We have seen a couple of delegate teams that are eligible for the Recognized Delegate Compensation program create additional accounts and use them to increase the number of “likes” received. Since the current system relies on two main criteria, likes received and reading time, both of which reset monthly, it opens up room for this kind of behavior, which may not be wrong but doesn’t really reflect good merit.
We do not believe this creates any real benefit for the program. On the contrary, it risks normalizing behavior that undermines the integrity of the incentive structure and may encourage other delegates to follow similar practices.
We believe the program should be based on “Good Merit” and encourage continuous, meaningful contribution. For example, the behavior we have seen from @Axia, @DAOstar_gov, @Tane, and others who consistently engage by providing thoughtful comments and constructive feedback to grantees almost every day is what should be encouraged.
To address this issue, we suggest:
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Excluding likes received from accounts within the same team for the current month and going forward, or
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Introducing a rule that disqualifies delegates from monthly rewards if such behavior is detected
This situation also highlights a broader limitation in the current system. The existing design still contains loopholes that allow for manipulation of engagement metrics. It is worth noting that this is partly what motivated our team’s earlier work on the PRS system — an alternative framework designed to provide greater transparency into delegate contributions and make this kind of behavior harder to exploit at scale. We raise this not to reopen that discussion, but simply as context for why more robust approaches to measuring contribution were explored in the first place. We believed this could better reflect actual forum contributions and reduce this type of behavior.