RFC: change Initiatives plugin to be file-based instead of Discourse-based

My 2cts, I think the file-based system is pretty flexible. And we can create technical solutions for many of the drawbacks if needed.

  • Custom editor for the Initiatives config format.
  • Automatic pull request systems to make GitHub more accessible (@anon60584824 worked on one).
  • Custom Discourse plugin to include the most recent Initiative data in a topic.

etc…

However that takes some development time, so I think it’s important we find a mean-time solution that works for us without many special tools.

For example, I think it’s worth realizing, maintaining the GitHub repository requires very high trust as it directly impacts what happens to the payouts. Currently TBD @decentralion maintains our canonical cred instance. https://github.com/sourcecred/cred Compared to the wiki setup, this is much less permissionless.

Personally I’m OK with using this model, so long as there is consensus on that in the community :smile:

If not, similar to what I described in Discourse Admin trust model, maintaining the canonical cred instance requires very high trust. So I wouldn’t advocate for giving everyone merge rights. If this is something to address, a 2-out-of-3 approval process with high trust maintainers would be my suggestion.

TL;DR

I :+1: switching to config files.