I was almost done with a detailed reply to this thread yesterday, and a minor interruption and capacitive trackpad forced it into oblivion by the wave of a misplaced finger. Here I am today trying to recreate that post.
The OP has had no response save this one, and it has slipped into the obscurity of page 2 of General Discussion. But it is worth talking about, as it was when I broached the subject in last Friday's mumble. It gained more traction in the mumble afterparty when cryptoprometheus revisited the subject.
Why doesn't BitShares have a way to qualitatively and quantitatively assess what is important to the BitShares community?I was talking to gentso the other day, reflecting on the recent mumble. He explained how Counterparty's SWARM worked and how something like that could and probably should be implemented in BitShares. There's nothing standing in our way, other than:
- Willingness on the part of Dan / Stan / Dev staff to solicit external input more formally
- The community's insistence that we need to be more systematic about assessing proposals and setting priorities and goals for the BitShares ecosystem
Very little if any development effort is required to implement a community polling / voting system based on UIAs RIGHT NOW. If any coding is required it would be to possibly create a special class of UIAs that require lower fees (but not too low as to result in a flood of frivolous polls / proposals) so as not to be a significant barrier to submitting proposals.
Perhaps a two stage approach could be used, where a panel of trusted community members (such as delegates) serve on a panel to review ideas and proposals and if deemed worthy, are issued a UIA for formal review of all shareholders, who vote by buying the UIAs to indicate their support. The panel can set the price of the UIA, for example a low value to encourage participation in a simple poll or higher values to encourage more serious reflection on strategic proposals or "pivot points". The results could be viewed right on BitSharesBlocks via number of outstanding UIAs that exist, for example.
I'm just trowing this out off the cuff as an idea. Our community is an extraordinary pool of talented entrepreneurs, I'm sure we can come up with refinements of this "BitShares Swarm" concept to be a very useful tool to help BitShares realize its highest aspirations.
The point of this is not to dis-empower Stan / Dan / Dev team by empowering a review panel and shareholders. The point is to provide a better way to collect feedback from the community in a scientific and quantifiable manor rather than through ad-hock means like forum posts and mumble sessions that aren't comprehensive or very accurate. It also serves to give the community a stronger voice and provides another avenue to encouage people to become a part of the BitShares community, a place where their voice has a megaphone.
If we demand that of Adam in assessing the effectiveness of the bitshares.org website to attract new users and impact marketcap, why shouldn't we apply the same principles to the ecosystem as a whole? Isn't this a typical engineering problem? Aren't there a few of that ilk around here? So why isn't this an obvious thing to do, where is the resistance coming from?