Apologies, I didn't mean to come off as dismissive at all. I actually wrote that comment in somewhat of a hurry (was leaving the office after a long day).
I agree that it shouldn't be underestimated, and I agree that a group should likely be performed to provide oversight (which is why I mentioned the council idea).
I like an independent 3rd party who make decisions on allocations. The creator, is just that, only creates the bounty. They do not actually allocate the funds.
Ideally you're right, a 3rd party who makes decisions would be nice, but the technical complexities of designing the system or the manpower required to operate it are now 10 fold. It's not really a viable option if I were to build the system.
To counter this idea - I plan on using the bounty system create bounties for my projects. I don't want a council deciding anything, I want to be the one deciding. No offense, but you don't know what's best for my projects. If people don't trust me, then they shouldn't apply for my bounties.
I didn't dive into the community driven awarding aspect for these reasons - my feelings towards it are mixed and complicated. Specifically when I tried to break down to create engineering requirements, I couldn't find a system that wasn't a full time job for many people, that scaled, and/or wasn't abusable.
With the way that the simple dispute system written above works - anyone involved in the bounty can stop the automated process requiring manual intervention. This was the cleanest way I could systemize that actually worked.
I would love to see an idea otherwise though that didn't require a ton of effort on either development or the council :)
No apologies needed!!! This is a good discussion.
You bring up an interesting point. I doubt anyone, myself included, would question your bounties. You have contributed so much to Steemit! Your reputation precedes you. Perhaps that is another angle to explore, the reputation of authors. That could be a mitigating factor against fraud, if incorporated into the system. Just a thought.
A council is a high-resource endeavor which introduces other issues. My brain just works in a way to compartmentalized the assets from potentially malicious instigators. There are always tradeoffs.
The goal is to find that elusive 'optimal' balance.