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This is a really good plan. If they made it better could you voters do it again and see what happens?

Ok... so I guess we could have endless theoretical discussions about what should work best, but what it actually comes down to is the actual data. What does the evidence say? I'm wary of the potential dangers of a highly influential small group swaying the entire community (intentionally or unintentionally), but I'm open to accepting the value, if you show me.

You've been "testing" the PEC for the last 4 months. What criteria do you use to determine whether the PEC has been valuable or not? How do you quantify your own success?

This isn't an exact answer but this is what I wrote to try and answer that a few days ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/6lpdi0/proposal_discussion_proposal_evaluation_committee/

Voting yes as we need or will need a few of these type review projects in the future. We have to start somewhere and start working out all the kinks now.
Dash Force has recently hired a writer to do post proposal reviews and I will be doing a review committee podcast on my personal YouTube channel soon.
The more of these the better so no one person or group has total control or over-influence. It will be interesting in the future to see where these committees disagree with each other on various proposals. Dash Force News will be there then to help sort out who we believe is right after thoroughly researching all sides fairly.

Reading through the posts there is a constant thread:

Centralization
This fear I have answered a number of times, but I also realize it will keep on popping up as new people join the community.
The letters DAO is what drew me to Dash in the 1st place. I think nearly everyone in Dash despises centralization and the evils that come with it. Of course, the 1st sign of centralization is the word:

Committee
It’s seen as a swear word, but Core themselves realized a long time ago that committees will be needed: https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=8585240
The last sentence there sums it up: “In the case where a committee isn’t being transparent or is not posting updates, the community will begin to inquire about the status of the project. If no satisfactory answer is given, support will be lost, masternodes will change their vote and the project will drop off of the budget. In a way this system should be self policing." The 1st hint of what came later:

SUB-DAO
As everyone should know by now: Evan foresees a time where we’ll have multiple Sub-DAO’s within the main one. It’s new and a bit scary, but we’ll have to get used to it. There is no other way of managing a large organization like Dash and stay decentralized. So whether the PEC is called a committee or a sub-DAO IMO is irrelevant. It is an organization whose sole aim is to improve Dash governance – make it easier and more efficient.

The PEC is not centralized. It is peopled by community volunteers; the bulk of them being MNO’s themselves. What makes the PEC Committee/sub-DAO unique is that unlike the other DAO’s, all its members serve for limited terms. See PEC Organization https://goo.gl/dZvadz. We have an unfair advantage, because we can afford to give PEC members a limited term, which is not practical for developers etc, but the point is clear: We are more decentralized than any of the other DAO’s in Dash.

Why the PEC?
When I joined Dash there were constant moaning about scams getting through and good proposals being ignored. I was surprised that no one stepped up and fixed an easy to solve problem. I was a Noob.
At the time there were less than 20 proposals per month and even so MNO’s will say things like: “If it’s TLDR I will simply vote No”. Others remarked “I vote ‘yes’ for everything, because we have so much money and the bulk are bound to perform.” After a while I got so irritated that I volunteered. As I said: I was a Noob.

Here we are. I think most of us agree there is not going back to the bad old days, but we don’t agree on what needs to be done. The PEC is one possible solution and hopefully in time there will be more DAO’s scrutinizing proposals from a different angle. We used the Official Dash Project Proposal Template https://goo.gl/m0jgfS as a guide for our Guidelines, but there are certainly other ways of creating Guidelines. Multiple Committees/DAO’s looking at the same proposal can only be beneficial and will make the life of scammers even more difficult.

Why should we pay for them?
Because it’s bloody hard work.
An average evaluation takes +- an hour. The follow-up reports we don’t know yet. We suspect/hope there will be at least 3 follow ups to get the Proposals up to the highest standard possible, but we won’t know until the end of this cycle. Last cycle we started too late with the test run, so we only got to do 2 maximum. This time we started on time and we should have more reliable figures by the end of the month.
It is quite precise work. The Evaluators know they will face, and have faced, endless criticism for any poor marks. Some PO’s take it in their stride and use the opportunity to improve their proposal. Others see it as a personal attack.

It is a thankless job! Some PO’s are very grateful when they see the end result. Some see the PEC as a thread. This can be quite stressful. We have already lost two evaluators. I would urge the community to be more supportive. These people have worked very long hours for no pay at all for many months, all for the good of the community. I suspect you forget that sometimes.
In time IMO, the PO’s and the community will get used to the aims of the PEC: To improve proposals so that they contain all the information that the MNO’s need to make informed decisions.
The end result will be beneficial for everyone.

I hope this will quiet some of your fears.

Thanks for this thorough response. I upvoted it because I think it has some valuable info and explains the PEC's history and potential purpose. I'm open to the idea of the PEC as ONE possible solution, and agree that having more DAO's scrutinizing proposals from different angles would be a good thing.

As the value of Dash grows, and the budget grows too, the proposal fee will also grow. If the fee doesn't change, it's hard to see the budget system being flooded with many proposals needing evaluation... we will see work grouped into more and more sub-DAO's. So each sub-DAO will have work done under it. But what you're talking about here for the "PEC" DAO is *not just any* sub-DAO... this sub-DAO basically will be the one "evaluating" all other proposals/sub-DAO's and potential new sub-DAO's. I'm not sure that's what we need right now.

And if we need more "regular-sized" proposals instead of huge multi-million dollar projects, what we could form might be a.... a... "medium-size-proposal-processor DAO" that will do what you say: basically help "regular-sized-proposer-wannabe's" and then rate them (according to your own PEC criteria). Request say 2000 Dash every month to "hand out" to different proposers (with much smaller proposal fees) that the PEC evaluates. That might be a Sub-DAO that I'd "try out" and fund, to see how well it runs.

I think what people are afraid of is the PEC turning into THE "Advisor DAO" that does all the analysis and presents all the info on everyone else for the "King" (MNO's) to decide... we say the "King" (MNO's) has ultimate say, but the "Advisor" (PEC) is unduly influential... and I'm not sure - have you earned that influence?

While I agree to some extent with what others have said I will still be voting YES. If this helps improve a couple of proposals then it's worth it. Also what jimbursch's prosal showed is that the PEC doesn't that strong of an influence on MNs and whey they think the evaluation is inaccurate they can and will just ignore it.

Also, I am hoping that with Time their process will improve and for now the costs are modest.

So if they don't have a strong influence, or are inaccurate, then why should we fund them?

If they help improve proposals then yes, I agree, that is worth funding. But if they issue inaccurate or non-influential ratings then I don't want to pay them to issue evaluations (they are either going to distort decision-making or they are useless!)

Yes - to assisting proposal owners
No - to evaluations or ratings

We won't know what will happen until we try it out. If more or bigger proposals keep coming every month I think a proposal evaluation committee might be necessary sooner or later. For 45 Dash we could test one out; and maybe someone at home will think "I could do it better" and so they make their own better PEC.

The main question I want to ask is: Do we want to give a smaller group of people influence over the "budget and governance" system?

Like I asked previously, what are the results of the 4 month test? And how do we know whether it has been successful?

What are good measures to look at? Like, is "MNO spending less time on voting" a good measure? I'd say no, but others might think yes. How about "are MNO's swayed with/against the recommendation with/against the community"? Or "Are proposals getting passed that failed"? Or "Are we not having proposals that we otherwise should"? Is the PEC having any effect and if so, what are those effects?

I've heard a couple cases of proposals getting a poor review, discouraged, and not pursuing it further, or getting a poor review, submitting and MNO's passing it anyway. Then there's the case of the PEC reviewing a proposal and the owner taking the criticisms and deciding to revise their proposal. And the potential case (of Mr. Kembo's proposal) where there was seeming support from the community but didn't translate to actual votes (not sure

What other cases are there where the PEC played a positive/negative role? Like... have they brought to fruition 47% more proposals? Have they helped us avoid 39% more scams? Have they provided 350% more information? Have they turned away 25% more proposers? I mean, I'm just making up metrics off the top of my head, but since there's so much controversy here, I'd like someone else to come up with ways of measuring whether it's been successful, and how.

So far, the cases that I've seen seem to call for something more like a "Proposal Assistance Committee" than a PEC. So I want to see actual examples of "evaluations" having a positive effect.

Hasn't it been tried out for 4 months? What were the "Results"? And what criteria are used to measure its success quantitatively?

Help in improving proposals, recruiting proposal owners, and monitoring/assisting funded proposals is definitely needed.

The PEC in its current form is none of these things, in my opinion. Voting NO - sharing the same concerns as others in this thread.

Agreed. If someone starts a sub-DAO to help improve proposals, recruit proposal owners, or monitor/assist funded proposals, that would get my support.

With all respect, I just don't use this PEC evaluations. I'm able to read all proposals and make decisions by myself.

That is the ideal, but if the Dash price keeps on climbing and Evo gives it a boost and the budget becomes x times a million dollars? There will be too many proposals to be handled by even the most dedicated MNO. And that time is getting very close.

Let's see how many proposals there are with $1000-$10,000+ proposal fees...

We need more proposals first. Again, I'd support you helping proposers with writing up their proposals (optionally). If you make that step easier for proposers and we get many many more of them, then we'll see how to tackle the problem of analyzing too many proposals (maybe it'll involve personal evaluations, but I bet there are other better ways... and if we have to resort to a "ratings agency" then so be it. I just don't think we're at that point now).

i agree

The problem is you could be corrupted (someone can pay you for get your approve). Or you basically can be wrong at some point.

Raise the proposal fee if there are to many proposals. And if the treasury went to 10 million, masternodes will have about 2 million dollars collateralized and are incentivized to take time and vote correctly.

Finding a solution to the whole issue of "making decisions" is going to be difficult. We, the dash community, believe in decentralised systems, but we don't see how laborious decentralised decision making is by comparison with a real company. Its management by committee, except its a committee of 4500 people, and every one of them has a different point of view. It works a bit, kinda, but we can never be a dynamic ambitious company unless we can hugely improve our management style. This is a very simple improvement to our process, doing a bit of the legwork to make it easier for masternodes to make decisions, and yet we have people suggesting that masternodes should do more work and if they want help they should pay for it themselves. There have been several alternative proposals like this but they have all failed. Oh well, we are better at it than bitcoin I suppose.

The "every one of them has a different point of view" is a good thing, not bad. And it would be even better if we could have even more diverse points of view. That's how the "wisdom of crowds" make the best decisions. More diversity = better decisions (see the forum discussion for this proposal, or search "wisdom of crowds").

By narrowing down the decision making, it's easier to fall into herd mentality, leading to worse decisions.

On the other hand, I would support a "group" whose sole purpose is to help proposers (who want it) to make better proposals. I'd be okay with subsidizing that type of work for now, until proposal-making became better overall.

The type of thing that would "make it easier for masternodes to make decisions" I envision might be a website that brings together relevant info about a proposal and presents that, automatically, with an objective algorithm. There could be "metrics" that can be presented visually so it can be understood more easily and quickly. Something more like Google Trends or even Linkedin, as opposed to Consumer Reports or Supreme Court.

I've abstained from this vote. Whilst I appreciate the effort, enthusiasm and endevour put in by Biltong et al., I have to say that the the proposer being evaluated must feel very demotivated when a less than favourable evaluation result... and this can cause good momentum to be lost..... Furthermore, I myself tend to look at the % result of the evaluation and if it is not particularly high, I too kinda give up on the proposal.

I think there is a fundamental difference between evaluating the merit or potential of a proposal (which is something I can do myself) and the absolutely essential requirement we have to hold accountable the people behind the funded proposals to their promises. This is something that is not so easy to do, yet it is greatly needed.

Hi DashRedWhale
I hear you and it also concerns all of us in the PEC. However, I think you might be basing it on our test run reports which started way too late or maybe the 1st reports of this new cycle.
Yes – some 1st reports might have bad percentages, but as the PO adjust his Proposal to the feedback provided by the report the quality of his proposal and the marks on the report will increase dramatically. We’ve already seen that with the group who had 2nd reports last cycle.
And that is the main purpose of the PEC – to improve the standard and quality of proposals. So that eventually all proposals will have all the info needed by the MNO’s to make informed decisions.

As for “absolutely essential requirement we have to hold accountable the people behind the funded proposals to their promises” - All of us fully agree with you, but baby steps 1st.
It’s scheduled to be investigated in the 3rd Phase – see PEC Road Map Summary https://goo.gl/TD6dtw
If we get approved in the 1st place ;)

That is honestly a true statement. I made a preproposal seen here https://www.dashtreasury.org/p-694.pre

I received a 0% rating on it... I mean it was just a basic layout, of course it wasn't ready but it does discourage you if you know nothing about The Committee and how true the rating actually is. One of the lines given to the review was "the Craigslist ad looks more like a scam than anything" I found that to be highly bias with absolutely no reasoning. When I questioned about why that was said I received no response back.

I personally believe the committee had bias against me before hand because I had spoken out against them and received a harsh, bias, personal, comment immediately back. just my personal thoughts, because I know they all talk to eachother, they can choose who they want to look bad or who they want to look good.

I was one of the two people who reviewed that proposal. I invite anyone interested in the full story to go look at the the thread on the Dash forum to see both the pre-proposal and the evaluation form. For what it is worth I stand by that evaluation.

That being said since then we have changed our operating procedure to no longer stop assisting proposals that scored zero. That rule was a relic of written guidelines that originated before we actually started testing in the real world.

I'm 50/50 on this.
I share all of the conserns raised by dashtedwhale and mizzymax. But I also feel strongly that we need something.

No offense to Rick Farnsworth, but there is no way that proposal should have passed. It was submitted late, with exactly 24 hours of preprosal discussion and zero modification as a result of that discussion. Important questions regarding escrow, ownership, acountability, etc. were simply ignored. Now we are left with a 6 month obligation and our fingers crossed.

Personally I would like to see the masternodes shares ideas extended to voting so anyone can vote based on their shares in masternodes.

YES this is a fantastic idea and increases the diversity pool for available voters! Fortunately I do see it in the Evolution roadmap. Unfortunately it's not until 15.0 Evolution v3. As Dash grows, this will become more important.

More than a year away :/ if a third party wanted to only focus on creating a masternode shares wallet I'd definitely support them!

I agree with Mizzymax, jimbursch, and GrandMasterDash on the forums, but would like to add:

Why should I have to pay for someone ELSE to do ANOTHER person's analysis? MNO's should be free to fund someone else to do their analysis *provided they pay for it out of their own pocket* (or the analyzers volunteer for free). This problem keeps coming up in political systems: Money is taken out of someone's pocket to give to 2nd person for a 3rd person's benefit.

I am perfectly capable of analyzing the proposals on my own. Perhaps others would like to do their own analysis too. But when (or if) I ever want someone else to, then I can choose to pay who I want to do my analysis. IF someone wants to sell his "vote" (or analysis) then he should be free to do so. But don't take "public funds" (Dash budget) to do that. And on top of that, why "collectively" take our power and concentrate it into a small centralized group? Not only are you taking public funds to pay a small group, you're then giving this small group undue influence on the greater group!

Please, no. And I urge others to vote no too. If you want someone else to do your analysis, then you pay for that yourself (or get your own group together and collectively pay for it).

Hi Henry,
Before I reply to you, won't you do me a favour: From your post here and the fact that you voted as a MNO in the thread opinion poll, I would ask you to please display your MNO badge. We've had a bit of a problem here with sockpuppets and people claiming to be MNO's.
You've only been on the forum for a couple of hours...
Sorry for the bother, but - just to be safe, you know ;)

Mizzymax comment committee rating of Biltong: 2%

Response to commenter: rating 0/100
gave no input on why the committee should be paid or why to create a centralized group.

Grammar: rating 4/100
Improper use of semicolon and Dash mark but Formally addresses Henry.

Total: 4/200

Extra comments:
Not sure if the winking face is an invite for Henry to come over later or if he just has something in his eye.

Biltong has yet to earn his MNO badge, yet constantly brings it up like its a problem. I personally could care less, as long as the question has a valid reason to it.

Note: We are not a officially funded centralized DAO as of yet. we are here to make your future comments improve as time goes on. Hopefully you can bring up your score next time. Good luck on future comments.

I should keep my mouth shut... But I can't... That was a good shot Mizzy. 😜

if a masternode holder is finding it difficult to evaluate proposals they are either going to not vote or vote using gut feel. They are not going to pay someone with their own money to fully evaluate the proposal. Lets keep it real.

If they are not going to pay someone with their own money, then why should we make everyone collectively pay?

Look, if the committee is providing a valuable service, I would have no qualms with using "public funds" to pay for it. But the issue here is, I think this "service" would be not just neutral or positive, but have a detrimental effect.

If they just stuck to helping proposers (who want it) to make better proposals, that's something I would agree to fund, at least for now until the community gets better at it (like subsidizing an "infant industry").

But subsidizing a small group to influence others... I see that as not just wasteful, but harmful. *For the wisdom of crowds to make the best decisions, more diversity is better.* I said a MNO can fund his own rating agency to try to influence the group, but in all honesty, I think that would be bad for the network too - however, he has the sovereign ability to "sell" his analysis to whoever he wants and I can't stop him. Just please don't make everyone sell their analysis.

I agree with every single point you are making. Your the man Henry! Haha

I think I have a great idea to solve this "proposal problem" tell me what you think.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/6lxukv/fixing_the_proposal_problem_solution/?st=J4UKFZ06&sh=2e5cd0c5

Creating a centralized committee that has a strong influence of how MNOs vote is not the way we should run Dash. We have 4500 reviewers and should not lower that number down to 10 or so.

The reviews are based upon if you follow the guidelines they set. If you don't follow the guidelines, you receive a bad review in certain categories. They have a set layout your proposal needs to be formatted in. Please understand that there is no set way to submit a proposal, you are telling a story to the MNOs and if it's all confusing or just plain boring MNOs will not read it. Proposal owners need to have the freedom to post the proposal the way they want to. The layout should just be recommended but definitely not required.

A committee also causes the possibility for corruption, if you know someone on the committee they will end up giving you a good review. Also bribery , blackmail or threatening of a committee member could easily happen in the long run. Currently with 1.2 million dollars on the line that's a lot of money available and people will do crazy things for it. This already happens in congess today in America. Don't think that it won't happen. But in the current process you can't do any of that to 4500 masternodes.

Please stay away from centralization of the process.

Full disclosure, I am one of the people listed above as being in the PEC.

There seems to be a misconception about what we are trying to do here. We do not seek to be a one stop shop that Masternode owners can use to entirely determine their votes. We want to work with proposers so that their budget proposal is as complete as possible and gives the MNOs all the information they need to make an informed decision. Without someone urging PO's to be transparent we end up with under-detailed proposals and MNO's that are in a rush might overlook crucial missing data. Currently when someone posts a pre-proposal there is very little constructive feedback on how to improve their proposal and the PEC serves as a means of rectifying that problem and allowing the MNO's to choose from detailed high quality proposals.

Ok that sounds great - then how about renaming "Proposal Evaluation Committee" to "Proposal Assistance Committee" and limit your role to helping proposers with being transparent, more-detailed, and include crucial missing data.

Helping proposers to complete detailed high quality proposals is different than "evaluating" them with a rating that distorts the strengths of Dash's budget process: a diverse, decentralized group, making independent decisions.

yeah, rename it to the "Proposal Assistance Committee" and then do the "Proposal Evaluation Committee" as a free of charge extra bonus, LOL :)

I guess... would that work?

Suppose we did have the PAC, and an evaluator (I mean assister) sees that a proposal they assisted with is actually submitted with some glaring problems (or extraordinary merit); the "assister" then is in a very good position to give her own individual evaluation/analysis/comments, just like any other individual, about what the problems (merits) she came across are.

That is a very different flavor than publishing "THE rating, from THE evaluation committee (officially funded and approved by THE DAO)"... I'm sorry but it's hard for me to get past that.

After helping with a proposal, if she wants to say something, the assister's "evaluations" should stand along side every other individual's "evaluations" (even though most community members are likely to give those comments extra weight, because they came from an [experienced? trusted?] assister). But the ideal is that decisions are made more based on the content, not just from the reputation.