We hesitated to adopt the proposed open community model, fearing dozens of CRT complaints and that the Sponsor team would be swamped. Ironically, that’s exactly what happened.
And so I am once again proposing a model proven in real communities for millennia: collective observation, transparency, and shared responsibility - enhancing fairness, engagement, and accountability.
Ancient communities, whether by location or activity, constantly monitored each other. They knew their members so well that they could judge condition or effort from a distance. Permanent members behaved properly, meeting requirements essential for the community’s survival. Honesty mattered - not only out of care for the group, but because moral outrage would not allow some to work hard while others did little yet claimed equal share. This single moral principle was enough.
Here are three things we lack today.
1. Openness:
For example, if someone doesn’t do their shift properly - say, washes the dishes badly -the whole community suffers. And who did wash the dishes today? We don’t know; it’s “confidential.” Ridiculous. A community of spies, really.
You’ve often said that openness breeds hostility - but I completely disagree. It’s the lack of transparency that fuels hostility. When you don’t know who gave you a low score in the dark, you invent stories: maybe they’re crazy, malicious, or something else - and you want them out. Meanwhile, the truth could be simple: a post got deleted by a service, and no one is really at fault. But without openness, the truth never surfaces - or surfaces too late.
If you do know who evaluated you, and you can openly discuss it, ask for justification, and hear the community’s feedback - the problem vanishes. Everyone understands who thought what, what needs to be clarified, or what should be improved to prevent future issues. Even the evaluator who gave a low score gets a chance to calmly reconsider, and maybe admit: “I overreacted” or “I missed the links.”
Openness forces people to take responsibility for their actions, words, and scores. It builds morale, unites the team, and discourages freeloading.
2. Community-wide decision-making
Currently, evaluations are conducted by 2–3 people, and in case of conflict - 5 people. This means that a person’s work is seen by only 2–3 (5 in conflicts) members of the community?! That is not objective.
But the working model assumes that decisions regarding those suspected of misconduct are made by the entire community.
Yes, we have rotation, but even if judges are randomly chosen, objectivity is still not guaranteed. Think about how you would want to make important decisions in your own life - you’d want to examine the problem multiple times and from different perspectives. Our communities used to assess the actions of wrongdoers or suspects the same way - everyone looked from different angles. Some saw one thing, others saw another.
Maybe 2 people say: “You’re bad, leave!” (score 1), while 3 say: “You need to significantly improve” (score 2). But there could be a dozen others who didn’t participate in CRT or the expert evaluation that day, and they might say: “Wait! They tried their best but failed. I’ve had cases where my links were deleted by that same service without my consent too .. and so .." (for example).
In our current system, 3 people - an expert evaluation - is enough to justify a score if there are no objections. But in an open community model, objections either don’t arise or dissipate naturally in discussion, where complainants get answers to their questions - if the scores are fair.
- We could create a Discord channel for score disputes, where disagreements would resolve themselves because people would find answers to their questions.
No one will ring the alarm over every little issue and demand a full community meeting. But if objections remain even after explanations are heard in the designated channel, then something went wrong. In that case, a random group of 5 unknown CRT members is not a solution. The real solution is a full assembly - a general vote. We know how to run votes. And moreover with the voting bot, it would be a real pleasure. But let’s not get into implementation yet.
3. Automation.
Relying on automation = relying on the judgment of 2–3 people. Building automation based on community-wide voting is a completely different approach.
Thank you.