How to improve and reward Community Support

I have been thinking about the need for a helpdesk, as discussed in the community call. A project like Dappnode is not equipped to handle support requests from a growing user base. And if Dappnode gains some meaningful adoption, it will need some way to scale support for new users. I would like to initiate a discussion about the possibility of a decentralized support service for the Dappnode community, which if successful could be applied to other projects.

A typical helpdesk handles a variety of questions/issues from users. However, there is often a great deal of overlap in the questions or issues that need to be resolved. Therefore, if an individual was sufficiently instructed on how to resolve a particular common problem, it seems likely they would be able to teach another person if so inclined. The problem is that there is no incentive for them to do so.

Luckily, we have this cool new cryptoeconomic tools. Now, it’s not 2017, so creating another token won’t fly. But I think there is a lot of room to explore staking mechanisms for applications such as this.

With a mechanism similar to Pay-it-Forward, as the community grows, so does it’s support team. Imagine you are a user who has an issue setting up your Dappnode. You go to a support site and stake a small amount of ETH or other accepted crypto to generate a support ticket. A support :unicorn: picks up your ticket and walks you through the steps to resolve your issue. You then have a choice, donate that small amount of crypto and go on your way or pick up a ticket from someone who has the same problem (or another problem you are equipped to resolve) and help them solve it. If you resolve 3 issues for other users, your crypto is unlocked and you go on your way. If you want to become a support :unicorn: you can return to continue to help other users to receive a share of the funds that are donated or the interest from the staked coins. You might call this Stake-It-Forward.

Now, there are a lot of details to work out and challenges with a model like this but I believe there is a lot of unrealized potential in these nascent decentralized tools. I hope to start a discussion with you fine folks and see where it takes us.

4 Likes

I have also been giving this some thought. I think you are absolutely right: Support needs to be addressed as a prerequisite for scaling the userbase.

Something along the lines of incentivization of support, as you suggested, could be a solution. Nevertheless, building a specific system for support by ourselves would distract the very small team from improving DAppNode itself, so maybe there are existing systems that we could easily integrate to get a similar result?

I’ve been looking into Sourcecred, which tracks user contribution to communities and provides a platform for rewarding them. They even have an integration with Discourse (this forum)! What I like about them is that they differentiate between “cred”, which is measure of your contributions and the appreciation for your contributions by the community, and “grain”, which is a token that might have value, utility, etc. and can be integrated in any token economics design (once obtained, the ERC20 could be used in other parts of a broader DAppNode system, or exchanged for $$).

I’d like to hear your thoughts, @Metisus and the rest of support heroes here on whether a system like that would cut it for you, and what other uses we could have for an ERC20 (“the grain”).

PS: Can I change the title to “How to improve and reward Community Support”? It might reflect better the broader discussion.

1 Like

Absolutely, that is a way better title! I’ll have to look into sourcecred but I like the idea. I totally take your point that the Dappnode team has other priorities, so finding a solution that is already built is a must. Even some simple integrations with NFTs could go a long way in driving some community members to help onboard and troubleshoot with new users.

3 Likes

I just learned about “Time Credits”. This could be an interesting experiment and addition to sourcecred.

2 Likes

Definitely a cool option! Trustlines are the best <3.
I’m also looking at AraCred (SourceCred + AragonDAO). If I had someone who would help me implement, we could move it RIGHT MEAOW!