WOW!
I can see many more questions arising from this discussion about delegates and voting to add to those I've posted recently.
This really does strike at the heart of the DPoS model, as well as remind me of the reality TV shows like Survivor and Big Brother. Although the word "panopticon" is often used in the alt media to describe a self policing society and carries a negative connotation, it doesn't have to be so. Our community should be self policing / self monitoring to restrict evil doers from causing harm to others. And that requires a good system of communication and good sources of information.
Our BitShares community is shaping up to be a reflection of a global society, complete with those who promote positive and negative virtue. Let every member of this community work to build mechanisms to safeguard the positive virtue and eliminate the negative influences. That goes for devs, investors and marketers alike. We all share this ecosystem so lets not allow it to devolve where we're eating our own poo.
I'm glad BM is now quite aware of this discussion. I will be looking to him, toast and the other heavy weight thinkers in this community to address this, definitely before the BTSX client release at the end of the month but preferably ASAP.
Today is the first time reading this thread, and I find it quite disturbing.
The one good thing this turmoil has surfaced is that the DPoS system has weaknesses if we don't find a way to make voting for your desired delegates easier, but that taking control of a majority of delegates is rather hard.
I think this problem has been exacerbated by the language barrier. But that should serve as an important wake up call to BM and other devs as such issues will increase as people from other countries and languages start to use BitShares.