Proposal “DashWatchRenewal“ (Closed)Back
| Title: | Dash Watch Renewal May 2018 |
| Owner: | paragon |
| Monthly amount: | 141 DASH (4367 USD) |
| Completed payments: | 3 totaling in 423 DASH (0 month remaining) |
| Payment start/end: | 2018-04-18 / 2018-07-17 (added on 2018-04-24) |
| Votes: | 756 Yes / 234 No / 6 Abstain |
Proposal description
Pre-proposal Link: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-watch-renewal-pre-proposal-april-15-2018.36411/
What we’ve accomplished so far:
- Website http://dashwatch.org built tracking all funded proposals since beginning of the DAO with over 20 metrics, multiple views, and advanced filtering
- Calendar/Timeline of all funded proposals and their respective milestones and events (editable by proposers upon sign-up)
- Globe showing location of all funded proposals
- Monthly research, outreach, and communication with all active proposals
- Reports issued monthly on all active proposals in PDF format
Summary of things to come:
- Twitter and Email Alerts to masternodes and community when there is important news from any proposal instead of only once a month in our reports
- Video Report Summaries (starting a trial now at the end of April, if desired, could be expanded to cover all of our reports)
- Executive Update Summary at the top of our reports for masternodes who don't have time to read entire reports but would like a quick run down of how things are going (starting a trial now at the end of April, if desired could be expanded to cover all of our reports)
- A tracking system for each proposal's inidividual deliverables, milestones, and events built into website with the budget, schedule, and status for each (deliverable, milestone, or event) shown (upcoming)
Summary:
With this proposal, we are seeking funding for continued development and improvement of the Dash Watch platform, as well as ongoing funding for the communication, reporting, research and verification team. Since we first submitted our proposal in November, we significantly expanded the scope to include monthly follow-up with proposal owners and reports on all ongoing proposals. In February this included over 40 monthly reports and in March this entailed 65 reports on those who responded to us and several of those who did not. In most cases, this required researching the proposal, posing customized questions, back-and-forth correspondence, and individualized report writing. We release our reports three days before each voting cycle closes to maximize their utility and relevance. With continued funding we plan on developing and deploying a more rigorous deliverable tracking method for all proposals, creating report summaries in video form in addition to our PDFs, as well as on-camera video interviews of select proposal owners that opt to give the community a more in-depth look at what they are doing, as well as implementing a new landing page with statistics, charts/graphs relating to approved proposals.
Our reporting team is composed of four and soon-to-be five highly-skilled college educated individuals, one full-time developer, and a few part-time research and data verification and entry personnel. The added scope of this proposal has required additional individuals to help collect, manage and organize all the data that is gathered. It will be our continued responsibility to actively seek the most accurate, relevant, and up-to-date information on all ongoing proposals.
About Team Dash Watch
@paragon on Discord - Project Manager
Core/Reporting Team
Reporting Team’s Shared Discord Account @DashWatchTeam (#5277) on Discord
Alex L/@dash-Al (#0877) on Discord
Gethen J /@GJacobs123 (#5867) on Discord
Peyton R/@PeytonDw (#0877) on Discord
Matthijs B @MattDash *#6481) on Discord
Research, Data Verification and Entry
Elizabeth G /@Serendipity#59022 on Discord
Jay J
Hajie H
Suneera M
Most members of Dash Watch are readily available on Discord for community members and proposal owners. Alternatively, you can email us at team@dashwatch.org or message us on the forum at DashWatchTeam.
What are we proposing to do?
Dash Watch will continue to collect and publish proposal performance metrics and proposal updates. In order to keep the community as fully up-to-date as possible while also keeping us as efficient as possible, we are making use of our brand-new pre-formatted logic-based survey questionnaire this month to make life easier for proposal owners. Going forward we will aim to more clearly ascertain and map out milestones and deliverables for proposals along with their respective dates and costs at the start to more effectively track proposal fulfillment over its lifetime. We would like this new system to be implemented into our website as well. We will implement our new improved landing page with proposal charts/graphs, and statistics. We also will release brief video summaries of select reports for those who prefer audiovisual content. Another goal is to begin carrying out regular on-camera interviews with some of the proposals that the community would like us to engage with to provide a more in-depth look at certain proposals’ progress and the people behind them.
Scope
We have significantly increased the scope of our project since the original proposal was created. Initially, Dash Watch promised a functioning website that tracked and displayed proposal metrics for proposals starting from February 2017 as well as a proposal calendar and milestone tracker. We have added coverage of all approved proposals since the treasury’s inception and added monthly proposal reports for all ongoing proposals along with an all-inclusive proposal map and an upcoming proposal statistics/graphs page. This month we plan to start implementing proposal summary videos, proposal owner interviews, more comprehensive reports for bigger-budget proposals, and potential integrations with other Dash projects that create synergy such as Dash Boost or Dash Nexus.
Proposal Reports
Dash Watch publishes monthly reports that outline fundamental aspects of a proposal’s progress.
Our reports include the following:
- Financial Information - including proposal expenditures, remaining budget, budget changes
- Milestones/Deliverables - a clear list of what milestones or deliverables have been accomplished since the last report or the beginning of the proposal
- Challenges/Hurdles - outlines challenges that the proposal has faced currently as well as anticipated challenges
- Future plans - outlines the proposal’s plans for the upcoming months
- Any additional news or information the proposal would like to share with the community
- We also include an executive summary for community members that are limited on time and want a summary of the report.
We are continuously iterating on our reporting system balancing both the time constraints proposal owners face while at the same time still acquiring and providing the necessary information to keep the community updated on all aspects of a proposal. We continue to work on our report format and information gathering model and welcome feedback from both the community and proposal owners on how this system can be improved to add additional value.
Proposal Map
We have created a worldwide map of where proposals have been or are currently being carried out, it can be found here: https://dashwatch.org/map
Proposal Calendar
We have created a calendar that outlines key proposal events or milestones, it can be found here: https://dashwatch.org/calendar
Proposal Statistics Graphs/Charts
We’re developing a new homepage page to illustrate general proposal statistics, categorizations, and trends. Beta site: http://dash-charts-11-apr.surge.sh/
Audiovisual Content
Starting in April, Dash Watch will begin creating short videos for selected large impact proposals (~10 proposals a month). These videos will be produced by the reporting team as an additional measure to engage the community by utilizing a different medium to convey content. We will create a YouTube playlist so that proposal report summary videos can be seamlessly streamed back-to-back.
We also have plans to schedule more in-depth interviews with proposal owners and publish these in a video format. We hope that this will increase proposal owner participation and buy-in. At the same time, the community will benefit from the interview being carried out by a reporting team member who has full knowledge of the happenings in that particular proposal.
Cooperation with Escrow Services
We’ve realized that Dash Watch has some overlap with some of the services that escrow agents provide. We are tracking and reporting on the same milestones and budget the escrow agents do. We believe it would significantly cut down on some of the escrow agent’s work if they let us help with the process. We are happy to work with any and all escrow agents in following up and keeping in contact with proposal owners. This will be a complementary added service of Dash Watch for any escrow provider that would like to offload the responsibility of milestone tracking.
Twitter and Email Alerts to masternodes and community members
We want to make sure we relay the latest information we learn to masternodes and community members within as short a time frame as possible
Deliverable, Milestone, and Event Tracking for each proposal which breaks down the scope, schedule, and status for each deliverable, milestone and event (upcoming)
This will provide a quicker way to stay up-to-date on all the components of any single proposal negating the previous need to always have read the initial proposal text, all of its updates, or reports in order to be fully aware of how well a proposal is progressing
Increased Reporting for Targeted Proposals
To ensure we return the most value to the network, Dash Watch’s monthly reports will go into even greater detail on proposals which compose the largest amount of the budget. We will more thoroughly cover deliverables, budget, and schedule. We’ve heard and seen the community feedback regarding several big projects lately - the community wants to see more detail on the larger proposals and we will accommodate.
Community Engagement and Support
Dash Watch maintains constant lines of communication with proposal owners to ensure we have the most up-to-date information. We are readily available to proposal owners and the community through email (team@dashwatch.org), discord (@DashWatchTeam @paragon or @dash-Al), and forum (DashWatchTeam).
Deliverables
- Database containing all approved proposals, their details, and performance metrics (continued)
- Web application to view proposal data and progress with advanced filtering and tagging ability (continued)
- Fully built database and web application displaying proposal status along with objective metrics (continued)
- Monthly published proposal reports (new with Executive Update Summary (first trial iteration just released)
- Monthly proposal update summary videos on community-requested proposals (upcoming trial just released)
- Monthly audio/video interviews with community-requested proposal owners (new)
- Growing statistics page with various data surrounding the treasury system (new)
- Twitter and Email Alerts to masternodes about any important facts discovered (upcoming)
- Deliverable, Milestone, and Event Tracking system built into website for each proposal with each proposal's budget, status, and schedule shown (upcoming)
Milestones
- Reports - ~90% of active proposals’ reports will be posted at least three days before voting for the cycle closes. This gives time for MNOs to look through reports for any proposals they may be concerned about for continued funding. A select few reports may not be posted until after voting closes because their project has been completed and thus do not need continued voting.
- Report Summaries on Video Trial Completed by end of May
- On-Camera Video Interviews by our reporting team of community-selected proposers by end of May
- Metrics, Map, Calendar - updated on a daily basis
- Proposal Owner and Community engagement - we are in daily contact with proposal owners
- Twitter and Email Alerts for masternodes and community members to ensure each proposal's most important latest news is made known (Completed by End of May)
- Deliverable, Milestone, and Event tracking system to hold each proposal to greater account (Starting in May will take several months to finish and get all information input)
Budget
- Dash Watch Communication, Analysis, Reporting, and Video Creation Team: which includes a minimum of 4-5 full-time highly-skilled, college-educated team members ~ 34k/month
- Dash Watch Development 10k/month (1 full-time developer 60$/hr)
- Dash Watch Research, Verification, and Data Entry 5k/month
- Video Editing 1.5k/month
- Project Management 6k/month
- Accounting, Legal, Tax Administrative Costs 3k/month
- 20% Cushion as a depreciation hedge, or to cover unforeseen costs, and or onboarding additional team members as needed, or for expanded scope. If unused, this will be rolled over and used for future months as it was in previous proposal - 12k/month\
- Total: 71.5k/month at (513$/Dash) = 139.3 Dash
- + 5 Dash Proposal Fee/3 months = 141 Dash per month
(We are not bearing the risk of Dash depreciation or the benefit of appreciation. All appreciation and unused funds will be rolled over to future months and any shortfall will be requested with another proposal)
Our funding ask has increased since our initial proposal because we have vastly increased the scope. The individualized communication with proposals owners and reporting is a very labor-intensive task which is we have four highly-skilled and talented people solely dedicated to this task. Furthermore, we anticipate the amount of monthly reports will increase over time as there are more recurring proposals than completed proposals per month. This will likely require more team members to be added in the future.
Our web development needs have remained stable but we did have to pay slightly more than anticipated ($60/hr). We retain a small budget for our part-time data entry and verification team to keep all the metrics on the website up-to-date. I have asked for a humble project management salary despite the scope and time dedicated to this project being significantly higher than expected. This cycle we’ve also asked for funds to offset accounting and accountant’s cost that are associated with paying the entire team in a tax-compliant manner. Any and all excess funds will be rolled towards future months including any appreciation as it was with our last proposal - this includes the 20% cushion we’ve asked for. If the price of Dash increases, we will not ask for continued funding until we have exhausted all excess funds.
Terms
We are requesting a monthly payment of 141 DASH for the next three months to accomplish our scope of work. Any excess funding will be rolled over and used to lessen the amount requested on future proposals. The increase in cost in proposal outreach and documentation costs was accurately predicted in our initial proposal. This increase in cost is due to our significantly increased scope and an increasing number of proposals in the treasury system. We will be continuously upgrading and improving our application’s featureset as well as the completeness, accuracy, uniformity, and presentation of the information we collect. We will request feedback from the community regarding additional features, more and/or greater-depth coverage, etc. The amount of work required on an ongoing basis may change over time and that will dictate the monthly cost which we will refrain from trying to predict now and will simply request at the appropriate time.
Closing
We know that the vast majority of the value we will provide is still untapped as we iterate to find the most suitable way to present masternodes the information we collect. We hope you appreciate how much work has gone into our efforts as far as finding and training our team and refining a system that's scalable to communicate with proposal owners and collect data. We would really appreciate the opportunity to optimize all of this and unleash the full potential value of Dash Watch.
We believe that Dash Watch adds a much needed level of accountability and follow through to the governance system. In the past, many distressed proposals have slipped under the radar. Our efforts will help discover these distressed proposals. Our mere existence as the eyes and ears for masternode owners increases proposal owner communication, accountability, and follow through. We would like to continue to ensure that those receiving funding are followed up on regarding their deliverables and are held publicly accountable for their progress, or lack of thereof.
Our value proposition is to provide a clear and concise set of metrics and reports that will allow any person viewing a proposal on Dashwatch.org to easily gauge if that proposal is delivering the value it promised when successfully funded by the DAO.
We hope that you see the value in this work and that you will allow us to continue to improve this service. Thank you for your time reading this through, and please feel free to leave any and all suggestions, modifications, and feedback. Thank you!
Show full description ...
Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
Submit comment
|
No comments so far?
Be the first to start the discussion! |
1. Proposal owners will be motivated to get more points. They would not be motivated to get less points.
2. A proposal's total points could be shown as a rough measure of the amount of effort a proposal owner has taken to gather evidence. i.e. all VSN points could be added up in the proposal and given as an overall score value. This also would incentivize a proposal owner to gain evidence.
This is why I proposed points go up for better quality evidence rather than down.
DeepBlue
Apologies for the slow response, we have been quite busy incorporating both Key Proposal Hypotheses (the value proposition) for Dash and the Key Performance Indicators used to track them as well as the first iteration of milestone verification along with a couple other new additions to our offerings: community concern reports and video interviews with community-requested proposals.
We really appreciate the well thought out and clearly outlined feedback you have provided, and would be very interested in continuing the conversation on how to best present milestone verification. If you wouldn't mind moving the conversation to a platform that would allow us to have a more rapid back-and-forth exchange of ideas, we would really appreciate that. You can reach us on Discord at DashWatchTeam. If you prefer we contact you over another platform, you could private message us your contact information on the forum at DashWatchTeam as well. Thanks again for your time and well-thought out feedback!
Our forum account is DashWatchTeam and we look forward to hearing from you once your internet is fully set up.
building on my earlier suggestion for milestones and achievements being marked as Validation / Non Validation and taking into consideration your comments of MNOs possible misunderstanding of the concept of validation.
One possible solution to this is to use a sliding scale of Validation score rating from a scale of 0 to 3. This is to start with to keep it simple but later this rating could go to higher numbers e.g. 0 - 5 as you gain experience in the types of Validation evidence provided and the factors that make validation evidence more trustworthy.
Therefore using the 0 to 3 scaled with 3 being the most validating evidence and 0 not validated at all. We could then remove the words "Non Validated" entirely.
The "Validation Scale Number " or "VSN" for each milestone or claim could be assigned instead.
By using an abbreviation it would make it easier for you to place these ratings anywhere as long as the abbreviation definition is defined at the top of the report with an explanation for each Scan number.
Here are some examples of possible VSN rating criteria. These may well develop over time I hope this provides a starting point for discussion and refinement.. These suggestions will more than likely be improved by your organization over time as you have more experience looking at the type of evidence submitted by users. You could then have a better idea of what the VSN ratings would be based on real life examples of data. However I am putting this forward as a suggestion as a starting point.
The VSN will increase as the evidence provided is more demonstrable, and trustworthy. You will notice that as the scores go up there is more specific type information gathered. Therefore the score is moving from "general unconfirmed validation evidence" to "specific validated evidence".
In addition you will notice that another characteristic of the higher VSN is that there is naturally an increase in trustworthiness as we move up the scale.
Trust can also be transferred or connected to another trusted source e.g. Government ID, Trusted Person e.g. Core team member, etc. If a proposal owner can link their validation evidence to a trusted source in the validation process then they would obtain a higher VSN. Note that the definitions may have other such characteristics that make them more trustworthy however these are not discussed here. The system would need to be refined to the point where it would be easy to know what the rating would be.
VSN 0 = no backing evidence provided but was mentioned somewhere by the proposal owner. This would be in effect "not validated"
VSN 1 = DashWatch received some written correspondence from the proposal owner discussing their milestone and they gave a valid reason why they could not provide higher VSN evidence. A valid reason my well be applicable if so the reason could be given.
VSN 2 = DashWatch discussed the issue with the proposal owner on a video or audio call. From this DASH watch has more information to go off to determine if the said milestone was achieved or if the work undertaken was actually undertaken or not. (Note DashWatch is a trusted body and therefore a higher rating is justified because now a trusted party is involved in the assessment). Or the proposal owner provided some photo evidence that backs up what they are saying. etc
VSN 3 = There is concrete, strong unequivocal evidence that the milestone has been completed. e.g. if a proposal owner stated they had a video interview with a TV station then they would provide a link to the video showing themselves being interviewed by the TV station.
In terms of evidence that cannot be publicly displayed, then an NDA can be signed with DashWatch with the proposal owner and the evidence (e.g. a contract) could be shown to DashWatch then DashWatch could confirm to the community that you had seen the contract and it appears to be in order.
I have kept it simple for now but as you gain more experience with the types of evidence provided you would be able to refine the rating system.
Another reason for me suggesting to keep it simple is so that DashWatch would not have to spend to much additional time on assigning these ratings. If they are too complex then it would take additional time to administer which is not the goal here. We need something fast and easy for DashWatch to implement, Simple for MNOs to understand and use as gauge of how reliable the validation evidence is and straightforward for a proposal owner to know what they need to do to get higher ratings.
The other other benefit this system will bring is that MNOs will be able to learn from what types of projects and what types of proposal owners lead to successful projects. Currently MNOs are not receiving sufficient job updates in order to gauge how well the project went. Without this information MNOs will find it difficult to improve their project assessment skills. We need feedback in order to improve our assessments. This VSN system will not only provide evidence but also provide a means of feedback on how the project is progressing.
There was a suggestion by @stone to integrate the DashWatch reports into the DashCentral. I would also like to see this however I have heard your point on the fact it would need the developer of DashCentral to take time to make the mods. However as an interim period Proposal owners could be educated that in order to garner greater credibility with the MNOs it would be advised to put their DashWatch report link at the top of the proposal with some standard text as follows:
DASH Watch Report (issue date): {link to dashWatch report}
This standard text and link would go at the very top of the "Proposal Description" . If people posting their jobs here were educated that this is where it is recommended to put this text then the diligent proposal owners will do this.
Posting a DashWatch link in a proposal can easily get missed, since it requires a MNO to scroll through the proposal to try and find the link to the report. This is not time efficient and can easily be missed by an MNO.
The modification to the DashCentral however would not be major. It would be a simple one line optional field near the proposal description heading.
I hope you might find these suggestions of interest.
DeepBlue
Thank you for your thoughts and feedback and our team is excited to continue improving the reporting service we provide to MNOs. With regards to your main point of milestone delivery verification, we absolutely agree this is the logical next step in the development of our service, though we also have come to recognize several important challenges that should be highlighted. Our team has discussed how we think this verification information could most effectively be delivered in the face of the challenges and propose having a 3 level system regarding milestone delivery. An explanation of some of the more important challenges with establishing this verification system will follow the brief explanation of the 3 level system.
Level 1
A milestone that has clear evidence provided for it, or is easily confirmed using the resources available to Dash Watch, for example:
Proposal Milestone: Web platform www.exampleproposal.com has been launched on xx/xx/xxxx would easily be verifiable by our team even if no supporting evidence was provided by the proposal owner. These milestones would be listed as VERIFIED
Level 2
A milestone that has some supporting evidence provided by the proposal owner or is confirmable with our review but is not able to be confirmed to the exact specifications that the proposal owner has indicated. For example, a picture of a fully-packed auditorium with the proposal owner and proposal-related branding material visible as evidence for a conference that claims it had 357 people in attendance. Or a claim of X number of hours of footage collected in the production of a video project that is delivered as advertised. These would be labeled CREDIBLE (we are open to an alternative label if something else more appropriate is suggested)
Level 3
A proposal milestone that provides no supporting information and is not able to be confirmed as delivered by our research and report team would, of course, be labeled UNVERIFIED. It should be clear that just because no evidence has been provided as of the writing of the report that the milestone has not been delivered but simply that no proof that the work has been completed has been made available.
Challenges to consider with a verification system:
The first challenge at hand with this system is that this would be the first time that the community has truly demanded it of all proposals, and as such, not every proposal has the infrastructure in place to effectively verify everything. It may take a couple of months in some cases for proposals to get everything in place to establish level 1 verification on all milestones through no fault of their own, especially if they are quite busy this month. We want to exercise caution when rolling out the verification system so that proposals with complex deliverables to verify are not overly stigmatized.
The second challenge is a concern that people reading a list of milestones that say unverified may automatically conclude that these deliverables are in fact not accurate and that some form of deception is taking place. A lack of evidence of completed work is not automatically evidence of misleading claims, incomplete work, and fraud. It seems important to fully educate the community with regards to the meaning of the labels attached and what can be reasonably inferred from each level. This is going to be important to address, especially given that the community is most active when proposals are up for a vote, which is when a misunderstanding of the verification system can cause the most unintended damage.
The third challenge is that some deliverables are almost impossible to verify. Some business deals are covered by NDA’s. An important pitch meeting can’t be recorded with a selfie without risk of appearing unprofessional.
We are planning to implement the above-outlined system in our June reports and welcome any additional thoughts in response to our write up here. If you or any other community member would like to discuss this with our team please reach out to us at team@dashwatch.org, DashWatchTeam on the forum or DashWatchTeam#5277 on Discord.
Every statement, or claim or work or milestones needs to be marked either as VALIDATED or NOT VALIDATED in these DashWatch reports. This way MNOs can make better decisions. It is not enough to go off what the proposal owner says they have done, because the proposal owner can say whatever they want. They VALIDATION means the proposal owner needs to provide evidence backing up each of their claims of work.
If unbacked statements are added to the DASH watch report without giving Validation evidence then MNOs may be mislead. MNOs may believe that DashWatch had validated the information, when in fact all they have done is got the unvalidated information from the proposal owner and put it in the report. This could do more harm than good because MNOs would then be making decisions based on hearsay and believing it has been checked and confirmed by DashWatch.
I read many of the DashWatch reports however I have doubts on several of these reports what was claimed as achieved was actually achieved. I've seen reports with stages the proposal owners claim was accomplished with no actual evidence given that it was accomplished.
However other reports e.g. the Argentian report was very good because it provided proof on all its statements. I felt very confident by that report and what the team had achieved because they had taken the time to provide the proof of what they had done. Here is a copy of that DashWatch report and you can see the “Proof” links:
https://dashwatch.org/files/1524871187903.pdf
The above report was good however it could have been even better by marking unvalidated information as Unvalidated. This then creates a motivation for proposal owners to get validation for everything because then their reports become more believable and therefore more likely to be funded in the future.
The onus of the gathering of the evidence should be down to the proposal owners with guidance from DashWatch. I would suggest that in order for proposal owners to know how to gather and present evidence that is effective at Validating work and milestones perhaps DashWatch could create a small youtube presentation on how to collect evidence that validates the work.
Therefore I propose that every claim of work completed needs be clearly marked VALIDATED or NON VALIDATED in the DASH watch reports. If it is VALIDATED then the evidence provided needs to be conclusive enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the work has been completed. The type of evidence should be quoted and a link to the evidence e.g. link to a photo, video or report. Therefore links to the evidence should be given for each claim of work completed.
If a team say they have secured a contract with xyz they need to show a copy of the contract, excluding sensitive information. The report would then have the word VALIDATED and a link to a copy of part of the report. If a team say they had a key meeting with someone then they need to show the minutes of the meeting plus a photo of the attendees at the meeting.
Everyone owns a smartphones now so it only takes seconds to take a shot. The proposal owners that are honest will have no problems in collecting evidence. It would not take much time with a smartphone to take photos of all the evidence or record a short video. I know for a fact that if I was to raise a proposal I would feel good about gathering the evidence because I want to show that I am doing what I say I will do. It also shows I am taking pride in my work and that I value the funding from DASH. I would know the evidence gathered would be helping MNOs make sound decisions.
If evidence cannot be provided then these reports should have the words NON VALIDATED next to each claim of work or milestone. If these reports have this information this will have the following benefits.
1. It will inform the MNOs that the information provided is to be trusted or questioned.
2. It will show which proposal owners are committed to working with DASH community because they would have no problems providing the evidence needed.
3. It will put off any scammers from the start because they know they will have difficulty providing real evidence on their project.
4. By putting the words "Validated" and "Non Validated" next to each claim of work or milestone it will encourage the honest proposal owners to gather evidence. If a report only contains "Non Validated" information it then shows this proposal owner is likely either not to be delivering what they say they are delivering or they are not that concerned about DASH after they have got their funding. If they were concerned about DASH they would know that this data gathering is essential for MNOs to make good decisions on all projects not just theirs.
Most of these projects are between 20,000K to 600,000K. That is a huge amount of money for these proposals. If a proposal owner could not be motivated to gather the evidence to support the work they have done for these quantities of money do we really want them working for us anyway? The proposal owners that are genuine will want to validate their work because they then know they will be trusted for future funding and they will have pride in their work.
This requirement should be even more applicable to the larger projects where very large investments are being made. We need to be certain that these teams are actually delivering what they say they are delivering and to provide concrete proof of this.
The proposal owners that are scammers or aiming to cheat the DASH treasurey system will most likely raise objections to these suggestions and most likely kick up a fuss and object to this feature because they know they will not be able to validate their work.
Without marking each achievement of work in a project as "Validated" or "Non Validated" then the DashWatch reports are little more than a summary. A summary which could actually mislead MNOs because we are trusting DashWatch has validated the work. MNOs cannot make good business decisions without this information.
I learned the value of validating evidence in my Ph.D. Every statement in my thesis had to be backed up by a scientific paper or my own research experiment results. Nothing could be quoted without solid evidence. This gave the work substance. That is what I feel we need in these DashWatch reports.
The DASH network has suffered enough losses in the past that could have been avoided if Validation had taken place. We need Validation on both the initial proposal and on proposals once they have gone through. Particularly on the large budget proposals that are asking for repeated payments. These absolutely must provide concrete evidence for each milestone and stage of work they claim they have achieved. Without this MNOs are going off blind faith, which is not good business.
DeepBlue
Dash Watch Renewal
https://dashwatch.org/files/1527734126189.pdf
Our impression has been that rango, who as you know created and generously runs Dash Central in his free time as a passion and hobby with no compensation, doesn’t have the free time to make massive changes or integrations. If other community members and rango himself also want us to integrate with Dash Central, we will happily pursue this.
However, in the meantime, we will continue to post relevant reports in the comments section of proposals, and we remain totally open to collaborating and integrating our data with other similarly appropriate platforms
stillcantstop (solarguy), thesingleton, TroyDASH, Mastermined, name3, JoL, Schnuppdog, Arthyron, ec1warc1, cedbrown, Trikiloga, unchained, Criticalinput, quantumexplorer, kbu66, A_node_to_a_Master, feedbands, nuancer, and vancoinman.
Thanks as well to everyone else who supported us outside of the comments section including Chuck, Robert, Strophy, and Philipp from Core, Joel, and Mark from Dash Force News as well as bigrcanada, joezippy, bituzer, jeffh, splawik21, walter, JGCMiner, hilawe, jimbit, Sequal, biltong, moocowmoo, Rimey, Simon the Ravager, pasta, techsquad, JoL, foxtrot, rock, Dashracer, Nate, rion, toknormal, Dashwok, jmmon, Darkcoin, mastercozy9, oaxaca, Amanda B Johnson, krish, tantestefana, Ichigo13, solowhizkid, macrochip, masternube, agnewpickens and many others whom I don't have in my message history. We appreciate the trust you have put in us and acknowledge the seriousness of the responsibility we've been entrusted with and will do our best to not let you down.
For those who didn't support us, we hope to gain your support in the coming months as we improve our offerings to better meet your needs and expectations, but please don't hesitate to let us know where we are falling short on Discord or the forum at paragon or DashWatchTeam. Thanks again everyone!
With so many projects going through, we need accountability.
Even if completely successful, this is a really high bureaucratic drain on the monthly budget. Whoever you are contracting to is overcharging you by a multiple of 10.
This somehow needs to grow organically. In terms of independent financing, consider partnerships, integrations, or even 3rd party advertising.
I know that nothing is easier for funding than throwing up a large proposal, but it's simply not sustainable.
We want to avoid another Green Candle scenario. We can't let this treasury go in the direction of every large liberally govt treasury in the world.
Thanks Paragon, but please see what's possibly on a much smaller budget.
DashWatch has 1 customer the DAO with its MNOs so nobody else should be funding this.
1) This team went two months without funding (March and April) because they budgeted well in their last proposal. This builds confidence. They will likely be able to do so again in the future perhaps with this proposal. That is awesome!!
2) We had the chance to brainstorm some ideas to keep MNOs informed, such as email alerts and twitter feed. Also we discussed what kind of events should be reported to MNOs.
3) The proposal owner recognized the need to build more engagement and awareness with the MNO community.
4) We discussed the need to remain unbiased in certain ways while always keeping in mind what is best for the MNO community.
Switching to a YES vote. Thank you for your efforts and transparency. Taking that much time means a lot to me.
1) Dashwatch it's purpose to keep track of how proposal owners are executing there proposal's creating a easy way to see if they are keeping their end of the deal.
- It fails in this because their is no clear way to instantly see the good and bad proposal owners
- getfreedash.com is prime example that should have been reported on, after massive fraud was uncovered. that is a major fail, bringing news should be front-page news for dashwatch, and if their would have been a mailing-list, people should have been informed by email about this.
- Seeing info is not properly reported, and difficult to be found, I wonder how much of the bad things are uncovered
2) Lack of communication
- Would have expected to seen lots of communication between Dashforce news and Dash watch, so to report noticeable well or poorly executed proposals
3) There is no sense proposal owners are held accountable, or at the very least feel some shame, or urgancy to report to them and deliver the product and or service as promised.
4) There seems to be allot of info on there which makes the whole platform uninviting to even start looking into the worst and best performing proposals, I even highly doubt people even look at it.
5) This platform should make it easier for MNO to vote quick and easy
6) Compared to Dash.org (pre-)proposal forum and dashcentral, it's even worst(please ask yourself where do you go for info and updates ?!?! that should be dashwatch but it isn't
Now we need to spend 141 Dash per month for what proposal owners should be including in what they do for FREE?
I have had some issues with this concept from the beginning, but the cost of 141 a month alone is enough for me to vote NO. It is way to much money! That is $211,000 USD for three months of service! Absurd! Has anyone actually USED THIS SERVICE TO DECIDE HOW TO VOTE THUS FAR??
For the price, first of all, it's not just to run it but keep improving it and good developers cost money. Personally, I have no issue paying that price for what I think will become a vital piece of infrastructure.
Has this organization uncovered anything that was problematic and needed our attention? What did they do about it?
The proposal owners who want to scam us are going to do it with or without this service watching them. Are they really watching them in any meaningful way? What are they saying about it? What are they doing about it?
Thanks to Dash's price appreciation, we expanded our scope to include writing reports on around 65 ongoing proposals a month even though we never promised to handle writing reports on any. This is only our third month doing so (reports soon to be released today and tomorrow), and the effort to become much more efficient and effective is underway. We know we don't have everything perfect, but we're working hard every day to get there, and with community members' feedback like your own we expect this process to be accelerated.
With your proposal in particular, I'm sure our team assessed the claims that you made in your responses to our questionnaire and determined that you were delivering as promised and were therefore not a cause for concern warranting further questioning or investigation.
Despite the fact that writing reports was never part of our promise to the community, we did our best to add more value when the Dash price appreciated by covering all 65 ongoing proposals in our reports last month. I will admit, however, that because of the high volume of proposals needing to be covered that we were unable to put as much time and effort into each individual proposal as we would have liked. Going forward, I've instructed the team to further increase the time spent on larger proposals and to further decrease the time spent on lower cost proposals (at least until we are better equipped to handle the proposal load) which should ensure our time is spent as productively as possible for the network.
We also see a definite need to provide even more clarity to voters about each proposal's progress. We will do this by establishing a clear agreed upon list of deliverables, milestones, and proposal events with the individual due dates and budgets for each confirmed with the proposal owners at the outset of each proposal. This will be one of the core components of our website, allowing masternodes to better track proposal progress over time without necessarily even reading our reports, or doing any research for updates, or knowing what the proposal originally promised.
I feel we are 75-80% of the way to the point where the community will much more easily perceive our value, but I acknowledge that in some people's eyes we are presently falling short. As a proposal owner yourself Eric, I hope you can appreciate that this process of releasing a product, getting feedback, and refining the product to meet the users needs takes time. We had many setbacks with both development and locating the required talent and training them, but we never made excuses and are now finished with the most difficult part of this project.
I hope you will have a little more patience and understanding with us as we have worked extremely hard to get to this point and we are doing something that has never been done before (helping monitor the investments of a DAO), and as result we don't have a template to follow which makes things even more difficult when tackling a project as pioneering and interdisciplinary as this.
We now have a super solid team and a much better-defined process and product with a clear path to improving it significantly in the near future, and I would hate to see all of this work and potential go to waste.
Thanks for your feedback though Eric, I'm hoping you'll reconsider and stay engaged with us to ensure we deliver a platform and product that meets your needs
If this proposal pass, that mean than MNO gave you the right to ask questions to all proposal owners and they have to answer to there questions. Because you act in the name of DAO.
Its an yes to see real green orange or red flag on proposal. We have to trust in you inflexibility.
Good luck with your proposal.
solarguy
We held off on asking for funding last month because we saw how thinly stretched the budget was but couldn't sustain operations another month without funding. I hope you can understand
I hope the timing and full budget does not make your proposal slide of the cliff.
Paragon's initial proposal was designed to be inexpensive so the Dash community could try it out and see that the project is real and effective. He has accomplished that.
solarguy
Well intentioned, sure, but this project is a tar-baby. You guys got funded, now figure out how to run it without constant life support.
I have typed out like ten different responses and ended up deleting them because I just don't know what to say to something that stupid. Please tell me you are joking
How do you expect them to aggregate data and keep up with the hundreds of active proposals for no money? Should we also stop paying core or DFN since we funded them one time?
I hope you appreciate that this communication and reporting was not part of our original scope but rather a large expansion of our scope undertaken because the community felt it was desirable to increase the accountability and awareness of proposals. And I can tell you firsthand that we have already helped prevent the network from losing money by following up regularly with proposal owners and asking the appropriate key questions to make sure they are on track. The value to be had from our organization is just in the beginning phase of coming to the fore however, as we finalize and build out our process including even more detailed reports for larger proposals, improved deliverable tracking built into our website and optimized relay of our report information including proposal report video summaries and proposal video interviews among other things.
It would really be a shame for Dash to discard the foundational work we've done in hiring, training, establishing and refining our process of communicating and reporting and in adding to and improving our offerings. I am convinced that with just a little more work, feedback, and refinement a lot more value will be captured from us by the network. I hope the network considers this decision carefully though as we will have no choice to but to cease our operations after this month if not funded.