Quote from: hadrian on June 18, 2015, 08:23:49 am

@vikram (does paging work?)

you mean on site? Pagination ? Just to get it clear …

I just meant on this forum, does using '@member' notify the member.

By the way, there's a link on the faucet page which doesn't work for me. It's where it says:

Need help? Read How to Register a BitShares Account

ALERT!!! ALERT!!!

Do we need anti-automation measures in place on the faucet?

I'm not familiar with it's operation, but it looks to me that there's nothing to stop a certain uni-tusked aquatic creature from hammering the shit out of the faucet with some botty-bots!

Edit: no worries after fav's comment below

I think most of the tools should exist outside of the blockchain.

That said I see two major features that the blockchain can provide to help with this: simple approval/disapproval voting on items and voting on intervals for a parameter.

The first would just be using stake to vote on an item, such as a non-binding proposal (which can be as simple as a hash of some content) submitted to the blockchain, and having the blockchain tally the results for total approval and total disapproval.

But this feature could also be used by stakeholders not just to vote whether to support a proposal or not (or a particular option of a poll), but also to delegate their votes (again in a non-binding way) to other accounts for a specific issue. For example, imagine we want to choose N people to represent us in a debate regarding some change to the blockchain protocol. Candidates give their views on the issue on some platform (maybe the forum or maybe something more organized), register their representative for that issue on the blockchain, and stakeholders vote for the candidate they think best represents them on this issue. We can then agree that by a certain time we take a snapshot of the rankings and choose the top N representatives by total approval (ignoring disapproval). Each of them receive a weight equal to their approval divided by the total approval of all N representatives (so the weights of all N representatives sum to 1). Then these N representatives can debate it out on the forum, or better off-chain tools built for the purpose, and even have their own voting done on certain issues (in the case of voting, their votes are weighted by the weight value they were assigned from the rankings).

Then, they come up with a few different proposal models to implement (although certain parameters, which are not intended to be dynamically adjustable, in the model might still be left undefined). Those proposal models are registered as voting items on the blockchain and the stakeholders once again vote on the model they prefer best. Perhaps this time we rank by net vote and may also have a rule that the top ranked model needs to have a net vote above some threshold or else we need to go back to the drawing board.

Now with the model selected, there might need to be certain parameter values that still need to be determined. These are integer values representing fixed point numbers with some level of precision. One common parameter used in these type of proposals might be the cost that the stakeholders are willing to pay to the dev group described in the proposal model to implement the blockchain functionality described in the proposal model. So, this is where that second type of voting comes in. The blockchain would have this other type of voting in which stakeholders can supply two integers (a lower bound and an upper bound) along with the ID of the topic they are voting on. The nodes indexing the blockchain can then compute a distribution where the horizontal axis is the integer value and the vertical axis is the total approval votes supporting that integer value. This functionality can allow everyone to see what value for the parameter in question is most desirable to the stakeholders or, in other cases, the minimum (or maximum) value that a large enough fraction of the stakeholders support.

Finally, with the parameter values for the proposal model decided, the proposal model can be transformed into a fully fleshed out official proposal which is written up and submitted to the blockchain as a voting item to see if it will get the necessary approval to carry through with the changes (for example developing the necessary code to implement the changes described in the proposal). In the case where blockchain pay is necessary to carry out the proposal, the voting item might be a worker proposal which in some sense is binding (although only in the sense that the worker gets paid for the work but not binding in that the implementation may not necessarily actually get adopted through a hard fork). Of course, when it comes to actually hard forking (more binding changes), the protocol requirements for stakeholder approval of the hard forking change still need to be satisfied before the hard fork can actually happen.

Elected representatives are involved in the best off-blockchain solution I've thought of so far, also. I think it's the most elegant way to have an effective 'discussion' once an initiative gets to a certain point. I imagine first there would be a broad discussion between the community at large. This would be somewhat messy, but would allow good ideas to surface and would give some useful indications of possible directions in which to head. Then individuals (or even organised bodies) who want to be representatives could put forward a manifesto, and we could vote for them. Then following the methods you outlined above it would enable a less messy debate between representatives, before bringing proposals back for more voting, etc...

Maybe, if the voting mechanisms are sophisticated enough on the blockchain, there could be some very useful functionality to further tighten up consensus on the proposals (as described by permie, for example).

Quote from: NameNarwhal on June 17, 2015, 07:43:04 pm

In fact, for the next few days: if you had an account prior to June 8th, if there is name I have which you would like to own, let me know your name and I'll arrange to give you the private key of the name you want.

I just had a funny idea...
Wouldn't it be ironic if every single member of the BitShares community took you up on this offer and asked for one name each!?
This isn't a serious proposal, and isn't intended to upset you NameNarwhal, but the idea occurred to me, and I can't stop smiling about it!
Ha hahahah aha hahahah ahha hahhahah aha haaaaa!

I had another idea!

I listened to this hangout earlier today. Bytemaster (should 'bytemaster' be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence?) said they were considering giving people life memberships if they give $50 to Cryptonomex.

@NameNarwhal - would it be worth upgrading all of your accounts to life memberships at this cheap rate, in order to make them more valuable? How much would you end up giving to Cryptonomex!?

@everyone - has there been any more mention of this 'special offer' since the hangout?

Just as an example, if BitShares were to consider paying an entity to do some work for it, how should this work? It's not ideal to be offered just one proposal by the entity and to have the community simply vote 'yes' or 'no'. Wouldn't BitShares benefit from being able to negotiate and suggest alterations to the terms before submitting a proposal (or sets of options) for voting? I'm trying to imagine various ways in which BitShares may be able to negotiate and assemble proposals prior to the community voting on them. I see that this may become very difficult in the future as BitShares grows, unless we have a solid mechanism for implementing the process.

At the moment the community is very small and this forum, along with the hangouts, are obvious arenas for discussion. This makes it relatively easy to discuss various aspects and come up with solid proposals, around which we can reach agreement. In the future if BitShares really expands, the landscape could be much more diverse, with no real consensus on where we should come in order to properly discuss issues.

Obviously the blockchain will be capable of offering voting functionalities, so we can easily vote on proposals. My issue is though, how will the proposals be assembled? In real world business there can be much back and forth, tweaking, haggling, swapping in and out of various conditions etc. This is otherwise known as negotiation. This can be a complicated procedure which can end up with a handful of possible proposals which can then be voted on. Do we need the ability to negotiate so that we can come up with a select few viable options prior to voting?

Is there a nice, clean, efficient way to address this issue entirely on the blockchain? Or will we need to maintain some kind of commonly agreed communication method outside of the blockchain, so that we can effectively engage with one-another prior to putting up proposals for voting?

To put it another way, it's a bit like voting on the polls on this bitsharestalk forum. How many times have you thought, "I want to vote, but none of the options is quite right. I need to propose a tweak to the options before I can vote in good conscience". Surely we need to avoid this problem when it comes to voting on fundamental issues once BitShares 2.0 is up and running.

How is this going to work, especially when it comes to voting on things with many factors or variables?

Is what I'm describing a real issue, am I understanding it correctly, and have there been solutions already suggested?

I see there's a general election in Denmark tomorrow @ccedk. Are there any outcomes which you know would particularly affect your business?

In fact, for the next few days: if you had an account prior to June 8th, if there is name I have which you would like to own, let me know your name and I'll arrange to give you the private key of the name you want.

I just had a funny idea...
Wouldn't it be ironic if every single member of the BitShares community took you up on this offer and asked for one name each!?
This isn't a serious proposal, and isn't intended to upset you NameNarwhal, but the idea occurred to me, and I can't stop smiling about it!
Ha hahahah aha hahahah ahha hahhahah aha haaaaa!