"Our Corrupt Sense of Fairness" or Steemit's Incessant Rule Changes?
This is a reply to Dan's "Our Currupt Sense of Fairness" post.
Disclaimer : This is probably a horrible analogy, but don't fret, if enough of you say so I will simply change my mind and rewrite this to please you! < / sarc>
I often wonder, would there be as much complaining at Steemit.com if the rules didn't change every few weeks?
When playing chess you rarely, if ever, hear anyone complaining that the rules aren't fair. Probably because the rules were created and have remained the same for many, many decades. You know what you're getting into going in and you know that you can't change the rules mid-game to suit yourself.
With Steemit, this is not the case. If someone doesn't like something, they simply post a complaint and if they can garner enough upvotes there will likely be a hard fork to calm and sooth their complaints away.
The rules have now changed and now a new group of complainers is born!
And the cycle continues on a monthly basis it seems. Sure I get the fact that people take advantage of "rules" here on Steemit and that's the reason given for the rules being changed, but is that really any different from playing chess against someone who knows how to castle versus someone who doesn't?
I've castled against new chess players and heard, "you can't do that!". Au contraire my noob chess playing friend, yes I can and I will ... and you too shall learn the rules of the game and use this maneuver against lesser opponents.
What's the point?
Is there actually a problem with people complaining that things aren't fair or is the problem the fact that the rules of Steemit change every few weeks; before everyone has had a chance to adapt to the existing rules and learned to maneuver accordingly to their advantage?
Perhaps the persistent rule changes at Steemit.com has created this seemingly entitled attitude of, "I don't like the rules, so I'll just complain until they are changed because I'm not a winrar!". Or perhaps not.
What do you think?
While I don't like constant rule changes, I do think that they have been a necessary groping towards what is workable and sustainable (and perfectly understandable for a platform still in beta).
And, agreeing with @innuendo, it probably took centuries for the rules of chess to become fixed and standardized (and chess is a MUCH simpler game than steemit).
I wonder if they were changing the rules every 2-4 weeks initially and doing so without notifying everyone that played? Mid-game someone moves their queen diagonally across the board and captures a piece on the other side of the table.
The opponent is like, "What the fucketh? Thou cannot moveth thy Queen sucheth!?"
In reply, the creator of chess says ... "Dost thou not read ChessHub? I made this change in rules a fortnight ago!"
;)
Bringeth me my Fool! I tire of cold logic!
stop being a sophist just because you are vested, please
Haha I sweareth thou is a jester fit for the Lords court:D
This comment made me laugh so hard. Thy hath done well, good sir.
It's proven that most things in life "ain't fair" and when you add rules out of spite, they usually are not ratified properly. There for making another rule that's being circumvented,or understood better then others. Making that problem of " things ain't fair ".. Again.
whats that? .. another rule that's being changed, and the problem goes on.
Wonderful point Tuck, immaculate
Come on Sir, I expect a little more intellectual honesty from you,
he has a point.
It's seems that everyone agrees changes, especially this early on are fine and likely even beneficial, yet they MUST be made transparently with proper notice to all involved.
This is obvious logic and anything else is quite dishonorable.
Steem is a "game" that has never been played before. Its developers could not anticipate in advance every possible way to game the system, so the rules must adapt to maintain an equilibrium and prevent the game from collapsing. Eventually, like chess and ancient games whose rules evolved over centuries, the rules of Steem will stabilize.
There is very little transparency to these rule changes here on Steemit. How many people were aware that we went from a 12hr payout to 24hr's recently? What other changes have been made and can anyone name them all without going to a 3rd party website?
In every game in existence (afaik), when there is a rule change everyone is made aware of the rule change by an insert placed inside with the game board and it's title reads, "Rules". And generally there will be a section that mentions what rules have changed since the last time the rules were published. On Steemit, we do not get this same transparency.
Currently changes are being made in the dark and 99.5% (best guess) of the platform's users are completely unaware of the changes, many simply do not care ... until it affects them adversely, then they complain. A better way to handle these constant rule changes would be to ...
Post the proposed changes for everyone to discuss openly on Steemit.com and make everyone aware of this post with a notification we all see upon login. This excludes changes to the system that protect us all from vulnerabilities. Those should be dealt with promptly, in most cases, after the code has been reviewed and deemed worthy.
Once a lengthy discussion has taken place and all sides have been heard, that wish to participate, then and only then should the change be implemented. This way everyone has had a chance to review the change, voice their opinion and will know up front what to expect after it's implemented. Even if Dan & Ned decide to do what they think is best, they've at least given everyone else an opportunity to voice their opinion and know what's going to happen prior to the change.
I think that was basically an accident. The release was rushed out because of the mining security issue, which is a good reason for a faster-than-normal release. The rule changes were supposed to come in Hardfork 14, approximately two weeks later. Somehow the 12->24 change ended up in the first release.
In the earlier days things seemed to work better. There were more detailed proposals ahead of time and the release notes were more complete and detailed. I think the team is overworked trying to do too many things at once, and it shows.
I agree with that completely. And thanks for the headsup on why we are now on 24hr again.
But it's all there in Github. I've been following every release for the last month.
But... not everyone is a geek nerd techie programmer like me. A rules change insert, as you mentioned, would be much better (and easier) for the average user for sure.
The fact is, the transparency here is quite amazing, but few have the technical abilities to take advantage of that transparency and fully understand and appreciate the consequences of the code changes prior to them being released. There is a bit of "fast and lose" going on (as @smooth mentioned in their reply as well), but, to me, they have been justified responses to hacks, market liquidity reward issues, and exploitations of the mining algorithm. I'm hopeful things will settle down in the future as the low-hanging fruit gets exploited and repaired.
Good points. Agreed.
Changing the game isn't the problem, it's not being transparent about it and making it clear to new users. For a protocol that's attracting mainstream users that can't scan github, there need to be an ELI5 changelog that covers new changes.
No Sean, I must disagree with you here, whats going on here is abuse,
they set a ruleset to achieve an objective and if that objective is not met, they change the rules
PAY ATTENTION, if the ruleset is not somewhat fixed, there are no rules
the only rules that remain are the objective,
and is thats the case, this will get out of hand. totally out of hand.
This is fascism, authoritarian rule by a few set on an objective,
the rules are irrelevant to them,
Do you get what Im saying?
This is good one!
The issue I have with rule changes is that they aren't happening, but they are often happening much too quickly, and too many rules change at once!
Good science lets you change one 'knob on a console' and then observe how that change affects an experiment. You don't change 5 parameters at once and then accurately determine which of those 5 parameters affects the outcome of the system.
I don't think that's the problem. We're still in beta and iterating quickly is important in the early days. Lack of ability to iterate quickly has slowed Bitcoin down quite a bit.
In my view, the main problem is that the changes aren't being made in a completely transparent way. Sure, everyone can see on Github but Steem is attracting lots of non-technical users. We need a changelog and central repository that has the up-to-date rules so non-technical Steemians can stay in the loop: https://steemit.com/steem/@ntomaino/echoing-tuck-fheman-from-3-months-ago-we-need-a-steem-changelog
make up your fucking mind, they arent happening or they are often happening much too quickly?
would it be that the changes to the rules that would benefit you, are not happening
and the ones that you dont understand are happening too quickly?
Or What?
I should change the first line to :
i.e.
ischanges toisn't.Exactly. You don't have clue which variable is responsible for the outcome you get. Change should be done one thing at time. I can understand fixing multiple bugs at once but I agree with your reasoning regarding adjustment of multiple variables. You just turn your experimental data into garbage by doing that.
Exactly!
I'm not necessarily against them being changed but I think the frequency is perhaps alarming people.
Not only that I think some of them are being pushed through so fast that they have unintended consequences that aren't foreseen.
An example would be the 12 hour voting windows which was changed back to 24.
I suppose like everything there needs to be balance. Going too far either way causes problems.
I also think it might help if there were greater discussion of changes BEFORE they were implemented and not just a single post made by Dan just prior to the change.
Some kind of means of polling the community (in a purely advisory way) might also help to inform decisions - though it could also be a hindrance to progress if used too much.
Another excellent point! Dan's recent voting discussion is a great case in point, first claiming his post had nothing to do with Steemit, while in the background making an overhaul to the entire system on Github without notifying anyone and causing a bit of an uproar when a whale came across the proposed change and code and alerted many of us in chat.
Due to the community responding quickly to the proposed change in code, Dan backed off and decided he needed to rethink the change. What would have happened if the whale (who can identify themselves if they like) had not brought it to our attention in chat? I'm guessing that the code would have simply been forced upon us and another v8.2 or v8.4 scenario would have transpired where we all had to decide which Witnesses to support depending upon who supported the change or not.
But even that is debatable as many believe that to be a Witness you must do whatever Dan & Ned say or you will be voted out. Whether or not that is true has yet to be determined ... or has it? I'm currently under the impression that is the case, if for no other reason that so many of the Witnesses I have talked with feel this is the case; therefore they will do whatever Dan and Ned say is best out of fear they will be voted out.
If I'm wrong, please speak up!
It would not surprise me if that were true in terms of the perception that witnesses have. Were I a witness I would feel wary of offending them in some way.
They have huge influence over the community - I'm not saying they would misuse it but it is something that one must consider. I'm sure they only have good intentions but even the best people can be corrupted by power.
Even putting that possibility aside if they were to express a dislike for someone then I very much doubt they would be able to continue as a witness due to the community almost blindly supporting their opinions.
Just look at all the false hurrahs all those anarchist posts get - I doubt there are that many actual anarchists on Steemit or anywhere for that matter.
For any witness it is a lot of money and power on the platform to lose if you get voted out - that is a strong incentive to toe the line. It is simply human nature.
I discussed this in one of my early posts about whales being like nobility on Steemit.
If regular whales are nobility then Ned and Dan are like the Royal Family in feudal times. They have the power of virtual life or death over people.
Makes sense they (be they witnesses, other whales or just minnows) would not want to disobey their wishes or appear to disrespect them in any way.
I know a few brave souls have done this e.g. @berniesanders - even though I disagreed with his reasons at the time I have to give him respect for having the balls to do it.
I always respect people who put conscience above fear (even if I don't always agree with a particular argument).
Sadly those kind of people are rare nowadays and rarer still on Steemit.
story time?
Let's just say v8.2 would have been very good for me personally (and wang), but ultimately v8.4 was good for everyone.
A perfect example!
I was not even aware that the rule was changed back to 24 hours, but I almost posted the other day questioning why my post were showing 24 hours until payout when it was supposed to be 12 hrs. If Steemit is going to constantly change the rules, at the least let everyone know the rules have changed and let us know on Steemit, not just on Github.
I've seen Dan, far too many times, guide users to Github for updates. We should not be sent to another website to read changes to the system, especially a change like the payout time, much less a website that is not owned and operated by Steemit the company.
This is simply counterintuitive IMHO. I feel that the changes, especially major changes like the payout time, should be posted here on Steemit with the notification system, much like what was used for hack updates. It should be highlighted where everyone will see it upon login and should not be able to be rewarded by upvotes.
Being rewarded for system updates has been a problem for some time and Dan & Ned should cease this practice instead of forcing the hand of a whale who will only be scolded later for reducing or removing the payout for such system change notices. But that's another article entirely. ;)
These people are very shady, I agree
Sorry read your responses in the wrong order (it's late lol). Yes definitely agree about informing people - there should be a channel for this and it seems shady to get rewarded for announcements.
I said on another of Dan's posts that he and the team need to separate their personal accounts from the official account or accounts that are used to inform people of things.
This is not just for financial reasons but to eliminate the obvious signs of conflict of interest. Steemit itself is made up of more than one person (or so I thought) - the current way of doing things makes it look like Dan's personal toy.
That does not give the right impression for a large multinational company (or at least a future one).
I think with hindsight @berniesanders may have been right on that post - the confusion for many of us arose because we sometimes have a hard time telling if something is a blog post or an official announcement.
Anyway sorry I think I'm rambling now because I'm tired. Time for bed I think.
Great discussion though.
Look forward to your post on this matter as I think it needs to be addressed and I would like to comment too.
In a democracy if a group of citizens are against a specific law they can collect signatures to have it change. In many countries gay people can now marry, abortion is now legal and so is medical marihuana; this was all possible because rules were changed.
Yep, and there were open discussions prior to the rule changes and transparency after the rule changes as well. Something we lack here on Steemit unfortunately. There are also so many rule changes at once that we can't measure which change is causing people to complain, which change created a beneficial outcome for a majority and so on.
ok, then you disagree with the lack of discussion before a rule being changed and not necessarily the rules being changed per se.
I'm not a fan of the constant knee-jerk changes. As others have mentioned the Dev's are tweaking so many things at once that in some cases it makes it difficult to determine which tweak is having a desired effect and which is having an adverse effect.
My Theory
They are not giving enough time for one tweak to sink in to everyone before they either change it back (without notice in some cases) or change it to something else. I maintain that this is the reason for the majority of the complaining on Steemit. If the rules were to stay locked in for any extended length of time and let everyone learn and play by the rules for a bit, we would likely see less complaining.
And then all of the other stuff I mentioned on top of that. :)
I'm OK with the rules changing in the early days.
The problem is that the rules are changing and it's not transparent to all. There needs to be a changelog that's easy to track and a central repository where the updated rules are published.
Now, I'm scrambling between Google searches and Github, and it's very hard to know what the updated rules are for things like curating, voting, etc. Rules are so important on this platform and there really needs to be more transparency and clarity for all newcomers.
What are "the early days"? Yes, I know there is a "beta" tag but that is someone's arbitrary decision and we are approaching six months in. That state can't continue indefinitely or it causes more harm than good.
I understand that not everyone was around, but from the very start (mining phase) we were told that very clearly that there would not be many or frequent changes. That was described as an advantage over Bitshares and also as a lesson that had been learned getting this wrong with Bitshares. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well it was really learned.
@sean-king. I agree that catastrophic problems need to be addressed but many (arguably up to 100%) of the changes are not that. They are small tweaks that address various vocal complaints or theoretical or philosophical concerns that may or may not ever matter, and yes as @complexring (and @blocktrades likewise elsewhere) said they are being done without any sort of good scientific approach or method. Not infrequently these changes try to solve one problem by creating one or two more (the original 24->12 change being one simple example). The benefits of these changes need to be weighted against the costs of instability (including the costs of constantly proposing changes even if not adopted) and that balance is out of whack.
Spot on @tuck-fheman
"Early days" is obviously subjective but it often takes startups 2-3 years to find product market fit and get things right.
Crypto projects should be thought of in the same context, imo. The changes must be reasonable of course but if done transparently and reasonably, experimentation is a good thing.
I cannot agree enough! :)
https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@tuck-fheman/steemit-changelog-posted-here
wow 3 months ago! nice :)
That should be the no.1 post on Steemit because it is such an important issue. We can't even upvote it now because the 30 days are up. @tuck-fheman please repost it - it is even more important now.
made a new post alluding to @tuck-fheman's old post
https://steemit.com/steem/@ntomaino/echoing-tuck-fheman-from-3-months-ago-we-need-a-steem-changelog
I can guarantee you after I said it 3 months ago, others said the same thing at least 10 times. They started posting a few updates here shortly after creating the "@steemitblog" account and then it seemed to stop and people were simply referred to Github to read code to see changes. =/
Point being, I don't think reposting it will have any affect on Dan and his decision concerning this practice otherwise he would have made this change, and stuck with it, 3 months ago when it was first brought up.
It's been 3 weeks since anything has come from @steemitblog. But I still maintain that the updates/changelog should be posted as a notification that cannot be rewarded and so everyone can see it upon logging in, during this beta process.
I'd agree there's a problem if the rule changes didn't make so much sense to me. As a programmer, I've looked over every code change release for the past month, and I've been really impressed! I've been reading various books which touch on game theory and evolutionary stable strategies, and I have to to say, the people behind Steemit are pretty freaking brilliant. I run my own software as a service company, and I know how difficult it can be to implement everything you have in mind right away. Reading Dan's posts, I get the feeling much of what we're seeing as far as change goes was already in mind earlier on, just not yet implemented. Yes, community feedback plays a large role (and that's a good thing), but I don't think it's just about people whining. This is a really, really smart community and they come up with really good ideas. I'm happy those with the most influence listen.
i literally got punched in the face once at the WSOP because the "chess hustler" i was playing against had a backer who had never heard of an en passant capture.
Constantly-changing rules are one of the central distinguishing features of a Dan Larimer crypto project.
lol they should issue meta tokens that appriciate in value every time the rules change. Call the calvin balls or something.
I agree
I'd bet it took more than 6 months before the chess rules had settled.
Exactly. Nobody creates a perfect system in one go.
come on...
;)