Author Topic: Things I don't like about the committee  (Read 14222 times)

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Offline Thom

The committee might not get anything done if they don't have a place to talk free of attacks & distractions. And this forum is not the platform most conducive for coming to consensus... but no system is perfect.

Politics is always accompanied by accusations of "backroom deals" and always will be. But you can (1) show respect and trust for people making proposals, and (2) judge them by their results, not personal fears. We CAN help bridge the gap by finding or creating tools that make transparency easier yet more productive (whereas typically transparency and productivity are inversely related, imo).

I was truly impressed by xeroc's effort on the fee proposal. When you compare it to the conversations the Bitcoin community is having, it's clear we are miles ahead, and it's easy to lose sight of that.

I've missed out on a lot of these fee/politics conversations because I've been busy with cryptofresh. I've been working on some experiments that I hope the community will be able to help me with soon.. it's almost ready for testing.. hope you guys will all still be around, lol.

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Offline roadscape

The committee might not get anything done if they don't have a place to talk free of attacks & distractions. And this forum is not the platform most conducive for coming to consensus... but no system is perfect.

Politics is always accompanied by accusations of "backroom deals" and always will be. But you can (1) show respect and trust for people making proposals, and (2) judge them by their results, not personal fears. We CAN help bridge the gap by finding or creating tools that make transparency easier yet more productive (whereas typically transparency and productivity are inversely related, imo).

I was truly impressed by xeroc's effort on the fee proposal. When you compare it to the conversations the Bitcoin community is having, it's clear we are miles ahead, and it's easy to lose sight of that.

I've missed out on a lot of these fee/politics conversations because I've been busy with cryptofresh. I've been working on some experiments that I hope the community will be able to help me with soon.. it's almost ready for testing.. hope you guys will all still be around, lol.
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Offline cube

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I've used the word "rebranding" in this sense: the process of changing a product's purpose or target market .

Use a word loosely may cause confusion and misunderstanding.  If I may ask that you use the word 'repurpose/market retarget' to avoid potential misunderstanding.

If AM/LTM is no longer an attractive choice for non-advanced user, for me that's a substantial change in AM/LTM purpose and target market.

While there is a fee schedule proposed, there is much to be discussed about the structures and incentives of AM and LTM.  We will need input from the referrers.

I am not xeroc and I cannot know his intent.  But in general, each individual has a preference for a communication channel to achieve a specific purpose.  It could be different channels for different purposes.  Whether it is for a real-time discussion, co-ordination or organisation, I think we should let the individual decide what is most suitable for their own needs.
My assumption is that most of your communication stems from the fact that you differ in opinions and try to convince each other. For me, this part of the process belongs to the forum and you should be exposed to full public scrutiny while arguing your cases. All other communication can be wherever you want.

I know that as a proxy I could access your communication if I wanted.
But I also want the best minds on our forum to be able to comment on your arguments, as it often happens that other people expose things I could have missed myself.

Much of the conversations are about clearing doubts,  gathering different POVs, and getting a deeper understanding of the concerns and points raised in the forum.  These conversations are usually real-time and require near immediate responses.  The telegram or similar instant messaging tool is needed for such purposes.  Anything else is just too slow and inefficient.

Once a proposal from the committee is ready, it is posted to the forum for users' comments, feedbacks and new ideas.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2016, 03:10:18 pm by cube »
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Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.

So what's the difference between a proxy and a committee member then?

You are effectively creating an elite of more privileged participants. Privileged to have special access to information and privileged to shape things up before they are presented to ordinary shareholders. This attracts the wrong type of people - those who enjoy power and privileges. Those who enjoy telling others: "we are very approachable".

Horribly wrong.

And unfortunately, xeroc, your initiative to consult political issues like fees with this self-proclaimed elite first, has set a terrible precedent.
I do believe your intentions were good and you only wanted to make the process more efficient - but I think you forgot about much more important principles.

Yes.. I would like to tell everyone we are approachable. At present the precedent set by others here in the forum is to do nothing but complain about it here in the forum.. when in fact Bitshares has a mechanism for taking action.

People in the forum have set as you like to call it, 'a dangerous precedent' for people to falsely believe that if any parameter changes need to be made or considered to bitshares, it must be posted to this forum. If you want to just jibber jab about it it, that is what you do. If you want to take action on something to make a change to bitshares, then make a proposal and/or contact a committee member so that you can present your issue or idea or get help to create a proposal.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging individuals to participate and let them know that it's not in the hands of the committee.. we ARE very approachable in this regard and want everyone to participate in making bitshares better. You want to hate on that thats your choice. Strawman.

There is nothing elite about this.. it's just a function. That's like suggesting devs telling people they are approachable about anything they would like to see happen with Bitshares is elitist. The only one characterizing it as some kind of elitism here is you.

You are choosing to try and warp and demonize what was a simple update that it seems 99.9% of people understood was made in good faith delivering a simple message of 'we want everyones input on fees next week, so watch for it. If you have suggestions, we are listening'.  You take issue with this. Fair enough. Encouraging community participation in fee schedule updates through all channels available should not be what the committee does. Got it. Instead we should just let the forum continue to ramble on endlessly with not actionable proposals. We can then call ourselves Bitcoin. Happy?

What is ironic about this steam of shifting complaints from you is that if I had said nothing at all, and instead just waited till we actually did a forum post which many would not even know about unless they follow every single post here, we wouldn't be getting this berating.

I gave an update on the hangout to ensure that we get the most community input/participation possible. You are instead saying it is better we say nothing at all, and do nothing. Then somehow, perhaps with some pixie dust and magic, an organized well thought out and analysed fee schedule will emerge via an outdated discussion forum that only has a fraction of a fraction of the community actually participating, english speaking only (wow that sounds really elite.. imperial really), and it isn't the major stake holders.

Create a Worker and get it voted in to make that the process to replace the committee if this is the way you believe shareholders want things.

The Worker system is very approachable for proposals (GASP IT'S ELITE TOO!  ;)). I can't say the same for the forum however. Good luck on that front.  :-X

Or you can create a new forked network with your ideas on governance. Wait, that would make you the elite then. Ug, it's an endless loop that nobody wins it seems.

Whatever you do.. just do it. Don't let your dreams just be dreams!
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Offline bitcrab

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surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.

So what's the difference between a proxy and a committee member then?

You are effectively creating an elite of more privileged participants. Privileged to have special access to information and privileged to shape things up before they are presented to ordinary shareholders. This attracts the wrong type of people - those who enjoy power and privileges. Those who enjoy telling others: "we are very approachable".

Horribly wrong.

And unfortunately, xeroc, your initiative to consult political issues like fees with this self-proclaimed elite first, has set a terrible precedent.
I do believe your intentions were good and you only wanted to make the process more efficient - but I think you forgot about much more important principles.

please stop demonizing committee.

if you are talking about to increase the transparency of committee discussion, I agree, If you are saying that there should be no space for inner discussion in committee, I totally disagree.

take xeroc's proposal as an example, anyway he need to draft a proposal first, and consult committee members first could get some feedback that can help to refine the proposal before asking feedback from the whole community, I don't see any problem here.   
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Offline xeroc

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And unfortunately, xeroc, your initiative to consult political issues like fees with this self-proclaimed elite first, has set a terrible precedent.
I do believe your intentions were good and you only wanted to make the process more efficient - but I think you forgot about much more important principles.
I totally agree here and learn my lesson :D
Though, I don't think that forums or slack is a good fit for it .. I'd rather go for mailing lists

jakub

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surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.

So what's the difference between a proxy and a committee member then?

You are effectively creating an elite of more privileged participants. Privileged to have special access to information and privileged to shape things up before they are presented to ordinary shareholders. This attracts the wrong type of people - those who enjoy power and privileges. Those who enjoy telling others: "we are very approachable".

Horribly wrong.

And unfortunately, xeroc, your initiative to consult political issues like fees with this self-proclaimed elite first, has set a terrible precedent.
I do believe your intentions were good and you only wanted to make the process more efficient - but I think you forgot about much more important principles.


« Last Edit: February 08, 2016, 11:13:52 am by jakub »

Offline betax

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I think all the discussions should be on a open forum and recorded. Everyone should be able to participate,  so they should not synchronous but asynchronous. Slack / Forum is ideal for this, if not we are creating subgroups of people with a greater preference.

Note: I am the first one that loves to have a chat with everyone (as some of you know).
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Offline xeroc

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The thing is, you do not need to seek consensus of the existing committee members, if you have an idea for a committee proposal. Just make the proposal and if there are some committee members who obstruct it but the majority of shareholders like your proposal, it will go through as those committee members blocking it will be voted out.

For that reason I do not understand why xeroc has decided to consult his initial ideas about the new fee schedule only with the current committee members. There is absolutely nothing special about them. They try to make it look like there is something special (e.g. BunkerChain making his mumble "announcement") but it's a myth I wanted to debunk.

The committee member position is extremely transient for a good reason: so that nobody holding this position feels important and has illusion of any power, including emotional power.

surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.

My assumption was that committee members have more technical understanding of the technical internals as well as the business part of BitShares as a whole. If I had put MY(!!) proposal forward to the whole community, I would have had to go through dozens of pages of posts from people "proposing this change" proposing "that change" yada yada ...
Thus, I took the approach to go the easier route FOR ME (alone) and consult the committee members about this proposal first (I was not a committee member at that time!). Next, I educated them about all the individual fees and had them understand the restriction we are facing (keeping Referral program alive and reducing the fees, as well as others).

Essentially, it was WAY easier for me to get a few people understand the whole concept first and have them educate every other community member (read: shareholder) later.

Again, this is *NOT* about making a decision, but putting together a fee schedule as well understanding as many consequences of fee changes as possible.

Offline bitcrab

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The thing is, you do not need to seek consensus of the existing committee members, if you have an idea for a committee proposal. Just make the proposal and if there are some committee members who obstruct it but the majority of shareholders like your proposal, it will go through as those committee members blocking it will be voted out.

For that reason I do not understand why xeroc has decided to consult his initial ideas about the new fee schedule only with the current committee members. There is absolutely nothing special about them. They try to make it look like there is something special (e.g. BunkerChain making his mumble "announcement") but it's a myth I wanted to debunk.

The committee member position is extremely transient for a good reason: so that nobody holding this position feels important and has illusion of any power, including emotional power.

surely it's needed to seek consensus inside committee, and there is nothing strange for one committee member to consult other committee members before/after consulting the whole community.

committee members are similar to senators.
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Offline puppies

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Offline kenCode

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I don't think that I am more important than any one else

You are not your f*cking khaki's! ;)
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Offline puppies

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I also think that the committee should not be viewed as a single monolithic entity.  I am an individual not 1/11th of the committee.  I don't want any power over any of you, and I don't think that I am more important than any one else.  I will continue to discuss policy both in the forum, and in telegram.  The incredibly slow nature of getting anything done frustrates me to no end, and removing the ability to talk in telegram would slow things down even more.  I have no objection to someone posting all telegram chat in a thread here on the forum,  just post it all, and don't cherry pick things out of context. 

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Offline abit

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I am sure coindesk news and bitcointalk will love this characterization.
I remember someone said that any news in coindesk or bitcointalk about BitShares are good news.
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Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

Ok.. if all it takes is for me or other people in the committee to say that the hard work we do is just like the hard work of every other shareholder or is otherwise of no import what so ever then fine. I totally agree.

I think you are debunking a strawman.. but if that's what it takes to end this showboat minutia then fine. I haven't seen an avalanche of people chiming in agreeing with how you choose to interpret things.

Nothing I said in my update was out of line or untrue or whatever conspiracy insert here thing.

Over the past week there was tons of discussion if you call it that over fees and all I was there to do was let everyone know the committee heard and wants everyone to participate next week in further review. Unless you have a problem with progress this is all good news.

Otherwise all the discussion you want to happen in the forum just results in a lot of jaw - jacking and dissatisfied shareholders if the committee choose to just sit on our hands and wait for a proposal.

A proactive forward moving and thinking  committee is an asset to Bitshares.

What I am getting from this though is we should not be thinking. We should be monkeys that push a button based on some segment of shareholders whom we really don't even know why they voted for us. Again though this is counter intuitive to attracting the best minds. This seems to be part of your mission to debunking the unimport of the committee or it's members contributions. No problem just be sure when ever the committee does anything to remind everyone that the Bitshares committee are just monkeys. I am sure coindesk news and bitcointalk will love this characterization.
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