Author Topic: Voter Apathy - We need to provide incentive for people to vote  (Read 15072 times)

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Offline davidpbrown

Some interesting ideas:

- Slates should have 'owners'
- Slates should be 'subscribable'
- Users will subscribe to slates from trusted, public figures
- Users who subscribe to these slates are notified when changes occur
- Slate owners are given the option to write reasons why they are changing their slate
- If the user takes the time to review the change, then they can accept, deny, or make an amendment to the change
- If the user does not review the change after a given time period, it will automatically be set to accept
- Popular slates should be readily available within the client

I like this. Representative democracy more effective than direct democracy.
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Offline fluxer555

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Some interesting ideas:

- Slates should have 'owners'
- Slates should be 'subscribable'
- Users will subscribe to slates from trusted, public figures
- Users who subscribe to these slates are notified when changes occur
- Slate owners are given the option to write reasons why they are changing their slate
- If the user takes the time to review the change, then they can accept, deny, or make an amendment to the change
- If the user does not review the change after a given time period, it will automatically be set to accept
- Popular slates should be readily available within the client

Offline kokojie

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At a min we need to make it easier to vote.  I don't view voter apathy as a bad thing in all cases. It is too hard to figure out how to vote. The thumbs up thumbs down would be great if it worked. I don't like the fact that I must select 101 different people in order for my vote to be counted. Why can I go through and thumb up a single delegate and the gui takes and votes my stake. Or I select 10 or 20 delegates with a check mark system and click vote stake and be done?

Wait, I believe you don't actually have to select 101 for your vote to count. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Offline Gentso1

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At a min we need to make it easier to vote.  I don't view voter apathy as a bad thing in all cases. It is too hard to figure out how to vote. The thumbs up thumbs down would be great if it worked. I don't like the fact that I must select 101 different people in order for my vote to be counted. Why can I go through and thumb up a single delegate and the gui takes and votes my stake. Or I select 10 or 20 delegates with a check mark system and click vote stake and be done?
You don't have to pick up all 101 delegates in order for your vote to be counted. One delegate is minimum so your vote can be counted. System prefers if you vote for all 101 delegates, but that doesn't mean that you need to vote for all 101 delegate.
You are right.
You just get the "This account is not voting with some of its stake. You should consider updating your vote."
Making voting simpler is desirable, but even when it becomes so simple a caveman can do it, the most time consuming part will always remain:  becoming informed.


This is so true but the same argument can be made for VOTE. We want to make it easier for the masses to vote but in reality it not necessarily a good thing for the masses to vote.

Ever seen the movie Idiocracy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Either way no matter the reason its my opinion it should be made easier, for better or worse.




« Last Edit: November 14, 2014, 05:10:27 pm by Gentso1 »

Offline Stan

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Making voting simpler is desirable, but even when it becomes so simple a caveman can do it, the most time consuming part will always remain:  becoming informed.

Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline Stan

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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.

Ok, so then it does make some sense to set the default to what the trusted wallet developers are doing.  Now an attacker needs to override all those defaults, which requires a very public campaign to point out why those defaults can't be trusted.   

Power ultimately lies with individual shareholders, but there is a huge burden of proof that an attacker would have to provide to motivate them to pay attention and act.  Nothing can be done in the dark without acquiring an unlikely high percent of stake (and driving up the price for everyone else's benefit.) 

The trusted wallet developers would essentially acting in the role of the Big Five mining companies that control all decisions for Bitcoin.  Except with BitShares they can be fired in ten seconds for violations of trust without the whistleblower needing to buy vast warehouses of hardware to unseat them.  Just make your case to the shareholders.
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Offline davidpbrown

A lot could be done to make voting simpler. If voting is important, then a relative amount of effort is needed to make that obvious.

I'm not clear if my holding gets shared equal weighting between those I vote for. If I only vote for 1, do they get full effect or no difference from if I had voted for 2?

Having an alert to the effect that this will transfer the account balance, is not what user will expect. Someone wanting to vote, is not expecting to transfer their balance somewhere.. transferring it to the same account does not make sense. Also, it's hard to keep in mind which 101 delegates you prefer. Perhaps just encourage people to an optimal number of 10 or more.


Off topic perhaps but I do not understand how we know that 101 delegates is sufficient to provide a robust network. Are we expecting more delegates in future? In the event BitShares goes large, what is to prevent a simple DDOS attack on the core delegates??
« Last Edit: November 14, 2014, 04:50:48 pm by davidpbrown »
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Offline vegolino

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At a min we need to make it easier to vote.  I don't view voter apathy as a bad thing in all cases. It is too hard to figure out how to vote. The thumbs up thumbs down would be great if it worked. I don't like the fact that I must select 101 different people in order for my vote to be counted. Why can I go through and thumb up a single delegate and the gui takes and votes my stake. Or I select 10 or 20 delegates with a check mark system and click vote stake and be done?
You don't have to pick up all 101 delegates in order for your vote to be counted. One delegate is minimum so your vote can be counted. System prefers if you vote for all 101 delegates, but that doesn't mean that you need to vote for all 101 delegate.

Offline Frodo

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I don't know if I have missed anything but what happened to the concept of RDPOS? It could be a pretty good solution imo.

Besides that I would expect more participation once there are options to vote with stake in cold storage.

Offline fluxer555

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I have a proposed solution to voter apathy, as well as other problems here:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10642

It's not perfect; some assumed facts are wrong, however the concepts still have value, and arhag has contributed improvements to it as well.

Offline CoinHoarder

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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.
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Offline Stan

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I guess we could have tiers of apathy:

1.  The least a person can do is express trust in the source of their wallet, by merely downloading it.  So that wallet can point to a default slate which expresses their preference to just trust the wallet provider they already have trusted with their private keys.
2.  The next least a person can do is express trust in some other slate, by overriding their wallet's default slate and pointing to one provided by some celebrity or developer or personality you trust.
3.  The next, next, least a person can do is override some entries in their hero-provided slate with a few delegates you happen to know.
4.  The last level of least you can do is to become fully informed and hand-pick your top 101.

In the event of a crisis, a rebel leader can publish a slate and campaign to get everyone to switch slates.

Other than paying people to vote, this seems like the best solution so far. I actually really like this "tier of apathy" idea. You made my laugh irl... "the least a person can do... the next... the next, next... the next, next, next"  :D

Yeah, if I just spent many days evaluating 300 delegates to responsibly pick my Top 101, the last thing I want to do is to pay other people to water down that hard work with random uninformed votes.  If they want to be lazy (who doesn't?), they should just pick a slate that somebody spent some time thinking about.

EDIT:  Alternatively, they could just pick the average of what everyone who cares is doing.   Oh, wait, that's what not voting at all does.  :)
« Last Edit: November 14, 2014, 04:38:19 pm by Stan »
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Offline CoinHoarder

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It's more than a month(maybe two) since the last time I opened my wallet, I can't even remember what version I have installed.

I would like to update my votes more often but I'm lazy compiling every time a new version is out.

When we have a "final" and more stable version I think people will show more interest.

- Make it idiot proof
- Create a simple video explaining the need and tips on how to evaluate delegates
- Push out through twitter/newsletter

Do you guys seriously expect all shareholders to go through and take the time to vet 101 delegates, select them one by one in the client, and then update their votes? Simply researching about 101 delegates seems like a lot more time than most people would be willing to contribute (if there is no incentive or a system in place like "tiers of apathy".) I can tell you I personally am too lazy to do this. :-\
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Offline Gentso1

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At a min we need to make it easier to vote.  I don't view voter apathy as a bad thing in all cases. It is too hard to figure out how to vote. The thumbs up thumbs down would be great if it worked. I don't like the fact that I must select 101 different people in order for my vote to be counted. Why can I go through and thumb up a single delegate and the gui takes and votes my stake. Or I select 10 or 20 delegates with a check mark system and click vote stake and be done?

Offline kokojie

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My first suggestion would be refund the transaction fee for voting, so there is no "dis-incentive" to vote. Or if that's impossible, just pay a small fee every 30 days or so, for stakes that has voted at least 51 delegates.