You are right on the money. How the rules change is very important. Using the scientific method would be an improvement.
If people stop in every weekend and see massive changes to the rules and rewards each time, they are less likely to invest time or money in the project. If past promises are retroactively changed and rewards taken away on a whim, this will also kill any faith in the future of the project. Right now, even I am wondering what the heck is going to change next. Is it even worth posting? voting? commenting? voting on comments? I may have missed the rule change and am out of the loop (again).
There needs to be a clearly posted list of current rules and proposed changes, a much longer discussion phase with more community involvement, and a testing and simulation phase before changes are implemented. If you want a public project to succeed there needs to be some professionally managed change controls put in place, with a process and procedure that is followed each time a change is made.
Like Complexring said, use the scientific method!
I really appreciate both your posts, but I just wanted to say, I don't think anyone is suggesting an arbitrary shifting sands approach. We are in beta which comes with the expectation of adjustment and we are trying to form a consensus on what is the best way to enhance the incentive design for fairness and a model that is sustainably inclusive of what we hope is a massive membership. So if this analysis is the result of a problem which we are rationally trying to resolve to as many people's satisfaction as possible.....there's no need to be concerned that some kind of precedent for changes to incentive design has been made.
Past changes across 3 previous projects are the concern that brings this topic up. Shifting sands is an accurate description...
A more professional change control process is needed.