Things I don't like about the committee

[Bhuz]

He presented his "idea" badly and without the slightest attempt to offer logical justification (apart from "lower fees = more users") and without the slightest attempt to take into consideration the interests of businesses other than those similar to his own.

(1)
So, if one person present his personal idea without too much "hard work" in finding rational and logical justification and only with the purpose to start a public discussion about it on the forum, it is bad and he deserves what bitcrab got.

(2)
At the same time, if one or more person try to pulicly share an idea and present it with in-depth analysis and rational and logical argumentations (from their pov ofc), it is also bad because they put too hard work in it and should have shared the general idea first: point (1)

I am totally lost here.

bitcrab is a businessman, not a solution seeker interested in finding good incentive structures.
That's why he got a response like this - for pushing his interests above the interests of the whole system.

Do you even know about his business?!
Bitcrab do not gain nothing from a lower transfer fee from the point of view of his business.

Maybe you did not realize that bitcrab is also one of the biggest proxy from chinese community.

The transfer fee debate is coming from a big part of our community, not from a man running his business

[jakub]

For me it's a loose collection of people, each of the them represents some kind of unique political view & experience and they do not really need to work together, apart from coordinating the usage of the mulit-sig account they share and control. All they need to do (free of charge), is discuss things publicly between each other, so that voters can form a view who is right and who is not. This way it's more like a panel of independent judges, each having his own wisdom.

Yes, and tell me: does the name "bitcrab" say something to you?

Because last couple of threads he make, ended up with just endless personal attacks.
People went crazy without a real reason, without trying to read and really understand his points.
I only saw a bunch of closed-minded/i-know-it-alls people insulting him without bring real and constructive arguments on the topic.
I only saw really stupid statements like: he is going to fork bts, he is going to kill bts, he is going to kill the referral program, he is going to replace all the committee, he is going to replace the witnesses.
Just after couple of minutes from his post, some people opened new threads titled "Please vote out Bitcrab if you care about bitshares" and "OBITS HODLERs, your money is in danger", just because a community member stated his pov. There was not even a proposal attached to his thread.

So, please, you can dream what you want, but try to stick to the reality of this forum.

Regarding bitcrab, he got exactly what he deserved.
(Apart from personal attacks, which I condemn, as they obscure the discussion)

He presented his "idea" badly and without the slightest attempt to offer logical justification (apart from "lower fees = more users") and without the slightest attempt to take into consideration the interests of businesses other than those similar to his own.

bitcrab is a businessman, not a solution seeker interested in finding good incentive structures.
That's why he got a response like this - for pushing his interests above the interests of the whole system.
But it's good he's quite open about it and does not pretend anything: he clearly says what he wants  - I value this.

[jakub]

It seems the current committee is operating exactly as documented.

Well, we are actually  gathering more feedback compared to what the documentation seems to says.

We gathered feedback before and during the creation of our proposal.
We are going to gather other feedback after the proposal will be given to the public for listen to their thoughts/ideas/comments etc.

Only after that, we are going to approve the proposal (probably modified with community input) and let the stakeholders do their job with the voting process.

This is exactly where we differ. IMO it's *not* the role of committee members to do what you described.

You are not supposed to "gather feedback" because you are not representing anybody's interests.

You are not supposed to do any "hard work". If hard work was needed for this position, it would have been a paid position.

You are not supposed to be "approachable" as Bunker said in the last mumble. If being approachable is a valuable quality for a committee member, that would mean s/he has access to some sort of power or resources which ordinary shareholder does not have. And this is clearly not the case. There should be nothing I should need to ask Bunker or you. I should not need to ask for any of your attention, either. When I have discussions on the forum, I don't expect anybody to be approachable.

IMO, the only thing you are supposed to do (for free) is this: have public discussions and publicly differ in your opinions. That's the whole point.
Not work together (as some kind of governmental body representing the shareholders' interests), but quite the opposite: discuss and publicly defend your views with solid arguments, so that the shareholders can see who is making sense and who is not. So basically do what everybody does here on this forum. Discuss. For free.

The only difference between me and you is that you have been given (by the shareholders) access to some special multi-sig account.
Otherwise we are equal and there is no reason I can think of, that entitles you to work on the details of the new holistic fee schedule but not e.g. luckybit, if he wanted to.
You are only committee members, not some sort of special commission, whose purpose is to arrive at a solution to a problem.
This is what pc wants you to be and I strongly disagree with him.

And this is where the pathology begins: when shareholders are misled to feel grateful for your "hard work". Their gratefulness gives you power over them.
You are not supposed to have any power - you are only supposed to have opinions, each of you individually, not collective as a group.

[xeroc]

Next time we can of course ask every shareholder to spend 5 days straight and find a good fee schedule .. would that make sense?

[xeroc]

@jakub
ALL discussions by voted-in members should be done right here on the fourm. Don't ask shareholders to install telegram, learn slack or whatever new trendy tool comes out.
 
Customer service and transparency are imperative, especially in this crypto-space, it's a major learning curve for people. Make it easy for the newcomers!
 

transparent debate among our elected reps is what the masses demand

conducting secret closed door discussions is the fastest way to get voted out

Its also the fastest way to get a reasonable result.

Again, the committe worked on a fee schedule to present to the shareholders for further discussion .. it is not about voting but about working towards something to present to the shareholders for further discussion but have a reasonable starting point

[giant middle finger]

@jakub
ALL discussions by voted-in members should be done right here on the fourm. Don't ask shareholders to install telegram, learn slack or whatever new trendy tool comes out.
 
Customer service and transparency are imperative, especially in this crypto-space, it's a major learning curve for people. Make it easy for the newcomers!
 

transparent debate among our elected reps is what the masses demand

conducting secret closed door discussions is the fastest way to get voted out

[kenCode]

@jakub
ALL discussions by voted-in members should be done right here on the fourm. Don't ask shareholders to install telegram, learn slack or whatever new trendy tool comes out.
 
Customer service and transparency are imperative, especially in this crypto-space, it's a major learning curve for people. Make it easy for the newcomers!
 
See my threads about NodeBB. Realtime chat and a slew of other cool features can be added right here in an upgraded forum.

[xeroc]

It actually was my idea to start working on the fee schedule behind the scenes.
Apologies to those that felt treated badly be this decision.

My motivation was to develop a sound fee schedule before we reach out to the community about their input.
It never was the idea to develop a fee schedule and vote for it without a larger consent of the community (read: shareholders) but I felt that it is the job of the committee to propose a schedule with reasonable fees. I do see the issue with having most of the discussion in a private Telegram group and I would love to have one or two mailing lists for the committee eventually so that we only need to "organize" via Telegram and don't develop stuff behind scenes ..

[Bhuz]

It seems the current committee is operating exactly as documented.

Well, we are actually  gathering more feedback compared to what the documentation seems to says.

We gathered feedback before and during the creation of our proposal.
We are going to gather other feedback after the proposal will be given to the public for listen to their thoughts/ideas/comments etc.

Only after that, we are going to approve the proposal (probably modified with community input) and let the stakeholders do their job with the voting process.

[Stan]

[I wish @bytemaster could comment what his intentions were when he was designing the whole thing.

As documented in https://bitshares.org/technology/delegated-proof-of-stake-consensus/

Delegates are elected in a manner similar to witnesses. A delegate becomes a co-signer on a special account that has the privilege of proposing changes to the network parameters. This account is known as the genesis account. These parameters include everything from transaction fees, to block sizes, witness pay, and block intervals. After the majority of delegates have approved a proposed change, the stakeholders are granted a 2 week review period during which they may vote out delegates and nullify the proposed changes.

This design was chosen to ensure that delegates technically have no direct power and that all changes to the network parameters are ultimately approved by the stakeholders. This is done to protect the delegates against regulations that may apply to managers or administrators of cryptocurrencies. Under DPOS, we can truly say that the administrative authority rests in the hands of the users, rather than either the delegates or witnesses.

Thus, by posting their opinions (an exercise of free speech) in a way that the blockchain can understand them, the parameters of the system get set without anyone having formal control.  Shareholders decide whose opinions the system values.

And public discussion among all opiners helps shareholders do that.

[Bhuz]

For me it's a loose collection of people, each of the them represents some kind of unique political view & experience and they do not really need to work together, apart from coordinating the usage of the mulit-sig account they share and control. All they need to do (free of charge), is discuss things publicly between each other, so that voters can form a view who is right and who is not. This way it's more like a panel of independent judges, each having his own wisdom.

Yes, and tell me: does the name "bitcrab" say something to you?

Because last couple of threads he make, ended up with just endless personal attacks.
People went crazy without a real reason, without trying to read and really understand his points.
I only saw a bunch of closed-minded/i-know-it-alls people insulting him without bring real and constructive arguments on the topic.
I only saw really stupid statements like: he is going to fork bts, he is going to kill bts, he is going to kill the referral program, he is going to replace all the committee, he is going to replace the witnesses.
Just after couple of minutes from his post, some people opened new threads titled "Please vote out Bitcrab if you care about bitshares" and "OBITS HODLERs, your money is in danger", just because a community member stated his pov. There was not even a proposal attached to his thread.

So, please, you can dream what you want, but try to stick to the reality of this forum.

[jakub]

I'll comment only on one thing, and stop the discussion here.
Clearly, we have very different visions about the committee's role and I don't want to be part of your vision.
If we start treating the committee as some sort of government (even if it's fully controlled by the shareholders) it will end badly IMO.

That would be your interpretation and definition.. not stated fact. I understand that you might perceive a lower transfer fee as a direct threat to your worker proposal, but I have already expressed differing views on that if you factor in other aspects.

Please do not imply that my motivation stems from me "perceiving a lower transfer fee as a direct threat to my worker proposal".
Actually, in my own best interest would be to shut up and hope people don't notice that it's quite likely that 4.4m BTS is going to be wasted.

Whereas you seem to be quite unconcerned about this fact:

This all seems fine.. though your worry over the % based fee has no real reasoning. I understand that it was initially sought out as a means of lower fees, however, if it doesn't get used it really won't have any negative consequence to Bitshares.

I've said what I felt needed to be said, and I'll not post in this thread any more.

[jakub]

I don't really get you here...

Since we are going to public the fee schedule with all of our thoughts and rational conclusions on why we are proposing what we have come up with, what you are saying does not make sense.

If we will present something stupid, flawed, or anything that someone would like to comment, He will be free to point it out.
No one is hiding behind telegram or prevent someone to challenge our arguments.

But we need an argument first, so give us the time we need to be able to make it rational/sound/understandable.

So I guess we have very different visions of the role of the committee.

For you it's some sort of governmental body which works closely together and first achieves a consensus within itself and then announces the outcome of this consensus and asks voters to support this outcome. So it's more like a government which needs to sort things out within itself and then present a holistic solution to the voters.

For me it's a loose collection of people, each of the them represents some kind of unique political view & experience and they do not really need to work together, apart from coordinating the usage of the mulit-sig account they share and control. All they need to do (free of charge), is discuss things publicly between each other, so that voters can form a view who is right and who is not. This way it's more like a panel of independent judges, each having his own wisdom.


I wish @bytemaster could comment what his intentions were when he was designing the whole thing.

Yesterday, when Bunker made his announcement about "the committee working hard behind the scenes", I felt like this was some sort of governmental spokesperson giving a press conference.
If that's what shareholders want, I'm fine with that, but certainly this is not something I'd like to be part of.

[Akado]

Yes but people might not want to use their phone number. On top of personal preference, that's another restriction you're adding to the use of the app, meaning it's one more entry barrier for users. Even though it's something really simple in this case, but still applies.

What I would suggest regarding this convos should be public vs private is having a section on the forum where only committee members can post but every can see the posts. This way they don't loose track of the subject, there's no spam, and everyone can easily see the conversations. Sounds pretty simple. Disadvantage however is it's not as fast as a chat.

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

Several committee members have posted about what they thought about things and have gotten feedback from the community.

I've seen only one case of this: xeroc (not a committee member yet) asking us about the 90/10 split idea.
Other than that, please point me to the relevant threads or I'll say it's not true.

You mean to tell me you haven't seen any posts from any Committee members in any of these threads? These are just a few off the top of my head in the past week..

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21202.0.html
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21314.0.html
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21326.0.html
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21293.0.html

The Committee members are always listening to what community is saying about anything related to fees.. and some of them weigh in on the discussions.... to go by your stated logic any committee members participating in an existing thread started by anyone else just doesn't count.

Oh and one of them WAS started by a committee member... considering your level of activity in that thread I can't believe you can't recall this.

As already noted and as I reminded all proxies today, they are welcome to join us in the telegram chat if they think it is going to provide some additional insights. You ( @jakub ) are already there and have had the option to check in at any time. I encourage all others to join in if they think it is of any value.

Again, I know that and that's not my point.
My point is this: all political discussions belong to the forum. If you are discussing non-political stuff, I'm not interested - you can have them on Telegram or wherever you want.

It would be impossible to have any kind of discussion in a timely manner that isn't hijacked by others. If the level of discourse is to take place among 300+ people at a time we would have no way to stay focused on any matter at any given time.

The idea of negotiated deals is highly unlikely. The idea of certain number of committee members who will vote a certain way only because another committee member has gotten them voted in is more plausible.

So you say it's plausible that committee members back up each other, but at the same time you rule out any negotiated deals between them.
That's an interesting view.

It's not that interesting.. it's just what is possible with the way the system is now.

Yeah.. the committee IS working hard.

Going over line by line every single fee schedule of the entire Bitshares ecosystem is a lot of work.

Discussing the ramifications of every single one is a lot of work.

Having not everyone agree about what each of those fee schedules is meant for and how it should be used is a lot of work.

So when I said they are working hard, it really is an understatement. Some have been more engaged in the process than others. I have found myself spending at least a few hours a day either reading over or responding to matters related to the committee.

That's the thing: I don't want you to work hard.
You are not supposed to, especially if you have an unpaid position.
That's why I said you probably misunderstood the purpose of the committee.

This is what should have happened:
Those of you who feel we need this new holistic approach to fees, should first run a forum thread and present the assumptions & outlines of this approach. Take this chance to argue why this new holistic approach is needed in the first place. Convince others that we need external business rules to be changed before we sort out internal liquidity problems.
Then, if you felt the idea has got some traction, create a worker proposal and reach those two goals:
- prove that your idea has enough support among the shareholders
- get some financing so that you do not need to work for free on every little detail of your implementation

IMO the committee is meant to discuss and make general political decisions, not do the the hard work on a very detailed level. This is what paid worker proposals are for.

Well you seen that one thread already started by bitcrab about 1BTS transfers... tell me.. how do you think the forum handled that? You are saying you want us to do this X 10 now with everything?

As for the paid worker proposal idea.. very unlikely that will ever get voted for given the current climate. You can keep that in your wish list though maybe when we have a $100m market cap. Perhaps then the Asian shareholders would be ok with it.

This forum doesn't represent the shareholders, so I disagree with the notion of it being Parliament. Until we have such a platform then it would make sense. DID YOU KNOW... the Chinese/Asians don't even use this forum.. most of the discussion happens in QQ. More than half of the Committee are there. So how about them?

This forum is the best substitute of a Parliament that we have.
If you want to switch to Telegram, I'm fine with that but then let's move *all* activity there and invite everyone, not just the proxies.
And why the proxies only? If any of you say something stupid, I want tonyk or luckybit or gamey or akado to be able to point it out for everybody to see.

I am pretty sure that every committee member has experienced that nonetheless from all those members. You seem more intent on getting some kind of entertainment factor out of this more of that rather than enabling the committee to have meaningful consultation.

2. I don't understand this in reference to a rebranding of the refer program. If this is regarding fees ok, yes that's what we discuss. We haven't specifically decided anything about rebranding the refer program as far as i know.

The referral program, as we have it now, strictly depends on the flat transfer fee being above certain level.
So if you consider a substantial cut to the flat transfer fee, then you have put RP rebranding on the table.

That would be your interpretation and definition.. not stated fact. I understand that you might perceive a lower transfer fee as a direct threat to your worker proposal, but I have already expressed differing views on that if you factor in other aspects. BM yesterday after dropping the bomb on no fees even went on to talk about % fees still being another 'tool in our box'.

We have had extensive discussions and input about the fees and how they relate to the refer program. Just as we have extensive discussions on every other element and how it might be impacted negatively or positively.

As I've stated above, we should have had these discussions *before* you set out to work on the fee overhaul and we should had have these discussions held in the public domain on the forum.

We did.. the whole forum is always buzzing with ideas and thoughts... as stated above.

We are doing everything based on shareholder feedback.

My impression is quite the opposite.

Who then? I love to know where we been getting all our input from then. Hint.. wasn't the bitcoin forums!

When we share this.. we are AGAIN seeking to get input and feedback from the community. It is going to be VERY difficult because there is going to be a fair number who may simply not bother to look at it all and decide to start things in descension instead of discussion.. because once again.. this forum does not represent the stakeholders.

I will certainly be one of those who will not bother to look into any details of you work *unless* you make a clear argument, why we needed this fee overhaul in the first place and what assumptions you have made.
So you could have saved yourself quite a lot of time and work, if the committee had set out to this task in the reverse order: first arguments, assumptions & outlines, then the actual work on details.

If you want to fold your arms up and say you are not going to look that is your choice. I personally think that's not a good idea and would be counter productive. Also.. if you really do want to stop it from proceeding, you best know what is in it.

On a side note.... This post has eaten up a good hour of my time. If I did this for every single post in the forum in response to one thing or another I would need to make posting in the forum my full time job. If you want Committee members to be fully paid thats up to the shareholders. I think that would be a bad idea personally at this stage.

As I said before, things like this should be paid from a worker proposal, which is also good, as it means they first need the shareholders' approval.
You've turned this process upside down, and now you try to make me feel guilty for your unpaid hours. Not fair.

You are recommending to create a worker then for committee members to spend more time in forums. The Worker feature is not a limitless gravy train for anyone to just reach into. I understand there are misconceptions about its impact as far as this idea of dilution, but the impact of that perception is still real.  Again.. $100m market cap later perhaps this is something to consider.. but I am a little taken aback you feel that the Worker is something we should so freely access for such things.