OWS Fund Request [November]

Dear community,

I would like to provide a detailed breakdown of the OWS funds distribution in October that serves as a basis for the estimation of funds requested for November - a total of 2,450 NEAR.

(OWS Fund Request [October] for reference)

The following OWS needs have to be covered on a monthly basis. These include:

  • 1. Moderator pay: 7,200 USD

How did we arrive at this figure?

Based on the previous months, Sandbox moderators have been rewarded 800 USD for the commitment of min 10h per week: Community Acknowledgement [July]. That results in 5,600 USD (@Jacopo has volunteered to do extra 10h as of this month which explains extra 800 USD in this section compared to the last month)
On top of that, In September we have launched 4 new language channels on the Discord Server: Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, and for the region of India. To moderate these channels in the native language we onboarded 3 new language coordinators: @FritzWorm @Monish016 @williamx (=moderators) who will be monthly rewarded 400 USD for the commitment of min 5-7h per week. That adds extra 1,600 USD to the moderator section.

We have also welcomed @Aria in our team to take care of the OWS events.

  • 2. Rolling rewards (standard tasks available for everyone each month): 39,900 USD

How did we arrive at this figure?

*Note: max amount has been limited to 300 USD per contributor for these tasks in order to allocate more budget to the project-requested tasks: 30,000 USD (in October OWS had 115 approved submissions). Assuming current growth of 15% we assume a max of 133 submissions in November (15% of growth that translates into 18 new expected submissions in November => 115+18= 133). Capped at 300 USD per contributor gives 39,900 USD. Should engagement grow faster than expected and cause more than 133 submissions, the OWS Treasury funds (=5000N) will cover it.

*A max award of 1371,1 USD was possible because it included project work (on top of rolling opportunities tasks) that @Monish016 has been undertaking

  • 3. Payouts to contributors working on requests of NEAR-based projects: 12,000 USD

How did we arrive at this figure?

As of September, the OWS has shifted its focus from general reward opportunities to more targeted project work that we believe will better support the NEAR ecosystem with more focused actions from the Sandboxers as compared to free-floating initiatives captured by the rolling opportunities. To motivate projects come to us and deploy OWS funds, we raised the amount from 1000 USD to 1500 USD per project/per month. Ongoing Projects in November are represented in the infographic below:

To sum up

This three elements sum up to 59,100 USD which should have been OWS initial request for November. From October OWS DAO has 8777,95 NEAR left to be used (5000N is preserved as Treasure for emergencies and we are left with 3777,95 or 35,853 USD). To come to the estimated amount of 59,100 USD, we are requesting an additional of 23,247 USD or 2,450 NEAR (converted by that rate of 21/11/21: 1 NEAR= 9,49 USD).

Please let me know if any further clarification is desired.

Best,

Sofia

8 Likes

Thanks for the impeccable transparency in this report. Please submit your payout proposal. OWS is doing great work, I’m proud to experience the growth and maturity of the guild.

For the next month, we would like to focus on quality of the output and providing the sandboxers clear guidelines for what is acceptable and what is not.

I have to admit that I am concern with some of the work we have approved for rewards. We want to make sure that rewards are signaling the right expectations and level of care for the work done.

Next month we ask guilds offering their services to ecosystem projects, to receive feedback on their work. This will be an important requirement to add to their monthly report.

3 Likes

Thank You very much for that.

Hi Grace,

Regarding quality, i think we should have a standard template. Moderators in OWS are simply rejecting the claims, and if someone known to the moderators they are approving the claims without any hurdles. So every one should be accounted for their handwork. Suddenly the moderators will come up with the silly reason for rejections.

Finally we should bring a policy that each person should get the enough opportunities.
Same person shouldn’t moderate for different communities.

Thanks

2 Likes

Also, I disagree that OWS moderators like @Monish016 can claim something from OWS. They already have great salary in OWS.

Additionally, I propose reduce quantity of OWS moderators. I don’t understand what P0k does or Monish for example. May be they do great job, but we don’t have any information about it. 8 people work for OWS. Wow

@Sofia_Alum could you please show us full list OWS moderators responsibilities ?

And why did you delete my proposals in OWS? I suggested some improvements in OWS.
It’s an evidence that you don’t want to listen Near Community.

Thanks

Hi @Blacksheep & @Dacha -

I’ll let @Sofia_Alum answer for herself, of course, but as I’ve been working closely with the OWS team I wanted to respond to some of the points raised here as well.

Quality is an interesting topic - and one that all parts of the Community are discussing at length on a regular basis. No Guild more than OWS I would imagine - which you can see in how the Rolling Rewards and Opportunities are adjusted with care month after month to continue to encourage Sandboxers to contribute as meaningfully as possible to the NEAR ecosystem. And awarding them for it accordingly. This is an evolving process and involves a lot of reaction to what Sandbox contributors are interested in doing with what projects/Guilds are looking for so it has had its stops and starts over the past months.

Creating templates and strong standards limits creativity so personally I have a hard time enforcing them, especially in an environment like the OWS where we are encouraging people to “play, learn, and earn.” The playing and learning comes first and we don’t want to stifle that, merely direct it. This is why the Quality Guidelines were posted a few months ago. If you have thoughts on these guidelines and how they can be improved, please comment on that post.


Can you provide specific examples for this? These are very strong claims that should be addressed. If you feel that the moderator reviewing your proposal had not adequately explained in private message on Discord why certain items were rejected or accepted, let’s address those instances exactly.

It would be great to see both of your thoughts and comments on this Forum post On Community-Driven Accountability where we’re hoping to encourage conversation on how community accountability, quality standards/guidelines, or items of this nature can be handled by the community for the community.


We have increased the number of OWS moderators - and this is a good thing! This means more support throughout the month for Sandboxers, especially at the end when there is an urgent need for reward reviews so folks can get their payouts as efficiently as possible. It also means the growth of the OWS regionally-focused initiatives, so we’re expanding content created in other languages & support/projects for specific linguistic populations so English does not have to be the only language you can contribute in for the OWS.

These initial moderators were hand-selected in Sept/Oct based on the demographics/linguistic needs of the OWS, stated interest in the contributor form to be more involved, and previous activity within the OWS. For this experimental pilot and first instance of hiring Regional Coordinators (as part of the moderator team) we kept the hiring curated, but look for full open calls for new language-based roles in the new year as we further develop this initiative. More info about this to come in the OWS roadmap for Dec-May, which will be posted here on the Forum soon!

This applies to Monish & p0k’s roles, which was already explained last month in a comment here.

3 Likes

Will get back to you with the proofs…! lol

1 Like

hand-selected

Great example of equal access for Near community members.

Also, I have information about one of OWS moderator and his/her OWS accounts network .

I sent my proposals to @vrdoingthings today.

I think we together can improve it.

Thanks

I have never seen moderator @Dskye in OWS Russian group. Who is it ? Aslo, there are couple messages in November. What kind of work this moderator did?

1 Like

Check out this Post,

A person who got 1000 followers actually gets about 150 USD in reward. So he might be bit off this month since he already filled his reward bank to half. He must work harder to bring those 1000 followers.

I don’t know why his OCT month claim is been unattended by OWS.

Will bring up more like this.

Blacksheep

2 Likes

Hi, regards this, the handle @Dskye is in the previous edition. That was mine actually (and you can see the current edition clearly state my handle @williamx). This is for the contributors to recognize me easier from Discord to this forum.

3 Likes