Changing The FUTURE – “Learning From Our Mistakes“

In order to move forwards we need to LEARN from the mistakes of the past. Instead of dwelling upon the mistakes, we need to FIX what still IS BROKEN so that we do not continue down the same path that we were on before.

Hive has seen some major changes to what we had before, many agree that these changes open the doors to further decentralization and opportunities for public input.

How can we ensure that the needs of this new situation at hand are delivered?

Well, this is where we need to take a look back at what “was” and then FIX IT by implementing the needed improvements/changes.

In this post, my goal is to show the differences in the governance from before the fork (more precisely, from before the sale of Steemit inc.) and now.
& show what is needed for this new decentralized governance to function better.

In order to describe the difference, I will use graphics that I believe are suitable and are recognizable to most. As they depict a parallel to what many people are familiar with and that is “governance” that we see depicted in “parliaments and congresses” from all over the world.

parliaments of the world 1.jpg

So this is what we had;

Steemit Incorporated was at the centre of just about everything as the central body with all the genesis mined/ninja mined tokens under its control:

Then we had the Top 20 witnesses who were the governance and who called the shots as to finalizing any decision by applying the new code and by doing so confirming the consensus.

steem 333.png

The triple S logo of Steem could represent all stake holders aka “Steemians” who too often considered themselves to be “bystanders” or “onlookers” to what the final decisions were, without any insight into anything that was going on and likewise without a means to express their voice. The “Vox Populi” (voice of the people) was definitely not a major player in the process, as we saw in practice all too often.

Then, we had the rest of the witnesses and if applied to the usual graphic it would have looked like somewhat like this:

other witnesses.jpg

However, it didn’t. It looked like this:

no sreach zone steem.jpg

There was absolutely NO effective means for any Steemian or non consensus witness to have an equal right to say anything in what went on.
Hence the crossed out stand where people could have their say.

SO WHAT NEEDS FIXING?
Well, if it isn’t obvious yet, then here it is, again using the same well known graphics:

We no longer have or need a centralized entity as what Steemit inc. was. Since the DAO or what was referred to as the “Steem Proposal System” was coded in, the role of Steemit inc. somewhat became redundant.
We had a means of putting proposals in by anyone and them being voted on as per the ecosystem.

THIS IS WHERE HIVE CONTINUES!
Note: For the purposes of this post, I will use the terms DAO and SPS, simply because most people are familiar with them and the goal here is to get a clear message across with as little confusion as possible.

CURRENT SITUATION IN HIVE.jpg

So we no longer have a centralized entity in the centre of it all, instead we have the coded in proposal system which is voted on by all stake holders.
Yet we still do not have a fair and equal means of presenting these proposals.
Posts on front ends are often lost in the masses and only those that are voted on by people who too often follow each other and vote on each others posts are pushed to the “top of the page” into the “popular” category. Then along with that come the votes looking for added curation, too often via automated voting mechanisms, adding to it all!

We still lack a means for witnesses to have a say without being drowned out by the “popularity contests”.
As depicted in the above picture.

HOWEVER, that is not all, now we do not solely depend upon ‘witnesses’ to present us. We can now as members of the public submit proposals.
Yet, we do not have a means to present these proposals without being affected and drowned out by the current means of publically submitting and presenting proposals.

So this now calls for a new need, a need for a fair and equal means of presentation.

Which would look like this:

HIVE HOW IT SHOULD WORK.jpg

What this would ensure is a fair and equal means of representation for all proposals.
It gives OPPORTUNITY the equality that it so desperately needs for a decentralized governance model to function.

Stake holders should be the centre of everything when it comes to the governance and with the “DAO/SPS” we have a means to ensure that the voice of the people and the input from the people can be a part of the ecosystem. Yet, in order to make this effective, there is a need for a fair and equal opportunity of representation, especially in the smog of all the data (i.e. ‘posts’) that is being flung around all over the chain.

Decentralization is the goal.
So let’s start looking at how to ensure it is implemented in ways that are not divisive, but actually all inclusive, with as much equality of opportunity ensured for each and every individual that makes up a unique part of this society that we call Hive.

Note:
This is a topic that I tried to address within the old ecosystem in which there was a centralized authority/company. As expected, nothing was ever done about it back then. Some of the terms I used back then were not 100% spot on. i.e. I used the term “democracy”, again in my attempts of getting the message across in an effective way and that lead to a “rabbit hole” of “tomatoe vs tomato”. Hence why I left out all the “political” terms in this post.
Yet for reference purposes, here is a link to the post from yonder year, so as to show consistency in attempts of FIXING what needed to fixing.
https://steempeak.com/politics/@jackmiller/understanding-the-importance-and-the-real-roles-of-witnesses

I hope that this topic gets noted and put on the “to do list” of our governance.

As it definitely needs addressing at some time ASAP.
& not get swept under the rug as what was the practice on Steem.

Looking towards a better tomorrow,

Yours truly
@jackmiller