Tao Voting, the New Name for Disputable Voting!

#1

Hey! So I think this is missing from some of the convos, but Gabi, Sacha, Mitch, Lauren, Sem, and I (and maybe others?) were all chatting about naming for lots of Parameters in Gardens and ended up surfacing that the name “Disputable Voting” Sucks.

We looked at a lot of potential other names… mostly flowers and gardens related things.

Then Gabi (I think) Called it Tao Voting… and everyone loved it.

Tao voting (pronounced with a D) is named after the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, it’s not an acronym.

Taoism is based on the Tao Te Ching which is generally considered the earliest anarchist (or at least libertarian) texts ever to be written. I referenced my favorite chapter here:

Fun Facts…

  1. Back in the day, Pre-TheDAO, most people called it DeeAyOh… but I pushed Slock.it and in general the ETH community to pronounce it as “dow” as a h/t to Taoism

  2. TheDAO may have been renamed to Chapter 57 had it survived longer.

  3. The day of TheDAO Hack I was writing a blog post about how Jordi Baylina (cofounder of Giveth, Dappnode, Iden3, Hermez, WHG, author of minime, 777 and so many other things) created a delegation solution for TheDAO (which is built into Tao Voting).

  4. The idea of Wait for Quiet of which Tao voting is the only onchain solution Ive seen with this tooling also emerged out of TheDAO, from Dominic Williams, founder of Dfinity ($ICP)

So in short, Tao Voting is a great name!

Let the Memes begin!

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#2

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#3

The DAO is the mother of the ten thousand coins
They rise and fall in their rhythm…

Wait for quiet.
Nice.

I hadn’t thought of Lao Tsu as a Libertarian before, but I see it.

#4

I’m not really a fan. I think we should be trying to introduce as few new concepts as possible to new users and trying to instil an understanding of Taoism I think is needless cognitive overhead. Also when I first saw it I assumed it was an acronym and was confused when I couldn’t find it’s extended version.

I think the voting mechanism should just be called what it is or what it does. I also think that both the conviction votes and decision votes should use the same approach, either be called what it is or what it does.

Unfortunately I can’t think of a good name for what decision votes are, but I don’t think TAO votes is clear at all, without looking at documentation, and even then it could be confusing. If instead we call them what it does then in the “decision vote” case, I believe that it’s capable of changing anything related to the Garden/1Hive protocol, therefore something like “protocol vote” would be more suitable. For conviction votes in this case I think “proposals” as it currently is fine as it encapsulates funding and signalling.

Either way I don’t look at the term “TAO vote” and think of the decision votes we’ve been using all this time.

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#5

Disputable Voting was a bad name since Conviction Voting is also disputable… so we tried thinking of a good name related to and delegation, wait for quiet… didn’t come… Then we were looking at garden themes… Lilac Voting was the lead option… but it wasn’t feeling great… But then Tao voting came up and it felt like a no brainer.

“The Tao can be roughly thought of as the flow of the Universe, or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the Universe balanced and ordered.”

Sasha said, “replace Universe with DAO” :smiley:

Whether we like it or not, good branding is important. Tao Voting is a catchy name and IMO a fitting concept.

The most well known DAO framework is probably Moloch… which maybe should have been called “Exit Voting”… but with the moloch meme, it went far.

Gnosis “Safe” could be “Modular Vault” but it doesn’t give that warm fuzzy feeling of safety.

And now Safesnap is being rebranded with some cool naming (announcement pending).

Colony.

DAOstack’s Alchemy

…

Taoism is very well known anarchist Philosophy in China and around the world… Google says > 100 million people practice it.

And Tao is pronounced “Dow”… with this branding it is well poised to become the default voting pattern for Aragon DAOs… it is Tao Voting, all DAOs will want to use it!

Also if you didn’t see it, there is a nice twitter campaign explaining all the Tao Voting Params:

I’ll be honest, I was hoping to do a vote or something on the forum for advice process but was advised against it.

So we pushed forward with the naming.

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#6

No one’s going to read “TAO Vote” and learn anything about what a decision vote is without reading documentation, that’s poor UX.

Using an abstract metaphor for a larger array of concepts at a project level is okay eg Gardens, although it should be minimised, but I don’t agree we should be using abstract metaphors whenever we can.

At this stage I consider “Decision” better than “TAO vote”, and since these votes are so infrequent and I haven’t heard any better suggestions I’m warming to the term “Protocol Vote” since that accurately encapsulates what it does, it allows changing anything related to the Garden’s on-chain protocol.

People have often come into the 1Hive Discord and been confused by all the meme/random name related rooms, it’s gimmicky and fun but it can be off putting and I don’t think we should be replicating it.

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#7

In the Gardens interface we should keep with “Funding proposals” and “Decision proposals” for the sake of clarity and good UX. This is something we are already doing good. No user will see Tao Voting or Conviction Voting in the UI as it’s confusing.

Tao Voting would be the “brand” of the wait-for-quiet voting mechanism, only made at the level of the Aragon app name and documentation. It can be used as a proper name to distinguish from other voting mechanisms, such as Dandelion Voting or Conviction Voting. “Protocol Voting” doesn’t accurately reflect that, since the way 1hive votes changes in the protocol may change in the future, but “tao voting” can be referred as this particular system even if it’s not used anymore. For example Dandelion voting was the previous 1hive protocol voting, but it isn’t anymore, and it is still used as Dandelion Voting by other DAOs such as TEC Hatch DAO.

Having said that, I agree with @willjgriff that those proper names should not appear in the UI. I think that we should keep them for the system specification and documentation.

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#8

Hey friends, unfortunately this time i need to be totally against naming the disputable voting like TAO voting not just because i am agree with @willjgriff that we should try to keep the terminology simple enough for the user to understand but also for this most important reason:

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Taoism is not just a Philosophy is considered a religion and i DO think we should avoid any kind of political, religion, ethnicity, country related terminology.

If i need to throw a name to the table i would just go with “Protocol decisions” which Decision is already to what the user is used to on our frontend

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#9

So willjgriff is the Confucius to Griff’s Lao Tsu.

Tao voting because it waits for a pause, it is activated by what is not there.

The Tao comes up regularly in discussions around DAOs. Integrating words related to Taoism makes sense as the concepts in DAOs are very Taoist.

That said, I think contract wording needs to be consistent and obvious. That’s a Solidity standard.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss Taoist naming on the basis of Taoism being a religion. There are many Taoists who would say they aren’t religious at all, just as there are non- religious Buddhists and even non-religious practicing yogis.

There are many verses in Lao Tsu’s Tao te Ching that speak on the value of what is not there, like the hub for a wheel or the hole for a window. There are verses that speak on the value of non-action, verses on preparing for peace to prevent war. The TEC exemplifies attention to this last one.

And there are many verses on how to conduct oneself. It’s easy to appreciate how the values of personal conduct expressed in the Tao te Ching align with our community’s values.
I’ll leave you all this snippet, from verse 8.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No fight: No blame.

Have an amazing day.
Bee delightful.
:honeybee::honeybee::honeybee:

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#10

This has been quite the topic of conversation.
It seems like it’s taking a lot of time.
Sigh.
I’m thinking maybe “Pause” voting would be a more community appropriate name?

Stay safe out there Bees.

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#11

I like the concept, but I’m not really a fan of how it rings. Do you prefer “Pause” over “Quiet”?

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#12

I have no preference between pause and quiet.
I just agree that we should pivot away from anything contentious, even if it’s a cool idea to some people.

#13

I don’t think it’s worth it to spend that much time on the technical name of a gardens app. We have way more important things to discuss. If “disputable” is not a good name I’m OK on just calling the app “voting”, as Aragon did before apps were disputable, and keep it moving forward.

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#14

Is the goal of the name to define something? I think the goal of the name is to be catchy and interesting so that people want to learn more about it and engage with it.

I really think the Buzz DAO voices are the most important here… as it is a branding issue… that said, I would love to see a signaling poll to see how bad Tao Voting is…

There is a lot of documentation and promotion that has already been done with this name… at this point I am pretty sure the TEC will just stick with the name Tao Voting because that is what we have been calling it up until this point… and have it all over the place and there is no other clear name emerging out of this discussion to pivot too.

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#15

What should we call the Voting App formerly known as Disputable

  • Tao Voting
  • Prefer something else but can live with Tao Voting
  • Hard No on Tao Voting
  • Abstain

0 voters

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#16

I completely disagree with this, naming, and language in general, is fundamentally an effort to define things in ways that infer meaning so those things can be understood. No one should have to read documentation to understand what a decision/tao vote is.

I suggest the 1Hive community continue’s to use the term Decision Vote, as it has historically been used, to refer to the standard voting process until we come to a conclusion about a better name.

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#17

Completely support Will on this.

#18

Yes i agree with this. I prefer just Voting over Tao Voting really. And in the context of gardens we aren´t using non-disputable voting app anymore so just Voting won´t be confusing if that´s something some may be afraid of.

#19

Yeah I have to disagree strongly with branding 1hive tools in such a boring forgettable way… No one will be interested in Decision Voting. It’s boring. Moloch is mediocre tech with great branding and it has become the default for new people to come into DAOs… because it’s fun.

If we stay boring we will stay irrelevant.

“There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors.”

I would argue this is because the Computer Scientists shouldn’t be naming things. It should go to the people who are promoting it to an audience to give it reach.

Calling it Decision Voting in the UI is fine… Calling it Decision Voting on Twitter is just asking for no one to care.

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#20

Totally in support with tao voting