The Natural Language for the Governance of the Evmos Chain is English

Discussion: https://commonwealth.im/evmos/discussion/8551-governance-consensus-the-governance-language-is-english

Purpose

Clarify the parameters for the natural language used in Evmos Governance.

Exposition

To achieve authority of Governance, the chain needs to establish the most accessible ground for debate and voting. The language for the process of Governance is one of the main parameters and we consider that the best language for Evmos Governance is the English language.

Since the meaning of the sentence and therefore paragraph can be changed by choice of word meaning, by the punctuation signs, and by the resultant syntax tree, a consensus has to be reached on the unique arbiter for each, including the syntax tree of a proposal (in whole or in part).

Rules

1. The accepted English dictionary for words and concepts and their semantic linking shall be the latest version of The Princeton Wordnet. http://www.lexvo.org/uwn/ with language option: English (eng).

   The alternatives, in order (in their order of use when a source is unavailable):

   • 1.1. http://www.lexvo.org/uwn/
   • 1.2. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
   • 1.3. https://en-word.net/(https://en-word.net/)

2. Any governance text may contain words with subscript that indicates the order of sense of the word as it appears in WordNet. For example:

The chair₃ position is the most important.

refers to the third meaning of the word 'chair' from http://www.lexvo.org/uwn/entity/eng/chair : (noun) the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization; 'address your remarks to the chairperson' chairman, chairwoman, chairperson, president, chair

3. If concepts are not found in the source designated by point (1): Wikipedia may be used. https://en.wikipedia.org/

4. The syntax tree source shall be http://lindat.mff.cuni.cz/services/udpipe/ with its English option.

   The alternatives, in order:

   • 4.1. http://lindat.mff.cuni.cz/services/udpipe/
   • 4.2. https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/submit-sentence-4.html

Meaning of the Decision

• if this proposal passes: the governance process gains additional legitimacy by recognizing prior consensus contained in the gov language itself

• if this proposal does not pass: the token holders forfeit the right to reject a proposal (on-chain or off-chain) on account of not being made using proper, verifiable English

Additional Benefits of Adopting

The subsequent proposals (on and off-chain) may be legitimately challenged on:

• the natural language used
• clarifying the meaning of a specific word
• sources of truth (such as a unique dictionary)
• syntax or semantic ambiguities

Only the chains that will pass proposals compatible with this one will have the legitimacy to enter common governance platforms for the InterChain. By this prop, we offered Evmos the opportunity to be the early leader in that respect.

Author

Christian Tzurcanu, volunteer for The Laurel Project. Efforts performed for The InterChain Pact office.