Moderation Team Bounty Top-up

Hello,

Could you please show the engagement metrics for the last 12 months on all the channels where you participate? Thanks

PolkaWorld Vote: AYE

The proposal is detailed and the requested funding amount is reasonable. It deserves support.

It’s an AYE from me, with a kind request to remain a bit more impartial and to take a more active role when unpleasant disputes arise.

Based on the quality of the Moderation team over the past months, where usually users didn't find reasonable help and support outside Juanma and Alberto, it's probably time to reset this bounty.

Additionally, the desire to show metrics and activity of moderators doesn't seem to be meet the transparency standards we expect from a Bounty.
We don't want to rely on any "Trust me bro we need it". Various comments on open forums just highlight this lack of transparency and the only will to continue without any form of "control" by the community.

Most of the guidelines in the doc for moderators are barely met but everyone is still in place.

The history of messages of some moderation members is really questionable about the expected quality.
Most of the time, people outside the moderation team are helping and giving support where the current team fails to deliver.

Time for a change?

Dear Proposer,

Thank you for your proposal. Our first vote on this proposal is AYE.

The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum (at least 5 aye votes) and simple majority of non-abstain votes according to our voting policy v0.2, and any referendum in which the majority of members vote abstain receives an abstain vote. This proposal has received five aye and one nay votes from ten available members, with one member abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

Voters expressed both support and caution regarding the top-up proposal. Several members thanked the team for keeping social channels safe and clean, endorsing their ongoing contribution to the ecosystem, while one voter called for more detailed performance metrics to fully understand the team's workload and effectiveness. Some acknowledged the overlapping roles with the anti-scam team and considered the financial ask reasonable given its necessity, whereas another voter voiced uncertainty about the overall impact and whether alternative methods might work better. Overall, the proposal was backed by a majority, even as some voters raised valid concerns about transparency and measurement of moderation efforts.

The full discussion can be found in our internal voting.

Please feel free to contact us through the links below for further discussion.

Kind regards,
Permanence DAO
Decentralized Voices Cohort IV Delegate

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🗳️ Delegate

JAM DAO's vote on this Proposal is a NAY

While members recognized the importance of community moderation to the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem, concerns centered on the proposal’s flat compensation structure. The payment rate of $23.33/hour applied equally to moderators was seen as overvaluing entry-level work while undervaluing technical expertise.

Some members felt that a more balanced, tiered compensation model, aligned with experience, qualifications, and contribution, would better reflect ecosystem values and resource stewardship. Additionally, the proposal lacked stronger qualification requirements and accountability measures to ensure quality standards across the moderator team.

The general view was that the concept of funding moderation remains valuable, but this version of the proposal did not meet expectations for fairness, proportionality, and strategic alignment.

TruthDAO votes AYE

This bounty appears capable of providing daily, long-term, and stable support to the community.
The proposal’s responsibilities are clearly defined, the budget is reasonable, and it represents an essential safeguard for the healthy operation of the ecosystem.

With solid transparency and evaluation mechanisms in place, the long-term value is significant.

See the full feedback here.

📖Truth DAO Governance Statement

💭 Email: open@truthdao.cn, Telegram

🗳️ Delegate

Hi @xcRom1.dot, Abdul and Franky answered your questions on the KusDAO server the same day and now I would like to explain a few things and dynamics better:

• I think it’s hard to measure each moderator’s workload (you also had similar experience on Phala as an ambassador), activity on the server and other platforms (reddit, telegram, twitter, forum) is dynamic, so some days it’s more intense and others quieter, largely due to market trends... under favorable conditions, chats come to life and moderation activity increases.
• it’s also difficult to measure the outcome of our work: did we save 10-100-1000 users from potential scams or wouldn’t they have been scammed anyway? have we solved the problems for 10-100-1000 users who are now part of the Polkadot community or would they have succeeded on their own?
• automation is already in place, bots quickly delete links, and we make sure there are no false positives... adding more tools would weigh on costs.

Also, I love what I do and have been doing for a long time... before moderation was funded by the Treasury and could therefore become a full-time job. All moderators share this passion and we would like to continue to do so with the same current intensity and dedication, but this requires constant presence and, as you well know, time is money. Our hourly rate is absolutely in line, if not cheap (especially considering only 2 hours a day are rewarded), with what you can find elsewhere.

That said, we’re trying to figure out how to publicly show our moderation efforts... we might share a private channel where the activities of us moderators are monitored, but every moderation activity comes with an explanation, and this could be exploited by scammers to avoid detection. Additionally, a moderator reads messages in chat without performing a trackable action, but it is online and this is difficult to monitor.

If you have ideas or solutions on how to track our activities I invite you to write to me in DM on discord, I already sent you a message yesterday.
thank you

While some moderators do a very good job, according to the monthly bounty reports, some have been rated as inactive due to their lack of participation. Yet they still receive around USD 1,500 for doing nothing.

Here you can see moderator's evalution per month. Some moderators have lowest rating or even negative which means that they were inactive that month. Why did they still got paid?

https://airtable.com/app7KBSvwARQYtjHp/shrwhxhsTV87eYPqU/tbl6r16JPabZM7VGI/viwTwXajChuikmtA8

Why has the Head Moderator not replaced them long ago?

It should also be noted that some moderators sell all the DOT they receive, suggesting a lack of commitment to the ecosystem. For example

pastaMan
https://polkadot.subscan.io/account/14tcZ9ibPGdMwb7XXE4QChgVuJU1xXTvDFpV3E1HpMajbBsH?tab=transfer

Tim Janssen
https://polkadot.subscan.io/account/1pHpxvp2CYscDreozYQdBkJkUkLFQftxQTAwMs5M1a6GRBf?tab=transfer

Need to stop this mismanagement

For me, it’s a big NAY.
A nice concept: create a Telegram group, boost it artificially with incentives, reward members for taking on moderation, while you as a paid moderator pocket 10x more.
On top of that, certain members are favored so they always get more than others. Seems like some connections are at play...
My own suggestion: put the moderator job outside and go lower than the current team. You will see plenty people interested who don’t have such exaggerated salary demands.

Suprised that @polkaworld and @Truth DAO voting AYE. Maybe they haven't read this https://polkadot.subsquare.io/referenda/1698#11 and haven't realized that inactive moderators are being paid for doing nothing.

It's also concerning that OG paradox is getting paid while has been rated as inactive and is voting AYE with x6 conviction.

Can't believe curators are being paid for this bounty

Hey GM,

Fellow ex-moderator here and a regular Polkadot Discord lurker. I want to share my thoughts on the concerns around some mods being inactive while still getting paid by the treasury.

There are definitely a few who are quite knowledgeable and consistently active - Grizzly, Michelle, Greenhatter, Abdulbee, Cappex, Pastaman. But at the same time, others have been inactive for long stretches.

Easy way to check activity: use the Search option at the top right of Discord, and select from: @username

The Moderation Team Bounty needs a proper audit and restructuring. Inactive members should be rotated out or replaced, and only those actively contributing should remain on payroll. This would be fair, transparent, and make sure treasury spending is justified.

@frank

For years, inactive moderators have been paid for doing nothing, this bounty should be closed.

Consistent cost reduction is needed.
Hopefully a more consistent application of rules happens so that it doesn't discourage conversation in the forums and spooks out potential newcomers.

Disclaimer:
Our modeling includes more than 1000 non-linguistic parameters so these are only verbal observations also included in the vote calculations and they are not an extensive review of the full rationale behind this vote.