Decision
Three commitments, made together because they form a single engagement posture:
- Reactions on entries. Journal entries and public Register entries surface lightweight reader reactions (+1 / -1 / "support" / "concern" — exact vocabulary TBD). Anonymous reactions are acceptable; registered reactions are preferred and may be weighted differently.
- Registration is the upgrade path. Visitors who stumble across the platform during the founding phase can engage immediately (anonymous reaction), and registration unlocks more (commenting via G-035, the ability to support specific Register items, and credit accrual).
- Pre-launch credit accrual. Registered users accrue credits during this founding phase. Specifics — rate, qualifying actions, conversion into post-launch Power — are intentionally not pre-committed.
Why
The Journal and Register are public artifacts inviting scrutiny. Publishing them with no engagement layer treats every visitor as a passive reader, which is the same failure pattern a closed-system corporation has when it publishes investor decks with no comment section: technically transparent, practically one-way.
A reaction layer is the lowest-friction signal. It does not require authoring prose, does not require credentials, and gives a passing visitor something useful to do — say "yes, this matters to me" or "no, this is wrong" — that the founders can read in aggregate. Anonymous reactions are acceptable because the signal value remains even with imperfect Sybil resistance (G-004); the gaming resistance question is real but bounded (see G-036).
Registration during the founding phase serves two purposes: it converts visitors into recoverable identities (so we know who showed up early), and it lets early supporters accrue credit for being early. The latter is explicitly not a fundraising mechanism — credits are not equity. They are the same kind of token that contributors will earn post-launch through editorial work, with the rate calibrated so early supporters have meaningful, but not overwhelming, weight at launch.
The rate itself is deferred (G-037). Pre-committing it now would either undersell the value of being early (driving away early supporters) or oversell it (creating a launch-day distribution problem where early supporters dominate Power before any contribution work has been done).
Alternatives considered
- Public comments only, no reactions. Rejected — comments require authoring effort that filters out a large class of legitimate signal. A reader who reads an entry and thinks "this is wrong but I can't articulate why right now" still has a real signal worth capturing.
- No engagement layer until launch. Rejected — the founding phase is exactly when engagement signal is most valuable, both for course correction and for converting incidental visitors into registered early supporters.
- Registered-only reactions. Rejected for now — registration is a meaningful friction wall and we want the lowest possible friction on the basic signal. Anonymous reactions can be weighted to near-zero if Sybil concerns dominate; they cannot be added later if the wall is set high initially.
What this leaves open
- G-035 — the comment / Q&A model proper (mutual-consent default proposed, not yet locked).
- G-036 — reaction-system parameters, weighting between anonymous and registered, gaming resistance.
- G-037 — pre-launch credit accrual rate, qualifying actions, and conversion into post-launch Power. Intentionally not pre-committed.