How do we address editors being overworked with a better governance method and what does it look like?

[SamWilsn]

@TimDaub

an EIP editor would only help EIP submitters over the finish line towards getting things merged on GitHub (by criticizing form, e.g., “You must add a security section,” "you must use the form “ERC-XXX”), but all subject-matter critical feedback (e.g., “you shouldn’t propose this standard because it is immoral”) would actually come from other Ethereum community members. Dunno, just an idea.

For the most part, I try to keep my “content based suggestions” off of pull requests and make it very clear that the suggestions do not affect whether I will approve their PR or not. The only subjective thing that editors should be reviewing, in my opinion at least, is whether or not a proposal should be an EIP at all.

[kdenhartog]

@gcolvin

o a large extent you are describing the way the EIP process and the Magicians were intended to work, (we had the IETF much in mind) and I’d be most inclined to build on that rather than start over.

Rings (so named in Berlin) were intended to function as working groups.

Yeah that’s what I’ve started to realize after participating in this conversation a bit more.

@gcolvin

One big issue is that the self-organizing Rings never did get organized. I’m not sure how to fix that. But a start might be to insist that the authors of a proposal – especially ERCs – find one or two peers who are willing to edit the initial Draft and see it through to Review – if an author can’t do that there is likely not enough interest to bother. The primary role of the Editors would be to approve the actual merges into the repo.

Yes, this does seem to be the heart of the issue for a lot of the quality control side of things which editors have taken on because these rings never properly formed like originally envisioned.

I think we’ve kind of got some self emerging rings appearing, which is a good sign, but they’ve just not quite appeared like originally intended. So it’s not like we need to go back to the drawing board with this. Just need a bit of refinement about their purpose and what decisions they’ve maintain within the process.

For example, I think rings should be used to establish quorum and decide whether a draft EIP is ready to be standardized.

If it deems it is, then the ring should establish a place to coordinate all the tasks that need to be completed to finish the standard. My preference is that we just setup a github repository for a EIP once it’s been decided quorum is possible so that we can use the issue tracker to track all the updates.

Once the participants who are actually moving the spec forward have decided the work is done, they can request broad review from the ring as a whole. This is when the EIP hits review period which signals to the broader ring that review objections should be raised and addressed otherwise the EIP will be proceed to final call.

At the point of final call, the Ring proposes the EIP to the broader EIP community (via a PR to the main EIP repo) where one final consensus point is established for any final objections to be lodged. If none are (or they’re not actionable) then the EIP is considered final.

So the principle I’m operating under here is we should move some of the hard power (e.g. decisions and enforcement to have a EIP proceed) that’s being enforced by editors today and shift that power to rings. This serves two benefits. First it makes it so that editors have fewer responsibilities, and second it gives legitimate reason for people to participate and focus on the rings.

This is only one piece of the puzzle though, so I’m thinking it’s time I write a longer blog post about how I see this potentially all fitting together so others can provide feedback and critiques.

[sbacha]

I am willing to contribute to an initial round of funding for at least one EIP reviewer on the condition that they come from or have a background in Client development. Additional backgrounds like Compiler development, Security Auditing etc I think would be useful to identify so that an initial estimate of cost for attracting some experienced persons to be involved would go along way to getting people to donate if they knew it was going to be spent on reputable candidates.

Also @gcolvin point on EIP shepherds is spot on.

Additionally monetary compensation isn’t necessarily the only form of compensation, there are other potential ways of providing incentives that are not purely fiscally compensated such as invite to a private DAO or NFT artwork donated by popular artists, etc. Maybe a letter with ACDs signatures as a show of appreciation, you get the idea.

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