Proposal has been rejected!

Percentage of eligible voters who actually voted = 42.0%

This means that if EVERYONE who voted had ALL voted “YES”, the proposal would still have been rejected.

Percentage “YES” votes (of total eligible votes) = 25.8%

This number is less than 50%; as such, the proposal was NOT ratified. The current governance protocol requires this number to be greater than 50% for a proposal to be ratified.

Percentage “YES” votes (of those who actually voted) = 61.5%

This number is interesting, but irrelevant based on the current governance protocol.

NOTE: As required by @proofofbraionio’s call for proposals (available here), this post has 100% beneficiary set to @pob-fund, is tagged with #pob-proposal, and has two comments to which you are to cast your stake-weighted vote (any upvote amount votes your entire POB stake).

I announced in a post a couple weeks ago my intention to file a formal proposal regarding rules to govern downvoting within the ‘Proof of Brain’ tribe. I have gone through all the comments and have done my best to incorporate constructive feedback. The biggest changes have been restructuring, with additional and expanded definitions, for ease of interpretation. Also, ‘Fair Use Violation’ has been added to the definition of ‘Plagiarism’ and HBD has been included in the definition of ‘de minimus Downvote’. The proposal has three sections:

DEFINITIONS -- defining the key terms
RULES -- detailing the actual ‘rules’ to be enforced
GLOSSARY -- defining ancillary terms

DEFINITIONS

“Proof of Brain” post -- any post placed using the proofofbrain.io front-end or using any of the current “Proof of Brain” tags (e.g. ‘pob’ and ‘proofofbrain’).

“Proof of Brain” comment -- any ‘reply’ made to a “Proof of Brain” post or comment.

Valid Downvote -- downvote of a “Proof of Brain” post or comment for any of the following reasons: [1] plagiarism (requires documentation), [2] de minimus downvote (defined below), [3] failure to properly tag NSFW (not safe for work) content, or [4] any action defined as ‘bad behavior’ via a tribe-approved ‘community consensus’ protocol.

Malicious Downvote -- any downvote that does not meet the definition of a ‘Valid Downvote’.

Plagiarism -- presenting content created by someone else as if it were your own. For purposes of this directive, plagiarism is further categorized as Copy/Paste Plagiarism, Spinning, Fair-Use Violation, and Partial Plagiarism.

Copy/Paste Plagiarism -- copying someone else’s content word-for-word without doing both the following: [1] placing the copied text within quotation marks (or as a block quote) and [2] correctly identifying the source from which the quotation was drawn.

Spinning -- copying someone else’s content by putting it into your own words without attribution (i.e. without identifying the original author and source material).

If you are publishing as a “Proof of Brain” post any of your own original content that was previously published elsewhere, you must identify the content as having been published elsewhere, with citation and/or links to the original source material.

Fair Use Violation -- using too much of someone else’s content (even with attribution) or using someone else’s content without providing your own substantial original content.

This includes merely presenting a ‘translation’ of someone else’s content, with little or no original content of your own.

Partial Plagiarism -- incorporating any aspect of either copy/paste plagiarism or spinning into a document, or deceptively misrepresenting or mis-identifying the original author or source material.

de minimus Downvote -- a downvote that only minimally impacts the author and curator rewards associated with a specific post or comment. ‘Minimal impact’ is herein defined as any downvote that results in a cumulative reduction in author and curator rewards that is less than 2 POB and less than 2 HBD (exceeding either threshold will constitute malicious downvoting).

For example, if someone else has previously applied a de minimus downvote reducing the estimated payout by 1.5 POB, then applying a new downvote that further reduces the payout by less than 0.5 POB would also be considered de minimus. In this specific example, applying a new downvote greater than 0.5 POB would be considered ‘malicious’ (because it resulted in a cumulative reduction greater than 2 POB). However, the original 1.5-POB downvote would still be considered de minimus.
de minimus downvoting can be used for whatever reason, such as a ‘flag’ to alert others to investigate the post, a form of playful banter, a statement of dislike for the post, disagreement with the content, etc. The key is making sure that your downvote does not result in a cumulative reward reduction greater than 2 POB and/or 2 HBD. Also, whereas upvote and downvote values are merely estimates, if you place a de minimus downvote that brings the cumulative reduction near the 2 POB or 2 HBD threshold, it is strongly suggested that you take a screenshot of the cumulative downvote values after you place your downvote, so that you can prove your downvote was de minimus (in the event the originally-estimated values end up being inaccurate).

RULES -- (Proposed Rules to Govern Downvoting within the “Proof of Brain” Tribe)

Malicious Downvoting of any “Proof of Brain” post or comment is hereby prohibited.
- First offense will result in a warning (which will be issued as a comment to the downvoted post or comment -- the offending account will be directly tagged in the comment).
- First subsequent offense (after issuance of a warning) will result in the downvoting account being muted for a period of 10 days.
- Second subsequent offense (after issuance of a warning) will result in the downvoting account being permanently muted. However, if the second subsequent offense (after issuance of a warning) occurs before the 10-day mute period begins, the 10-day period will be skipped and the downvoting account will be permanently muted.
- Suspected alt accounts will be muted as well (e.g. accounts with significant delegations or transfers from the muted account); independent account holders receiving legitimate delegations or transfers from the muted account can appeal by providing evidence of independence relative to the muted account.

GLOSSARY -- (general definitions that might help non-native English speakers and others better understand the above proposal)

Muting -- the ‘owner’ of the tribe (in this case, @proofofbrainio) can ‘mute’ and ‘unmute’ any Hive account at any time. When an account is muted by a tribe, two things happen: [1] anything that account publishes on the Hive blockchain (i.e. a post or comment) will be hidden from view on the tribe’s front-end (proofofbrain.io) (but will still be viewable from other front-ends, such as peakd.com, hive.blog, and ecency.com), and [2] that account will no longer receive author or curation rewards with respect to the tribe’s token (in this case, POB).

Alt Account -- any account that is under the control of the same person. For example, the “Proof of Brain” tribe has two accounts (@proofofbrainio and @pob-fund). Both accounts are under the control of the same person and thus are ‘alt accounts’ with each other. In many circumstances, it is difficult to know whether an account is truly an ‘alt account’ with another. For purposes of this proposed directive, any account that has received significant token delegations or transfers (and vice versa) will generally be considered an ‘alt account’ until evidence or adequate explanation is provided to the contrary.

Community-Consensus Protocol -- At present, the only ‘community-consensus protocol’ within the “Proof of Brain” tribe is the protocol being used to vote on this proposal. It was outlined by @proofofbrainio, the tribe founder, in this post under the heading Moving Forward (reprinted directly below for ease of access):

Anyone can make a proposal for a decision that is to be made and put a “yes” comment and a “no” comment.

Proposal posts must be tagged with #pob-proposal and have a 100% beneficiary to @pob-fund to avoid spamming. A vote on one of the comments at any percentage, counts as a full stake weighted vote. More than 50% of stake must vote on “yes” or “no” to make the decision.

To vote ‘Yes’ you simply upvote (with any amount -- percentage of the upvote does not matter) the comment below that has the heading “Upvote this comment to vote YES for the proposal”.

To vote ’No’ you simply upvote (with any amount -- percentage of the upvote does not matter) the comment below that has the heading “Upvote this comment to vote NO for the proposal”.

You may abstain from voting. Abstaining from voting is essentially the same as voting ’No’, because greater than 50% of the staked POB must vote ‘Yes’ for the proposal to be ratified.

I will update the vote tally below, hopefully on a daily basis. You can change your vote at any time (by removing your original upvote and then upvoting the other comment); however, once the required threshold has been met (with greater than 50% voting ‘Yes’ or greater than 50% voting ‘No’) then this proposal will have been either ratified or rejected. After that point, votes cannot be switched; a new proposal would need to be created to subsequently change the outcome of this particular vote.

If, after the payout window for this post closes, this proposal has not received greater than 50% in either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ votes, then it will expire (which will effectively be the same as if it had received greater than 50% ‘No’ votes).

NOTE: For purposes of the stake-weighted voting, votes will be counted based on the stake of POB ‘owned and staked’ (not delegated) . I will be retrieving those values from the Hive-Engine POB richlist.

I will be using the richlist values from “July 6, 2021 16:00 UTC” until the vote tally approaches 50% ‘Yes’ or 50% ‘No’, at which time I will update the stake-weighted values for the accounts with the largest stakes. Once the total ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ minimum threshold has been reached, I will update all vote values based on the then-current richlist.

FINAL Vote Tally (as of July 14, 2021 16:55 UTC, with total staked POB = 821,327.02):