[DAO Discussion] Wonderland Moderator Compensation

General Discussion
1

Synopsis

The goal of this proposal is to outline expectations and provide reasonable compensation to selected members of the moderation team and give them the tools and resources necessary to manage Wonderland’s community. The team is available 24/7 to provide support, education, community engagement and member management. This proposal is based on recommendations from the community at large and Daniele.

The team has been selected based on their current role, level of engagement, protocol knowledge, contributions and how long they have been volunteering to help the community.

Selected community moderators:
@AliceInWonderland , @Bamchicka, @0xDjinn , @NalX , @ruian11 @Wilson , @Smilbur @Vayu.

Current Duties

Since the beginnings of Wonderland, moderators have been available at any time to provide:

Technical support:
Help with using Wonderland- buying, selling, staking, software and hardware wallet issues, Avalanche and Fantom issues, bridging, wrapping, and using the cauldrons on Abracadabra.

Education:
Fighting FUD about Wonderland and its team, educating users on how Wonderland works, and offering guidance and status of partner products including: Abracadabra, Popsicle, Betswap, Liquid Staking, Cross the Ages and more in the future. Adding contracts to wallets, using block explorers and other blockchain basics. Education on general blockchain security.

Community Engagement:
Whether members want to talk Wonderland, DeFi, or just chat, the team is very active on the server to engage with fellow frogs.

Member Management:
Managing and maintaining server bots to protect members against spam and scams, removing disruptive/hateful content, de-escalating disputes between members, hearing complaints with empathy, and issuing timeouts or bans when necessary.

Forum Maintenance:
Keeping the forum on relevant topics and clean of hostile debate/topics. Advancement of proposals when applicable.

Proposed Duties

Going forward the aforementioned duties will continue and it is proposed to add:

Appoint Alice as Senior Moderator:
This role will include the extra duties of managing and paying for server bots, communicating with the core team when necessary, making server announcements and distributing compensation to other moderators. This role will include monitoring moderator work to maintain accountability.

Communication Relay with Management:
Both the community and moderation team feel it is imperative to have an open channel of regular communication between the team and Senior Moderator to report general status updates on the protocol’s workings and critical technical issues with Wonderland when necessary.

Maintain Regular Updates on Project Status:
Moderators keep the community up to date on Discord. Going forward they will also maintain a forum thread with latest updates, future plans, and a Medium for archival purposes as needed. The forum thread will offer community feedback, transparency, and visibility.

Create and Maintain Holders Only Chat:
With the rage-quit behind us, we feel it may be useful to have a holder only chat for people that are still invested in the project and its future.

Increase Authority to make Improvements:
Staff have a level of trust and should have the ability to make minor changes to the Discord server to improve the community experience without the need to go through the complete governance process. This requires the Senior Moderator be given authorization to post announcements and add or remove channels as needed.

Compensation

At over 80,000 server members we have one of the largest and most active communities in the space.

Proposed compensation for the staff of eight full-time moderators is 25,000 MIM per month to be distributed by the Senior Moderator based on performance. This comes to a total of 300,000 MIM annually for Wonderland, approximately 0.10% of the treasury’s value as of the time of this proposal.

Moderator Bios

Alice (Senior Moderator): Server maintenance, paying subscriptions for and managing bots -fixing broken captchas, auto role issues, anti-raid bot replacement, adding new language channels and roles to global section. Troubleshooting permission issues as they arise. Helps with AMAs and recordings. Assists community members in WAGMI. Personal FTM faucet for our community to assist the bridging efforts. Makes announcements when authorized. Answers questions in general chat, offering emotional support when needed.

Bamchicka: Most hours contributed by any mod in recent months. Lead mod for our new members area to answer questions about the protocol. Offers technical support in support channel, enforces server rules in all general channels. Assists Alice with server maintenance by testing roles and permissions as needed. Organizes internal channels with resources for mods to more easily assist the community in sharing information. Gathers and organizes AMA questions. Assists in our foreign language channels for community members in multiple languages.

Nal X: Often helping in general chat, governance channel, and in support of our Queen’s Guard team. Moderator on the Wonderland forum helping to keep it clean, organized, flag comments and proposals as needed, and main point of contact on the moderation team for DAO governance and forum-related information. Offers support in multiple languages and regularly assists community members on WAGMI.

Ruian: Long time moderator for Wonderland with a deep understanding of the protocol. Helps to educate community members about the protocol and keep our server free of misinformation and FUD. Has an advanced understanding of many DeFi protocols and offerings to help educate our holders. Certified rekt in liquidation cascade.

Smilbur: Long standing, daily active moderator mostly active in our support channel offering technical support to the community, as well as assisting in the new member chat and on the WAGMI server. Assists in finding and banning scammers targeting our community and keeping our anti-spam bot up to date. Assists in multiple languages for our international community members.

Gin’N’Sonic: Long-standing loyal moderator who has helped to train incoming team members. Active daily in all channels across the server including the WAGMI server. Offers technical support, answers general questions for the community, assists with handling scammers and enforcing server rules to keep our community safe. Assists Alice with feedback to improve the server for our community’s use.

Wilson: Actively moderates the general channels to enforce server rules and educate the community about updates to Wonderland. Creates educational materials for community members and takes initiative on organizational tasks and side projects for the mod team to run more efficiently. Regularly looking for new ways to improve our communication outside of Discord through other social media channels with the authority and information we have.

Yaksha: Long-standing loyal moderator from the beginning of Wonderland launch. Regularly assists in the scam report channel to help protect our server, offers technical support in our support channel, and monitors all general channels to enforce server rules. Assists new members that join our server. Our primary active mod in Asian Time Zones, also able to assist community members in multiple languages.emphasized text

82 Likes
4

Absolutely, well deserved. :frog::fist:t2:

24 Likes
5

100% deserved ! i support this one

19 Likes
6

I’m supportive of this, but would like the way the 25k is distributed based on performance to be transparent (this can be kept within the mod team) to avoid any future disputes. I’ve seen how salary disagreements have affected other protocols.

19 Likes
7

mods should do community give aways with all that cash money :wink:

4 Likes
8

100% agree. We tried to keep the proposal as simple as possible, but we do want to maximize on transparency going forward.

12 Likes
9

I liked how everyone’s background and general role was included, was nice to read

5 Likes
10

Totally agree, do not delay it

6 Likes
11

yes, yes. yes, yes deserved

7 Likes
12

About 3k / person / month… Can I be a moderator, too, please? :upside_down_face:

8 Likes
13

well deserved, my only question is this in line with what other moderators do/get?

1 Like
14

Sounds good to me. We’ll deserved

6 Likes
15

Good idea but I would argue all mods deserve something, we are all helping. Also for this to work there would need to be someone responsible for distributing the money, probably based on performance I assume. Unless the plan is to shrink the moderators to a small more dedicated team.

1 Like
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I believe that this is a no-brainer proposal. The moderators for this project, namely the ones chosen, have been pivotal in the communication and sentiment-shift that we are currently seeing in the community throughout all of the prior events and updates.

With the enormous treasury (in the hundreds of millions of dollars), this is a drop in the bucket for talent, effort, and continued loyalty to the project from these folks. In comparison to projects across the crypto space paying their moderators the same, if not more, with treasuries 500-fold less in terms of dollar value, I am in full support.

I would also like to see these moderators remunerated in a back-pay for some months as well (my suggestion is three). Anyone who has been part of this community over the last 6+ months knows for sure that this is deserved- handling one of the largest crypto communities full time, and with the passion they have shown deserve this, in my opinion. It’s only fair.

Onwards and upwards, friends.

8 Likes
17

You all do a great job, an amount of compensation is fine by me. do not delay, make this a wip

3 Likes
18

So, reading the other comments, I guess I’ll play devil’s advocate here.

Distributed evenly, the equivalent of 3125$ USD per month seems very high for what is traditionally a volunteer role. I won’t pretend that moderating a Discord (especially this one) is easy, but from my point of view, this is beyond what I would expect the DAO to pay for at this stage.

As a standard user, I only have visibility into the non-private channels, so I investigated the numbers and decided to base myself on the only quantifiable metric I have access to - number of messages per moderator.

Keep in mind, this will include their time prior to being elevated to mod status within Discord, but it will give a good picture of the activity level (taken around 6pm EST):

Ruian and Yaksha have some messages in September, but I didn’t bother to include it as a separate month when you can extrapolate the number from the totals.

Total Oct-21 Nov-21 Dec-21 Jan-22 Feb-22 Mar-22
Alice 6058 40 8 1079 2368 1877 686
Nal X 7076 0 401 2112 1528 1898 1137
Bamchicka 8852 0 68 356 1490 3004 3934
Wilson 4596 0 79 536 2023 1669 289
Gin n Sonic 17324 0 565 6915 6423 1912 1509
Ruian 10511 2332 281 3177 2610 596 238
Smilbur 5769 0 2244 1763 1096 333 333
Yaksha 3327 398 1336 553 386 256 381

At 3125$ per member per month; this is what the cost per mod message would look like (March is not a complete month, so I based the numbers off 2000$ instead since we’re the 20th).

Total Oct-21 Nov-21 Dec-21 Jan-22 Feb-22 Mar-22
Alice $3.10 $78.13 $390.63 $2.90 $1.32 $1.66 $2.92
Nal X $2.65 $7.79 $1.48 $2.05 $1.65 $1.76
Bamchicka $2.12 $45.96 $8.78 $2.10 $1.04 $0.51
Wilson $4.08 $39.56 $5.83 $1.54 $1.87 $6.92
Gin n Sonic $1.08 $5.53 $0.45 $0.49 $1.63 $1.33
Ruian $1.78 $1.34 $11.12 $0.98 $1.20 $5.24 $8.40
Smilbur $3.25 $1.39 $1.77 $2.85 $9.38 $6.01
Yaksha $5.64 $7.85 $2.34 $5.65 $8.10 $12.21 $5.25

This metric alone can server as a KPI for a variety of the duties listed in Nal’s initial post:

  • Technical Support
  • Education
  • Community engagement

Based on the last 3 months – Alice, Bam, Nal, Gin n Sonic are the mods from this list whom I would consider active enough to warrant compensation for their efforts. However, in these same 3 months, you can see there are some Cheshire Cats and Queens Guards who are more active than several of the mods on the list.

Sidenote – WAGMI all-time messaging stats:

MOD WAGMI messages
Alice 322
Nal X 313
Bamchicka 4
Wilson 1
Gin n Sonic 509
Ruian 59
Smilbur 158
Yaksha 145

A couple of other points I want to share:

The process for members to be elevated to Moderator within Wonderland Discord has not been transparent. I think it would be useful to have the context of how they got their role (i.e. who noticed them and elevated them). This is not to take away from the positive work they are doing, though I must admit, in some cases, the progression has been very fast, and I struggle to understand how their contribution merits compensation.

This suggestion of 3k/month becomes a little tone deaf is when you consider that the WL Discord mod pay will eclipse investor revenue sharing rewards for the foreseeable future (even at the most optimistic 2k/wmemo/month initially hyped up by Sifu). Maybe it’s the timing of this messaging that weighs heavy on my bias – though I concede this is irrelevant to the focal point being discussed – it’s merely an observation.

Any expenses related to WL Server should not come out of any mod’s pockets. This is ridiculous and should be corrected immediately. If Alice needs keeps this due to credit card commitments or otherwise, there should be a direct transfer of equivalent funds to her to compensate for this on a predictable timetable.

The core of this role is moderating Discord. It can definitely grow to more, but I’m confused as to why only 8 members from the Mod team would be deserving compensation when 4 of the 5 current duties are also executed by Queen’s Guard and Cheshire Cats? To me, the future duties, while super interesting and relevant, do not differentiate the responsibilities enough to warrant efforts being paid for 1 group versus the other (until we see the communication relay deployed at least – then it may make sense to revisit).

I believe that there should be some form of compensation for WL Discord Mods (as well as others who are contributing to the project). I also believe the number needs to start lower and that it grows alongside the health of the project; as things get back on track, as the proposed duties become reality, and the project begins to improve. Difficult to quantify, but I believe when the time is right, the pay adjustments will almost be self-evident in their requirements.

Lastly, if the DAO is going to pay for a subset of the mod team, (which again, I believe it should), this means that the mod team is accountable to the DAO and the DAO should have a say on the onboarding of new and termination of existing mods. Perhaps this part will also be deeper discussed in the RFC but consider that the DAO will also have some right to request the inclusion and removal of tasks from the moderator job description. It’s a partnership, so there should be interesting back and forth between the community and the Senior Moderator about proposed new duties, but ultimately, the DAO should have a significant say in their Mod team does if we’re paying their salary.

50 Likes
19

@countbyron We believe so (obviously lol) based on the knowledge/experience of some of the mods on this, but we are open to the discussion (for less or more :eyes:). For example, based on the Samurai at Sushi, I’d say we would qualify for the level 2 pay or above, which is 80k+ a year. I’m not just cherry picking this, it’s mostly because that’s the most recent one I’ve seen and have quick access to, but it gives you an idea of how high the range can go.

@Tolis21 we all agree on this and it was the intention initially. However, when drafting it and asking for feedback, we realized it made it too complicated at this time. We scaled down quite a bit and tried to keep it as simple as possible. However, as we get more organized and the community grows, the need for “resources” will increase and a more complex/wide compensation plan could be implemented.

1 Like
20

The reason we did not include message numbers is that it in no way reflects the effort or time we spend. As you’ve already said you have only access to a limited amount of channels, excluding things like new member area, all bot and scam related chats, as well as internal mod resources etc.

You also don’t see the things that happen behind the scenes, the amount of DM’s from wagmi that Alice solves, the hours on bot work spend, the hours of resource gathering, looking into wallets, helping individual issues, mostly in DM’s, forum work (Nal especially), discussions as well as the time we spend just improving things.

These are hard to measure metrics, impossible to put in numbers.
It’s one metric - but by far not the best imo. Look up server total, you will see that, counted all messages since creation of the server I am number one on that - that doesn’t say anything by itself, though.

For this space our request is actually not even mid level, check with other projects.

Most of us have been recommended to become fud fighters (now queens guards), then cats and ultimately been made time cops based on recommendation and votes within the higher mods firstly and Sifu.

I fully agree that the other roles, as well as that the community should be included as well - but this is not the purpose of this proposal to be honest. We, as community, need a comms team, urgently, with direct access to the upper level (as included), we need the issue addressed and discussed, as it happens every day.

I am more than happy to include allocations for community efforts, add $xy monthly for special effort to be shared between xy in yz metrics and xy dollars for other purposes and whatnot.

Problem, as you may see is that it takes a lot more discussion on everything, so we decided and agreed that it is more in the sense and benefit of the community to get moving, get the comms in place and after that improve on other things.

2 Likes
21

Wow! What a thorough response! I will do my best to address the different points you bring up. To begin with, as you pointed out, your message counts are only including the channels you have access to - so this does not include our separate new members section of the server, as well our internal channels where we do a large chunk of our moderation work discreetly (banning scammers, leaving notes, organizing resources for our mod team to share easily, discussing issues members bring to our attention, troubleshoot server settings to make sure things are running the way we need them to, etc). For me personally, that would increase my message count by another 4,000 to the figure you listed. This is probably realistic for all of the mods in this list, and if you like we can provide those numbers to you if/when it gets moved to RFC.

The reason we did not include it in the first place, is because we felt it was not an accurate unit of measurement. Nal X spends a lot of time volunteering on this Wonderland forum to keep it clean and organized. I spend time daily updating our bot’s dashboards, troubleshooting role and channel permissions, to keep the server running effectively. Even when we are not actively commenting, we have to keep an eye on all channels to ensure server rules are being followed, and no one that needs help is missed. We are providing help 24/7/365.

New moderators have often been nominated and voted on by other existing moderators air hand selected by Sifu, the Co-Founder of Wonderland, by being noticed for our efforts to help the community. We were selected for our knowledge of the protocol, our time devoted to trying to help fellow members, and our contributions to try to better the community. We joined the Wonderland server as holders looking to be part of the community, and then devoted our time and efforts to serving it.

The salary selected was based on a few factors - the moderator pay at a few projects similar to Wonderland. We landed in the mid range. We considered server size, responsibilities, tone/needs of our community vs others considering Wonderland’s history thus far, and average hours contributed. In total, the annual salary for the entire team translates to less than 0.1% of Wonderland’s current treasury value, so we feel this is very reasonable for a protocol of this size and a community such as ours. :slight_smile:

I hope that helps!

4 Likes
22

Sheesh! Nice breakdown (MEE6 gives a nice ranking too, although it includes old community members). I won’t repeat what the others said, but agree with their comments. A lot of work is done behind the scenes. I would also point out that a some of my messages on Discord are definitely not moderator friendly, but that’s a story for another day…

Anyway, I’m sure you get the point and I really appreciate the break down since I’m a stat nerd. About some of the other points.

Alice covered most of it. Since it was all volunteers for now, transparency was kind of not a big priority, but it should definitely be moving forward.

We actually had this discussion. We considered implementing an extra amount to be to be distributed to other community members who contribute or doing certain events to help people recover from these losses. However, it was decided that it was too complex and out of scope for this proposal. The idea deserves to be discussed on it’s own and we shouldn’t be the only ones making money in rough times.

Agreed to some extend, but bots are part of being able to manage the Discord properly and falls under the moderators’ discretion. It is one of the reason why we believe the head mod should handle this and the payment can be taken off the lump sum.

My answer to Tolis above explain this a bit, but the criteria for selection are also in the proposal:

What would you consider is required at this stage ?

I believe we all agree on this. After all, we are pushing this through the DAO’s hands. If the co-founder/treasury manager/ceo/coo/cm/communication head can be voted out. Surely, mods too. However, I would argue the Senior Moderator could/should take care of these situation should they arise without the need of the DAO to intervene in most circumstance.

3 Likes