Negative Votes Coming back in Next Dry Run

[AsymmetricInformation]

Suppose Bad Actor has 25% approval, everyone else has to find someone they can agree to give 26% approval to bump the Bad Actor.... there are 2 solid candidates and they each split the vote 13% / 13% and thus neither is able to bump the Bad Actor.    Everyone can agree the Bad Actor should go, so they simply vote against him.

Importantly, even if the 60% managed to use their votes to get another candidate in front of the one they oppose, BOTH candidates would likely still end up being delegates. Now we would still have a delegate who 60% STRONGLY OPPOSE!

I have some bad news for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem

[hadrian]

Suppose Bad Actor has 25% approval, everyone else has to find someone they can agree to give 26% approval to bump the Bad Actor.... there are 2 solid candidates and they each split the vote 13% / 13% and thus neither is able to bump the Bad Actor.    Everyone can agree the Bad Actor should go, so they simply vote against him.

Should this point be overlooked? How important is it in real world terms?

It is possible for there to be a candidate who would receive 40% support for a role as delegate, but 60% strong opposition. Should it be possible for this candidate to become a delegate?
If people have the option to vote against, the candidate would be unsuccessful. Without "vote against" the candidate would probably become a delegate, and I propose this to be undesirable. In order for the candidate to be partially unsuccessful, the opposing 60% would likely have to agree to collaborate. They would have organize their "votes for" in a way which they may find unsatisfactory, thus compromising their REAL preferences.

Importantly, even if the 60% managed to use their votes to get another candidate in front of the one they oppose, BOTH candidates would likely still end up being delegates. Now we would still have a delegate who 60% STRONGLY OPPOSE!

Bear in mind that this needn't be a polarized case of a candidate being either a good or bad actor, or processing transactions well or poorly. What if the candidate is proposing to use transaction fees for a certain controversial purpose? It is easy to imagine a scenario whereby the candidate incentivizes 40% to vote for him/her by some means, and this 40% are not opposed to the way the fees will be used. But what if the other 60% are fundamentally against the proposed use of the fees? Should they not be given the chance to voice their concerns?

Could not "vote against" potentially be a useful, if not necessary, tool? If the majority opposes something in principle, shouldn't there be a proper way for them to oppose it in practice?

I admit I haven't thought much about this, and also haven't followed closely enough the way voting works with DPOS, so I may be mistaken.
However, I thought I should post this in case it is useful, or in case it may act as a catalyst in some way.

[gamey]

So is there 3 voting states for each candidate delegate ?  If there are 2 states it seems functionally equivalent to  approval voting, so I assume there are 3 states.

I still haven't seen a good reason why this is better or worse.  I suspect a rational person would negative vote everywhere they do not positive vote.  This would be done for no other reason than to make the their positive votes more effective.  So therefore a rational voter will only use positive/negative and it becomes the same as approval voting.  ie yes/no.

Does anyone see a flaw in this line of thought?  I haven't really thought about it much ... was hoping for Agent86 to state his case clearly. 

I basically am still neutral. I  don't see it as worse than approval voting.  Even though it may be rational in a game theory sense to solely negative/positive vote, people will not likely do this will and save their negative votes for the bad actors because it seems more intuitive.  So in that way it might be an improvement.

[bitbro]

Agent86 is very persistent and talked with me on Skype last night to argue against negative votes.

The primary argument he made was that abstaining is the responsible thing to do for uninterested users and that large stake holders will be very pro-active.

Small stake holders collectively do not have much influence.

I have decided to make it an option that is easy to turn on in the future with a hard-fork, but off by default.  If it becomes a problem then the delegates can vote to support it.

Agent86 is bytemaster's alter ego

C'mon, don't play games toast


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[toast]

Agent86 is very persistent and talked with me on Skype last night to argue against negative votes.

The primary argument he made was that abstaining is the responsible thing to do for uninterested users and that large stake holders will be very pro-active.

Small stake holders collectively do not have much influence.

I have decided to make it an option that is easy to turn on in the future with a hard-fork, but off by default.  If it becomes a problem then the delegates can vote to support it.

Agent86 is bytemaster's alter ego

[bytemaster]

Agent86 is very persistent and talked with me on Skype last night to argue against negative votes.

The primary argument he made was that abstaining is the responsible thing to do for uninterested users and that large stake holders will be very pro-active.

Small stake holders collectively do not have much influence.

I have decided to make it an option that is easy to turn on in the future with a hard-fork, but off by default.  If it becomes a problem then the delegates can vote to support it.

[liondani]

Isn't the risk of downvotes that a powerful group of shareholders, either large/active, will have both the power to vote in a large portion of policies (via delegates) they want and effectively vote out the type of policies (via delegates) that they don't. - Like the Democrats would not only be able to vote themselves into a majority position but also vote out all of the Republicans from the remaining positions too?

I can see the very important need for downvotes to rapidly remove bad actors though.

If only the system can downvote delegates that not produce blocks (or acting bad) and replace them automatically with stand-by delegates?

No such thing as something "only the system" can do.

What about that?

Considere something else:
Maybe deppended  on % delegate participation to remove the last active delegates on every round... (NOT RANDOM)

if 80% participation, remove the last 20% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
if 95% participation, remove the last 5% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
if 60% participation, remove the last 40% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
etc. etc.

normaly the participation % will go up until it reach a equillibrium point that is the highest possible depended on delegates average accuracy...
and you give oportunitys for potential better delegates to get active !!!

[bytemaster]

I will suggest something a little different:
1 Keep approval voting with no downvotes
2 Apply X% vote weight decrease after Y blocks. ( I suggest X to be approx 1%, Y ~101)

Using this a delegate need to have continuous support in order to stay in top 101.
Any vote will not matter once enough rotations have passed.
Those who use the system (making transaction) will dictate who will be delegate IN SHORT TERM.

Of course one could just transfer stake between own wallets and routing votes through his own delegates so he is not paying taxes. (and this is one more reason for restrictions for delegates to burn at least some % of the transactions)

interesting...

Delegates share the fees in their block with all other delegates.  You cannot "route transactions through your own delegate" to get free transactions.

[bytemaster]

Isn't the risk of downvotes that a powerful group of shareholders, either large/active, will have both the power to vote in a large portion of policies (via delegates) they want and effectively vote out the type of policies (via delegates) that they don't. - Like the Democrats would not only be able to vote themselves into a majority position but also vote out all of the Republicans from the remaining positions too?

I can see the very important need for downvotes to rapidly remove bad actors though.

If only the system can downvote delegates that not produce blocks (or acting bad) and replace them automatically with stand-by delegates?

No such thing as something "only the system" can do. 

[Empirical1]

Isn't the risk of downvotes that a powerful group of shareholders, either large/active, will have both the power to vote in a large portion of policies (via delegates) they want and effectively vote out the type of policies (via delegates) that they don't. - Like the Democrats would not only be able to vote themselves into a majority position but also vote out all of the Republicans from the remaining positions too?

I can see the very important need for downvotes to rapidly remove bad actors though.

If only the system can downvote delegates that not produce blocks (or acting bad) and replace them automatically with stand-by delegates?

But if we had downvotes we could pre-empt that bad behaviour. A group of delegates might be behaving well but observant people might be able to see that are setting up to collude and disrupt the system.  For example if you could see these guys were among the 101 delegates, wouldn't you want the power to downvote?

[santaclause102]

Disclaimer: I just read the OP...

Maybe something like this would help reach the goal of effectively voting against bad actors: Down votes have twice the effect as positive votes + there are only 3 (or something similar) down votes you can make. The latter ensures that the bad actors doesn't use the "double down votes" to vote everyone down except him which others would be to lazy to do...

This

The average user is lazy and unlikely to evaluate 101 different individuals.  We must factor in this laziness in our designs.

I think is very important and probably in the end only those with huge stakes and the fanboys will vote at all....

 

[liondani]

Isn't the risk of downvotes that a powerful group of shareholders, either large/active, will have both the power to vote in a large portion of policies (via delegates) they want and effectively vote out the type of policies (via delegates) that they don't. - Like the Democrats would not only be able to vote themselves into a majority position but also vote out all of the Republicans from the remaining positions too?

I can see the very important need for downvotes to rapidly remove bad actors though.

If only the system can downvote delegates that not produce blocks (or acting bad) and replace them automatically with stand-by delegates?

[Empirical1]

Isn't the risk of downvotes that a powerful group of shareholders, either large/active, will have both the power to vote in a large portion of policies (via delegates) they want and effectively vote out the type of policies (via delegates) that they don't. - Like the Democrats would not only be able to vote themselves into a majority position but also vote out all of the Republicans from the remaining positions too?

I can see the very important need for downvotes to rapidly remove bad actors though.

[luckybit]

Why not just have review sites outsource the process of rating delegates so users can remain lazy?
I don't see how this is a big deal.

[liondani]

Considere something else:
Maybe deppended  on % delegate participation to remove the last active delegates on every round... (NOT RANDOM)

if 80% participation, remove the last 20% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
if 95% participation, remove the last 5% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
if 60% participation, remove the last 40% of active delegates and replace them with the first delegates in the standby list...
etc. etc.

normaly the participation % will go up until it reach a equillibrium point that is the highest possible depended on delegates average accuracy...
and you give oportunitys for potential better delegates to get active !!!