The govNerds maintainers are pioneering the first contribution path to onboard new govNerds into our governance processes. In following the Optimism culture of working in the open, we encourage feedback to be shared here rather than in personal messages. This approach helps promote public debate, collective learning, and building together.
We invite all participants and observers to share their thoughts, suggestions, and feedback about this path. Your insights are invaluable as we aim to improve and refine the experience for future contributors.
Please feel free to add any comments here—whether about your experience as a trainee, the support you received, or any other aspect that could help us make this process more effective. This feedback will be reviewed during our reflection period at the end of Season 6.
Thank you for the dedication and hard work the Govnerds team has put into Season 6. Overall, there are many positives to acknowledge, but there are also a few areas that could be improved.
Overall, I’m optimistic about the progress in Season 6 and look forward to seeing Govnerds grow even stronger in the upcoming season.
I like the task system. While it is not the most optimal and can be improved in the future I’m more of a “keep it simple” philosophy. The system works and I would not complicate it with additional features considering that the contribution path is just taking its first steps.
One point that concerns me is the scalability of the program. As of today this is not yet a problem because there are less than 10 of us actively participating, but what will happen when the number increases to 20-30? The concern is not related to the mentorship required, but because the availability of operational tasks to be performed per voting cycle are not too many.
I would like the contribution path to include content creation and onboarding tasks to OP Governance. We need more people to get involved in Governance, but it is a reality that this process is not easy for someone just starting. Understanding concepts such as Seasons, Voting Cycles, Intents, Mission Requests, or how to properly use the forum is a barrier to entry for more participants. By creating simple and educational content on Governance related concepts we can address this problem.
As a participant of this initiative since the first day it was live I’m beyond excited to continue progressing in this contribution path and I’m sure that this program will be of vital importance to onboard new people to actively participate in governance processes.
First of all, I want to thank the GovNERDs Maintainers. It’s really nice that they’ve organized this open contribution path. After years of thinking about how I can contribute to Optimism Governance, it’s great that such a path has emerged. I believe this is also very valuable for others who will ask the same question in the future.
Actually, it might be better to wait until the end of Season 6 to provide comprehensive feedback, but I’d still like to mention a few things that come to mind:
Notion is an amazing workspace that we all use—I agree with that—but I think it would be better if the process of entering tasks were in the form of a form. This way, it would be easier for one of the GovNERDs Maintainers to approve or provide feedback. I’m ready to explore which form applications can collaborate with Notion for this purpose, and I can add it as a task to our Notion hub.
I believe that measuring activity on the forum solely based on read time won’t be sufficient. You can see the details included in Discourse’s Read Time calculations via this link. I think having a max cap of 6 minutes hinders completely accurate data calculation. Therefore, we can combine metrics like replies to topics in addition to Read Time. To prevent abuse of this, the forum profiles of candidates who are likely to move to the next step in the contribution path can be reviewed.
Another piece of feedback that comes to mind is actually about feedback itself. I was surprised to see this topic on the forum because when I wanted to give feedback, the first place that came to my mind would be the govnerd channels on Discord. Perhaps, to allow all feedback to be given in one place and collected together, guidance can be provided to direct everyone to give their feedback here.
