RE: Why I'm In Favor Of Witness Vote Decay

[timcliff]

The fact that you are the only top witness who chose to chime in is utterly disconcerting to me.

It has kind of already been said in the other replies, but your post is not the first time this has been brought up. It had been discussed many times before, in a lot of other places. Most witnesses have expressed their views on it in one way or another.

Comments

[teamsteem]

1. Do you know where witness stand on that issue?
2. Don't you think it would be quite important to add this feature as quickly as possible?
3. Are Steemians supposed to trust that this feature will be added in the future when it will become harder to be voted in?
4. Shouldn't a chart of where witness stand on that issue be compiled?

1. I don't know for most witness and I don't know any easy way to verify.
2. Yes.
3. No, if this feature is not worked on now, this is a concerning thing.
4. Yes.

[timcliff]

1. Are you familiar with the term "house whip" in politics? (If not, look it up.) It is basically the person in charge of keeping track of how everyone is voting on an issue, and dealing with all the conversations with each of the members in order to get something to pass. That job is a lot of work! I'm not trying to be a jerk or dismissive of your legitimate concerns, but why should I do all this work of researching all of the witnesses positions for you on an issue you find important? If it is important for you, then do the homework to find out what you need to know. (By the way, the approach you have been taking on stuff like this is not going to be very helpful in terms of you getting what you want from other people. You are starting this whole thing off in a combative "us vs. them" mentality.)
2. I support it, but I do not see it as a pressing priority. I would vote for it if it was implemented in a way I support, but I'm not going to advocate for it to be pushed higher priority than it already is, because in my view there are a lot more pressing issues that we have in front of us at this point in time.
3. I'm not sure I understand the question. If your theory is that there is a conspiracy among the top witnesses to prevent this feature because we fear getting voted out, I would strongly disagree with that assumption. Myself and the other witnesses I have talked to would support it if we felt it was best for the platform.
4. See 1.

[teamsteem]

By the way, the approach you have been taking on stuff like this is not going to be very helpful in terms of you getting what you want from other people. You are starting this whole thing off in a combative "us vs. them" mentality.

I'll give you this one at least partially. It wasn't my intention and I can understand why people feel like it. Maybe my title should have been Are you for witness vote decay and that would have been already better. I considered it at some point.

That said, I've never asked you to do any work. I'm sorry you feel this way. My post would have been a good opportunity for the witnesses to make their stance known. It would also have shown they care, even though them not saying anything doesn't mean they don't care and I'm fully aware of this.

I'm concerned vote decay or vote renewal isn't part of the next hardfork. Do you have any idea how long would it take to be coded?

Like I've said in the post, the integrity of who decide of what hardfork gets passed is at stake. The more we wait, the more it will be difficult to pass vote decay/renewal.

There is no need for a conspiracy and I've never implied such a thing. The fact is that sometimes human act selfishly. In fact, selfish behavior is more often than not, the most expected behavior.

Cryptocurrencies help us get rid of some of that trust inherently needed in conventional and outdated financial exchanges. This trust we have to put in others is unreliable. I'm even unreliable to myself sometimes so I don't expect 100% reliableness from others. Doing otherwise is pure insanity.

I want to limit this need for trust or make it so that people can more easily be held accountable for their actions, just like your support to vote renewal seem to imply.

Take care Tim! I'm passionate about Steem but I must not lose sight of being passionate about people and making them feel good about life.

[timcliff]

That said, I've never asked you to do any work. I'm sorry you feel this way.

The comment about "work" was in reply to your request to provide a list which witnesses were for/against the change.

My post would have been a good opportunity for the witnesses to make their stance known.

Sure, but why should they spend the time to do this on your post if they have already done so? Should witnesses be expected to re-iterate their stances on issues every time a user writes a post about the topic?

I'm concerned vote decay or vote renewal isn't part of the next hardfork.

I could easily come up with a list of 50-100 changes that the platform "desperately" needs in order to succeed. This one is in there somewhere, but I would not put it in the top 10.

Do you have any idea how long would it take to be coded?

Probably only about a day or two of coding effort. Coding is only 5% of the battle though. There is a very long process (with lots of negotiation) in terms of getting a change merged into the official repository (by Steemit, Inc.) and included in a hardfork. I would estimate the probability of success in terms of someone being able to get this into production before SMTs launch at less than 1%.

Like I've said in the post, the integrity of who decide of what hardfork gets passed is at stake. The more we wait, the more it will be difficult to pass vote decay/renewal.

This goes back to your premise that witnesses will not vote for the change in the future because of a conflict of interest. I disagree with that premise.

I will add too, that the majority of large stakeholders who are currently voting for witnesses (@pumpkin, @clayop, @smooth, @blocktrades, etc.) are still actively participating in the witness voting process. Maybe there are some larger stakeholders that have truly checked out and are no longer using their active key (idk, I don't have data on everyone) but I doubt that getting this change in now going to have any significant impact on the current witness votes. In my view, it is mainly a protection against a future (hypothetical) problem where a large stakeholder looses their key, dies, or abandons the platform for some reason with their witness votes still in place.

[teamsteem]

The comment about "work" was in reply to your request to provide a list which witnesses were for/against the change.

I've never asked that.

Sure, but why should they spend the time to do this on your post if they have already done so? Should witnesses be expected to re-iterate their stances on issues every time a user writes a post about the topic?

I've never implied such things.

I could easily come up with a list of 50-100 changes that the platform "desperately" needs in order to succeed. This one is in there somewhere, but I would not put it in the top 10.

Thanks for letting me know your opinion.

Probably only about a day or two of coding effort. Coding is only 5% of the battle though. There is a very long process (with lots of negotiation) in terms of getting a change merged into the official repository (by Steemit, Inc.) and included in a hardfork. I would estimate the probability of success in terms of someone being able to get this into production before SMTs launch at less than 1%.

Cool! I'll try to see if there are some stuff I could do to increase those chances.

This goes back to your premise that witnesses will not vote for the change in the future because of a conflict of interest. I disagree with that premise.

It's a possibility. You can't deny it. I haven't said they won't. I said it's a possibility. It's a non-negligible one with high very repercussions.

Maybe there are some larger stakeholders that have truly checked out and are no longer using their active key (idk, I don't have data on everyone) but I doubt that getting this change in now going to have any significant impact on the current witness votes. In my view, it is mainly a protection against a future (hypothetical) problem where a large stakeholder looses their key, dies, or abandons the platform for some reason with their witness votes still in place.

We mostly agree. This change is mostly for protection but it surely isn't an overrated feature. What if Freedom lost his ability to vote? No matter how small the chances are of this to happem, this isn't negligible. This would be very bad. And there would be no way to know if they have lost their ability to vote.

[timcliff]

If pumpkin (or another large stakeholder) hypothetically became inactive tomorrow I would predict that this change would become more of a priority, and would be more likely to pass.

I do agree that there is always a possibility of conflict of interest getting in the way, so in that sense there can be an argument to do it sooner rather than later, but my personal view is that that chance is quite low. The biggest thing standing in the way of the change (based on my understanding of the situation) is just the list of other things that need to get done.

[teamsteem]

Thanks for those inputs. I really appreciate these.