Request for Funding - Groundskeeper / Satoshocrat / Jan-Apr 2023

Governance
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Greetings Grinners and Grinnettes,

Wishing a bountiful and blessed block-chaining to one and all. It has been a pleasure to serve the community in the capacity of Assistant Groundskeeper over the last few months:

-Editing and refining the bi-weekly newsletter,
-Creating content for twitter for new education and outreach,
-Responding to and resolving technical support requests via Grin++ telegram.

My proudest contribution this cycle has been undoubtedly troubleshooting and testing successfully the compiling of Grin++ on RPi running Ubuntu 22.04. This task I did have guidance from David Tavarez on the linux-specific processes, but the research and hours of quasi-masochistic trial and error was both fun and fruitful.

I have shared with a few people @davidtavarez, @johndavies24 and @mcm-mike the procedure I followed as it pertains to compatible/accessible repos, dependencies, hurdles and solutions for a successful build (and will post in a separate thread in the future once it is replicated).

During this Groundskeeper role, I found myself discovering new passion for the Grin Project and ways in which I feel I can aptly/enthusiastically contribute. This spawned a new idea recently and I believe it is both worthy and welcome by the community:

A New Newsletter, but not just any Newsletter… The vision I have is to transform the bi-weekly blog post into a Newspaper format, with above-the-fold headlines, catchy pieces with engaging content, and visually, as a website, it would be as if the user is turning pages through the articles. I will use wordpress, squarespace etc. this is an approximate design, but I envision less colors and more traditional format if possible.

[Album] imgur.com

It would be a monthly distribution, but with more dense quality and content. I feel if done correctly, this will boost visibility and engagement with Grin at large, and I commit to the Newspaper being something in which we can all be proud.

In addition to the paper, I intend to continue assisting with end-user troubleshooting and community tasks as necessary, and have talked with David about assisting with the community-hosted nodes for example.

Rate 1500 USD / Monthly

Thank you for the consideration and I hope everyone has a delightful, Grintastic day :smiley:

-Satoshocrat

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I like the idea of there being a place where news articles related to grin are collated. I support this idea. Perhaps there could be a formal way for members to submit articles for consideration to broaden the pool of material.

A catchy name would be good if there isn’t already one.

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I’m more than happy to both crowdsource the name and host community content. As far as the name however, I’m set on having Grin prominently in the title, e.g. “Grin Gazette”

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Grin Newspaper format.

I support transforming the bi-weekly blog post into a Newspaper format, with above-the-fold headlines, catchy pieces with engaging content, and visually, as a website. This could help us to include technical articles and expand what is published, and consequently, we would improve the content. I would like to support @satoshocrat doing this.

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In general I think it is an interesting proposal to provide content in a website like format.
I do however prefer to keep that contribution within the limits of 1000 USD/Month and I think it is possible.
For example, by integrating it in the GrinCC website, a lot of design work can be skipped. Content wise I would see this more as an in-dept blog, going into details into topics such as CoinSwap. I see it therefore not as a replacement but a supplement to the newsletter and in general a nice addition to the grincc.mw website. Additionally, I think time can be saved by relying to some extend on voluntary contributions. If someone wants to help write content, this saves a lot of time. Also I think we should make this type of website blogging variable based on content available for blogging and not fixed to any time frame.
So I would propose the following tasks for 1000 USD/month, just let me know what you think

  • GrinCC meeting note keeping
  • new website blog (don’t reinvent the wheel, use the website)
  • Responding to and resolving technical support requests via Grin++ telegram and or other channels

Typo checking of the newsletter for @Cobragrin you can leave to Mac and me or contribute to when you have time available.

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I think this is an excellent, mutually-satisfying proposal- one that expands on the role while allowing for community collaboration, fresh perspectives… Looking forward to organizing this endeavor and helping promote the Grin Project in an enthusiastic but also substantive manner.

@davidtavarez had a cool idea with integrating Jekyll to allow community members to post submissions via GitHub. This seems like an efficient way to also ingest, screen, edit, catalogue content. Do you prefer I use my own GitHub @jaw709 or have conditional access to the GrinCC repo?

As for the technical support, I do have experience in this regard both as it pertains to Grin and career experience, but I might need assistance if “escalation” of an issue is warranted.

I can definitely do the meeting note-taking and will be thorough; Just let me know if there is a preferred template and to where I should submit the documentation.

Excited about continuing to assist, and thank you to the CC for allowing me the opportunity to explore and potentially innovate. I do commit to quality and responsiveness as the Grin community deserves no less.

-Satoshocrat

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On last CC meeting, was proposed to follow-up for the groundkeepers tasks. Various individuals in the community have expressed concern about this funding request. Particulary regarding the following commitment :point_down:

Two options were proposed, as this commitment has not been fulfilled without a clear explanation of what has been done so far:

Option A: Return the funds to the CC’s wallet.
Option B: Contribute without compensation for the next 4 months for the task funded and not performed.

We would like to collect votes, comments, opinions and suggestions from the Community on the best way to proceed.

My personal opinion is that the right path to take is Option B, as I see no reason why @satoshocrat would not do so as he has been a very active member of the Community for a long period of time. I vote for Option B.

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My preference is A, because it is most simple since the proposed tasks have not materialised. But if that is a problem for @satoshocrat I think B is acceptable as alternative.

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As the one who brought up this topic and suggested the refund request, I think it’s worth giving a little context:

The main issue was the missing meeting notes that allow transparency for the community to follow the progress over time, the GK role was abandoned immediately after this funding request without any progress report or follow-up.

I’ll break it down so the community and the CC members can follow the timeline and make a decision, let’s start with the basic facts:

  • 2022-12-06 - The last record of the CC Meeting notes, done by @Cobragrin as part of his tasks [link].
  • 2022-12-20 - At the CC Meeting as part of a discussion regarding @Cobragrin funding request, the CC decided to split the GK tasks and the meetings notes assigned to @satoshocrat. The meeting notes of this meeting were never published but @Cobragrin posted the notes from this meeting voluntarily about few days ago [link].
  • 2022-12-22 - @Anynomous responded to the funding request in this post and suggested the changes above. @satoshocrat approved the changes and funding was approved later.
  • 2023-04-19 - I asked in the Telegram group about the meeting notes of the last meetings, I tagged @Cobragrin and @satoshocrat as the funded GK and asked for their help to find it. @Cobragrin referred me to this funding request and then I realized that the funded tasks were never done or even started.
  • 2023-04-20 - I tagged the GK again and asked @Cobragrin to add “follow-up” topics about missing CC meeting notes and the other tasks to the agenda of the next CC meeting [link].
  • 2023-04-23 - I raised the issue with one of the members of the CC. At this point I suggested asking for a refund and calling it a “misunderstanding” to avoid public drama and keep if friendly.
  • 2023-04-25 - I joined the CC meeting to bring this issue and I suggested to request a refund, @Cobragrin confirmed that he will be able to complete the missing meeting notes.

Personal opinion:

I have nothing personal against anyone involved and my thoughts below are currently referring to this particular funding request, my motivation behind this reply is to make sure that the funds are used in the best way that benefits the community and are not wasted.

I’ll use @davidtavarez words because he explained it better than I can:

The funds should go to support the Community that improves the Grin ecosystem by supporting contributors, and the CC should try to keep contributors motivated to continue to devote time and effort to Grin, but the current behavior is causing just the opposite.

I also mentioned the lack of accountability, no one takes responsibility for anything, and now we have reached this point where the CC does not even care about honoring payments …

The quotes above referred to the delays in payments for some funded tasks but I think it is also relevant to responsibility when the funded tasks are abandoned.

Some extra points to make it clear why I insist on the refund request:

  • This is the simplest solution, we have @Cobragrin as a GK who has proven himself capable to handling all his tasks and he confirmed that he would be able to complete the missing meeting notes.
  • None of the CC members who approved this funding never noticed it for 3 months. 5/6 of the CC members are volunteers and what exactly is the responsibilities are is still not clear. “Option B” requires time and resources that clearly cannot be provided [link].
  • This is not the first time that GK receives funding and the tasks were not completed [link].
  • It’s been 10 days since I tagged @satoshocrat for the first time to find out about the missing notes, I asked @davidtavarez and some other community members to try to contact him before posting this comment, the CC members tagged him in the last CC meeting and so far since bringing this issue no one has been able to get a response even though it is online and active daily.

I’m not sure if we’ll really be able to get a refund, but just making an official request by the CC is “drawing a line” that we will not accept it for the third time and the funds can’t be abused, again.

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I send the above message to @satoshocrat on KeyBase, and will put it here as well for transparency.

Dear Satoshocrat,

I write on behalf of the community council and the community to you in regards to the funding you received as Ground Keeper for the period January-April:

In this funding request there were three deliverables:

• Keeping Grin CC meeting notes (not achieved)
• New website blog (not achieved)
• Responding to and resolving technical support requests via Grin++ telegram and or other channels (partly achieved)

From the above tasks, perhaps you have done some support for Grin++, but not for the full funding period. The other two objectives have not materialized. In the recent weeks, multiple community members and community council members tried to have contact with you to hear why these tasks were not fulfilled. Probably you have good reasons not to be able to produce these deliverables and we were willing to provide solutions, such compensating this work in the coming months. However, so far you refused to engage in the discussion or simply acknowledge the facts and take responsibility for failing to achieve the objectives for your funding period. This is independent on any past or present contributions you made as community member; these efforts are and will be appreciated but are independent of your tasks as Ground-keeper. As paid Ground-keeper, you are accountable for your work specified in a funding request.

After a lot of discussion in the CC meeting of 9th of May, it was decided by the community and community council to ‘officially request you to return the funds you received for this funding period on behalf of the community’. You can return the funds to the know Grin Community Council BTC and Grin addresses. Shit happens in life, and that is understandable. But we are all responsible and accountable for how we deal with whatever comes on our path. I hope you will be honest and fair with yourself as well as with the community and return the funds to the community.

Kind regards,

Anynomous (on behalf of the Community Council and the community)

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That’s a very good idea. Also it would be even better to gather all technical issues and resolutions into a github repository, initially first to refer those who have questions that have already been resolved and any others that arise and are resolved to be added to the repository.

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You mean this…:

Ya, a real bummer not enough Grin peoples got off their ass to make an account and support the initiative, it could have made Q&A so much easier and scalable.

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