I voted No.
Here are some of my reflections.
Random sampling and my basis for voting
I was not among the badgeholders randomly selected for participating in the deliberative process, but I have read all of the documentation and watched the recordings that were made available afterwards.
I do understand the wish to include other badgeholders than those who generally show up for everything, and to experiment with random (representative?) sample groups of citizens coming together to deliberate. And I don’t want to devaluate the care that went into choosing this setup!
However, the question of defining what we actually mean when we speak of ‘impact’ and ‘profit’ is at the core of everything that we do here, and in my opinion it would be better to include as many badgeholders as possible in the process - and especially those who have a lot of context and are very engaged.
I understand that in the future there may be many more citizens, and random selection for focussed discussions may be the only way to go, but at this point, only 30-40 citizens regularly participate in the ratification of token house decisions, and it seems very clear to me that there is a huge variance in what different citizens bring to the table. A random sample will hardly be ‘representative’ in any meaningful way, and even if that was the case, it might still be better to bring as much knowledge and engagement into the discussions as possible.
How much support is there for the proposed definition?
I notice that in the original post about the plans for the deliberative process, it was said that 50 citizens would be randomly selected - but going through the documentation, it seems that only 25 participated. At least, only 25 voted on the inclusion and weighting of deduction parameters.
I understand that 10 of the 25 participants (40%) voted against including the category of OP grants in the deduction formula.
As of right now, with two days to go, 28 citizens have voted for or against the ratification. As I understand it, several of these (like me) were not part of the random sample, which seems to implicate that not all who participated in the deliberations are voting on the ratification. For whatever reason. In any case, as of right now, the preliminary results indicate approx. 2/3 votes against the ratification.
EDIT: Quite a lot of votes came in the last two days. The distribution of votes for/against the ratification has remained roughly the same, however, with a clear majority of No votes.
What did the deliberative process show?
After having gone through the documentation, my main takeaway is this:
It seems very clear that there is a great need for much more shared context when discussing these questions.
Participants noted that they learned much from participating, and many were surprised to learn about the nuances of the grants process, such as that certain grants were not given to the builders themselves, or that funds might be locked up for up to a year.
These nuances are obviously important, as underpinned by the fact that the initial proposal to vote on a single weight for the deduction of any kind of OP grant was changed on the last day of deliberation into a proposal to vote on weights for each of three different kinds of OP grants.
My conclusion
Impact and profit are highly complex abstractions. Even if we only speak of the kinds of projects that will be rewarded in rpgf4 - and I think it would be a mistake to only look at those.
There is a great need for deliberations such as the one that we saw here. Those who participated learned a lot. The rest of us get to learn from the documentation and the recordings, but it seems clear to me that even more could be gained from including all of the most engaged citizens in the actual deliberations (simply by inviting them to join if they have the time and wish to do so).
It is too early for standardized formula like the one proposed. We have to start somewhere, yes, but then let’s start with the discussions and the deliberations - as we have, here.
As such, I think the experiment with the deliberative process is a huge success.
Realizing that something is more complex than you might have thought is not a bad result, even if it can feel like one step forward and two steps back. Rushing forward is no use if you are running in the wrong direction.