We think that from Steemit to Hive we have done a quantum leap in the right direction of decentralization.
we-the-people is a witness that try to propose a new point of view about how really
decentralize the governance of Hive first using Dpoll to ask users what do they think about what to do.
The fact is that, also here in Hive, a very few people, that de facto are a closed club of whales, have too much power.
The smallest is this club, the easier is to repeat the bad experience that we all face in Steemit.
What we can do?
- better distribute producer rewards (more to small, less to the first 20)
- reduce the number of witness that a user can vote (less that 20!)
- balance number of votes and power of voter creating witness rank
- eliminate downvotes
- ask people what to do using pools or in any other way
- create a Proof of Activity that ranks users based on how much they produce value for Hive (the more you post and/or you vote etc. the more you go up in the rank) and use this rank to balance the VP
These are the first things to do, in our opinion.
Thank you for your feedback.
Although dpool is an interesting tool, it is not "the perfect tool" that can lead to good governance
We all know that survey questions can be guided and do not allow users to express their opinions in a nuanced way.
I agree with you that the witness reward scale should be reviewed.
About the number of witness votes and voting power, I invite you to read this interesting analysis from @raycoms
Can you elaborate on why you want downvotes removed?
Can you tell us how to quantify "how much they produce value for Hive"?
We already have a ranking of users based on their activity and other criteria.
Number of posts, comments, votes, ... each of these values can be easily manipulated. It's then more PoB (Proof of Bot) than PoA. So I'm not sure it's a good idea to rebalance VP on these.
I agree that Dpoll is far from being perfect, but is just something to start with.
When you create a poll a user can always write in the comment everything he wants.
We can implement something better or just ask Dpoll to do some work on it, we-the-people have done some polls and we think that the results are interesting, even if the number of answers are very low.
In my opinion the first action about witness votes are not allow a single user to decide all the top 20 witness, a minimal way is to downsize votes below 20, better, I think 10.
Yes, you can split your power in many users, it's a little bit more complex, but you can do it, but not in an hour, it takes some time.
I think that a balancing of VP and number of users can be the best but not perfect solution approach.
I think that as far as one person can have multiple account all we can do is mitigate the problem but not solve.
Downvote is the greater power in the hand of whales, until there are downvotes no one can have free to speech, that's all.
It is so simple just to not vote a post, no reason to have also e downvote.
We have reputation but is computed in a very strange way, in any case what we think is completely different, because reputation can only go up, in a normal situation.
What we propose is a dynamic value that rank a user in a window of time, i.e. the famous 7 days.
You can be very active this week and no more the next, your rank changes, and reflect what you do in the last seven days (or can be in the last month).
Can be manipulated? Yes, we are back to the question, if we can use automated systems, bot, multiple account and so on everything can be manipulated, but not so easily and not for a long time.
Active user are who let all of us make money and make sense to Hive in general, so activity has a great value, also for whales, if no one post will be impossible to vote and do a curation.
We think that this point is not so clear to all whales.
Downvotes have nothing to do with freedom of speech! Downvotes are about reward pool allocation.
Remove it and you will get tons of abusers who will deprive the legit authors of their
deservedpayout.My opinion is you are tackling the problem from the wrong side.
Tell me about your reputation as a human, if you screw up with your friends, your boss, your family,... Will your reputation go up?
But maybe we should first agree on a definition of "a normal situation".
I do not know of any good example where reputation (i.e. trust) is linked to the level of activity, especially in a limited amount of time.
If this is your only criteria, my bots will always have a better reputation than me, at all times, because they are much more inexhaustible, patient and persevering than me.
I think that whales have no idea about how downvotes is an hammer in wrong hands.
If you remember your blacklist recent episode you have to agree that the perception of downvote bad power over people is very high.
Downvote are a bad solution for a real problem.
Let's try to find a better solution.
We think that just do not vote a post is all you need to stop plagiarism and other bad thinks.
If you are a little account and post plagiarized content and have 0 rewards, you will stop very soon.
Downvote can be used to silence, intimidate, fear this is what could happen, or, this is what the small accounts feels can happen.
We are non speaking about reputation, we are speaking about Proof of Activity, a value that allow to determine, in a block of time, how much you contribute to the community.
Reputation is about you are a good guy or a bad guy.
PoA is about how much active you are in a period of time, you can be a good guy doing nothing at all.
How to understand if you use a posting bot?
This is a good question, and is a general problem on Hive and the same can be asked about reputation and any aspect of Hive, until you let people use bots and multiple account I think that this problem can be hardly solved, but we can try to mitigate in many ways.
i.e you can create two types of users, if you want you can have a verified account, that have some privileges or an anonymous account, like now.
I think of downvotes like this...
1.) someone is breaking into a store to steal money that someone else earned. The store owner is inside and begins shooting. He may or may not kill (Lower to negative rep) the abuser. But it serves as a reminder of consequences.
2.) while an offender is breaking into the store, the community rises up and neutralizes their offender.
And lastly:
2.) just as a weapon can be used to defend, a bad person can use it to harass. Someone with 40k HP can destroy people's accounts with the click of a button. Someone with 15k HP can take the account of someone with 500HP to negative rep for any reason.
The last is a bad situation, obviously. Have people done it? Yes. But is it common, no. So why kneejerk because it happened a few times in a few years?
If you does NOT vote for him, he can NOT stole at all, is very simple.
@we-the-people here to prove #3 is @worldcapture
Because I spoke in favor of someone trying to hide her sins from Hive-Watchers, she gave life to “the wicked flee when none pursueth” and for all her shame couldn’t recognize someone saying her account wasn’t a managed account, and called me racist, and then I reported another account (a friend of hers) to buildawhale for skipping the plagiarism blacklist and bragging to me about it, and here we are where she comes to downvote everything I post because she assumes that I cannot afford to drop $500 in leased HP and fight back.
While rare that it is abused this way, it doesn’t mean that downvoting is a bad thing. It just means that she is a bad person and everyone she tricks into joining her is ignorant.
@we-the-people that’s not at all what happens and you know it.
It makes me wonder if you have been caught doing something you shouldn’t. After all, we don’t defend the rapist from punishment with “if women would just sew themselves shut...”
i dont agree with the second and fourth point. downvoting is a necessary tool to stop people from profiting from illegal activities. less votes will cause people to only select a few top witnesses, giving small witnesses like your self no chance.