Charter

The Minnow Support Project was created by elected Witnesses that choose and chose to operate this public community organization. The primary goals are to spread the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty, to help Steem Grow, and to train and retain minnows on the platform.

Community Standards and Rules

Please find our Guidelines on Community Standards, which form "the spirit" of the Minnow Support Project along with our rules, which represent the bare minimum expectations of our community.

Structure: The Board of Directors

The Minnow Support Project follows the directive of "the Board of Directors". The Board of Directors comprises senior leadership with broad oversight.

The Board is comprised of the Chair who sets the agenda, but does not vote; as well as a Vice Chair that fills in for the chair when they are absent, they can vote, and their vote will split tie votes. Voting members include Sr. Moderators, and Moderators. Non-voting members include Supporting Witnesses and counsel.

The current Co-Chairs are @aggroed and @ausbitbank.
The Vice Chair is @followbtcnews.

The position is held for 2 years and then all members of the Board can nominate for positions and vote members into Chair and Vice-Chair. There are no term limits and people may serve on the Board or as Chair for as long as they voluntarily choose to work on behalf of the Minnow Support Project.

In standard practice motions can be called and seconded, votes can be issued and counted. A simple majority is all that's required for a vote to succeed, but all efforts should be made to build consensus. The chair sets the agenda, and their vote can be used to split a tie.

Witnesses and Sr Moderators appoint Junior and Full moderators to manage the services and functions of the Minnow Support Project. Weekly management is handled in a Moderator team meeting described below.

Witness Tiers

In order to differentiate internally and for public consumption the amount of work various Witnesses do in the project witnesses are split into Witness Tiers.

Becoming a MSP-WITNESS with the Minnow Support Project
The Minnow Support Charter was created and is supported by publicly elected witnesses on the Steemit blockchain. In order to be a Witness associated with the Minnow Support Project a person must meet the following criteria.

Have an operational Witness that's stable and only goes down for routine maintenance. This includes a correct price feed.
Have a minimum of 10PV of stake weight supporting their Witness.
Have a minimum of 100 Witness votes.
Write a post declaring intent to help the Minnow Support Project and what you pledge to support the community and the Charter.
Be approved by the existing Board of Directors.

Benefits Conveyed

You are now allowed to call yourself a Witness with the Minnow Support Project. Your name will appear in Purple and at the top of PALnet. You will have voting rights at weekly moderator meetings. MSP witnesses will be eligible to be on the comment left by votes from @minnowsupport.

Established Witnesses

Non-voting- Witnesses that provide services, only help make occasional decisions, curate out of the Minnow Support Project, or stop being active for a while are non-voting witnesses who lose their ability to vote.

Honorary- Non Witnesses that have been brought into the role. It's an honorary title rather than one that comes with a role.

Witness Voting with @minnowsupport

Various Steemians have started and continue to get support as Witnesses from the Minnow Support Project. Going forward Witnesses that are seeking support from the Minnow Support Project must-

Author a post seeking a vote from the Minnow Support Project.
At a minimum, we will only support Witnesses that meet the following.
a. Be in alignment with the charter.
b. Share how you as a Witness will support the charter.
c. Be a Witness for no less than 1 month before receiving a provisional vote without public support.
d. Be a Witness for no less than 2 months before getting a vote and public support of their witness from the Minnow Support Project.

Voting Review for Witness

Going forward Witness votes will be reviewed the first meeting of every month and voted on by the Board. In the case votes are not approved a summary of why and requests for alterations in order to earn a vote will be issued on the block.

Votes are assumed to stay unless a voting board member calls for a vote on a particular Witness. Discussion will follow, and votes will be approved or denied.

Moderator Tiers

The three tiers of Moderator are still in effect.

Jr. Moderator

The current minimum requirements to become a Jr. moderator:

Be approached or apply at a time MSP is accepting new applications.
t!rank suggested minimum level score in the mid 20s, which shows engagement in the PALnet community
Have a service project- MSP is both a community and a community service project to a broader community. All moderators have to have a service project they manage (these can be MSP Services and Operations or separate).

Write a post indicating their intent and desire to moderate with a description of their service project and promise to de-escalate conflict within PALnet and on the Block as well as pledge to live by community standards.
Approval by consensus of the Board of Directors

Standards include-
Active member and leader on one or more PALnet committees.
Ability to work peacefully with themselves and other moderators
Familiarity with Community Guidelines, MSP operations, and Onboarding Procedures.

Full Moderator

After a minimum period of 30 days, a Jr Moderator may be promoted to Full moderator. This requires consensus approval of the Board. This is the role at which official voting becomes allowed.

There are currently no Moderators in this tier. This may be subject to change if we add any additional Moderators in the future.

Sr. Moderator

Full Moderators that have shown incredible dedication such that they spend the extra time to be involved across the entire organization. They are appointed by nomination of their peers and a vote of the Board of Directors.

Community Membership

Delegators- MSP asks for support from its members through delegations. Please use the http://minnowsupportproject.org/delegation/ website to delegate to the Minnow Support Project.

Weekly Moderator Meeting

The board will have broad oversight across all aspects of the Minnow Support Project. New decisions and variance from common practice are made in a weekly meeting run in Discord. Standard application and communication happens in a hidden discord channel called mod-pit.

Decisions that affect the whole community are often brought up for a vote. Motions can be issued in mod-pit to be added by the chair.

Voting- These members have voting rights
-Managing Witnesses
-Sr. Moderators
-Moderators

Non-Voting- May attend, may not vote
-Jr. Moderators
-MSP Medal Winners
-Support/Honorary Witnesses

Quorum is at a minimum a chair and half the moderator team present to make votes carry validity.

Tallying Votes

Votes shall be by majority rule, but efforts towards consensus should be taken.

Mod-Pit

To help the general operation and to allow inter moderator consultation the moderators and witnesses will have access to a private moderator chatroom called "mod-pit." Mild amounts of life discussion are allowed, but the focus is PAL related business.

Moderators can put forward motions for the Chair to consider for the agenda. Moderators can put things to an unofficial straw poll to get a sense of consent, BUT NO RULING IN MOD-PIT IS BINDING without a true vote at the mod meeting (unless there are zero objections).

If the policy has been already been set and the discussion revolves around how to best effectively execute on it then discussion and execution are highly encouraged. If the discussion is based on brand new policy or a large change to the rules then the discussion is encouraged, but action should be stalled until after a vote at the moderator meeting.

Palcoin

The Palnet ecosystem, including the token PALcoin and it's corresponding STEEM blockchain community of palnet.io, is held together by the common interests of Steem and spreading the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty. A community of people looking to co-exist, bring good things to each other, and celebrate the freedom to do all this.

All of this has come from our original vision of the Minnow Support Project, and we expect it to grow far beyond it.

Palcoin Whitepaper

MSP Operations

PALnet Oversight

PALnet is the Discord home of the Minnow Support Project. It currently has just shy of 20,000 active members, 400+ people sitting in channel most of the time, 50+ sub channels and hundreds of active text chatters and voice conversationalists. It takes a team of people to moderate the channels, help new channels form and make sure that we're registering and onboarding new members successfully.

While all moderators and witnesses are at least in part responsible for making sure that PALnet is working smoothly and people feel good and view it as a safe fun community some Moderators choose to help shape how it should run by serving as leaders on the PALnet Oversight Committee.

Core Duties
-Channel Moderation
-Channel Development
-Channel Engagement
-Registration
-Discord Role management

PALnet Oversight Leaders: @crimsonclad, @juliakponsford, @discordiant

Community Curation

This is powered by all the moderators and a handful of selected curators from the community. MSP uses a program called MSP3k to allow community members to manually upvote and resteem posts from @minnowsupport. MSP uses a Discord bot which has the posting key to @minnowsupport to curate from the main account.

Community Curation Leaders: @isaria, @juliakponsford

Finance

Make recommendations to Board on investments, general guidelines for funds use, appropriate publicly accessible money-making ventures.

Finance Leaders: @followbtcnews, @swelker101, @aggroed

Recruitment & Retention

The Recruitment & Retention department serves to write posts, share posts, create contests and bounties, to help with recruitment to Steemit (and MSP specifically) as well as improve communication and public relations. Affairs are broken up between the two major charter objectives: bringing new users to the platform and training and retaining minnows on the platform.
-Steemit- Contests/Bounties, Recruitment, Public
Relations
-External- onboarding new Steemians from irl/steemit to msp.

Recruitment & Retention Leaders: @ma1neevent

Product Department

Programs that enable us to do our job better, faster, cheaper, and impact more people positive fall within the Product Development. These new products may well create who new services that helps the MSP community support the Steemit community even better.

Product Department Leaders: @juliakponsford, @r0nd0n, @crimsonclad, @discordiant, @clayboyn, @victoriabsb, @isaria

Product Development

@ausbitbank, @danielsaori, @aggroed, @followbtcnews, @crimsonclad, @drakos

Information Technology

IT exists to support all other services and operations through technological support and automation help.

IT Leaders: @ausbitbank, @r0nd0n

Fundraising

The Minnow Support Project is a community. The community is enriched when donors contribute to the project, community Witnesses are supported, and the coffers are full. Members of the Development operation assist bringing in and retaining delegations and witness votes to support the mission.

Fundraising Leaders: @aggroed

MSP Services

Make a Minnow

The Minnow Support Project runs a bi-monthly contest to award a minimum of 10k SP and 10k PAL to an upstanding community member.
Account: @msp-makeaminnow

MAM Organizers: @clayboyn, @juliakponsford

Steem Community Development

Use MSP programs to help build micro-communities around community bots and Discord Channels/Servers.

Steem Community Development Leaders: @aggroed, @swelker101

Communications

Provides official communication from Minnow Support to the Steem Community.

Communication leaders: @aggroed, @isaria

Sheriff's Department

There is often abuse on the STEEM chain and sometimes abuse within PALnet (The Discord home of the Minnow Support Project). Sheriffs are authorized to act on behalf of the community to de-escalate as they deem necessary any breaches of the Peace and/or Community Standards.

Sheriffs: @discordiant

MSPWaves

We have our own broadcast station! You can listen in at http://mspwaves.com/listen. We have rights to stream 18M songs. We have 20+ DJs and shows across many nights of the week and we have the SteeMix that plays music by and for Steemians.

MSPwaves Station Leaders: @r0nd0n

Right to Change

We reserve the right to change our operating guidelines so long as it fits the mission and we make changes public on the block.

Changes to operating guidelines can be introduced at moderator meetings and voted on by the group. Broad strategic differences can be brought up at the quarterly strategic meetings and discussed there

MSP/Palnet Operations and Services Roster

PALnet Server Oversight- @juliakponsford, @discordiant, and @crimsonclad

Moderator Organization: @aggroed

Finance- @swelker101, @followbtcnews, @aggroed

Chat Moderation- @juliakponsford, @crimsonclad, @clayboyn, @discordiant, @swelker101, @victoriabsb, @r0nd0n, @ma1neevent

Community Curation Team- @juliakponsford, @victoriabsb, @isaria, @ma1neevent, @drakos

Recruitment & Retention- @ma1neevent

Product Department- @juliakponsford, @r0nd0n, @crimsonclad, @discordiant, @clayboyn, @victoriabsb, @isaria

Product Development- @ausbitbank, @danielsaori, @aggroed, @followbtcnews, @crimsonclad, @drakos

Communications: @isaria, @aggroed

Steem Community Development- @aggroed, @swelker101

MaM- @juliakponsford, @clayboyn

Fundraising - @aggroed

Sheriff's Department- @discordiant, @swelker101

MSP-Waves- @r0nd0n, @juliakponsford,

Msp-Music- @isaria

MSP/PALnet weekly management meetings: @isaria, @aggroed, @ausbitbank, @clayboyn, @discordiant, @ma1neevent, @juliakponsford, @r0nd0n, @swelker101, @victoriabsb, @crimsonclad,

• Weekly Management Meetings are not required but are considered as part of the total contribution towards their efforts in the community. It would be ideal to attend as many as is feasible given schedule and other responsibilities.

Palnet Proof of Moderation Guidelines

Any Moderator who is not able to contribute properly should be aware of this and voluntarily remove their claim to the Proof of Moderation distribution before it is necessary for their peers to enforce anything.

However, at the last meeting of a given month (as distribution is completed on or around the first of a month), the Moderator team will review contributions from that month to confirm that each of their peers is due a Proof of Moderation distribution in the following month for their efforts.

During the weekly meetings leading to the last meeting before distribution, notice can and should be given to the Moderators who their peers feel are not contributing, allowing them time to correct the situation.

Any arbitration of these issues, if in dispute by the Moderator on notice, will be handled by official vote during the meeting at which they are presented.

The determination of these distributions should only be handled by the Moderator team as an internal review.