[GCP-008] S18 Discord Management

Summary:

Discord Management within the DAO was previously funded by the DAOops workstream, which is closing operations at the end of Season 17. Moving forward, we look to the GCP process as a mechanism to fund operational & organizational efficiency within one of our primary community & working hubs: Discord.

Scope:

I propose funding Discord management to do five things:

  1. Continue addressing daily server management tasks and contributor requests.
    a) Respond to DAO contributor access, channel/role creation, and help/informational requests within 24 hours.
    b) Tracking of server insights and metrics to spot suspicious activity
    c) Regular checking of role access to various channels and the ongoing need for these roles
    d) Regular checking of activity across channels to ensure stale channels are archived when they become stale
    e) Continued maintenance and monitoring of bots for active use, relevant updates, server security/automation, and community engagement

  2. Facilitate coordination and strategy between workstreams, working groups, and community groups within Discord.
    a) Suggest proper & scalable approaches toward implementing new working groups or growing existing ones
    b) Creation & maintenance of admin-level roles for individual workstream, guild, and pod maintenance

  3. Continue documenting best practices and how-to guides for contributors.
    a) These are developed as needed. Examples include a Discord best practices guide, a kick/ban policy, a bot access tracker, a guide to playing music in Discord, and Discord channel structure/role access documentation

  4. Continue the development, maintenance, and user training of the Gitcoin Sentry bot as an in-house security tool.
    a) The Gitcoin Sentry bot is an internally-developed bot that provides access to mass-moderation commands and unique server security functionalities, such as targeted pruning and public-channel monitoring, not offered by other bots. In addition to the continued development of this bot, a series of documentation providing usage guidance will be developed and shared with DAO Core members and any other contributor with administrative-level access on any level within the server

  5. Coordinate the development of a ChatGPT response bot
    a) We will aim to introduce a ChatGPT-powered bot to quickly respond to community questions with answers from our Knowledge Base and assist with wayfinding within the server and broader Gitcoin Community. This bot will improve citizen comfort and engagement while reducing the contributor strain of additionally monitoring the active public channels to assist grantees and other citizens experiencing issues or that have questions

Benefits:

  • Retain high context tooling contributor who understands the DAO, its organizational structure, and the needs across workstreams/working groups
  • Maintenance of a healthy, safe, and efficient working space
  • Quickly respond to emergent contributor requests and potential scams/raids
  • Continued development of bots to improve security, contributor productivity, and community support/engagement

Risk assessment:

  • Using the GCPs process to fund high-context work could lead to a loss of resources due to the seasonal instability of the role
  • Not funding this work will mean the existing work must be stopped or reassigned to existing resources

Budget:

An estimate based on the history of filling this role suggests this work requires one contributor operating at a part-time capacity, or approximately 30 hours per week for the 13 week season.

Payments would be distributed by one Tally vote for the season or by individual Tally votes at the end of each month.

This role will require access to “core contributor” tools such as Discord (with “moderator” access), email, g-suite, miro, etc. There is no consideration for vacation, travel, training, severance, conferences, or other ancillary DAO/workstream contributor benefits.

30 hours/week * 13 weeks = 390 hours total. 390 hours at $60 per hour = $23,400

Total request: $23,400*

*All spending will be tracked, including hours committed. Any unused funds will be sent back to the treasury at the end of the season if a consecutive GCP is not passed.

Timeline:

The season would start on May 1 and conclude on July 31, for a total of 13 weeks. There would be no severance should the service not be renewed.

Success Metrics:

What metrics, outcomes, or deliverables should be used to verify the project met expectations? Said another way, after the project is complete, what measures will you use to confirm the project met or did not meet the outcomes listed in the “motivation”.

  • Continuous Discord role & channel maintenance and re-organization, focused on reducing overwhelming views and promoting efficient coordination
  • Response to DAO contributor requests & access issues with a response time of <24 hours
  • Immediate response to raid attempts
  • Release of and proper documentation for the Gitcoin Sentry bot
  • Release of and proper documentation for the ChatGPT response bot
  • Continued documentation & guidance on best practices for navigating/using Discord as a contributor, lead, or workstream Discord Manager (e.g., Discord best practices guide, kick/ban policy, bot access, playing music in Discord, discord channel structure) to promote clarity, context, and introduce shared processes to maintain organizational consistency
  • Continued training sessions on special cases as they arise (e.g., banning, entry flow, wayfinding within the server, onboarding/offboarding, where to look for documentation, how to receive support)
  • Continuous implementation & maintenance of external and internal bots to aid contributor security, increase productivity, and engage our community
  • Overall positive sentiment from active DAO contributors

Vote:

For - Fund Discord Management $23,400 for Season 18

Against - Do not fund Discord Management for Season 18

5 Likes

I am fully in support of continued funding for Kyle to manage the gitcoin discord.

This role is ESSENTIAL and is ultra high context. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen to our discord if we no longer had Kyle doing this job.

7 Likes

Highly, highly supportive of Kyle continuing to work on Discord, we are extremely lucky to have him.

People have no idea how much maintenance happens in the background, but Kyle will happily run you through this. The above gives you some idea of the many things he does.

Hope people like @DisruptionJoe @kyle @Viriya @CoachJonathan @kevin.olsen also have a minute to comment here, super appreciated. :pray:

4 Likes

This is extremely important work and it’s one of the pieces I was worried about falling off as DAO Ops sunsetted. It would be wonderful to have Kyle continue to do this.

@kylejensen – maybe you already have this but it would be helpful to have some kind of handbook ready for hand off if/when you decide to not do this type of work anymore. Moreover, I would really love for you to be responsible for find and train replacements if you were to stop doing this kind of work in the future.

I’m a full yes to this proposal :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I’m also a yes to keeping our Discord organized and safe :slight_smile: Looking forward to having @kylejensen continue to his work.

3 Likes

I do! I am finalizing a “current state of discord” handoff doc that I will maintain should this GCP go through. Additionally, a big theme for this work in S18 will be automation and decentralization, providing DAO contributors with the tools, guidance, & confidence they need to successfully manage the server as a community. If I’m successful, I’ll have automated or created easy-to-use bot commands that should hopefully reduce the need for such active server-wide moderation & management as we continue to scale

6 Likes

Been using discord since 2016. Early Supporter Developer badges, etc. I have an eye for quality and you seem to be very knowledgeable.

To your plans with bots helping out you probably know this but, I suggest having custom ones with very limited access.

But even then ownership of the bot, as well as authorized users can be a huge vulnerability.

For example: if someone with responsibility were to get their token stolen. Someone could spam DM every user in the server malicious links.

Also with custom bots the issue is similar. When the responsibility comes down to one bot owner, their contribution and responsibility is heightened but somewhat set in stone.

I believe there may be features to pass off bots into a group of people so there is more security.

would be happy to help if possible and look into these things for you, appreciate the efforts you’re making and the energy. :sparkles::zap::seedling:

3 Likes

I really like the clarity of this GCP. And your ongoing “gardening” - nurturing and pruning - seems crucial.

Side note - IF you have cycles - maybe working even more transparently could be helpful, ie getting you more visibility outside of Gitcoin. Sharing your expertise could help you, Gitcoin, and of course the broader community. Just a thought.

I’m fully supportive of this GCP.

5 Likes

Definitely in support of keeping this going. It’s important we have our Discord run well, so in favor of this.

4 Likes

This vote is now live - go cast your vote here:

https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0x977fc6bf60aa119b6352e36abf1435bbeede46abf6ef75060069d6da32f35d1d

End date May 9, 2023, 5:56 PM est.

2 Likes

Hey @kylejensen - does this work actually take 30/hrs a week? That seems like a lot for just discord management when I know you used to do a number of other things for the DAO within the 40/hrs a week you working in DAO ops. Did the responsibility/scope grow recently, or are you doing new work that wasn’t covered previously?

I have very much appreciated the work happening, just want to confirm we need to pay for 30/hrs a week.

@kyle Yes, I expect this work to take 30hr/week. I increased the scope of the role for S18 to include more custom bot development, the documentation/training materials necessary to hand ownership of these bots over to Gitcoin, and the ongoing maintenance/management work originally part of the role. These bots aim to reduce the general capacity needed for this role in future seasons by introducing automated moderation & security features and multiple moderation commands custom fit to our community needs. I eventually see this role evolving into an as-needed advisory/development role, with most of the daily tasks managed automatically or by the community. This GCP covers the work needed to lay the groundwork for that.

If I wrap up the development of the bots early, I will vocalize that progress with the adjusted working hours and return any surplus funding to the treasury!

1 Like

Thanks for detailing out the details for such an important but under appreciated task within the DAO.

I’m keeping track of Discord metrics week to week here: LINK

I can see your work trough the numbers, and I appreciate you keeping the Discord tidy.

From a security perspective I think it’s key for us to keep our discord on lock.
I would love to see a monthly report for Discord, as I think there is a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes with discord management.

I will be voting yes for this proposal.

2 Likes

Quick update on this proposal, it passed the vote with ~92% approval rate.
Metrics:
1913 unique votes
~5.7M GTC tokens cast.

Thank you to all the voters!

1 Like