# S5_oss_burnout — Independent grading

Scoring substance only (not length/formatting). Six dimensions, 1–10 each.

## Recommendation R1

1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — Builds cleanly from one organizing claim (attention is a bounded shared resource) through intake, prioritization, contribution, funding, and SPOF removal, with each section reinforcing the same logic.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Explicitly names the contributor-starvation collapse, the favoritism/inconsistency trap, the silent-backlog failure, and even prescribes a graceful-degradation (security-only) mode if recruitment fails.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Nearly every action (governance note, templates, auto-close, lanes, caps, labels) is unilaterally executable by the lone maintainer; funding/recruitment are correctly framed as asks not guarantees, with fallbacks.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — Concrete rules: per-lane open-issue ceilings, "at capacity" pause messages, named security backup, documented contributor→reviewer→co-maintainer route, quarterly signals (hours, response time, issue age, contributor count, leakage).
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Cleanly separates beneficiary companies (sponsor/retainer or in-kind), contributors (priority + standing), and free users (artifact + self-serve), and explicitly addresses who currently bears the uncompensated cost.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Directly protects the contributor lane to avoid pipeline collapse, mandates +1 maintainer and a security backup within the six-month window, and pre-declares degradation rather than silent last-maintainer collapse.
TOTAL: 53/60

## Recommendation R2

1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Well-organized around bounded honest acceptance with logically ordered sections, though slightly more list-of-tactics than R1's single load-bearing through-line.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 7/10 — Names the security-lapse failure and addresses abusive-actor exhaustion via a graduated ladder, but is lighter than R1/R3/R4 on the contributor-pipeline-collapse failure and offers no degradation fallback.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Charter, hard queue cap, bot-enforced templates, batched office hours, and the graduated block ladder are all directly executable by one person; funding correctly optional.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Specific: fixed "accepted" issue cap, auto-pause holding state, required-template auto-close, weekly batched triage, graduated reminder→reduced-priority→temporary-block ladder, public dashboard of latency/maintainer count.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Distinguishes free users, contributors (priority), and paying companies, and notably routes the heaviest demanders into a self-funding paid tier; equity reasoning is solid if slightly less explicit on cost-bearing than R1.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 7/10 — States the three-to-wider-circle growth goal within six months and uses cap pressure as a recruit signal, but underweights the contributor-pipeline-collapse threshold relative to R1/R4.
TOTAL: 46/60

## Recommendation R3

1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Coherent commons framing with the strong "separate received from accepted" spine; prose-block format slightly muddies the section boundaries but the logic holds together.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Identifies the angry-escalation root cause (queue-as-commitment), the paywall risk, the last-line-of-defense risk, and abuse, with a quarterly loosen/tighten rule guarding both over- and under-gating.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Charter, templates, needs-info auto-label, bounded backlog, public dashboard, contributor-standing record, maintainer-of-the-week rotation, and code-of-conduct muting are executable solo; paid tiers correctly framed as offers.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — Highly specific: posted backlog target sized to capacity, modest published targets (triaged within two weeks, no fix-date promise), money buys down security on-call first, contributor-standing record, appeal path.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Sharp equity stance: free users keep backlog + community + security guarantee and are "never abandoned," paid tier buys speed not existence, heaviest extractors converted to payers — clearest who-bears-cost reasoning alongside R1.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Explicitly funds the never-throttled security lane first, loosens the gate if the contributor pipeline thins, and ensures "no individual is ever the last line of defense," squarely targeting both collapse thresholds.
TOTAL: 51/60

## Recommendation R4

1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Strong, sharply argued through-line (defend the human-capacity pool, convert takers to stewards) with a memorable security-asymmetry principle; coheres well across sections.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Notably anticipates that hard rate-limits choke newcomers, addresses entitled-escalation, abuse via soft sanctions, and over-gating, and legitimizes scope reduction/sunset as a failure-avoidance lever.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Compact, templates, intake routing, public health board, recognition path, soft sanctions, and quarterly scope review are all solo-executable; funding correctly an "offered exception, not a requirement."
4. Mechanism grounding: 7/10 — Good mechanisms (security private channel always-fast, best-effort tagging, "wanted—needs a contributor", health board, graduated soft sanctions, deprecate/archive modules) but lighter on numeric caps/targets than R1/R2/R3.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Frames the externality clearly (paid tier prices it for willing companies), free users held to best-effort and never billed/blocked, and aims to convert capable free-riders into replenishers; cost-bearing logic strong.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — Protects the security-renewal channel absolutely, deliberately rejects pipeline-choking throttles, and adds scope-reduction/handoff to survive under-resourcing, but is vaguer on the six-month recruitment target than R1/R2.
TOTAL: 47/60

## Comparison and ranking

All four share the same correct core: reframe attention as a bounded commons, publish a charter, gate intake via templates, never throttle security, prioritize contributors, offer (not require) company funding, and grow stewards. R1 wins on completeness — it is the only one that combines explicit per-lane caps, a named security backup, a concrete co-maintainer pipeline, AND a pre-declared graceful-degradation mode, while most directly protecting the contributor lane from starvation. R3 is the closest rival, strongest on equity ("free users never abandoned") and on funding security on-call first, but slightly thinner on the SPOF/recruitment fallback. R4 is sharp and uniquely legitimizes scope reduction, but lighter on numeric mechanisms. R2 is solid and practical but underweights pipeline-collapse and offers no degradation fallback.

Best-to-worst: R1 > R3 > R4 > R2.

Adopt: R1 — most complete, executes unilaterally, and uniquely guards against both collapse thresholds (last-maintainer burnout and contributor-pipeline starvation) with explicit fallbacks.
