Catalyst Circle is supposedly breaking the rules of enagagement within Catalyst

[mark-stopka]

Bringing this to Allison's attention and for tracking, I as a ADA holder consider this very problematic if true...

This is not the first time. A while back the circle decided to grant themselves an exception to submit a proposal after the deadline. #Power2OurPeople

Source

@stephen-rowan can you, or some librarian (that is a business function established in process driven organizations, not a derogatory use of the word, they are very important) please provide reference to the minutes where this was discussed, justified, and decided?

[xeeban]

See: https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle/meetings/meeting-5-september-9th-2021 for the actual meeting transcript and notes.

Commentary on Meeting number 5 from the community can be found here: https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle/commentary/meeting-5-commentary

Also, this topic has was brought up in Town Hall by the Circle and the decision and reasoning shared with the community as seen here: https://youtu.be/sLisPIgHkLM?t=3224

[mark-stopka]

Thank you, I'll review it over the weekend.

[iHDeveloper]

I archived the resources provided by @xeeban using Web Archive for future accountability if necessary.

• Meeting 5 Transcript & Notes
• Commentary on Meeting 5

The commentary from the community on the meeting provides lots of different perspectives. It included 2 PDF files with the following git commit hashes in this repository:

• Nori - Meeting 5 Thoughts: 9997949b9630cd7a2951df1dd4e5281a8ba2828b
• Marta - Circle5meetingFeedback: f651ada5ca3e85004fdd7b949737c34eb4c21fdd

[stephen-rowan]

@mark-stopka - for context : in our distributed environment it was QA-DAO that emerged to record, archive and track Circle (at first unfunded here https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle/). From this Catalyst Oversight was funded in F6 as https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Oversight-of-Catalyst-Circle/370088-48088 and currently Vanessa Cardui independently transcribes, summarizes and tracks Circle V2 here (https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle-oversight-v2/). I withdrew from Circle Oversight when I became the Funded Proposer representative (because I cannot oversee myself). QA-DAO will likely seek funding in F8 to continue track Circle V3 and your support would be appreciated.

As for business function support, there is a Circle Admin team that works closely with Circle, provides continuity between elections and organizes Governance Day (the election of Circle). Again this is the subject of a F7 Catalyst Funding proposal here https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/CC-Admin-Team-Scope-Expansion/384245-48088 . And Nori @xeeban is part of the Admin team.

Recently I pushed for the migration of Circle Prioritized Problems from the proprietary Trello platform to the open-source GitHub Project Board located here.

[mark-stopka]

Thank you @stephen-rowan for the information provide it, be assured I appreciate it.

Meanwhile, as it is my understanding @xeeban would be a current librarian; I would like to know, if, as we are coming towards the finish line of the current spring, a retrospective checklist is drafted, or even finalized and approved from the prior Catalyst Circle v1.

As per comment above, there is a suggestion by Dor, that retrospective will be performed and I would expect that at minimum a initiial version of a retrospective checklist will be provided to future Circle members, so that we may apply continous improvement processes.

Dor commented: IOHK are preparing a public dashboard with the intention to inform people of risks & opportunities. At this point in our playbook, we are at the “insight stage” (analogy with proposal process) and critical actions still need to be taken. We need to be more transparent about our engagement data and work on a timetable for handover of responsibilities to the community. A retrospective week would be valuable to gain perspective on what are we (Circle) doing together

If we don't have a process library, I am happy to provide temprorary helping hand and my backgroun in area of formalized governance to aid the effort of development of the overall process library.

[stephen-rowan]

You are welcome @mark-stopka .

At the end of each Circle there is already a retrospective of its activities. The one for Circle V1 was held 8th October 2021 ( https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle/meetings/meeting-8-october-21st-2021#retrospective-45-mins). There is discussion that Circle may separate out these retrospectives - so they do not impact work on problems. Prioritized Problems are carried over to the next Circle. Nori @xeeban is currently a Circle Admin facilitator not a librarian.

I believe what Dor is referring to in that quote is a separate IOG initiative to create a public dashboard out of Catalyst Proposal reporting data (KPIs etc). And he is suggesting that another retrospective week could happen and that Circle could participate in that. For clarification I recommend you ask IOG for more information on this.

[kenricnelson]

I share your concerns about the exception that was made by the Circle in the Fund 6 process. As a proposer to the challenge where a new proposal was inserted after the deadline, it was disruptive to the way our team had tried to position our own effort. Nevertheless, I also appreciate that the transition to self-governance is quite difficult. At an early stage, I can be trusting of the people who made this decision but it would be quite important that this not become a precedent that is repeated.

[dimitrifernando]

I share your concerns about the exception that was made by the Circle in the Fund 6 process. As a proposer to the challenge where a new proposal was inserted after the deadline, it was disruptive to the way our team had tried to position our own effort. Nevertheless, I also appreciate that the transition to self-governance is quite difficult. At an early stage, I can be trusting of the people who made this decision but it would be quite important that this not become a precedent that is repeated.

If as a member of the team which was allowed the exemption, either the deadline should have been extended for everyone or this proposal should not have been allowed to move forward. Also if you feel the decision should not be taken as a precedent, why did you allow yourself to have the benefit of that in the first place? This is a conflict of interest. The notion of allowing one proposal only to come after the deadline should not have been allowed at all. I am curious as to why an exception was made.