There are several areas of communication we are improving for the Synapse.vote neuron. For starters, we now have a website that is called out in the name of our neuron as it is listed in the NNS dApp. This website provides our manifesto, identifies our voting members, and documents our policies. We also have a Twitter profile @SynapseVote where we can make announcements relevant to the neuron. Now we would like to invite the IC governing body to join the Synapse realm on Taggr.
The Synapse realm on Taggr is a blend of forum and blog focused on IC governance related topics important to the Synapse neuron (e.g. all NNS Governance proposals). It has an NNS proposals bot that creates a new discussion topic for every NNS Governance proposal submitted to the NNS. This bot also automatically creates a poll in that thread where members of the realm can vote on that proposal. The goal is for members of the realm to be able to express their opinions on each proposal and provide a place where voting members of the Synapse neuron can explain how and why they voted on each proposal. This realm does not replace the need for deliberation on the DFINITY forum or other social media platforms, but hopefully it will at least be a central place where community and voting members can deliberate and/or document final opinions on each NNS proposal.
If successful at generating community input on proposal topics through the Synapse realm, then voting members of the Synapse neuron may increasingly decide to take that feedback into account when they cast their own votes. However, it needs to remain clear that voting members of the Synapse neuron are committed to voting with their own convictions on each proposal. It is also true that their convictions are informed by active deliberation within the community.
If a robust community forms in this realm on Taggr, then another outcome that can be considered is to create a neuron that votes according to the results of the poll. This neuron might some day be configured as one of the 15 voting members (e.g. Followee) for the Synapse neuron such that it represents community opinion expressed through the Synapse realm.
Taggr is a blend of forums and blogs and provides a simple way to publish content on a public compute infrastructure. Posts containing #tags appear in feeds comprised of these tags and users can follow tag feeds, other users, and individual posts. Realms represent sub-communities grouped by a certain topic and can have it’s own terms and conditions that are enforceable by stalwarts. You can bookmark Taggr on your phone by selecting “Add to Home Screen”, which makes its icon look and feel like a native app.
At this point we consider the Taggr realm for Synapse to be an experiment. It is the first realm created on Taggr and we want to try it out because it is an efficient social dApp hosted on the IC that structures feeds and comment history. It has potential to become an easy way to deliberate and document final opinions on each governance proposal in a searchable way. Of course, other IC related discussion is welcome in the Synapse realm as well. We look forward to learning how the community responds to this idea. Please join the Synapse realm on Taggr.