21 replies to this topic

[lightowl]

I have some rather radical ideas for how both voting power, access and volunteering incentive could be structured. It required a rather large willingness to try something radical that could fail. It also requires many hours of technical implementation. The current membership system could/should be retained running parallel to this new system, to address some of the concerns voiced here (membership forum).

Voting Power

Basically the idea is to distribute voting power between members, based on the amount of money they donate. In a way like how investors in a company, gain votes by shares, but with a twist. All money submitted to this system would be considered a donation to the institute, so there is no payout, unless payout was granted in relation to an assignment to a project. The cost of a vote could rise exponentially, such that no person could buy an unhealthy number of votes, without donating substantial amounts to get them.

Example:

Monthly subscriptions:
1 vote subscription - $1
2 vote subscription - $2
3 vote subscription - $4
4 vote subscription - $8
and so on....

The exponential could be set to something other than doubling (tripling, etc..) to adjust to a reasonable level of money/power relation.

An obvious problem with this kind of "micro payment" system, is costs on transactions. This could be solved by members having an account containing Token Points (TP). That account would be credited each month, depending on the member's subscription choices. Such a membership account would also allow for some interesting possibilities for exchange of TP's, either voluntarily or by force by a majority vote, or some other mechanism. Lots of fun options there.


Forum Access

I haven't thought much about this, but basically subscription could be made to individual forums, posts by specific members, posts that require subscription (as selected by the author), or like now, a membership area subscription. Lots of possibilities. Subscriptions should be payed with TP's as well.


Volunteering Incentives (Karma)

Having a TP system would make it possible for members to hand over TP to members that do extraordinary work in favor of the mission. Creating such a system would encourage people to make public, work they have done, and it would also encourage people to publish work that other volunteers have done. Work that members respect and want to acknowledge. Since no money actually changes hand, these TP's changing accounts are purely symbolic, but they still represent a value internally due to the value TP's have in votes and access.

These TP handovers could be easily indexed, and a list of "top volunteers" could be generated, providing vanity incentive as well as a way to evaluate trust to a member.


Project Funding

Funding for projects could be done, by those who want to support specific projects, or by a specific proposal for general transfer of TP's from all members based on a popular vote. There are other ways to do this, that I wont go into detail with here at this time. Sorry, limited time to do this now. I think many here can come up with rather imaginative possibilities.


Obstacles

1. Political will to do something radical with a potential to fail.
2. Technical implementation (ongoing).
3. Usability adjustments. (ongoing)


-- Well, that's the basics of it. I have been thinking about this kind of system in a variety of contexts, and what I have outlined here is the bare minimum, to gain the effects, I believe would be valuable to cooperation. There are plenty of possibilities, and I hope some day, to develop a commercial site, that provides these, and many other features. I hope you will consider the proposal, and I am willing to answer any questions and come up with solutions to any concerns you may have. I am also generally interested in a wider response to these ideas.

Unfortunately I don't have time to do much volunteering work at the moment. Hopefully in the near future, when things settle down for me, I can help with implementation, should it come to that. I realize this is quite a handful for a small organization like ImmInst, but I think it could propel the institute significantly forward in its aspirations.

Caveat: When money is put into a TP account, they are essentially handed over to the institute, with the institute retaining the right to change the rules of the system, in any way it sees fit. Putting money into a TP account is essentially a donation in its own right.

Edited by lightowl, 19 July 2008 - 11:38 AM.

[lightowl]

Well, that's rather discouraging.

Perhaps the weekend is slowing things down here. Comon people. Let me know what you think. Rip it apart if you need to.

BUMP!!

Edited by lightowl, 20 July 2008 - 11:37 AM.

[Heliotrope]

So immortality institute does not have enough funds to do a lot of projects we want right? If this plan can generate money, then maybe we can put out some multimedia projects and a 2nd book? I'm for it.

so a person can get TPs through many actions like

1. donating money
2. doing volunteer work
3. actively contributing to the immortal cause

[Mind]

Very creative Thor. Thinking out of the box. There is definitely some upside to the idea, but I have to think on it a little longer in order to come up with a good critique.

[lightowl]

So immortality institute does not have enough funds to do a lot of projects we want right? If this plan can generate money, then maybe we can put out some multimedia projects and a 2nd book?

Yea, hopefully lots of worthwhile projects could be started. Plenty of things have been suggested. We seem to lack ways to 1. Coordinate human resources. 2. Allocate funds. 3. Maintain project momentum.

so a person can get TPs through many actions like

1. donating money
2. doing volunteer work
3. actively contributing to the immortal cause

Exactly, and those are only the basic ways. There are many possibilities.

For example: (being more specific)
4. ImmInst could put up TP prizes that members could win if such and such goal was achieved. ( Incentive to volunteer in general )
5. Members could hand out "mercy TP" to people who they think should have access and votes (etc), but that don't have the money to buy TP's themselves. ( Incentive to spread the meme )
6. Volunteering to a project, and help complete it, could automatically give a bonus in form of TP to those members, providing further incentive to volunteer. ( Incentive to volunteer in general )
7. ImmInst could create an "affiliate" system, where if new members join via specific links, the members who spread those links would gain TP's. ( Incentive to spread the meme )
8. Navigators could gain TP's by being voted "best Nav of the month" by members. ( this requires that members can follow Nav actions.. hehehe. ) ( Incentive to be a good Nav to the members )
9. Idea makers could gain TP's by their proposed projects being voted "best Project of the month" ( Incentive to propose projects )
etc... just off the top of my head. Plenty of great stuff could be done with a Token Point system, as long as those Token Points also have some internal value.

Very creative Thor. Thinking out of the box.

Hey thanks.

There is definitely some upside to the idea,

Yea, I think so, but probably also plenty of potential problems that needs to be ironed out as things progress. I see it as something that could/should evolve, rather than work perfectly at first try.

but I have to think on it a little longer in order to come up with a good critique.

That's fair. I will try to be patient. Though I'm rather enthusiastic about the idea at this point. Hopefully that will remain.

Everybody else... Please shoot. Any critique will incentivize me to be more creative at this point. I want to know what problems such a system might have too. Don't be afraid to point out the flaws. I know they are there, I just want others to confirm.

Edited by lightowl, 20 July 2008 - 08:42 PM.

[lightowl]

I will talk a bit about an issue that is likely going to be a problem with such a TP system, and that is Inflation. In fact many issues also seen in economy in general can become issues here. Its kind of a micro economy in its own right.

So inflation could become a problem if the institute creates too many "free" TP's. Those could be created as incentive prizes etc, and would not rely on donations to be created. That's a dangerous effect because with every "free" TP made, the value of "bought" TP's would fall. One way to largely limit inflation is to create a zero sum system. That is, a system where every TP have a corresponding dollar value. No "free" TP's could be created. Rather, spent TP's could be gathered in savings accounts for later use by the institute. That would make rampant inflation virtually impossible, but it would also limit action of the institute to "create" incentive options. In a zero sum system, a fixed number of TP's are create and "sold" with every donation. That runs the risk of running out of TP's to sell, which would be bad, so that would require the creation of more TP's.

In a non-zero sum system inflation would still occur because every donation would increase the total number of TP's in the system. This effect would have to be offset by methods of removing TP's from the system. One way of doing so could be to remove the equivalent amount of TP's from the system, when ever a project is funded by money received from donations used to buy TP's. Another way could be to "expire" TP's on a regular basis. A third way could be to convert TP's into semanticly more valuable "medals" that could be awarded as prizes etc... Such medals would loose their effective TP value, but still have a semantic value due to their original effective value, and due to the honorary value being awarded a medal would have. There are many other ways inflation could be limited.

It is important to keep the value of TP's relatively constant. Its a complicated job, but could be self regulating, as in regular economies, by TP owners providing critique feedback to those who control the flow of TP's. If people complain about a weakened value of their TP's, that's usually a good sign that something should be looked at.

I don't see inflation as a show-stopper, but as another tool in shaping a micro economy. Also, since all donations resulting in TP should be made in good will, there are less chance of people getting mad when changes are introduced. Those getting mad would probably be those that are too power hungry for their own good and for the good of the cause.

Edited by lightowl, 21 July 2008 - 02:00 PM.

[caliban]

At ImmInst, voting power cannot be bought.

Reason 1: An individual (or a company) could spent a couple of hundred dollars and 'buy' ImmInst assets. ("Motion: immInst should henceforth only support supplement company Y").

Reason 2: Every life is invaluable.
there are many other resaons

This is what you do to make things happen whithout having the money or the wherewithal to do it on your own:

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE:
A-- you formulate an action plan and get feedback on the forums
B-- you listen to suggestions and revise your plan
C-- you donate as much money as you can afford to that cause. (You can dedicate donations to a single purpose. Its a good start and a good impression)
D-- you lobby directors to spent part of their 'treasure chest' on the cause
E-- you garther members who are supportive and willing to volunteer some of their time
F-- you apply to the board to make it an officical project and to instruct the ED to start fundraising for it.

[lightowl]

At ImmInst, voting power cannot be bought.

Voting power is already bought today. You buy a membership that enables you to vote. If you don't have a membership or leadership position, you can not vote with power. You state this as an absolute nono. Are you suggesting that such a proposal never could, by law, be introduced? Do you have any argument to why this could not happen? (even though its already happening with the current system)

Voting power subscription would not be necessary for a TP system to have value, but it would give significant value to the TP.

Reason 1: An individual (or a company) could spent a couple of hundred dollars and 'buy' ImmInst assets. ("Motion: immInst should henceforth only support supplement company Y").

I don't know if you read the proposal beyond the first few lines, but I already proposed a way to prevent this from happening. Votes could exponentially rise in cost. Another way to limit single entity power, could be to set a maximum limit on number of votes.

Reason 2: Every life is invaluable.

I agree, but how is this an argument against my proposal? Could you elaborate? I think such a system could greatly increase the number of donations to the institute.

there are many other resaons

Please elaborate. Thanks.

This is what you do to make things happen whithout having the money or the wherewithal to do it on your own:

Thanks, but I know this already. Currently I am just airing a suggestion. I realize that if this proposal could have any legs, I would be the one implementing it (probably).

Caliban, I remember you posting a similar reply to another suggestion I made some time ago. I suspect you just don't have time to go into detail, but I'm rather offended by your dismissive "tone" without sufficient arguments. I hope you elaborate further on your concerns. The step-by step guide you added makes me feel like I should just forget about getting feedback to my suggestion by this way. Was that the intention? I see plenty of suggestions that are not presented in action plan format. Why do insist on repeating those steps to me?

Edited by lightowl, 22 July 2008 - 08:10 PM.

[brokenportal]

I think a token point system is a great idea. Getting points for a variety of things to get people to want to build them. Then there could be daily, weekly, monthly and yearly top 10 point winners.

I dont think it would need an incentive like voting power. Maybe though. Anything could be an incentive really. Just points are enough. Ive been a part of forums that had these systems. I found myself working like crazy to try to get to the top ten on the weekly lists or whatever.

It would take a lot of time to code those things into the system here, so finding somebody willing to put in the man hours is about all I can see it requiring. Well, that and a list that is discussed as to what would be good ways to add points. Like you say, if you get people to come via a link, or if you complete a project etc..

Ive been suggesting something like this for years. If your interested then lets collect 2 or 3 more people and set up a weekly meeting time to work out the details of it and create a proposal for it in the ustream chat room.

[lightowl]

Then there could be daily, weekly, monthly and yearly top 10 point winners. Ive been a part of forums that had these systems. I found myself working like crazy to try to get to the top ten on the weekly lists or whatever.

Exactly. Its incredible how simple vanity can be a powerful incentive.

I don't think it would need an incentive like voting power. Maybe though. Anything could be an incentive really. Just points are enough.

I agree that voting power is not absolutely essential, but I think it would provide great incentive to the system. Points in general are good, but giving them intrinsic value makes them so much more attractive. There are of cause other ways to give Points value, its simply a matter of being creative. For example, I think its important that one can buy Points with real money. That would provide an incentive to donate money to the institute, and it would put a value on Points in peoples minds just purely by monetary comparison.

It would take a lot of time to code those things into the system here, so finding somebody willing to put in the man hours is about all I can see it requiring. Well, that and a list that is discussed as to what would be good ways to add points. Like you say, if you get people to come via a link, or if you complete a project etc..

Yea, also, the people developing the system would need access to the code-base and data-base of ImmInst, or a test setup for development. So a great deal of trust is required, unless we could to set up a "dummy" system stripped of all but the most basic of data.

Ive been suggesting something like this for years. If your interested then lets collect 2 or 3 more people and set up a weekly meeting time to work out the details of it and create a proposal for it in the ustream chat room.

I'm definitely interested in helping to implement such a system with whatever limited time I can spare.

[brokenportal]

Alright, well lets see what we can come up with. Lets outline the steps we need to take and then try it out. Im meeting in the ustream at 4pm cst time today to discuss stuff like this. Can you meet in there?

Bring some ideas of other projects to consider and we'll go from there.

[lightowl]

Brokenportal, you mentioned some other forums using similar systems as this suggestion. Would you be able to list a few here so we can get some inspiration?

Perhaps its a easy as implementing an add-on to our current software package. On the other hand, if we made a system "in house" with volunteers from ImmInst, it would be easier to extend it into whatever directions we would want.

[lightowl]

We could add the F@H points to the TP system to increase incentive to participate in that program.

Edit:

Expanding on that idea. This may be a bad idea because the economics might not be acceptable. If we could set up Amazon EC2 servers to run F@H cycles, and those cycles where to be converted into ImmInst TP's, that might be the equivalent to buying TP's directly, but routing them through F@H to add extra research value. I will investigate the economics on that.

I found this:
Folding@home on Amazon EC2

It seems the economics are not good enough yet, even though scalability is good. There are some suggestions that other dedicated server providers could do it cheaper, but not as cheap as building your own setup. There are of course disadvantages to building your own, so perhaps at some time in the future it might be viable. At least this would be the point of cloud computing on a massive scale.

Regardless of the economics, F@H points could still be added to the TP system regardless of how those points are collected.

Edited by lightowl, 30 July 2008 - 10:17 PM.

[lightowl]

In addition to direct donations going to ImmInst for buying TP's, we could set up collaboration with other entities, Methuselah Foundation, etc, so that donation made to them, via specific link or direct integration, would result in bonus credits being added to ImmInst member TP accounts. That would encourage stronger ties to other entities with similar goals, and it would enable ImmInst to encourage members to donate directly to other causes.

Pardon the many posts: I'm just posting whenever I have an idea (brainstorming).

[brokenportal]

The forum I was at with the incentives program shut down about 5 years ago. Ask Jeeves used to have a tab called "ask other people" on their front page. It got millions of hits. Random search engine input and questions would go to these millions of people that hung out in the AJ forums for us to answer and we would get points for questions answered well. Their only action of check and balance was that they would periodically check ten of your answers, and atleast 8 out of 10 or something like that had to be quality for them to give you points for all your 100 or whatever answers for that week.

Anyways, I saw a few other forums like that afterwards but cant remember the addresses. Ill have to look them up. There is so much stuff to do. Ive proposed working on a bulleted interactive projects list and it would just work wonders for all these ideas we toss around. Right now we are trying to juggle and not lose site of like 10 projects we have been talking about but need less, but with a list set up like that we could easily take on 3 times that many projects at same time, with ease. I really think the bullet list should be done sooner than later.

Not to mention it organizes each project with ease too. Like, your talking about ideas for getting points like via MF donations or F@H, we could add those to an interactive list with ease. If we try to list it say, in a forum, we would have to keep manually updating it, and sorting through posts to pull out ideas, it would be way harder.

I think that the bullet list is the most important tool we could have to increase efficiency in project completion. Im 100 percent confident of it.

[lightowl]

I think that the bullet list is the most important tool we could have to increase efficiency in project completion. Im 100 percent confident of it.

I agree with you. Some sort of project management system is needed. It could also be used to assign members to projects and tasks under projects. I could easily put something together relatively quickly, but perhaps it would be better to find some open source tools with lots of features.

Requirements we might have:
Free (cheap)
Web-based
Forum account integration (open source so we can integrate ourselves)

Here is a nice list:
List of project management software

Here is a Google search that might help:
Google

This should probably be split off into a new topic? (Collaboration/Project management software) Have this been suggested before (I'm quite sure it has, but its probably buried by now)

Edited by lightowl, 31 July 2008 - 09:19 AM.

[brokenportal]

I have a topic on this bullet list idea here:

http://www.imminst.o...cts-t22172.html

If we had something like this, we could plug things like these incentivized volunteer ideas into it and have the concept worked out in no time.




This list will work well for any project, but in the long run the point is, I think the list can be made to outline everything that needs to be done that is predicted to gain us indefinite life extension escape velocity as soon as possible and then the list can be advertised to the world like a headline news story talking about "science says that once the world at large signs up for every job on this list we will most surely gain life extension treatments that allow us to live indefinently with in 20 (or whatever) amount of years."


Thats just the simplified form of it but do you know what Im saying?

Edited by brokenportal, 01 August 2008 - 03:41 AM.

[lightowl]

Thats just the simplified form of it but do you know what Im saying?

Yea, I think its a great project.

I don't think we should limit ourselves to simple listing for project management though. There are lots of useful features we could take advantage of. The only thing that worries my at the moment, is that we are the only people having this conversation. If people wont even talk about stuff like this, how is there any hope that people would help out? Its very disappointing.

Edited by lightowl, 31 July 2008 - 10:05 PM.

[brokenportal]

Thats just the simplified form of it but do you know what Im saying?

Yea, I think its a great project.

I don't think we should limit ourselves to simple listing for project management though. There are lots of useful features we could take advantage of. The only thing that worries my at the moment, is that we are the only people having this conversation. If people wont even talk about stuff like this, how is there any hope that people would help out? Its very disappointing.

Well, they will though. Its not that people dont want to join in, its that we are coming from a grass roots position and as we build more and more, we organize more and more. We just have to keep organizing. Like the splitting of the topics, that will bring traffic into these because they wont be as buried all the time. Also people will hang some pictures on the nails if we put the nails in the wall. I know they will. Build a little organization and the people will come in. Like this wednesday meeting. Then hopefully like 5 more task forces that meet on different days, it will give members nails to hang progress on rather than forum threads to go to to stack them in piles so they can get archived away. The forums serve their function awsomely, its just that we need to be sure to create the neccessary extensions of them. A lot of members are already doing this, but theres room and need for a billion more extensions, task forces, project groups, think tanks, whatever.

And as for just a simple listing, your right, it will be more than that, it will have listings that prompt and catalyze completion of tasks for one. I really cant wait to discuss this and this software your talking about more and see what kind of collaboration we can create between the two and if we really can kick this bullet list off. If it needed funding I would put in my top three list of things to accomplish. I think its really important. Im not sure why more people dont. I think its just such a simple thing that its hard to see how it could help that much.

Edited by brokenportal, 01 August 2008 - 03:53 AM.

[lightowl]

Sorry for the late reply.

I don't know if this is getting too much off topic, but I like the discussion. I think your bulletin idea is great. It would be quite simple to implement something basic like that. We could then extend it further as things progress.

I think it would be helpful if we could plug into the current members database to handle privileges, but I suspect it might also make it much harder to get something started quickly. Would you be willing to put together a list of previous topics about this idea and perhaps a mock-up screen? I can then put forward a proposal for a database structure. Then its just a matter of some coding to get it going.

Another idea. The forum software already have a topic tracing system. If that system could be advertised so a lot of people use it. We could use the statistics from that usage to identify suggestions and projects that people are interested in? We could modify the system slightly to allow for people to publish optionally what topics they are tracking. That way it would be possible for project organizers to identify potential volunteers and reach out to get them involved.

I agree that people are probably sitting out there ready to help out. Its just very hard to get things going. We need to put some names on specific tasks. Even if those names are only tentative volunteers.

[brokenportal]

Even if they are only tentative, I agree, I think that planting a host of seeds will produce at least a variety of sprouts that turn into mighty oaks of progress.

Another seed planted is, if anybody wants to jump on board is the Coalition to Extend Life lobbying meeting they are set. Tom Mooney says he will be at them, they are thursdays at 2 pm cst time. We just scheduled it about 20 minutes ago so there wont be one today.

This incentives list topic here should probably eventually schedule itself a meeting too. There is a lot to hash out with it and its a lucrative idea. It will inspire more action out of each person. It could be hashed out a lot easier though with that bulleted list. Its not a bullet'in' list. Im not sure what to call it so I call it that. Its really hard to explain concisely.

Lets try to get a meeting going for that. Ill get commited members together for it first though, and then schedule it. You, me, if ceth wants to, and then we will find a couple more people around here that are well versed in programming. I know there are some Ive been talking to but I forget who, unless you know how to do pretty much all of it.

[The Immortalist]

There is a currency system in place on a forum such as gaia online, but site is nothing more than a game for kids. Everytime you post on it you get a small amount of "gold" the forums currency where you can buy clothes and accessories to make your avatar look fancy.

How about here we make a point system for the action forum. every time you make a contribution you get a contribution point. When you get a certain amount of points you "level up" and go to the next level of MILE Activist, lvl one is newb, lvl 2 is helper, lvl 3 is supporter, lvl 4 is fighter, lvl 5 is champion, lvl 6 is hero, the second last lvl is MILE Runner, and the last lvl is Death Defier

Edited by The Indefinite Lifespaner, 01 April 2010 - 12:19 PM.