This proposal aims to eliminate Aura’s one-month document retention policy for Discord and Telegram content so that content is not deleted after 30 days and posts remain on Discord and Telegram servers and channels. Currently, content is deleted every month.
Background
Per Protocol Documentation and Discord FAQ, “Aura has a standard one month document retention policy for Discord.” Reasons for this policy are to:
emphasize our commitment to effective records retention
ensure that critical records are available to meet community needs
optimize the use of space
ensure that outdated and useless records are destroyed
minimize the cost of record retention
comply with legal requirements
Proposal
Aura community members are sophisticated and knowledgeable. Aura Discord is a place where conversations must be comfortable and encouraged. Participants use the channels to learn, educate, brainstorm, debate, and connect.
DeFi evolves rapidly, and experienced Aura members understand the importance of reflection and the value afforded from revisiting prior posts and interactions. This option and utility will be enabled by eliminating a retention policy that deletes user content every 30 days.
Our vibrant and active community can pin posts, create threads, archive channels, and utilize forum features. Aura’s savvy contributors can also employ search terms and filters when researching channels and posts.
Aura Discord has effective rules for conduct. Community participants must read and agree to these rules upon joining the server. These rules will be published to a dedicated channel so as to be accessible by server members at any time.
Thanks for posting this proposal. I don’t have the details why the deletion policy was introduced in the first place. No reason to continue to do so. In support
One reason for the current retention policy that wipes servers clean every 30 days is, “legal requirements.”
As we prepare to vote on this proposal, it would be beneficial for discussion and understanding if these requirements could be shared.
AIP-24 approved $100K USD in Aura to retain legal representation from Horizons Law & Consulting Group (“Horizons”) for the DAO. Per the proposal, “Horizons will be available for up to 20 hours a month to review legal matters and operational ongoings, ensuring that Aura DAO is acting in the best interest of its community members.”
If our DAO legal representation is indeed advising that deleting server content each month is in the best interest of the community, a detailed explanation of the requirements and rationale for the advice would be helpful for the community to have here.
The documentation retention policy stands on its own. It’s not for legal reasons or to evade legal authority, but to ensure efficient use of storage and minimize the cost of record management. It’s very difficult to archive messages from over 500 groups–we would need to establish a new role/position just to do something like this.
Horizons is no longer on the above pay/hourly schedule, but is now an hourly legal advisor.
DAO’s “guidance from legal” was also referenced in this reply during the temperature check phase.
I appreciate your making it clear that this policy was not implemented for legal reasons or to evade legal authority.
My question is, how did the current ‘retention policy’ begin? Was it in place from the start at Aura’s launch? Did it get voted in via a similar AIP process to what AIP-60 is going through now? I have been looking through past proposals and votes, but I cannot find any records of this retention policy being enacted through governance.
Please share how the retention policy this proposal aims to eradicate was brought into existence. It was not advised by legal - yet Aura official documentation cites “guidance from legal” as a main justification.
Did the policy pass through the governance process? Please link the information from this proposal and vote so that the community might understand this retention policy’s history.
Correct, yes. My point of clarification was that this phrase was referring to complying to legal requirements for doc retention (universal application, storage, etc), not for purposes of legal evasion, which some community members have been recently suggesting on Discord was the purpose for establishing doc retention policies.
Correct, yes.
It’s been in place since day 0, all of our Telegram groups from the very first one has had an autodelete in place as a default setting. Discord has been on the same schedule as well, but from time to time has lagged a bit, since that’s a manual job that fell under the deprecated Yogi’s domain, who have now been offboarded.
Governance is a bit tricky sometimes–there’s a chicken and egg problem with very early actions or platforms. Take, for example, this very forum that we’re chatting on. Did we approve of using this forum through governance or did someone simply start it up and everyone started using it? Governance can be used to change things, of course, anyone can put up a vote now to shift us from Discourse to another platform. But often, there are many areas of implementation or responsibility that will not be explicitly listed out line by line, or need to go through Snapshot, as that would be unduly burdensome on the DAO and the voters. Rather, contributors have delegated responsibility, for example, there will be a AIP vote to onboard contributors that have certain areas of responsibility, such as Community, and they have broad latitude within that area of domain to establish policies since they are already pre-authorized to do so by the overarching AIP. Or there is an AIP to onboard a legal advisor, whose purpose is advise us and set legal policy. Each of those policies don’t need to be approved through governance, since the broader AIP onboarding them has already tacitly approved of the advisor’s actions. However, if the DAO is dissatisfied, the advisor can be offboarded or the policy can be changed.
I’m not too certain where you’re getting the “not advised by legal” from. What I stated was that this policy was not implemented to evade legal authority. Legal was consulted and advised on this topic. The exact wording that you see in #faq on Discord was drafted by Horizons and copy-pasted to the Aura server.
This is certainly true and reasonable, as DAO representatives must be able to make decisions and take action (within their purview) without a snapshot vote.
It’s important that those who delegate make their wishes known - or choose to personally vote, should a matter be of personal importance. Also vital is that voters who delegate monitor accounts to which they delegate, so as to review whether or not their delegate is voting according to their interest.
There must be great care when decisions are made and policies are enacted. An implementation that may be relatively simple to establish can be terribly difficult to remove.
This is absolutely true. There’s a few things that can make this process a bit easier, however. I think first and foremost, it’s important to remember that just because we’re in web3 and now voting with Metamask, that doesn’t mean human nature has changed. Governance is just a fancier word for politics, and the rules of the old world still apply.
I’ll use your AIP as a case study to illustrate this point.
First, most of the important work to get an AIP approved is done before the AIP even goes to temperature check. Research and background is important. We shouldn’t be trying to figure out how the retention policy was enacted or who was responsible in the comments to the AIP after the vote has already been posted. This proposal would be much stronger if it was thoroughly researched, looked at similar protocols, perhaps pointed out that Aura is completely different than the rest of the market in this regard–is this a good thing, a bad thing–essentially, going a bit more in-depth that simply stating what we have, and stating we need a change. Concrete examples are important.
Second, sentiment or “how the wind is blowing” is important. This refers not just community sentiment, but also to delegate sentiment as well. If you have 5 people on server shouting, it’s easy to think that there’s broad based support for an action. But how many votes do they have? Will they even vote?
And how many votes do the delegates have? Have you requested to speak with any of the delegates, try to get them on your side before the vote has started? Have you sent anyone the draft of the proposal to get their thoughts on it, examine its feasibility?
Third, execution is important. Sometimes things are shot down not because people don’t agree with you, but perhaps the difficulty in enacting the proposal doesn’t allow it to proceed. Here, one very big sticking point is how to change the Telegram settings on 500 TG groups. Who will be responsible for doing so? Do we need to hire someone new for this task? If it’s a contributor that needs to do this, like myself, you would need to come talk to me first before volunteering me for extra unpaid work.
Sometimes, if there’s no one else, the author volunteering to help enact the proposal is what helps move it forward.
Fourth, who is writing the proposal is important. Here, you’re just one guy, not particularly well known, so this AIP is easy to vote down. In contrast, look at Auramaxi’s proposal from 2 weeks ago. He’s a well known actor–almost anything he proposes would receive far more favorable attention. Xeonus, above, signified support for this proposal. This AIP would have been considered in a much better light had he proposed it. If you don’t have a whale or a known actor, you have 4-5 other people on Discord supporting this proposal–perhaps gather all of them together as co-authors–signify authority in numbers. One guy alone is a nut job, but 10 nut jobs together is a movement.
Fifth, clarity is important. You have 2 different things mixed in one here, A) remove the retention policy, B) post the Discord rules. If this AIP is rejected, it might be because of A, but you’ll never really know, what if it was because of B? It’s best to have each AIP focus on one singular topic, so that if it’s rejected, you know firmly that it was rejected based on the merits of A, not B, nor some combination of A and B.
Sixth, build a history, take small wins when you can get them. Go for low hanging fruit first. If the Discord rules should be posted and it seems like something no one would object against, then lead with that AIP first, so that you have a successful win. People now know who you are. It’ll make pushing for changes in the future much easier–people bet on proven winners, not losers.
Seventh, visibility and a knowledge of where the voters are is important. The delegates and the voters read Snapshot and read this forum. No one is on Discord in a subchannel somewhere trying to hunt for comments. On Discord, there was actually a pretty lively discussion on this topic, yet here, it’s just me and you talking. You should encourage those guys to come to forum and drop their comments, so that there’s a groundswell of community support rather than just one person shouting in the wind.
I wrote a bit more than was probably necessary, but after I started writing I figured I would point people here to this comment in the future should they post a governance proposal and wanted some advice on how to best push it forward.
The wise instruction and advice you have assembled here will certainly prove beneficial to many.
One constructive and successful outcome from this AIP & our accompanying conversation is your proposal primer, available to inspire and educate anyone who wishes to successfully bring an idea to fruition through governance.
Your time and effort here in this forum is incredibly generous and this resource, that will forever remain available here, is very valuable.
Eight, does the action require governance or can governance be skirted altogether. Discord management, for example, falls within Community, which falls under the Contributor purview, and they have pretty broad permissions there. Guys like James, Kama, Guiriba, etc, can create a channel and get that implemented directly.
In fact, check Discord, it should now be done, and that’s thanks to your participation in governance.
Posting these thoughts here but Im happy to share also in the Temp Check if that’s signaled as the better forum for discussion. I also shared in the Discord channel for this proposal. By way of background, back when I was a Maxi, @SecondSetMaze and I had an initial discussion about the 30-day wipe as applied to Discord back in July or August of last year and the dialogue has picked up again recently. At the time of our initial discussion, I was somewhat blanket defending the policy and through our interactions it became somewhar clear that a more nuanced approach, at least as to Discord and other public communication forums, was needed.
Legit question - does anyone have any interest in genuinely engaging with the concept that the 30-day Discord wipe is a bad bright line policy?
Or are we just screaming into the void?
Because the forum and the website, as is, certainly aren’t the answer.
At the moment, there have been numerous expressions of interest in the Discord general channel of building more of a committed community that is more grassroots. Yet, the concept of deleting, every 30 days, the most active forum (Discord) in which the community communicates is counterintuitive to those expressions of interest.
I believe the relaxation, on Discord, of gifs, stickers, etc., was a step in the right direction. But, we still have this bright-line 30-day delete policy that operates to constantly delete the community’s most active communication forum.
So, if there is a genuine interest in building a more grassroots community, is there also genuine interest in crafting a more thoughtful retention policy that doesn’t simply delete the most active vestige of the Aura non-B2B community every 30 days?
Another example of poor tools for building community and sharing ideas amongst multiple forums - I can’t even share forum links on Discord.
I understand why we don’t want people to share links in Discord, but links to our own forum are also prohibited? That makes little sense and leads to more disjointed communication.
And it creates more work for contributors on Discord because they have to copy paste every proposal from here to Discord.
So I am copying and pasting from here to Discord and vice versa.
Hey, brother, welcome back–haven’t seen you in ages!
First, of all, no, the ending delegate vote count was much more nuanced than the votes on Snapshot would appear. You know better than anyone that the contributors see everything, listen to everything, and are sensitive to community sentiment as well. However, there’s a correct way to go about pushing for change (see my last comments right above yours) and there’s an incorrect way, and this proposal went about it in a pretty blunt manner, unfortunately, that didn’t place it in a reasonable position to be successful.
Before we get into this though, since you’re a big-brained and reasonable guy, let’s move one step back. Here and elsewhere, you’ve already assumed that eliminating the 30-day wipe is going to be overall beneficial to community discussion and sentiment, but that might not be the case. If all activity on server is the same as before, all discussion remains the same, then eliminating a 30-day wipe would be net positive. However, one counterargument might be that some community members and contributors only chat freely now because the 30-day policy is in place. If it’s not in place, we likely need to go back to some version of heavily redacted language, everyone watching what they say from a legal perspective, problematic language, discussion topics, etc, in essence creating a stifling environment for free speech. Discussions still need to happen, and if they can’t be held publicly, they will simply be moved to a private setting, outside of community purview, creating a less transparent environment as well. To be clear, I’m not saying that this will definitely happen–just challenging what seems to be the assumption that no autowipe is universally a net positive for the community, when arguments could legitimately be made both ways.
Regarding the bright line rule, as an attorney, you’re well familiar with these things. There’s room for debate, bright lines are never perfect. This is a fun law school discussion topic, but in the real world, if a line needs to be set, it just needs to be set, rarely is it ever perfect. The best lines are probably where everyone is unhappy, and everyone seems to be pretty unhappy now. It’s also unclear whether you’re challenging the number of days, 30, as the bright line, or the concept itself as a bright line, because eliminating the concept is another hard line as well. If the interest is changing the 30 days, then that’s basically the same effort as eliminating the rule altogether, and the problem with that approach, that I really haven’t seen anyone address yet is the following:
When we engage in governance, there’s two stages, the temperature check stage, where we work out ideas like this, and the AIP stage, where these ideas are already worked out, and some plan of action rooted in reality is put forward for the DAO to action on. Without a plan, stuff like this just can’t move forward. Everything is handled by bots now, but this AIP essentially encompasses the creation of a new record keeper or communication manager role to go manually adjust group setting, keep records, and it provides no plan of action, no budget, no individual that can execute on this. The DAO itself can take no action, individuals that the DAO hires can take action.
I don’t believe you were here during that time, but a few weeks ago, our server was hacked. The angle of attack was because of loose permission settings. We enabled webhook creation for the Yogis, ironically, to link together this forum and Discord, so that the two mirrored each other. One Yogi account was compromised, webhooks were created, and the server was subsequently compromised. After that, all permission settings were removed across the server. Links are allowed on Discord, but your present role settings don’t allow them. Since the attack, we’ve had a constant stream of bots entering the server and dropping malicious links, and we’ve only recently been able to contain this problem with very stringent security measures.
This seems like a pretty minor matter that a webhook could fix, if needed. But Discourse is for long form, permanent discussions, purposefully meant to filter out the noise through more thoughtful behavior. The delegates and voters read what’s written here, they don’t dig around in subchannels on Discord. Discord is for casual, free-flowing, non-permanent discussions. You can certainly make the argument that Discord > Discourse or vice versa. But if you want to truly capture mindshare from all parties, it seems best to allow people choose the platforms they want to use. If you have a serious comment, want to move a matter forward, do it here. If you just want to vent and blow off steam, use Discord, and it’s totally fine, say whatever you want, and you can do so freely, because you know whatever you say isn’t some sort of scarlet letter that’s branded on your forehead for the rest of your life.
I doff my cap to your intro sentence. You, sir, are a master.
My main question was whether there was a legitimate interest in discussing the nuances of this. Until your response now, the answer I gethered was “no”.
Thank you for answering yes to the most important question.
Haha, we miss you, brother, you disappeared on us a few months.
Reasonable debate can be held on anything here. Having been a Maxi, you know better than anyone that there’s a great deal of freedom in what’s discussed externally and internally, sometimes so much freedom that it feels unstructured sometimes, which comes from our big emphasis on decentralization. As a Maxi, you know as well that there’s a proper way to push for AIPs and action. This isn’t some sort of secret standard that’s special to Aura–it comes from human nature. Shout into the void, hard. Gather support, push for change, easy.
For a weekend without an Aura gauge weight vote and birbs, this was quite an exciting span of days in our Discord and Forum. I want to give thanks to EVERYONE who got involved with AIP-60. People with different roles participated enthusiastically by reading posts, sending messages, offering comments, asking questions, and sharing opinions. I am proud to be a member of this community alongside you all.
At its foundation, AIP-60 was proposed as a way to aid the often-expressed desire to build our community. There are indeed many successes from the proposal, and its accompanying discourse & governance process, for us to celebrate and build upon. We now have the use of stickers, emojis, animated gifs (don’t overdo it), and a rules channel.
There were intelligent and insightful conversations that explored many different directions. The Discord governance channel AIP-60 thread and Forum discussion demonstrate the positive way that we listen to and respect one another. There is generous big-brained mentoring and experienced guidance available in every corner of Aura’s channels. Continuing to present, promote, and sustain this type of encouraging attitude will go a long way towards building out our community environment.
In the inspired roadmap to proposal & governance success he authored, Contributor advises, “Just because we’re in web3 and now voting with Metamask, that doesn’t mean human nature has changed.” Similar sentiment is valuable to remember when reading chats and looking at charts, for behind every avatar and candlestick, there are all people. Except for the bots.
No matter how long a message lasts, let’s make our community known as a place where people are supported and encouraged taking risks; a forum where people can experiment thoughtfully; a destination where people are comfortable asking for help; and a space where people generate new discoveries.
Collaborate towards building and participating in this type of community environment and we will all be sending out a very lasting message.
And it’s all thanks to you, brother–both in being proactive enough to try and push for change, and in being gracious enough after receiving voting results to turn this into a net positive for the Aura community.
I’m looking forward to collaborating w/ you more in the future!
