RE: A Strong Recommendation For Steemit's Next Hardfork: Anti-Spam Protocol...
We agree on a few clear points:
(1) spam is bad.
(2) whenever rewards are allocated to spam comments, the Steem network gets weaker.
(3) we should use the best tools available to ensure that (2) does not happen.
It's not a question of whether or not spam is good. It's a question of what the right tools are for the job.
What percent of the community (or percent of stake) should be required to agree before we hard code censorship into the protocol? I'm trying to understand how this process is different from one that could lead to censorship based on, for example, political ideas.
While it may seem strange to compare banning spam to banning ideologies - we've seen a similar path towards censorship in history regarding centralized networks (i.e. Government) - can we be sure the same thing won't happen on a decentralized network?
hmm... there are definitely alot of important issues related to governance coming up here. and undoubtedly, even if the whole premise is to be working towards complete decentralization, there's gotta be some form of governance...
extending beyond this one issue of spam, this does raise some good questions along the lines of "how can consensus be reached on key decisions that need to be made for the protocol to upgrade and community to advance?
truthfully, I don't know how the decisions have been made to date. there have been multiple hard forks - though what has been the process for determining what gets coded into those updates?
I'd guess that most people on the site have no clue either.
So, who is making those decisions? And if more users were to know how the process occurs, would they be freely open to step in and participate?
this might seem like a bit of a diversion, though I feel as going through this that there is a point emerging I didn't expect: there is no ideal of decentralization that can ever be fulfilled to the full extent of the ideological epitome. somewhere, someone is making decisions to drive forward the protocol. that's NOT decentralized. perhaps to some degree, as it's kind of democratic if anyone can step in and join the process. But, the majority of people won't. so there will always be some degree of centralization of decision-making as a byproduct of the way it has to be...
of the thousands of users on here, I'm guessing only a few dozen really know how they could get active in such decision-making processes. and even if ALL were to know, probably only a fraction would get involved.
nonetheless, decisions have to be made. perhaps the more people that get involved, the closer to "decentralization" we'd move.
(and maybe that'd be part of the case for futarchy - as little as I know of it, it seems there is some part of it relating to voters being invested in an outcome. or perhaps, there could be some sort of incentivization offered for users to participate in a voting process to help with the decision-making processes, thus moving closer towards that decentralization ideal.)
man, this feels like one of the most scattered comments I've ever written here. lol. as proving - not a simple, straightforward matter...
Yeah totally, it is important that as many users as possible understand how these decisions are made. To my understanding, it is the top witnesses who ultimately control the power to enact hard forks. I believe they are the ones who have the discussions, sometimes "behind closed doors" to some extent, that affect us all.
Perhaps some more research is in order, so both of us can figure out a bit better what the hell is going on here?!
Cheers dude, it was good to discuss this with you.