The @ivoted account : Governance and Policy

[ivoted]

The @ivoted account

Governance and Policy

Following our presentation of the #ivoted initiative, we got a lot for returns and we thank you all for that. As we will be mainly functioning with delegations, it becomes clear that we have to publish clear guidelines in terms of Governance and Policy for the program.

Our rules have been inspired by @buggedout (Governance and Policy of a Community Bot).
In our case, we cannot just transpose this model to our case because we are not a Community Bot and the people financing the project (delegators with or without a witness activity) are different from the ones receiving the rewards (users / voters), whereas in a Community Bot these two categories are confounded.

For easier discussions, exchanges, petitions, etc. we will be using a Discord server (Click to join) to organize everything stated below.

This is a draft of what we want to put in place, if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions, don't hesitate ! We want this project to work, so we want everybody to feel implicated and be the most transparent possible.

Delegators' Governance

1. Any Delegator to the project can initiate a Petition for Change by posting on the dedicated discord channel (#petitions-del), then an ephemeral channel is opened to discuss this petition.
2. Once this Petition for Change has at least 10 % of the delegators and 20 % of the delegated Steem Power backing it, a formal Proposal of Change will be published on another discord channel (#proposals-del) and on Steemit by the operators of the @ivoted account (@algo.coder and @sebbbl) and a referendum will be opened (in another ephemeral channel, this one just to count votes).
3. Votes and debates will be accepted during a full week. If the Proposal gather 50 % of the delegators' votes and more than 66 % of the Steem Power delegated then the account operator has to do all it can to implement the proposed changes.
4. @algo.coder and @sebbbl hold the Master Key for the @ivoted account. If another key (posting for example) needs to be distributed, a Proposal for change must take place.
5. It is not possible to change these holders of the Master Key by petitioning, but if delegators are not content with our administration of the account, they can undelegate.

The subjects that delegators are able to petition on:

• Posting guidelines of the @ivoted account,
• Type of content and frequency of posting,
• Attribution of posting keys,
• Contribution methods,
• Contribution weightings,
• Extra Expense Contingencies,
• Any unexisting Policy.

All default values of these points will be described in the Policy.

Members' Governance

1. Any Participant in the project can initiate a Petition for Change by posting on the dedicated discord channel (#petitions-par), then an ephemeral channel is opened to discuss this petition.
2. Once this Petition for Change has at least 10 % of the participants who joined the discord channel backing it, a formal Proposal of Change will be published on another discord channel (#proposals-par) and on Steemit (with the link to the discord channel, the name of the channel of this particular Proposal) by the operators of the @ivoted account (@algo.coder and @sebbbl) and a referendum will be opened (in another ephemeral channel, this one just to count votes).
3. Votes and debates will be accepted during a full week. If the Proposal gather 50 % of the participants' votes (still only the participants who joined the discord channel) then the account operator has to do all it can to implement the proposed changes.
4. @algo.coder and @sebbbl hold the Master Key for the @ivoted account.
5. It is not possible to change these holders by petitioning.

The subjects that participants are able to petition on:

• Posting guidelines of the @ivoted account,
• Type of content and frequency of this posting,
• Target Voting Power & Weekly Voting Budget,
• Vote Frequency,
• Self Voting Guidelines,
• Any unexisting Policy.

All default values of these points will be described in the Policy.

Founders' Governance (@algo.coder and @sebbbl)

1. All decisions are taken unanimously.
2. To make a change in existing Policies, they need to respect the same rules (50 % of delegators, 66 % of Steem Power delegated / 50 % of participants depending on the subject).
3. For the sake of innovation, if a new feature is implemented by the Founders, only an informal discussion is required, but a delay of a week is mandatory before being put in production, and during that time, a petition and then a proposal for change can be made to oppose this modification.

Policy

1. Target Voting Power & Weekly Voting Budget : The Target Voting Power is fixed at 95 %. The Weekly Voting Budget is the amount of vote weight that can be cast by the bot and be sustainable at the Target Voting Power. The Weekly Voting Budget is 7368 %.
2. Contribution Methods : Delegations.
3. Contribution Weightings : Not relevant, as only delegations are accepted.
4. Contributor Budget (Weekly Voting budget allocated to contributors): 0 %
5. Non-contributor Budget (Weekly Voting Budget allocated to non-contributors / participants) : 100 %
6. Vote Frequency : One vote per week per participant.
7. Posting Guidelines : the @ivoted account will post a daily statistics post and all Proposals for change. It will also post, to the best of its abilities, information posts about witnesses, interviews, Q&A. It will organize opinion pools to provide witnesses with feedbacks from participants about their priorities for the Steem network and write about these priorities.
8. Self-Voting Guidelines : All unused Voting Power (coming from all participants with no post or comment to upvote) will be cast on the @ivoted account's posts.
9. Extra Expense Contingencies : for example, the use of bots to promote our content. The basic rule here is there will be none, but the delegators can change it via a petition.
10. All posts will be published with a 50 % SBD / 50 % SP reward distribution. All SP will be used to fuel the bot's growth and increase the value of the upvotes distributed to participants. All SBD generated by posts will be given equally to @algo.coder and @sebbbl.

Comments

[abh12345]

Pretty detailed stuff.

I think this is the right approach guys in relation to putting your cards on the table for all to see.

Assuming there are no major disagreements with the above, what are the next steps?

[ivoted]

Well, I'd say post our #introduceyourself, intensify our search for delegators and, in the same time, launch the bot which is ready, @algo.coder has made an awesome job.

[algo.coder]

Thank you ! We tried to be as clear as possible, and if there's even the beginning of a misunderstanding (or a point that we didn't formulate accurately enough) please tell us, we think it is better that we clarify it now, for the sake of the initiative.

The next steps, as my colleague @sebbbl through @ivoted said :

• Posting our introduction post, to make the initiative know to the public,
• Posting the official launch post (detailing the functioning of the bot, the ways to enter the program - for witness voters, and the definitive version of the Governance and Policy rules),
• At the same time, launching the bot that will begin rewarding people for voting,

Then, in the longer term :

• Promote the project to get new participants and new delegators,
• Begin posting with the @ivoted account, according to our Policy : daily statistics, witness promotion, participants' priorities.

[helo]

Can't wait to see how you're going to invite steemians to vote for witnesses. Keep up the good work.

_{Vote @helo for Witness}

[algo.coder]

Thanks for your continuous support.

The first step is getting users to know the initiative, and we count on the incentives (upvotes) to do that.
Then, and it will be the hard part, the goal is to transform this "attraction by greed" into a "genuine interest about witnesses" and that will demand a lot of work.

That's why the first form of the bot is going to be a "simple upvote bot", but that surely is going to change in the medium / long term, when we will find methods to reward only inquisitive people (maybe by proxying all to one account and then democratically vote on another platform - separating the good grain from the schaff - for the witnesses the account will vote for, rewarding much more active participants - voting and debating on the platform - then the ones only proxying to the account).
That's an idea I just had writing the answer, nothing more ! Don't worry if you don't like it ! Governance is here to assure we will all move in the same direction, respecting every interest.

But I think solutions will become clearer and more evident once the system is implemented, as we will have participating people and "leeches" (No offence, it's just the best word to describe the behaviour), we will have feedback and discussions with implicated people and this way we will be able to find a good compromise.

[sebbbl]

Hi @abh12345, in case you missed it, here's the introduceyourself post :
https://steemit.com/@ivoted/introduction-of-ivoted-a-witness-voting-incentive-bot
The bot is ready to launch.

[introduce.bot]

✅ @ivoted, I gave you an upvote on your first post! Please give me a follow and I will give you a follow in return!

Please also take a moment to read this post regarding bad behavior on Steemit.