Announcement to PAUSE Transitional Decisions of Creatives DAO

Creatives
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Dear Creatives,

Due to the ongoing difficulties arising from our collective transitions, we are immediately implementing as PAUSE on:

  • Using the V3 Creatives DAO
    • If you are uncomfortable being included in the V3 even while it is in its experimental and paused phase, please feel free to create a poll to request your removal.
  • Moderators DAO
    • This was created out of urgency to move forward with making Creatives DAO self sustainable. Now that we understand we do not need to move with that type of urgency we are pausing this project to allow for more discussion, community input and trust to be built. We still believe many of the ideas within this project should be pursued but only when the projects are decided on by the community so everyone can feel confident and hopefully excited about it!
  • Creatives DAO Grant Writing
    • This is still a possibility but not top priority at the moment.
  • Monthly Proposal Application Forum
    • Some of us thought this may be helpful to collect all info for better reporting but quickly realized it’s too much labor for the community and not effective. We are looking for new ways to report, feel free to give your input!

V3 Governance Structure

We would like to propose an election period for all community members to submit their ideas for the V3 governance set up between July 8th - August 31st. This gives the community almost two months to envision which governance system to use moving forward.

Please note that this is a PROPOSAL, meaning this is not a concrete decision. If the majority of the community decides that this election period needs more time than 2 months, then the community can vote to extend the election period. The community is free to submit any ideas they believe would best serve us as a whole.

For all proposals we are asking for everyone to please continue:

Background

The urgency for the shifts we have all been discussing for many weeks began at the end of April. The moderators team did their best to gently ease everyone into discussions around this in May. As we progressed, we did our best to move quickly on developing a grant application for Creatives DAO to ensure this entire community could continue to receive support for their projects.

June 6th @FritzWorm posted a Community Draft with his ideas for the next steps for the Creatives DAO.

After our community call on June 27th, @FritzWorm made a poll on the creatives DAO telegram gauging acceptance of his proposal for a new V3 setup. Many have expressed that

  1. This poll was not on-chain so therefore cannot be used as an official decision maker.
  2. The amount of folks who voted were not enough compared to how many people are a part of this community.
  3. Due to the influx of information and lots of misunderstandings, the poll may have not been fully understood by many community members.

After 31 votes with 24 approvals, @FritzWorm took initiative to set up the V3 as a test, without using it officially, as he was envisioning to learn by doing. Majority of community members added to the new DAO had not given their consent to participate and majority of the community did not understand the new setup nor even know about it.

People began to notice and felt very uncomfortable with the DAO being set up in a new format without their knowing. Although @FritzWorm stated many times that he was intending for this to be an experiment it is understandable that many members of the community felt deeply uncomfortable.

So there are some issues here to address:

Understanding Positional Power

Positional Power is defined as the power or authority that is assigned to a person because of their position or rank in an organization. While us moderators are not councils of this DAO, we make a lot of decisions. The community looks to us for direction and answers to our requests. When we speak (or type…) our words make an impact. Even when we do not mean for something to be concrete, often times the community interprets it this way. So we must be careful with our words and our actions. This does not just go for us moderators (past, present and future) but to all council members and DAO leaders! There are nuanced layers to leadership that we all need to explore, which leads me to…

Recognizing how we indirectly or directly contribute to creating environments of harm or care.

Operating in a decentralized way within a community of people that exist across the globe comes with many challenges. It is not easy to understand class/race/gender/language/cultural differences, especially through a computer screen.

We all have lives outside of Creatives DAO and can not be present in this space 24/7 but after going through this experience we can learn that absence can indirectly and negatively impact our environments. Using myself for an example - as I was taking care of many personal events during June, I found it hard to show up fully for all the changes happening here. I was hitting a bit of burnout and by the time July came around collective confusion was peaking because I did not take the time to voice my opinions in stronger ways. Other indirect damage can be seen by all the people that got left behind in the speed of everything. There was not enough care given to make comprehensive decisions more accessible and inclusive for everyone. Not taking action to include and comfort the community resulted in disharmony blocking our growth. Also, community members lacking in participation during the last fews months contributed to other members overcompensating with their contributions as they felt there were not enough people truly invested in making positive changes for our community.

We all play a role.

More directly, I have seen a handful of folks quickly resort to harmful ways of dealing with their discomfort. It deeply saddens me to witness community members that I have been growing beside become negative in their communication or allegations. None of us need the extra stress so I encourage us all to take one big BREATH. The world is not easy for many of us. This space should be one of support for us all. Please be good to one another, even if you don’t agree with them and use kind communication to express your beliefs. Let’s not take the easy way out here by making huge divides between each other. Let’s use these opportunities to deepen our understanding of one another and learn how we can better operate together in this large community - our world would benefit from this work. Please be good to yourselves by remembering that it is okay to take a break from this - no changes are going to magically happen when you take a rest away from the screen.

With gratitude,
Adrian & the Moderation Team @ted.iv @Monish016 @hevertonharieno @blusw @Paul @kc_sollano @Cryptonaut @williamx

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PTBR
Simplesmente perfeito! Eu realmente amo a precisĂŁo e racionalidade com a qual vc direciona as coisas. Uma vez mais vocĂŞ foi perfeita!

Uma das coisas que eu acredito que devemos mudar é a nomenclatura MODERADORES. Eu penso que palavras tem poder e história. E essa palavra foi usada muito no espaço digital para criar regras, banir pessoas, e fazer a vontade dos moderadores. Todos nós (eu acho) viemos do mundo digital e a gente liga essa palavra com autoridade.

Talvez uma palavra como MEDIADOR seja melhor, é bem similar, mas traz uma sensação de que é uma pessoa para ajudar e guiar quando necessário.

Essa é uma mudança simples, mas que talvez possa ajudar bastante.

Obrigada pelo seu post <3

ENG
Just perfect! I really love the clarity and the rationally way you direct stuff. Once more you were just perfect <3

One of the things that i think we need to change is the nomenclature of MODERATOR. I think words have power and history. And this word was used in many digital spaces for set rules, ban people, and set the moderators will. We all (i guess) come from digital world, and we bind this word with authority.

Maybe a word like MEDIATOR its better, very similar, but bring a sense that is a person to help and guide when necessary.

This is a simple change, but maybe can help a lot.

Thank you for your post <3

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@beetlejuice eu concordo!

For me, whether it is “mediator” or “moderator” is somewhat down to semantics, but what is important here is that we are not “council” in this current model!

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Okay. Appreciate all the efforts of everyone in building this ecosystem.
We (Creatives DAO) are big now, this is more of the reason why change is coming to us, Cos monthly funds from NF to us has now increased.
I don’t think NF is complaining tho,

But we need that structure to manage funds and secure our space in front of NF
When we request for funds to carry out creative activities that can add value to NEAR ecosystem, let’s get the works done, let’s onboard people and make them stay.
Let’s grow the community, let’s multiply ourself in the future of the ecosystem and Let’s use AstroDao.

Its also very important, smart and wise to plan self sufficiency too, that can make us go longer in the work​:slightly_smiling_face:. Let’s make it fun, business and lifestyle at the same time, And nothing would stop us.

Suggestion:

  • Pls let our moderators direct newly introduced DAOs to existing DAOs with similar vision…

I’m sure out of 70 DAOs that we have about 20 are doing Almost the same thing already…

bless up everybody. I wish us success. one love

Could we have a law of DAOs Saving 1k in their treasury, after receiving 5k monthly?
this can also help in support of self sustainability.

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Greetings @creativesdao-council

this is a good step, it will give us all time to restructure and grow.

Creatives DAO can have two groups, first will be Moderators from creatives Dao and the second group can be a representative from each community under the creatives DAO, it will also help to be a shared voting platfrom.

DAOs can create a google documentation of their Roadmap showing how they aim to get sustainability and the help they will require. this will provide a detailed portfolio for DAOs under the creatives, the Creative DAO can then create storage for informations from DAOs, where new DAOs can submit these documents after their proposals must have been created and voted on the Forum.

we are a decentralized community but if do not have well detailed but simple rules for documentation and growth then the Creatives DAO will always be like a governing power over DAOs. with these simple steps we can all go about our different projects but just like we com to give reports and proposals, we can also always upload documents for metrics and growth, the governance forum isn’t a good enough platform for this.

just my thoughts .

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Here’s my 2 Cents…

The origins of the Creatives DAO… Having come into existence due to the growth of Createbase as the first funding vehicle for the emerging creatives and community members using NEAR ecosystem tools at the time, such as Mintbase & AstroDAO (Sputnik for those who remember the early days), I can understand the myriad challenges council members and moderators have had to navigate since Creatives DAO left the hands of Near Foundation employees and myself, @tabear & @JulianaM took over the reigns and moved the treasury over to Astro at the end of 2021.

It has been no easy task I imagine, since I left the council at the beginning of 2022 I’ve seen the explosion of DAOs that fall under the Creatives DAO banner and the further decentralization of the DAO. We’ve definitely come a long way!

Making it up as you go, together with pseudo-anonymous community members, while trying to cater to as many people as possible, around the world, is what often leads me to describe a DAO as “An organism in constant state of transformation and evolution”.

Since Creatives DAO stopped directly funding DAOs under its vertical, the processes and requirements have regularly changed. Whether this is to cater to the needs of Near Foundation, to ensure the relevancy of Creatives, or both I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that the Creatives community is just too big to manage by one DAO.

Since the funding of DAOs is mostly in support of funding community projects, which there are many, the limitation of $5,000 per DAO has in my opinion led to the creation of more DAOs, to ensure that more projects can get funded and communities can meet their growth needs. Depending on the type of projects, DAOs have been exploring funding via both Creatives and Marketing DAO, which leads to the creation of separate proposals and generally more work for both the DAOs and verticals. Creatives and Marketing verticals have thus taken the role of moderating and vetting all the proposals and funding requests from all the DAOs every month and approve them so they may request funding from Near Foundation. That’s a lot of work.

Imagine a collective of verified DAOs in their respective fields. For example Music could be made up of DAOrecords, NxM, Tamago, BeatDAO. These DAOs, rather than approving funding requests for multiple projects, could instead evaluate relevant project proposals and queue them for clearance. Each approved applicant can then submit directly to Near Foundation for proposal funding. Kinda like the DAOs (usually through a liable human) currently do.

This could encourage long-term planning for projects being proposed and the inclusion of a more detailed proposal, potentially leading to greater impact. Rather than monthly proposals packaged inside monthly proposals.

If DAOs are meant to be sustainable, they shouldn’t just be set up to receive funding to fund projects and cover maintenance costs. It’s no easy task to run and manage a DAO, let alone a successfully sustainable one. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen very many of those at all to be honest.

Maybe we should just go back to encouraging project proposals, where accountability and metrics can be managed and applicants can be approved through a more nuanced set of verticals, who potentially stand to benefit from supporting members of their community.

For example, DAOrecords would love to support the creation of new music, that not only benefits DAOrecords, but also Tamago. I’m sure Metaverse DAO would love to support more events in the various virtual spaces, and so on.

I think we need more verticals to help facilitate proposals.

Existing DAOs could focus on community building, rather than trying to be legal entities, unless they have such intentions.

DAO and community members could focus on creating meaningful proposals that add value across the ecosystem and that are a part of something longer-term and quantifiable.

These are all just thoughts and insights.

Another alternative is to go directly to NEAR Foundation Grants and apply!

Thanks for taking the time to read my comments :100: :heart:
Vandal

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Hello, Adrian and all Creatives Mods!

thank you for this message, think we are sharing lots of learnings in this process.
this PAUSE sounds me as a deep breath and a perfect moment to share listenings, points of view and also to study and learn more about all we are in.

I’d like to share a small input about the words, as @beetlejuice pointed:
moderator, ou mediator, what word to use? for me, words are important, but they also can be interpreted in different ways. It would be interesting to qualify them. What are the Mods roles could be a great question - do define roles, to share some guidelines for different roles, could help us to understand better.

:purple_heart:

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Hey @ritamaria

The moderator’s job is first and foremost to ensure the guidelines are being met:

As per the question about what a moderator is, you can see the open call put out for the positions which outlines the requirements of each moderator:

You can also see the previous open call here:

I would say that the nature of this vertical is that is constantly changing and shaping itself, and with that so does the moderators role. As for the topic of moderator/mediator, I don’t think the name change would make an overall difference to how the community perceives the role, to be honest, but I’m open still open to the proposal. It could be brought up as part of the changes being proposed to Creatives DAO going forward! The main point for me for now is that we are not council members of the DAO in the current model.

Thanks for the input and happy to answer any other questions

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For me, this idea has some great potential and could really help streamline a rapidly growing community.

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Thanks Ted.iv for your answer!
yes, I’ve been following all these posts you mentioned, and studying the projects, proposals and reports.
I also listened you about it:

and starting in another point in this construction, when you say:

I see here a great question: “How does the community perceives the role?” and this question makes a lot of sense to me now, during all the debates and discussions we’ve being passing through.

In my personal understanding, there are lots of perceptions. I see a gap between the written and the applied guidelines. It may happen because the practice is organic, and there are different perceptions and understandings.

One suggestion is to fix guidelines for evaluating proposals. For me it is a bit different than the guidelines of submission, maybe it is the other side…

I guess that it may be clear for mods, but how to put it in words? Or if there is a document about it, where is it? I understand that everyone in the community should be a mod one day, for the health of the process, and maybe this could be a nice contribution, also if we can build this together.

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