# S4_skill_exchange — Grader 1

Scored on substance only. Six dimensions, 1–10 each.

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## Recommendation R1
1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — The band, demurrage, need-bend, visibility, repair path, and adaptive dials interlock cleanly (demurrage feeds the pool that funds onboarding/repair; remove the pool and both the leak-recirculation and the door-open promise break).
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Names hoarding, deficit spiral, easy-service flooding, the cold-start problem, and explicitly flags the incentives-crowd-out-goodwill risk with a counter (keep levers gentle, prefer nudges), though it under-specifies the migrate-to-next-loophole and churning risks.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — All mechanisms are dial-tunable and reviewable with members, but the demurrage cushion, band edges, and live need-tag computation imply real tracking infrastructure that a small volunteer org may struggle to stand up.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Concrete band (±20h), soft cap, demurrage as a few percent/month into a pool, ratio-driven need tags, and a repair-nudge path; some figures are "say roughly," lacking the per-week anti-flooding cap that peers specify.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Directly engages hoarders, deficit-drifters, and over-rewarded suppliers, protects ordinary savers via the cushion, keeps emergencies/welcoming outside the economy, and keeps balances private to protect relationships.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Explicitly frames the death-spiral as the thing to avoid, prefers nudges/conversation over lockout to keep people from drifting, and ties dial-tuning to a cadence so correction precedes collapse.
TOTAL: 51/60

## Recommendation R2
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Ceiling+decay, deficit band, demand-pricing, per-category weekly cap, visibility, and charter governance fit together; the decay-funds-pool linkage is asserted but, unlike peers, the pool is not wired to a concrete recirculation use, weakening one coupling.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Names hoarding, deficit drift, the mispricing seam, the persistent-vs-temporary-taker distinction, and explicitly "watch for new gaming the moment any rule changes" with recalibration as the counter — the strongest anti-gaming stance among the set.
3. Implementability: 7/10 — Floating requester price plus reliability signals plus weekly per-category caps plus appeals is powerful but heavier to build/operate than the hour-baseline peers; a small organizer team may find the floating price hard to run honestly.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — Concrete: 20–40h ceiling, ~few percent/month decay, −10/−15h band, declining/premium multipliers, an explicit per-member per-category weekly earning cap, monthly recompute, plain charter — very actionable.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Carefully separates temporary inability from persistent taking, preserves the ability to offer while losing only request-priority, adds an appeal path for the member whose only skill is oversupplied — strong fairness-under-stress engagement.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — "No one is expelled," frictionless re-earning, and revising dials "whenever the flow stalls" address the spiral, but it leans on standing/priority changes that could nudge marginal members out more than R1's softer conversation framing.
TOTAL: 50/60

## Recommendation R3
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Decay, soft earning cap, deficit floor, per-service taper plus needs multiplier, dashboard, and member-set dials cohere well; the loophole-migration tracker is a genuine structural feedback rather than a bolt-on.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Explicitly anticipates the flood migrating to the next-easiest service and commits to extending the taper, names hoarding/deficit/mispricing, and warns that seizing credit would drive people out — concrete counters throughout.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — "An hour is an hour" default with only tapering at the margins is simpler to operate than full floating pricing, and the conservative starting thresholds give organizers a runbook; the per-type supply/demand tracking is still nontrivial.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — Unusually concrete numbers: ±20h band, ~2%/month demurrage above band, ~20h deficit floor with newcomer grace, taper triggering when supply exceeds ~2× unmet demand — gives organizers actual starting dials.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Engages all three member classes, no-stigma deficits, frictionless re-entry without clearing old debt, occasional offers stay fully valued so casual suppliers aren't punished; slightly less on the over-rewarded-supplier's dignity than R2.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Frames the spiral directly, insists re-entry is frictionless to recover drifted members, sets thresholds conservatively to start and tunes per review — explicitly balancing fixing imbalance against churn.
TOTAL: 51/60

## Recommendation R4
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Working-range idle charge, deficit grace+job-list, supply/demand taper with posted bonuses, needs board, and quarterly dial review interlock; the deliberate rejection of category bans is coherent with the reward-follows-gap logic.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Names hoarding, deficit drift, flooding, confirmation fraud (recipient confirms hours + light spot-checks), the harm of banning categories with genuine users, and churning-to-dodge-the-charge with an explicit back-off counter.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Quarterly review cadence and "start mild, tighten only if" make it operable; recipient-confirmation and spot-checks are realistic, though the organizer-posted bonus list adds a recurring manual task.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Concrete mechanisms (rising idle charge, taper on the offer-vs-request gap, posted scarcity bonuses, spot-checks) but vaguer on numbers than R2/R3 ("a few exchanges," "a few percent") — actionable but less calibrated.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Protects genuine users of "abundant" categories by refusing bans, gives deficit members a grace period and a job list, lets members weigh in on which needs deserve bonuses; the spot-check on high-volume providers is proportionate.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — Addresses drift exits via starter balance and grace, and the back-off-if-people-churn rule shows awareness of driving members away, but engages the non-linear spiral somewhat more implicitly than R1/R3.
TOTAL: 49/60

## Recommendation R5
1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — The melt-feeds-pool-feeds-bounties loop is the tightest coupling in the set (decayed hoarder credit returns exactly where help is short), and the elected-group-watches-dashboard-turns-dials governance closes the loop; remove the pool and both melt-justification and bounties collapse.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 7/10 — Names hoarding, deficit, flooding (with a per-category weekly cap as a fast counter before prices adjust) and preserves an essential-help lifeline, but does not explicitly anticipate loophole-migration or charge-dodging churn the way R3/R4 do.
3. Implementability: 7/10 — Need-multipliers, weekly caps, melt, a needs pool, bounties, an elected review group, and a governed dashboard is the most machinery of any option — robust if resourced, but a stretch for a small destabilizing community to build at once.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Concrete mechanisms (need-multiplier, hard per-category weekly cap, melt into pool, pool-funded bounties, defined healthy operating range with a fixed dial set) but mostly qualitative on the actual numbers ("a small percentage," "generous ceiling").
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Guarantees an essential-help lifeline regardless of balance, starter grant against cold-start, soft bands with prompts at both edges, and member ratification of the weighting scheme — strong fairness-under-stress design.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Explicitly defines a healthy operating range and has the review group "turn the dials before the spiral starts," adjusting on a slow cadence to correct drift without thrashing — the most systematic early-warning framing.
TOTAL: 49/60

## Recommendation R6
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Need multiplier, demurrage, symmetric deficit floor, per-category cap, dashboard, seed+repair, and the decline-what-doesn't-fit guardrail cohere around one logic; the final operating rule genuinely summarizes the incentive alignment rather than restating parts.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Names the three failures, makes flooding self-defeating (falling rate + cap together), warns against lockout losing members and against coercing dependents, and explicitly declines bonds/deposits/audits as trust-eroding — but no explicit loophole-migration tracking.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Hour-baseline with a bounded 0.5×–2× multiplier band and per-period category cap is operable, slow recompute cadence is realistic, and the lightweight forum is low-overhead; the per-category rate computation still needs tracking.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Concrete 0.5×–2× rate band, demurrage of a few percent/month above a several-months threshold, per-period category cap, monthly/quarterly recompute with published reasons; thresholds are illustrative rather than a full starting runbook.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Strongest explicit equity guardrails: never coerce dependent members, never hard-lock deficit members, target idle wealth and dumping not genuine need, and decline trust-eroding heavy mechanisms — directly robust under stress.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — Frames the lost-member failure mode plainly and designs against lockout-driven drift, with the spiral "reversing on its own" once incentives align, but engages the non-linear/early-warning dimension less explicitly than R5's operating-range monitoring.
TOTAL: 49/60

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## Comparison (~150 words)

All six converge on the same diagnosis (flow not hoard) and the same toolkit (demurrage, deficit band, need-based pricing, visibility, member governance), so differences are in calibration, coupling, and edge-case care. R1 and R3 tie at the top: both fully couple their parts, give concrete starting numbers, and engage the spiral directly — R3 edges ahead on the explicit loophole-migration tracker and the most complete starting runbook, while R1 best protects ordinary savers and goodwill. R2 is the most anti-gaming and best-numbered but heavier to operate and slightly more standing-punitive. R5 has the most elegant melt→pool→bounty loop and best early-warning monitoring, but is the most machinery to build and vaguest on numbers. R4 and R6 are strong on guardrails (R4's anti-ban/anti-fraud, R6's anti-coercion) but engage the non-linear threshold a touch more implicitly.

## Ranking (best to worst)
R3 ≈ R1 > R2 > R5 > R6 > R4

(R3 and R1 are effectively tied at 51; R3 chosen as #1 on its loophole-migration foresight and conservative-start runbook. R5, R6, R4 all land at 49 and are separated by failure-mode foresight and threshold-awareness explicitness.)

## Adopt
**R3.** It pairs the clearest concrete starting thresholds with an honest acknowledgment that fixes drive the flood to the next service, and keeps the system simple ("an hour is an hour" by default, taper only at the margins) — the most implementable and self-correcting design for a small community already in decline.
