One side note on @thecryptodrive proposal: it is certainly helpful as some rough gauge of sentiment, but it's not exactly a great one, because the SPS was built to distribute funds among competing projects, not to get political consensus on hard forks. Originally, I was thinking it could be useful for that as well, but it clearly doesn't work that way. For example, I can't vote "against" this proposal except by voting for the "refund proposal", which would cutoff real funds being paid to active workers, which I would prefer to avoid.
If we do want to get a better polling of stake-based opinion using the SPS, the solution is to create two proposals: one "for" and one "against" during the same time period, then let voters vote on the two competing proposals. With such a method, it would also be good to set a "determination" date at which the two vote counts would be compared, to measure prevailing opinion. Both proposals should also be created at the same time, to give each opinion equal time to accumulate votes.
At last, someone answered my question and provided a solution just as my temperature was approaching critical. I find this place so confusing!
The for and against convention is a good idea, though I don't think a set "result" date is really needed. The purpose is really to get a 'sense' of stakeholder sentiment and that changes over time too. Even if the 'result date' says one thing, by the time a fork got implemented, deployed and was ready to activate, stakeholder consensus could be different. IMO, if the balance of sentiment is so close that it requires a careful rule to determine the winner, there is no real consensus either way and it probably makes sense to continue working to try to build one.
Yeah I agree with some of the comments about SPS not being an ideal polling system, but it is the best we have and creating something only a little bit better would be a lot of work for a small payoff. It would also risk having even lower participaton by splitting up attention into more and more separate voting systems.
I agree a result date isn't strictly needed, I just think it could be a useful way to have a clear point in time from which to discuss the results, mainly one that is not too early.
As far as consensus changes after that point, I agree they shouldn't be ignored. I almost said similar things in my original comment, so I'm glad you brought this up. Instead of calling it a determination date, maybe it's better to phrase it as an initial consensus date.
"Initial consensus date" makes sense. It is somewhat similar to having a delayed start date on funding, to give people a chance to get votes in place first.
Yes, I also think it's "good enough" with the "two proposal" method. Good enough because a) it's non-binding to begin with and b) because I agree it's not worth the effort to create something better.
@thecryptodrive, would you be willing to make a mirror SPS proposal to your 4-week one, so we could collect stakeholder votes against the change?
IMO it would help reduce confusion to make the proposal look as much like the other one as possible, except being against the change rather than for it.
Clearly the "for" proposal has a head start in terms of gaining votes, but over a bit of time we should be still able to assess the voting to a large extent, even if not perfectly.
I'm am somewhat concerned that without a clear method of voting/polling, the issue will be clouded by: a) people making the most noise in threads being given undue weight relative to stake, and b) the views of people who are less comfortable following and participating in discussions in English not being considered, even if they may have large stake.
yeah sure
Exactly. This system clearly is not designed or effective for voting on whether or not a change should be added to an upcoming HF, or anything else where we are striving for consensus. This is simply tracking whether or not there is enough support for something to get the funding it needs.
Whoever thought of a voting system where you really only get to vote "yes"...
The below mentioned two proposals at least allows for disagreement, but without linking the two proposals, most people would probably only see one of them anyway.
I think the two proposal idea is adequate, if not ideal. It might get messy if there were a really large number of proposals, but with the current number, I think it's a workable method for now.
Agreed, I am not a fan of using the SPS as a polling system. Two proposals would be better, but I think there is still network effects of people who look at the proposals and vote the higher one without even knowing about the lower.
A small tweak could be made, probably even without any blockchain-level changes (only UI), to tag the two proposals as alternatives with some metadata and display them together as such.
We can't upvote/downvote a steemit post?
You can as far as I know.
If you mean position on the steemit.com page, I think not. It's probably locked there as a featured post or sometihing. But only if using steemit.com. With other UIs that's probably not the case.
I was meaning as a way to measure support for proposals.
Downvote if you are against adoption.
There is no downvote against proposals. It was originally envisioned as a funding system and the way it works for funding is everything above the return line gets funded and anything below the return line does not.
Since it is now being used for polls, we have decided to promote a convention where there is one proposal FOR and one AGAINST. An AGAINST proposal was added for the 4-week change, so people who oppose the idea can now vote directly against it.
Good thinking, still seems simpler to use a post instead of a proposal.
Though that would result in autovoting conflicts, I'm sure.
Steem on.