Hi Dan,
Thanks for the feedback. That helps. And the following is just my current newbee opinion, so I would much enjoy any further feedback anyone may have.
Canonizer.com is just a small prototype, so yes, we haven't yet done much work to eliminate things like Sybil attack potentials. But those kinds of things are fairly easy problems to solve. For example Keyhotee IDs, integrated in the identity system would go a long way towards this, and there are other solutions. It just hasn't been a problem or part of the minimum viable product yet.
Who the 'experts' are is determined by the users of Canonizer.com. You do this by selecting the Canonizer algorithm on the side bar. The goal is to give users the ability to configure, mix and match any canonizer algorithm they like. The most popular 'expert' canonizers are the 'peer ranking' ones. For example, all the "Mind Experts" are peer ranking each other for that Canonizer. See:
http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/81 . Canponizer.com is all about enabling everyone to recognize and trust the minority best experts as soon as possible. It's about providing information to the experts and leaders about what the lagging crowd is still thinking, and why, and most importantly what will be required to convince them, so they can be more rapidly brought on board with the right thing to do. That which you can measure, improves.
The goal of Canonizer.com isn't to get to any "Truth". One goal is simply to enable large crowds to politely communicate, concisely and quantitatively, about controversial and painful topics. With Canonizer.com Instead of heated debates, edit wars, and flame threads people just join and help wiki a camp, end of argument. The nature of forums that talk about consciousness or any other controversial topic dramatically changes once Canonizer.com is introduced. The crowd finally starts making progress instead of just eternal demoralizing arguments that drive everyone away. Diversity in the crowd can then be valued and drive things forward instead of feared because it always drives everyone apart.
Canonizer.com is the most powerful consensus building system out there. No matter how much agreement people have, they always find less important things to disagree and focus on. Everyone gets hurt, nothing gets done and consensus is destroyed. But Canonizer.com completely avoids this problem by enabling such lesser issues to be pushed out of the way to lower sub camps, where they are not lost or censored. Such is valued, concisely and quantitatively measured. This enables the focus to remain on what is most important, what everyone needs to be on board, and what the consensus needs to be about so the crowd can move forward and act, decisively and quickly.
As things progress, the more this crypto currency war will depend on the intelligence and agility of the competing currencies. Dumb currencies that can't change will be weeded out very quickly when faced with currencies able to act more intelligently and rapidly. Hierarchically managed currencies will be more intelligent, but the intelligence of any hierarchy is an extreme bottleneck, to say nothing of how this crowd will reject any such. Leaders that aren't interested in knowing, concisely, quantitatively, and in real time, what everyone wants, will make many more mistakes driving away ever more potential supporters.
Right now, there are lots of people that think that a dumb hard coded can't change rate of introduction of the currency into the economy is a good thing. So all those people will tend to flock to dumb flash in the pan currencies, avoiding more intelligent and agile ones able to make such drastic changes. My prediction is that many currencies will continue to flash, crash and burn, with the holders of such loosing lots of money, till the crowd recognized the importance of intelligent and agile currencies.
Intelligent people will flock to the currencies that will win, long term, and make lots of money doing so. Currencies that are able to attract and help amplify the wisdom of their holders in a consensus building leaderless way will do far better than the short term flash in the pan losers. And if a currency can amplify and leverage that wisdom, to be far more intelligent than any hierarchy. If a currency can train it's potential holders to build consensus and learn from and trust the wisdom of the crowd, faster and more completely than the holders of its competitors, Such a currency will ultimately be the final winner, easily blowing away all less intelligent competitors.
Upwards,
Brent Allsop