TLDR
- I think we should have a DeSci Section because it helps us be involved in a community that aligns with our interests and mission
- The category should have similar content types as other categories to avoid some of the downsides, but there are some other types of post we should encourage in that section.
Good observations, @Larry_Bates, but I think I disagree a little on whether or not a space needs to be mature in order for it to be a section on the forum. I appreciate the call out to the defi space though. I have some thoughts on that as well, but I’ll try to keep them organized below!
Why DeSci Before XYZ Category?
I have been spending time thinking about the forum categories lately and some of the observations that @Larry_Bates brought up are part of those thoughts. The initial forum categories were created in late 2020 as an initial attempt to organize some of the emerging overall topics in web3. Obviously, such an initial system is not going to keep up with an industry that moves as quickly as ours does. There is some attempt to capture this quick movement through the Terms Glossary and Content Tags thread where our community suggests needed additions to the forum like a DeFi tag. Tags alone aren’t always great information organizing tools, however. It does seem like there is need for a community discussion about our categories overall and potentially a need to do some reorganizing of them. That seems like a growing priority based on what both @jmcgirk and @Larry_Bates pointed out. I look forward to being involved in that effort.
I think that effort can happen concurrent to the adding of DeSci as a category to the forum. I am also interested in adding a Community section to the forum, but I don’t see that as getting in the way of any of the reorganization work being discussed above. As @eleventh pointed out above, there is a growing community interested in DeSci and SCRF has an opportunity here to not only be a space where DeSci can discuss and mature, but the intersection between web3 and DeSci seems to strongly align with SCRF’s mission of advancing web3 research.
In my mind, having a section on the forum creates the space for DeSci to mature as a field and application. I wouldn’t want our forum to only be a place where the most highly researched sub-fields of web3 get representation. Many of these emerging trends have need for a meeting space between “industry and academia.” I think by having a section on our forum for DeSci, we have an opportunity not to just be involved in exploring this emerging trend, but we also have an opportunity to shape and influence it. To the questions in @eleventh’s original post, we as a community would have the ability to set some types of guiding sections and constraints on content in the category.
Structuring the DeSci Category
In @eleventh original post, it was asked:
Being an application and not a domain does mean, to me at least, that there should be some differences in the DeSci category than some of the other research categories. That said, I think there is a lot of similarity that we would want to retain and encourage in order to help guide discussions in a “SCRFy” direction.
Areas of Similarity
About the DeSci category
** Each category on the forum should have an about section. I think there is more to do with these in the future, but minimally there should be something like About the Consensus category.Notable Works in DeSci
** This is an incredibly important part of every category, and I think that much more so for DeSci. Many of the questions being wrestled with in the DeSci community have notable works throughout history. “Science” is not some monolithic system. There are notable works in the philosophy of science that would be valuable to have access to as well as the application of web3 solutions to DeSci that are foundational reading for people learning about and doing work in the DeSci space as well as the web3 space.Key Problems in DeSci
** This is a post type that I particularly like because it seems so mission aligned with SCRF. I actually thought it was part of the needed to have in the different categories already, but it somewhat looks like @lnrdpss may have created this of his own accord in the Auditing category. Regardless of the history of the post type, I think this is a requirement for me for the DeSci category if we are going to adopt it. It gives people a central space to concentrate on what are the next hurdles and might help avoid the downsides of “off topic” conversation that @eugene identified in the original post. @jringo recently posted essentially a think piece that I think starts to populate this section already.Research Summaries/Discussion Posts
** These are essential for SCRF, so I think it almost goes without saying these would exist in the DeSci category. Just the other day, @UmarKhanEth referenced a peer review study during a community call that could heavily influence decisions about mechanism design and approaches to DeSci/Decentralized peer review. I think that should be summarized and I would like to discuss it on forum. I like the paper, but there are areas to discuss. Exactly what our forum is for.
Areas of Difference
Experiments in DeSci
** DeSci gives us an opportunity to actively run and trial “experiments” right here on the forum. This is not something we really get to achieve in many of the other research categories on the forum. Specifying that a thread is an experiment in how to do something, like peer review, would make sense to have a specific home on the forum.Project Updates
** This isn’t really that dissimilar, but I am putting it here because I believe we would see more activity like this. DeSci is likely to be a little more project oriented as it grows and matures as a field, so having updates on projects in the category makes sense. We have some models for this on the forum already. For example, @Mr.Nobody recently did an update post on a project they are working on. There is likely some refinement we could do, but I think this would be a valuable type of content for a DeSci section.
There are probably some other types of content we would want to encourage in the DeSci category if we adopt it that I would love to continue to flesh out. It might even help us think about content in the other categories as well.
To me, if we had content type expectations like these, then we would be able to avoid the downsides mentioned in the posts above while also being involved in and influencing DeSci. I think it would attract an active community to forum while also helping SCRF accomplish its mission.
I hope this post gets as much engagement as the SourceCred one did, by the way. This is a great discussion to have!