Author Topic: Voter Apathy - We need to provide incentive for people to vote  (Read 15068 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

sumantso

  • Guest
I believe people will vote if the process is easy. Regarding incentives, maybe the transaction fee will be waived if they vote.

I think the delegates and employees should be separated. Delegate voting would be semi-automatic, with the client suggesting based on reliability, location (try to make it spread out), non-hosting on the same service providers (if possible). As far as possible the delegate voting - the backbone which runs the blockchain - should be kept as maintenance free as possible.

Employees should get one page in the client which lists them in groups in an easy-to-understand GUI. It will also list teams and let the voters allocate pays to them as whole or to individual members. It will be a bit like a game - I see on the top how much I have got to spend, and I can allot a portion of it amongst the various employees listed.

Bottom line, if its simple there will be more voters.

Offline xeroc

  • Board Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 12922
  • ChainSquad GmbH
    • View Profile
    • ChainSquad GmbH
  • BitShares: xeroc
  • GitHub: xeroc
Am I going mad, or did the word "think" escape your lips? A five page thread and no one has solved the riddle?

The solution is really very simple:

If they do not vote, they cannot collect any yield! Those who vote are rewarded with interest!
Doesn't work that way.

You get yield on bitAssets .. i.e. bitUSD but not BTS
though you can only vote with BTS.

the blockchain does not know which account holds which bitUSD or BTS

Offline FreeTrade

  • Board Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 700
    • View Profile
Yes, but this is an issue that we can see coming from a mile away. And I'm not convinced that people will magically become more interested in voting when there's more money at stake; they may still assume the delegates are doing a good job and let someone else focus on that junk while they spend their time trading and transacting.

+1

You're right - they won't become more interested in voting.

There are only two ways we're going to see quality voting -

1. Large shareholders
2. Trusted members with a lot of proxies (slates)

Some people have suggested incentivizing voting with rewards - but once you start getting people to view their votes in monetary terms, it is a small step away from trading votes for kickbacks.
 
“People should be more sophisticated? How are you gonna get that done?” - Jerry Seinfeld reply to Bill Maher

Offline svk

Instead of voting for individual delegates, users should be presented with issues or categories. I think I mentioned this in a previous post.  Categories should be presented that they can rank the importance of, or give give their own percentage. Like the way you select how much to invest in a particular type of fund in your 401K (high risk, mid-cap, emerging-market, etc). The user are presented with a list like investing in a Bitshares funds. They can allocate there votes by percentage.

Please rank the following criteria by percentage.

1) Performance     30%
2) Marketing         30%
3) Charity             10%
4) R&D                  20%
5) Support            10%

The votes are then proportioned to the delegates or slates that meet those definition and have a good track record. The track record can be weighted by the those who receive direct votes from users. People are more likely to vote on issues than individuals because it's easier to grasp.

Thank you!  If someone wants to take a more granular approach, they should have an advanced option to see an individual slate. By default, I like the individual categories similar to a 401k. Pheonike's solution would be great for bigger adoption that we're targeting. I'd even take it one step further an have a checkbox to distribute the votes equally to the categories to the people that don't care one way or another.


I love the passion in the thread, however, I'm trying to picture my close friends that might be interested in the tech giving a crap about the slates. For some of us, this is our world. For most everyone else, it's just one more thing in their life. How passionate are you about your debit card?

Great solution Pheonike.
It's a good idea in theory but how do we objectively measure those criteria? Definitely needs a third party, can't be done in the client, and even then it's really hard.

We'll need a site where one can rank delegates according to those criteria I guess, but once again we run into the issue of rating standby delegates. Do we give them a default reliability of 100% until they're given a chance to actually prove themselves?
Worker: dev.bitsharesblocks

Offline donkeypong

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2329
    • View Profile

Once marketing and adoption starts to take off and there is real money in running a delegate we'll see more active voting.

Currently half the stakes are unclaimed and BM has hire/fire voting stake against all the delegates. Until that changes through natural market maturation votes don't count for a while lot.

Yes, but this is an issue that we can see coming from a mile away. And I'm not convinced that people will magically become more interested in voting when there's more money at stake; they may still assume the delegates are doing a good job and let someone else focus on that junk while they spend their time trading and transacting.

Rather than let the voting mess become a possible point of failure, it makes sense to have this discussion now and find the best way to address it proactively.

Offline Riverhead

Voting with all your stake: Each share has 101+ votes. If you are voting less than that you get the message.

A lot of complex schemes in this thread. Remember all logic needs to happen at block signing. Like a turn based strategy game. More complex means higher transaction fees.

Once marketing and adoption starts to take off and there is real money in running a delegate we'll see more active voting.

Currently half the stakes are unclaimed and BM has hire/fire voting stake against all the delegates. Until that changes through natural market maturation votes don't count for a while lot.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk


Tuck Fheman

  • Guest
My proposition is thus.... would it be feasible to have a splash page where all possible advantageous delegate features could be listed in the form of 'checkbox' type selection criteria. By this manner a sharehodler community member may simply select the features that best represent his or her wishes. Of course, the selections can be moified by individual at any time they choose to do so. They would select and forget. Perhaps reviewing their selections to reflect new features presented.
On the other side of the ledger, the delegate would select the features that he or she would adopt as part of their basket of goodies. When married together we would have 101 delegates that represent the most requested features

 +5%

Tuck Fheman

  • Guest
I think the biggest problem is -- voting is confusing. I'm fairly technically inclined, but I still have difficulty understanding just what the hell the client's talking about when it says "you are not voting with all of your stake"...

Needs to be better streamlined.

 +5%

I see the message often, despite voting, so how often am I required/requested to vote?  I thought it was once a year, for some reason, or I faced a fee (tax?) of some kind.

Also, does the client vote when sending funds? There's an option next to transfer which indicates I'm voting as recommended and I assumed when I send funds that was happening.

Offline hpenvy

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 451
    • View Profile
Instead of voting for individual delegates, users should be presented with issues or categories. I think I mentioned this in a previous post.  Categories should be presented that they can rank the importance of, or give give their own percentage. Like the way you select how much to invest in a particular type of fund in your 401K (high risk, mid-cap, emerging-market, etc). The user are presented with a list like investing in a Bitshares funds. They can allocate there votes by percentage.

Please rank the following criteria by percentage.

1) Performance     30%
2) Marketing         30%
3) Charity             10%
4) R&D                  20%
5) Support            10%

The votes are then proportioned to the delegates or slates that meet those definition and have a good track record. The track record can be weighted by the those who receive direct votes from users. People are more likely to vote on issues than individuals because it's easier to grasp.

Thank you!  If someone wants to take a more granular approach, they should have an advanced option to see an individual slate. By default, I like the individual categories similar to a 401k. Pheonike's solution would be great for bigger adoption that we're targeting. I'd even take it one step further an have a checkbox to distribute the votes equally to the categories to the people that don't care one way or another.


I love the passion in the thread, however, I'm trying to picture my close friends that might be interested in the tech giving a crap about the slates. For some of us, this is our world. For most everyone else, it's just one more thing in their life. How passionate are you about your debit card?

Great solution Pheonike. 
« Last Edit: November 18, 2014, 03:17:26 am by hpenvy »
=============
btsx address: hpenvy
Tips appreciated for good work

Offline Vizzini

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 102
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: vizzini
Am I going mad, or did the word "think" escape your lips? A five page thread and no one has solved the riddle?

The solution is really very simple:

If they do not vote, they cannot collect any yield! Those who vote are rewarded with interest!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... ...


Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Offline Thom

Well... the main reason that led me to bring this up... I have been debating a lot of Bitcoin/Altcoin people as to the merits of DPoS versus PoW. I am telling a half truth when I tell them that someone needs to obtain 51% of the money supply to attack the network... due to voter apathy that is not the case. It is not only a security issue, it is a public perception issue of a possible security issue. If someone really advertised that instead you only need 14% of the money supply due to voter apathy, I think people will think more negatively of DPoS. How can we expect people to trust DPoS if it isn't as secure as it can theoretically be? IT doesn't look good in a debate when someone brings up that only 14% of the money supply is needed... they give me a hard enough time about 51% being bad enough.

+5% an extremely important point. This has been gnawing at me for some time now. I keep seeing these topics on delegates and voting recurring and yet no significant changes are proposed by the devs to address this. The last major change was with the creation of delegate slates months ago.

coinhoarder & oldman (among others) have made some excellent points. We really need to solve the problem of apathy, and imo we need to look at incentives (and disincentives). Oldman's point about responsibility is spot on imo. Several of the suggestions made here would be better than what we now have. We need to get bm, toast or other devs involved in this and work out a plan to address this problem ASAP.

It's the same thing with our govt. It works good enough for me so I don't waste my time with it. If they ever really start effing up I'll take some time to exercise my right to vote to change things. This is going to end up a lot like that and it's o.k. It is a better system because it is sooooo easy for people to vote when they want.

If you're actually a teenager I can understand why you think this way. You're a product of govt. influence on society which promotes apathy & irresponsibility. You're conditioned to think "govt. will take care of me" or "let the govt. pay for it". Govt. is force. Is that what you want? Your believe that voting can actually change things at the state & national level ignores the decades of evidence to the contrary that preceded your birth. Your thinking is seriously flawed and I couldn't disagree with you more deeply than I do.

Do BTS shareholders have a right to yield if they cannot be bothered to vote?

I wasn't aware BTS earns yield, I thought that was just on bitassets?  Bitasset holders definitely don't need to vote.

I'm not in favour of punishing with fines people for not voting.  BTS holders just need to be able to be able to easily vote someone out if they are attacking the network and have the rest automated as much as possible.  I don't know why delegates can't just be ranked algorithmically with using the fields on bitsharesblocks.com/delegates such as

 - feed frequency
 - number of active feeds
 - reliability
 - frequency of updates
 - time running as delegate (they'd become more trusted over time, would be a v important factor to make attacks more expensive)

There could be an algorithmically produced top 101 slate which could be auto-voted on (i.e. not voted on) and give its effect a weighting of say 50/50 vs the active votes of the BTS holders.  So if there is 15% active stake, the algorithmically defined stake gets 15% voting power automatically taken from the inactive stake, doubling the active stake (while decreasing the voters power by half).  Let an algorithm take some of the load. 

Or at the very least an algorithm could serve as a back up, so that if the active stake falls below a certain level, the algorithm could step in and do the voting on the BTS holders' behalf.  The only way to trick the algorithm would be to run a fleet of very reliable delegates for a long period.... which might end up being cheaper than just buying up the BTS... not sure.

Luckybit & I have been talking about bots & automation to help with this problem, so I agree with you on that. The metrics for delegates outside the 101 need to be determined. As svk pointed out the data and metrics for standby delegates cannot be exactly the same. Where I disagree with you is regarding the need for incentives, which encompasses disincentives. If I understood fuzzy's perspective, (a form of direct pay for people to vote) I have to disagree. Too much possibility for abuse and bribery. I very much like the 10x transaction fee penalty or options similar to that as a negative incentive.

How to incentivize becoming informed is definitely a tough nut to crack, but the closest to it would probably be related to Pheonike's idea of issue based voting. If we can couple what people are interested in or passionate about to a delegate or voting slate, and make it easy to them to see that connection and to vote, that may be the best we can do.

There are some really viable options being voiced here that will improve DPoS and I'm hoping to see some action taken by the devs before the green light is given to the marketing push.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline svk



Do BTS shareholders have a right to yield if they cannot be bothered to vote?


I wasn't aware BTS earns yield, I thought that was just on bitassets?  Bitasset holders definitely don't need to vote.

I'm not in favour of punishing with fines people for not voting.  BTS holders just need to be able to be able to easily vote someone out if they are attacking the network and have the rest automated as much as possible.  I don't know why delegates can't just be ranked algorithmically with using the fields on bitsharesblocks.com/delegates such as

 - feed frequency
 - number of active feeds
 - reliability
 - frequency of updates
 - time running as delegate (they'd become more trusted over time, would be a v important factor to make attacks more expensive)

There could be an algorithmically produced top 101 slate which could be auto-voted on (i.e. not voted on) and give its effect a weighting of say 50/50 vs the active votes of the BTS holders.  So if there is 15% active stake, the algorithmically defined stake gets 15% voting power automatically taken from the inactive stake, doubling the active stake (while decreasing the voters power by half).  Let an algorithm take some of the load. 

Or at the very least an algorithm could serve as a back up, so that if the active stake falls below a certain level, the algorithm could step in and do the voting on the BTS holders' behalf.  The only way to trick the algorithm would be to run a fleet of very reliable delegates for a long period.... which might end up being cheaper than just buying up the BTS... not sure.

The big problem with this is that you can only really rank delegates that are currently in the top 101 using this strategy. Standby delegates cannot publish feeds and won't have a reliability score until they're actually in the top 101.

What I feel we need is some kind of suspension period, where if you miss a certain number of blocks for example you automatically become ineligible for a day or two. Creating a fork could make you ineligible for longer, a week maybe. This would allow standby delegates a shot at proving that they can be reliable and that they can publish feeds. The current system is too static and requires too much voter intervention to punish poor behaviour imo.
Worker: dev.bitsharesblocks

Offline Pheonike

Instead of voting for individual delegates, users should be presented with issues or categories. I think I mentioned this in a previous post.  Categories should be presented that they can rank the importance of, or give give their own percentage. Like the way you select how much to invest in a particular type of fund in your 401K (high risk, mid-cap, emerging-market, etc). The user are presented with a list like investing in a Bitshares funds. They can allocate there votes by percentage.

Please rank the following criteria by percentage.

1) Performance     30%
2) Marketing         30%
3) Charity             10%
4) R&D                  20%
5) Support            10%

The votes are then proportioned to the delegates or slates that meet those definition and have a good track record. The track record can be weighted by the those who receive direct votes from users. People are more likely to vote on issues than individuals because it's easier to grasp.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2014, 03:53:53 am by Pheonike »

Offline feedthemcake

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 158
    • View Profile
Hmmm... what about your yield is split into 101 shares and locked/released until you vote?

Offline fuzzy

How does forcing an uninformed voter to make an uninformed vote produce any value for anyone?

I am currently an advocate of a system where people can get paid a small amount to vote, and can delegate their vote to those who are more well versed in certain areas.  For instance, I might delegate Xeroc, Gamey, Bytemaster and Riverhead to vote on very highly technical issues.  I might further delegate them into areas where they have a very high level of expertise compared to one another. 

In return, they receive extra points for voting based on the number of people who delegate their votes to them.  Certain people will be designated experts in certain areas of expertise and will be paid to voting for those who delegate them.  The only difference between this system compared to what we have today is:
1) Delegates can be voted out at any time
2) Voting records are completely transparent and auditable
3) Citizens have the potential to become highly paid for being subject matter experts and gaining a great deal of support based on philosophical and quantifiable grounds.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2014, 07:24:51 pm by fuzzy »
WhaleShares==DKP; BitShares is our Community! 
ShareBits and WhaleShares = Love :D