An appeals review process for participants who did not receive a Goldfinch Flight Academy awards

Proposals
1

Authors: Dava#2376, julia_jul#9550

Summary: we believe that the support and trust of the community is important to the Goldfinch team so this proposal has the main goal: define and check 2656 appeals (without tier) of users, who did not receive awards for participation in Goldfinch Flight Academy. The basic theses on the workflow and evaluation of works are described below. As well as compensation to leaders for reviewing appeals for verified appeals, a system that excludes fraud involving one or more leaders of appeals, fines for dishonest performance of duties by leaders, work schedule and other subtleties of the workflow.

The target and motivation:

Thousands of students of the Flight Academy who did not receive an award filed appeals in order to get the awards they deserved. The Appeal Leaders Team intends to investigate each of the appeals in order to look for honest participants who lost their rewards by mistake. Also our aim is to detect scammers who created more than one account or steal other participant’s work, passing them off as their own in order to receive more rewards.

Verification process and reward levels:

We believe that the development and implementation of new criteria for evaluating work will cause frustration for many participants.

Previously, the Goldfinch team developed a transparent and fair system for evaluating the work of participants in the Flight Academy, and we will adhere to it.

You can get acquainted with the criteria and distribution of awards at this link -
https://goldfinchfinance.notion.site/Flight-Academy-Rewards-Update-05aeb437087c4eee90f00523897f1ef6

Tier rewards and payout method:

6 - Completed most assessments and a limited number of tasks - 50 GFI * 1 month
5 - Completed assessments as well as a few tasks and challenges - 150 GFI. 50 GFI * 3 months
4 - Completed assessments as well as many tasks and challenges - 350 GFI. 50 GFI * 7 months
3 - Completed assessments as well as most tasks and challenges - 700 GFI. 50 GFI * 14 months
2 - Completed assessments and almost all tasks and challenges - 1500 GFI. 83,3 GFI * 18 months
1 - Completed all assessments tasks and challenges, and earned top scores - 2500 GFI. 138,8 GFI * 18 months

Levels 6,5,4 and 3 will receive a fixed monthly amount of tokens - 50 GFI for 1, 3, 7 and 14 months, respectively.

Levels 2,1 will get rewards according to the following formula - 1/18 of the tokens every month for a year and a half.

*Payments may vary depending on the quality and quantity of the appeal.The final decision will be made by the Goldfinch project team.

The severity of the evaluation criteria:

The grading system will meet the needs of users and allow the chance of “accidental error”.

For example: a candidate completed all the requirements for receiving the 4th level of awards, but in one of the weekly tests he made a mistake and received 15/20 correct answers instead of the required 16/20. Such cases will be brought up at the weekly meeting, which will be held once a week, where the opinion of the majority - 3/5 of the leaders of appeals will be taken into account.

Interchangeability:

It is possible to interchange the value of different modules and tasks of the appeal, depending on the total contribution.

For example: The candidate did not complete 1 of the 5 required tasks, but still diligently completed additional tasks to create educational content every week. At the discretion of the reviewer, 1 additional work may replace 1 missed compulsory work, and so on.

Weekly meetings:

Weekly meetings will take place every Saturday to report back to the community on Monday on the number of verified appeals and reward levels allocated.

Accounting for verified appeals:

For each leader, a special document will be allocated on the cloud with access to the administration, in which he will indicate all verified appeals with a decision made on them. It will also list disputed decision appeals that must be submitted to the weekly leader meeting. Such records will help make the appeals review process as transparent as possible, and will also allow the administration to monitor the progress and effectiveness of each leader individually.

Schedule:

Monday: Working day + progress report
Tuesday: Working day
Wednesday: Working day
Thursday: Working day
Friday: Working day
Saturday: Leadership meeting, report preparation for Monday
Sunday is a day off

*Working day - regular review of appeals.

Compensation to Leaders of Appeal:

Each of the leaders will work at their own pace, it would be better to choose an hourly wage - 10 USDC/hour.

The maximum number of working hours per week for each Leader is 40 hours.For the convenience of counting hours, the Leader can use the time tracker and provide a report on the work done at the first request of any Leader or administrator. Payment will be made every Monday to each Leader’s wallet.

So that the review of appeals does not turn into a competition between Leaders, I propose the following: if one of the Leaders has checked his appeals, and the other has not yet, the leader can check the appeals from another list. But first he must tell all the Leaders about it.

The system of penalties for leaders of appeals:

At any time, one of the administrators may ask the Appeal Leader to account for any of the awarded (or not assigned) levels of awards. If it turns out that the level of awards was assigned (or not assigned) without reason, then the leader receives warning. The Leader cannot receive more than 3 warnings per 100 audited appeals. For violation of any of the established rules, the Leader will be punished by the administration. It can be either deprivation of compensation or exclusion from the program.

2

Thanks to Dava#2376, julia_jul#9550 for putting this proposal together! For reference and transparency, I am the member of the Warbler team who led the review process for Flight Academy plus the 1st round of appeals and I am a member of the Governance Council. I would like to see a few more details added to this proposal in order for me to support it:

1/ Payment to the Appeal Leaders Team should be capped and linked to success
In my mind, the protocol should not dedicate more than a couple thousand USDC maximum to this endeavor. $10/hr seems reasonable, but we need to know the # of Appeals Leaders and a proposed cap on hours per leader. Ideally the team should also choose a target deadline, and payout should only happen upon successful delivery of project results by the target timeline.

2/ GFI rewards should be capped
3% of GFI were allocated to Flight Academy. Approximately 2.90% have already been paid out. Total rewards for appeals should therefore not exceed more than 0.1% of GFI. The community would like to reserve at least some for future education programs, so ideally appeals rewards should be even less than 0.1% (<114285 GFI).

3/ I would like to see more details on vesting and the proposed mechanism for GFI payout
I’m not sure of the reasoning behind the 50 GFI per month or how the team proposes to handle setting up vesting contracts to handle these kinds of payouts. I think this is very complex to set up and warrants some clearer explanation / planning.

4/ Miscellaneous scoring requirements should be made clear so that scoring aligns with the way scoring was conducted originally
a) Proper KYC and registration should have happened for anyone appealing in order for them to receive rewards.
b) Anyone completing just 1-2 assessments did not and should not qualify for rewards.
c) Any activities must have been submitted through the proper channels and attributed to the correct address in order to count towards rewards.

3

Thanks Andrew. We prepare a new version with your wishes and comments.

4

Hey Dava#2376, julia_jul#9550! Thank you very much for this proposal and your efforts. To avoid any ambiguity I would like to intorduce proprely myself as well for the rest of the community. I’m Robert (RP#2743 on the Discord) - the current community admin and a former community manager during the Flight Academy period of time.

Please, find below some of my comments, which I believe emphasize some draws in the current structure and wording:

  1. One of your “aims is to detect scammers who created more than one account or steal other participant’s work, passing them off as their own in order to receive more rewards” - I’m not sure, that this is something, what you will be engaged in. As you mentioned in the summary of the proposal, you will go through 2 656 appeals, which received no tiers at all. Hence, these people weren’t able to get advantage of other FA participants, as they didn’t receive any tiers=awards, even if they were involved in fraudulent activities.

  2. You “believe that the development and implementation of new criteria for evaluating work will cause frustration for many participants.” I’m not sure, that there will be any frustration, given that 3% of GFI were allocated to Flight Academy and 2,90% were already paid out. Echoing what Andrew said above, you should argue any amount of GFI tokens to be additionally spent out and prove this amount to be reasonable, taking into account that the community is also interested in further growth and development - something what is not spinning around the Flight Academy.

  3. You mentioned that "the grading system will meet the needs of users and allow the chance of “accidental error”. However, I’m not 100% sure, that this is the right way to handle submissions. Either you work out certain criteria, or you apply exceptions. If you apply exceptions, you should be ready to meet a fury wave from the community, as everyone will be proving himself to be an exception. The same applies to the “interchangeability”. Either you stick to the certain rules, or you do not.

  4. You said that “for each leader, a special document will be allocated on the cloud with access to the administration”. What do you mean by administration? I believe, that this process should be community driven and transparent as much as possible to the community.

  5. You mentioned, that “at any time, one of the administrators may ask the Appeal Leader to account for any of the awarded (or not assigned) levels of awards.” If you mean by administrators the community management, you should take into account that none of them will be actively involved in the community-driven inititative, as it was said earlier numerous times.

5

Hello. I am a member of the Flight Academy. I would like to know if the review will be open to ordinary project participants? I think it is necessary to publish the work done in the public domain, so that community members can see who and what received, how his work was checked. Also about fines for inspectors. I think that any interested participants in the project should be observers, because only in this way can the maximum purity of the process be achieved. Otherwise, the administrator will need to check dozens of appeals for control in order to find the errors of the inspectors. I doubt that an administrator will check dozens of papers looking for a reviewer error.
PS Sorry for my English. This is all a translator :slight_smile: Thank you