RE: Stake-weighted voting is a neo-fascist abomination: anti-liberty, anti-equality, anti-humanity
Simulations can be run using neural network models on testnets. There should be a beta interface where the public can also participate in the testnet. There can be a variety of models to test, and any major negative consequences will be immediately obvious. There will, of course, be outlier scenarios that simulations may miss - it's a given; but we shouldn't have to deal with the showstopping issues we have seen in previous hardforks.
If a major change was truly impossible to simulate, I would like to see them done one at a time. Bundling multiple disparate changes into one hardfork is something I will never support again. We have had this approach fail too many times.
And yes, of course, I would be looking to see the results of SMT testnet, which Steemit Inc has announced will run for over one quarter.
Leaving whatabouteries aside, my pledge is a simple one - don't support a hardfork if it bundles multiple disparate changes, with no peer-reviewed simulations and audits done on any of them. It's as simple as that, and I need not discuss it any further. If it turns out simulations are truly impossible, I'll reject the hardfork anyway.
I stand corrected regarding SMT's development. I have seen Steemit Inc looking to hire, and thought witnesses could either join the SMT development team or hire developers to do so; instead of committing the resource of human developers to making changes for the hardfork. Also, do note that this is the first time that the community is developing something, so the separation between Steemit Inc and witnesses/community is new and unclear at this time.
Nevertheless, there's always an opportunity cost. It doesn't have to be SMT. I'm of the belief that these tweaks are a waste of time on a fundamentally broken concept, were the goal to be better rewarding content and engagement as a social network. Were I a top witness, I would spend time and money researching an alternative system. I fully respect witnesses continuing to iterate on existing system, of course. I will dissent, but while we fail to change each others' opinion, we'll just have to agree to disagree and move on.
Your hypothetical neural network models don't exist. They won't be used to test SMTs or anything else. There will be a testnet, but as with previous efforts at a Steem testnet as well as other cryptocurrency testnets, the issue of lack of real economic incentives limits the ability of such a testnet to do much other than serve as a vehicle for functionally testing some aspects of the code (as opposed to how external actors interact with it). I've been involved with numerous blockchain testnets and without exception their usage is never representative of a mainnet with real value attached to it.
On the matter of the proposed economic changes, they are certainly not 'disparate'. They are a package designed to shift incentives in very specific ways. Bundling them is really the only way that makes sense. Indeed some of the changes on their own might well produce worse results than the status quote even if (hypothetically) the underlying theory behind the package is entirely correct and the bundle would work great.
Actually, this is the natural continuation/evolution of a process whereby several community-sourced changes got merged into HF20. That was, to my knowledge, the first time features sourced from outside Steemit Inc. have gone into production, and the current initiative (which may or may not actually proceed) is an effort to take that process that one step further with a community-sourced hard fork proposal (which, indeed, ought to be something that, at least to an extent you might support since it means considering these changes separately from a bunch of other changes being concurrently proposed by Steemit, unlike the way it was done with HF20 or every other hard fork).
From what I have seen, and been told, Steemit's process is very much focused on their own full time employees doing the core blockchain development, in this case SMTs. Much of the progress and process takes place in in private meetings, using internal methodologies in a way that isn't conducive to direct community involvement. As far as I know, none of the witnesses are interested in and/or in a realistic position to consider being hired by Steemit, including several with relevant development skills, so there is no particular overlap here to Steemit's own SMTs development. We have the option to pursue non-overlapping, minimally-disruptive community sourced development, or alternately wait patiently for Steemit to complete their work and package a release for witness consideration. Both are being done to some extent.
I respect your views on not even bothering to make any changes to the existing system even though I don't quite share them.
Yes, I know - simulation, quality assurance and testing processes need to be developed. Frankly, it's shocking they weren't, and explains why after two and a half years the network is more broken than ever. (OK, hyperinflation was worse.) Simulations are never ideal, but they do greatly help develop sustainable, if flawed, systems, that are easier to iterate over. I'm not a software developer, but the same tenets have worked across most professions since the dawn of the industrial age.
As far back as 2016, I have been asking for proper testing processes and peer-review of Steemit Inc's code. If the agenda is to continue whack-a-mole experiments without any evaluatory processes - I suppose it is now time for me to give up and move on. All the best, though, I'd be delighted to be wrong and bidbots dramatically decrease in influence (adjusted for the natural downtrend over the last few months) or disappear in a few months' time.