, but when I answer decentralized I also want to say that at least my meaning of this is that there should be multiple people making this decision to fully enforce the sanction. The DAO Squad should be included in this decision making as well as some users that are really involved with the community and know the different individuals to get different inputs and showing different points of view. With that said, I would like to point out that this should be applied for the most serious decisions, for example, when it comes to Discord banning. Perhaps a suggestion for the whole sanctioning process might be Discord moderator comes and sees activity, gives a warning, if the person does not stop then apply a temporary server mute, and from there and after that go back to the team, discuss and go through a decision making process, and then perhaps if it’s something ban worthy, bring it up with whatever members the Squad decides to bring on as the “eyes of the community”.

What do you think about zero tolerance policies and some specific behaviors?

Sinful: When you say zero tolerance behaviors, I can think about certain words, no name calling, I would even go as far as should be not exposing someone on the discord, like posting personal information about someone else. Now, continuing with the question regarding if there are any bad behaviors currently happening or not being considered, I personally have seen some stuff in the general chat, but I can see both sides of this. Someone can be a little rude, but it also can happen that on the other side there’s a “ready-to-go” attitude.

ck: When it comes to an ad hominem attack, it’s an immediate NO for me. Whenever I see that happen I try to de-escalate and deflect, so that kind of attacks do not continue. But it can be really harmful, and I don’t agree with a lot of the harassment I’ve seen lately of people regardless if they are asking the right questions that should be asked. There’s no reason for somebody to try to break somebody down just to get clear answers. Zero tolerance policies can be really useful for having people feel like there’s accountability and repercussions to their actions, because at the end of the day, no one should be coming to a space and feeling that they’re going to be attacked or intimidated.

Some final comments and reflections…

ck: I don’t know if this helps and I think that I already said this before. I pointed back to what we do in the CBD server, which luckily we haven’t had to enforce, because for whatever reason the hostility tends to defuse relatively easily in that server. Basically we have rules that people have to sign in order to become a new user in the Discord and a consequences section we’ve all voted as a community. So if you violate any of the rules there, we’ll ask you to not continue that behavior and remove post and give you warning (first time); then suspend you for a half an hour, and then if you come back and continue, then will suspend you for 3 hours, and if you come back again, 24h; and if you’re still continuing on and if offenses are beyond that, we will suspend you indefinitely. I think for us it feels good because we know we have this in our backpocket and people agreed to it, and when they come to this discord they’re under these rules regardless of being Decentraland and decentralized.

Also wanted to say that things that we were doing as a community, the ways that we were getting more active, and getting more power with VP delegation was the right path to be on, and now I feel like we’re in a stuck place where a few people are controlling everything. To me, it feels that it is getting more about individuals getting recognition, when it really is supposed to be about Decentraland and making this DAO actually work. I’ll keep calling this out and not going anywhere.

Sinful: I think within the moderation team, perhaps there needs to be a person, an unbiased moderator that has nothing to do with the platform and that only knows that the server has to be moderated and this role has to be upcaped. For example, Decentraland Discord is in the process of training some moderators acquired from a third party company to become that unbiased voice/choice to add another layer. I’m really happy that you took the time to put these interviews together, thank you for taking your time. Any way I can be a resource for the DAO Squad, just reach out. Always happy to talk with you! This is a very necessary step and I’m glad that the team is being responsive and reactive with this.

*Sinful is a sharehost at Decentraland as well as a community builder, and one of community twitch streamers. He also onboards new users and helps them get around Decentraland and find their place.

*ckbubbles is a Creative Director in Advertising, that right now is mostly doing work with AR & VR clients and storytelling around their products. ck is also a nail artist and entrepreneur that works with tech, concept builds and wearables, and works with artists and devs to make come to life their creations in Decentraland.

Conclusion

Conversations amongst community members in the Discord Moderation channel have also produced some limited consensus thus far, including:

• Support for a ‘warning-consequence’ approach that would include a warning, timeout/mute, kick and ban stages, with supporting evidence that this approach has worked in other DAOs and platforms.
• Expressing a need to find a balance between decentralized and centralized processes for moderation balancing between efficiency and community safety.
• Development of ‘self-moderation’ capability through the use of bots enabled to delete messages, timeout users and call in the the later involvement of the community by voting to uphold or overturn these automated actions.

In the interim period before establishing a formal working group to workshop issues of community moderation — should the community support doing so — discussions on community moderation will continue in the DAO’s the #🚫discord-moderation channel.

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The Decentraland DAO Community Pulse Report was prepared by the DAO Facilitation Team: @Matimio, @Fractilians, @Fehz