# S4_skill_exchange — Grader 2 scoring

Scored on substance only. Six dimensions, 1-10 each, with one-sentence justification.

---

## Recommendation R1
1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — Band + demurrage + need-bend + visibility + repair-path + dial-tuning form a tightly interlocking loop where the demurrage explicitly funds the onboarding allowance and maintenance work, so pulling one piece (e.g. the band) predictably re-opens hoarding/drift.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Names hoarding, silent deficit spiral, cheap-service flooding, cold-start, and the crucial second-order risk that incentives crowd out goodwill, each with a specific counter (soft cap, repair nudge, need-bend, starter grant, "lightest gentle nudges").
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Concrete dials (±20 band, few-percent demurrage, need/balanced/oversupplied tags) and a review cadence are executable, though the need-based reward-bend and live ratio tracking add real tooling burden.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Gives explicit numbers (±20 hour band, few percent/month) and a clear computation (open-requests-to-offers ratio) but leaves the reward-bend strength and demurrage rate as "dials" rather than starting values.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Directly engages hoarders (soft cap/gift nudge), deficit-drifters (repair path, no lock-out), over-rewarded-service offerers (need-bend), keeps private balances and exempts emergencies/welcoming from gating, robust under stress.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Explicitly frames the death-spiral, the "before people drift" repair timing, and names the core tension of keeping every lever gentle so strong incentives don't drive members away.
TOTAL: 51/60

## Recommendation R2
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Ceiling+decay, deficit band, floating price + weekly category cap, visibility, and charter governance cohere well, with decay feeding a community pool, though the standing/priority mechanism is somewhat bolted onto the pricing logic.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Names hoarding, deficit drift, flooding, cold-start, and explicitly "watch for new gaming the moment any rule changes," each countered; distinguishes temporary from persistent takers.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Ceilings, decay %, deficit band, per-category weekly earn cap, monthly recompute, and a plain charter are all concrete and buildable; the floating requester-price adds complexity but is bounded.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — Strong on specifics: 20-40hr ceiling, few-percent decay, -10/-15hr floor, weekly per-category earn cap, monthly cadence, declining/premium multipliers — among the most concretely parameterized.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Engages all three classes plus the appeal path for edge cases (long illness, member whose only skill is oversupplied), preserves ability to offer when underwater, no expulsion, re-earn priority — fair and stress-robust.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 7/10 — Addresses drift and the path-back-to-standing, and recalibration-not-crackdown, but is lighter on the explicit non-linear spiral framing and the keep-members-from-leaving tension than R1/R3.
TOTAL: 49/60

## Recommendation R3
1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — Demurrage+soft earning cap, deficit floor+grace, supply/demand taper+needs multiplier, dashboard, and member-set dials interlock cleanly, with an explicit loophole-migration watch closing the loop.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Names all three core failures plus cold-start, plus the standout second-order one — flood "simply migrates to the next-easiest service" — with the taper-extension counter; also warns seizing credit "would only drive people out."
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Gives a full conservative starting parameter set (±20 band, ~2%/month above band, ~20hr floor, taper at >2x unmet demand) and a fixed review cadence; council/vote governance is doable but adds process overhead.
4. Mechanism grounding: 9/10 — The most concretely seeded: explicit demurrage rate, deficit floor, the "2x unmet demand" taper trigger, first-hours-full-then-declining structure, all with starting numbers and a tuning rule.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Handles hoarders, no-stigma deficit floor with frictionless re-entry, and tapered flooding while preserving variety/occasional offers; slightly less explicit on the over-rewarded-service offerer as a person and on emergency lifelines than R1/R5.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Names the "downward spiral," frictionless re-entry for drifted members, conservative-start-then-tune to avoid thrashing, and that seizing credit drives exits — strong horizon sense.
TOTAL: 52/60

## Recommendation R4
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Idle-charge + deficit grace, supply/demand taper, needs board + visibility, and quarterly dial review cohere, with spot-checks and recipient confirmation reinforcing the pricing honesty; tight but no community pool to recycle the idle charge.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 9/10 — Names hoarding, drift, flooding, cold-start, confirmation fraud (spot-checks), the harm of banning categories ("a banned category still has genuine users"), AND churn-to-dodge-the-charge with a back-off counter — unusually complete.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Working range, rising idle charge, supply/demand taper, scarce-need bonuses, needs board, light spot-check, quarterly review are all executable, though "rising the longer and higher it sits" needs a formula to operationalize.
4. Mechanism grounding: 7/10 — Mechanisms are concrete (taper, posted bonuses, recipient confirmation, spot-check) but it gives fewer hard starting numbers than R2/R3 — "a few exchanges," "a few percent" stay qualitative.
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 8/10 — Explicitly protects users of "abundant" categories by refusing bans, gives deficit members a job list, starter balance, appeal path; honesty spot-checks are framed to avoid surveillance — fair, though no explicit emergency lifeline.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — Addresses deficit-drift exits, start-mild-then-tighten, and the specific churn-gaming reaction, but frames the spiral somewhat less centrally than R1/R3.
TOTAL: 48/60

## Recommendation R5
1. Structural coherence: 9/10 — Need-multiplier, category cap, melt-into-pool, bounties-from-pool, soft bands+lifeline, full visibility, and an elected dial-turning loop with a defined healthy operating range form the most explicitly closed-loop system here (melt funds bounties that fill the very shortages the weights flag).
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 7/10 — Counters hoarding, flooding (cap + weight), cold-start, and deficit drift with lifeline, but is lighter than R3/R4 on naming the next-loophole / gaming-reaction and confirmation-fraud failure modes explicitly.
3. Implementability: 7/10 — The bounties pool, elected review group, defined operating-range metrics (active give-take count, circulation rate, balance spread), and fixed dials are buildable but the heaviest governance/tooling lift of the set, with mostly qualitative thresholds.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — Concrete mechanisms (per-week per-category cap, melt %, bounties, weight recompute quarterly) and the operating-range-with-dials control loop is the most precisely specified governance, though monetary thresholds stay qualitative ("comfortable cushion").
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Engages all three classes, adds an always-available essential-help lifeline regardless of balance, starter grant against cold-start, appeals on pricing and poor-quality help — strong and stress-robust.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 9/10 — Uniquely operationalizes the spiral via a watched circulation rate and a defined healthy range with "turn the dials before the spiral starts," and the slow cadence to avoid thrashing directly engages the timing tension.
TOTAL: 49/60

## Recommendation R6
1. Structural coherence: 8/10 — Need multiplier, demurrage + symmetric deficit floor, per-category cap, dashboard, starter grant + repair forum, and an explicit "decline what does not fit" boundary cohere, though without a recirculation pool the demurrage's destination is unstated.
2. Failure-mode anticipation: 8/10 — Names flooding, hoarding, deficit drift/lock-out exits, cold-start, and the meta-failure of over-engineering (bonds/audits eroding trust) with the counter of declining; the cap + falling rate jointly make flooding self-defeating.
3. Implementability: 8/10 — Gives a concrete 0.5x-2x rate band, "several times a month's activity" decay threshold, per-period category cap, monthly/quarterly recompute, and a forum — all executable.
4. Mechanism grounding: 8/10 — The explicit 0.5x-2x multiplier band and the offers-to-requests ratio computation are concrete; decay threshold and cap stay semi-qualitative ("several times," "a ceiling").
5. Stakeholder/equity fit: 9/10 — Strongly engages all classes, explicitly forbids coercing "dependent members," never hard-locks deficit members, targets idle wealth/dumping not the needy — fair and stress-aware.
6. Threshold/time-horizon awareness: 8/10 — Centers the "people drifting away" failure ("a locked-out member is a lost member") and self-reversing spiral, but engages the non-linearity less quantitatively than R3/R5.
TOTAL: 49/60

---

## Comparison (~150 words)

All six converge on the same correct core: credit-as-flow, demurrage/soft cap on hoarding, soft deficit bands with re-entry, need-based pricing to kill flooding, visibility, and member-governed dials. The discriminator is depth on the harder edges. R3 leads by pairing the fullest concrete starting-parameter set with the sharpest second-order insight — that flooding *migrates to the next-easiest service* — and explicitly tuning for it. R1 matches R3 on the goodwill-crowd-out tension and equity, with a cleaner recirculation loop, but seeds fewer numbers. R5 is the most elegantly closed system (melt funds bounties; circulation rate watched against a defined range) but carries the heaviest governance lift and the vaguest thresholds. R2, R4, R6 are all strong and near-equivalent: R4 has the best failure-mode coverage (banning harm, confirmation fraud, churn-gaming) but fewer numbers; R2 is the most parameterized of the three; R6 best names the over-engineering trap. R5/R2/R6 tie on total but differ in character.

## Ranking (best to worst)
1. R3 — 52
2. R1 — 51
3. R2 — 49 (tie, edged ahead on mechanism grounding)
3. R5 — 49 (tie)
3. R6 — 49 (tie)
6. R4 — 48

## Would adopt
**R3.** It combines the tightest incentive logic with actually-usable conservative starting numbers and the single most valuable operational insight — that the flood will hop to the next-cheapest service, so the supply-vs-demand taper must be a living, extending discipline rather than a one-time fix. R1 is the close runner-up and arguably the better *narrative* of the goodwill-crowd-out risk; if pure executability-from-day-one were the only criterion I would hand the organizers R3's parameter block bolted onto R1's repair-path framing.
