very, very very good idea!

https://steemit.com/tag/@luminousvisions/safe-steemit-1-day-voting-moratorium-for-the-whales

I'm an investor, I already bought Steem!

and I'm actively working on a solutions, I did this;
https://steemit.com/bounty/@luminousvisions/there-s-no-flow-in-steemit-bounty-opportunity
and just last night I did this;
https://steemit.com/steemit/@luminousvisions/little-baby-dolphin-goes-to-steemit-school

so, if dandy dan would have taken the effort to see who I am first, he would have known I did this for steemit's best self interest!

the biggest problem with steemit is perception, and comments like mine being downvoted by dandy dan himself is the exact opposite of what we need

take a look here;
https://steemle.com/charts.php?charts=posts

it's going down ... why is that? is it because I used bold in my comment or because there's something fundamentally going wrong with steemit itself? I'm willing to bet it's not me using bold in the comments that's causing steemit's crash ... 

don't worry, I'm not mad, I understand you're playing devil's advocate ... I'm just making my case, nothing personal ... I'm not like dandy dan ... I will not downvote your comment, but simply answer it ... you know, like grown up's do ... 

so ... now I'm going to work on the post I'm writing about all this ... 

I'm an investor; I'm defending my investment, while dandy dan is squandering it!

As a potential investor, which I have talked about many times, I find the fact he/she was downvoted, on this "Freedom Loving" platform, much more upsetting than her comment.

or ... it's in fact a good idea, be it poorly presented, but no matter what it is ... it's not a reason to downvote me!

I agree it was a bad idea, and I'd say the same even if I were a minnow. I disagree it should have been downvoted.

This is how I see Dan's down vote as well. Look at it from his perspective: he is just curating to mold the platform into something that represents his principles. That's what we should ALL be doing. 

Arbitrarily restricting the voting power of whales IS theft, it's not *like* theft. They earned that SP either through investing, for being here early or curating. Why take away their incentives? Aren't they the same incentives for everybody? Your comment (if implemented) guts the principles described in the whitepaper, or at the very least disrupts and imbalances them. 

I like this article, it is open, direct and sounds similar to discussions I've heard in the BitShares community. I know transparency is important to Dan, but I agree he hasn't figured out how to balance the interests of all parties (investors, developers, user community) **yet**, and I do hope he figures it out soon; I don't want steem to fade away b/c he or Ned can't delegate to a PR team to inform the community or use it to monitor the pulse *of*  the community. 

An advisory board comprised of reputable, carefully chosen members of  the community would be very useful for communications in both directions, from the community to Steemit leaders AND as a mechanism to explain the rational of decisions made by Steemit to the community.

I sure hope Dan & Ned seriously take some time to reflect on this open letter and the comments people are making about it. I think some type of advisory board is a good idea. I suspect Ned & Dan may think that somehow gives away too much control of the direction the platform is headed. But that is an overly fearful position to take IMO. The concept is an *advisory* board, meaning it provides advice, not dictate policy. Such a board is not a matter of control, it's a matter of a better management structure to supply quality information to decision makers, who are not obligated to follow it. If they choose not to follow it I would hope their rational would be explained. That's very important also.

In early 2015 a marketing advisory board was suggested to help Dan promote BitShares more effectively and help him review and edit Dan's disclosures so they wouldn't have such a sharp, dramatic affect on investor attitudes OR the trading value of BitShares. Stan + Dan's approach to that suggestion was to put the responsibility of selecting such a board of advisors onto someone else, rather than seriously look into who would be qualified to serve in that role themselves. Ultimately no action was taken.

Do note however that unbeknown to the vast majority of the BitShares community during that time, the totally new graphene architecture was under development, and they didn't want that information leaking out. An advisory board might have compromised that. Still, the transition from the 0.9.x version to 2.0 was not handled well at all IMO, tho ultimately 2.0 did become a reality, or steem wouldn't exist today. 

I sincerely hope Dan will learn how to manage his team better and balance the often contrary interests between the parties involved.

@samupaha

You said:

>  As you probably know, @dantheman is libertarian who hates theft, so it's not a surprise that he downvoted you.

But why do we have to put words into his (Dan's) mouth to justify his actions?  This lack of communication is likely a factor in the failing confidence within, and falling price of, Steemit/ Steem, as the original poster (@steemship) has so clearly demonstrated.

We need an open discussion about this most important topic of how to more evenly distribute voting power, and/or if such an action is necessary, if for no other reason than to quiet some of the fears regarding apparent weaknesses of the Steemit system, which have only become more pronounced over time and amplified by the lack of clear communication, from the top, about possible solutions.

Silence isn't the answer here, nor is stubbornness.  Trust is built through transparency and by consistently demonstrating that care is taken to the considerations of all involved/ invested.  The block-chain that runs Steem is one layer of transparency, but the more more important layer - the people who control the hard-forks - are not forth-coming with any kind of clear plan, nor demonstrating to me in any way that they have any care beyond their own wallets.  

If you ask me, Dan's recent actions - the proposed hard-fork, with seemingly little concern for the generally bad review that it received from the community and his childish/ cowardly/ unprofessional way of dealing with constructive criticism/ alternate approaches - reeks of your typical penny-stock CEOs.  It appears to me that every decision coming from the top is aimed at protecting themselves, even at the cost of strangling the smaller investors.  But maybe it only appears that way because they've failed to accurately communicate their intentions.  Ideally, we wouldn't have to speculate about such things, especially when considering that these "policy makers" are running a social media network.  Oh, the irony.

hahaha ... really?

you totally missed the point I was making; it would be better of those whales were to stop voting, but ... because nobody upvotes interesting comments, I turned it into a sensational slogan and ... it worked!

As a Libertarian, I think that is extremely lame, instead of downvoting the comment he could have taken 2 minutes and typed his POV.  In this platform that is silencing.  He can't take the time to tell her why?

How can you be so stupid?????
Strong independent woman?

I know exactly why my comment was downvotes; dandy dan is scared!

this article calls for somebody to step up and take over ... I'm that person!

This while there's no need to actually reduce any of the whales steem power, they just need to stop voting ... but catchy slogans pull more attention than rational explanations ;-) 

#### think about it ... imagine that for the next 100 days anybody with more than 100k steem power would  vote at max 1% vote power, so they still get to play, but without skewing the results ... what would happen? the votes of the dolphins with 1k to 100k would go up ... significantly, enough so to fix the problem!

so, although I might have said it somewhat crue at first ... the principle behind it, would in fact solve the problem

yet ... dandy dan downvoted it ...  no wonder we have a problem ...

I tried to reduce my power setting on that vote to get closer to zero (but still positive) but I ran into an issue I have intermittently where the site stops responding to my votes altogether, so I left it. What a pain.