Document: Decision making algorithm

Resource Based Economy Foundation

RBEF Development
http://www.rbefoundation.com

Version: 1.01
Last modified by Venux on December 7, 2009, 2:34 am

This algorithm is not used at RBEF anymore, it was an experimental attempt to streamline decision making processes. Theoretical concept is good and may be used in other cases as needed. Couple of months of experimentations showed practicality of the algorithm yet lack of voters made it unsuitable for RBEF.

Overview

The RBEF is the metaphorical brain of all projects related to the Resource Based Economy community. It is through RBEF that all projects are approved and all donations are held and distributed. RBEF’s donation process is one hundred percent transparent; All transactions, in and out, are tracked and displayed to the public at all times. No penny goes unaccounted for.

The process at RBEF is very simple and, more importantly, fair. First, a person or group requests a donation for their project. At this point, the project is open for donations by the entire public. One project per week, as decided by the public, will be qualified for RBEF funding. During this week, voters determine whether or not they feel the requestor has adequately explained the project and all of the expenses and whether or not they agree that the project should receive the requested amount of funds directly from RBEF and vote to APPROVE or DENY the request for funds accordingly.

RBEF is a dynamic, automated website available to the entire public. Every person of every nationality, gender, age and culture is free and encouraged to register and vote. All registered users are able to request funds, however RBEF’s intelligent design ensures that only worthwhile projects are funded and that projects are funded in order of importance. All generated funds and all donations to the Resource Based Economy community are managed by RBEF. Funds generated by other Resource Based Economy community projects are held in RBEF until they are assigned to a project that has been submitted and approved by democratic vote. Donators can choose to donate to RBEF to later be assigned to projects that have been approved and require funding, or they can choose to donate directly to a specific project that they feel strongly about, in which case the funds are transferred directly to the project owner and are not held at RBEF.

Transparency

The process of funding and donations through RBEF is one hundred percent transparent. All transactions are logged, including the date, project, source (Donator or other), amount of funds and full project details. All of these resources are displayed to the public at all times, can never be modified and will never be deleted. Every penny of every transaction is accounted for.

Project Management

Requests for funds can be added to RBEF by any user without discrimination. Any amount of funds may be requested; however those that exceed RBEF’s current funds are not eligible for direct RBEF funding immediately. Such projects will become eligible for direct RBEF funding once its requested funds are within the limits of RBEF’s current budget. It is the requestor’s responsibility to include all information pertaining to the request, such as:

Who they are
The amount of funds they need
Where they are, geographically
The project’s short-term goals
The project’s long-term goals
Detailed information about exactly where each portion of the requested donation is going.
Why the project is critical to the progression of a Resource Based Economy.

When the requestor is satisfied with his request, he then submits it to RBEF where it is immediately available for direct donations. This project’s request remains in the system until it is fulfilled or cancelled.

Weekly Deliberation

During the week, users vote for the project that they feel is the most important project for the advancement of a Resource Based Economy. The most important project will be subject to receiving funds directly from RBEF. At the end of the week, 12:00AM GMT Sunday morning, the project that has been voted most important is put into a deliberation period. All users receive an email alert at this time, containing details of the request such as the amount requested, the description of the project and how much time the user has left to cast his vote. During the week-long deliberation period, the project is voted on by the entire public.

Each request is assigned a Voter Quota based on RBEF’s available funds. Preliminary numbers are as follows:

A request’s Voter Quota represents the minimum percent of active voters that must vote on a request before the end of its deliberation period to qualify to receive funds. The request’s Voter Quota is equal to X percent

of ninety percent, where X represents the percentage of available (A) funds requested (R), with a minimum of ten percent.

VQ = 0.9 x R/A percent

Example:

RBEF currently has 100,000 USD. 50,000 USD is requested.

VQ = 0.9 x

50,000/100,000 = 0.45 = 45%

Translation: HALF (50%) of all active users voted on the request. Therefore, the Voter Quota is HALF (50%) of ninety percent: Forty-five percent (45%).

RANGE = 0.10 < VQ < 0.90

Translation: The Voter Quota is always between ten and ninety percent.

Voters are determined active based on recent activity within RBEF. Any user who has not logged in for two weeks is flagged inactive and not counted toward the total “Active Voters” required to qualify the request. If an inactive user logs in during the deliberation period, he becomes an active user and is added to the total.

Once the deliberation period has ended, RBEF decides whether to transfer the full amount of the request to the project based on two criteria:

Have at least VQ% (Voter Quota, please see “Weekly Deliberation” for details) of active users voted on this request?
Were at least 90% of the votes to APPROVE the request?

If the answer to both of these questions is “Yes”, RBEF transfers the funds to the requestor to be applied toward the project. If the answer to either of these questions is “No”, RBEF does not transfer funds to the project, and removes the project from deliberation. The project will not be altered at all; it will remain open to Direct Donations as it was before it became the topic of the Weekly Deliberation. In both cases, the results are emailed to all active voters, logged and displayed on RBEF’s public transaction history page.

Examples

Project A receives a 95% approval rating, but only 5% of active users voted (Assume their Voter Quota is 20%) so the request is not eligible for funds.
50% of active users vote for Project B (Assume their Voter Quota is 20%), but they only have a 70% approval rating, so the request is not eligible for funds.
Project C receives a 95% approval rating and 30% of active users voted (Assume their Voter Quota is 20%) so the request is eligible for funds, and the requested amount is transferred to the project.

What this means is that 20% of active users/voters MUST vote and 90% of votes must be positive in order for a project to be accepted.

Every week there is a new project placed into Weekly Deliberation, meaning each week users will be voting for the most important project, to be deliberated next week. Throughout the course of the week, each user is able to vote for the one project they feel is the most critical project currently on the site. Very simply, the project with the most votes at the end of the week will be placed into next week’s Weekly Deliberation, at which point all projects will have their Importance votes reset to zero and all users will get a single vote for the new week.

Donations

RBEF handles two types of donations: General Donations and Direct Donations. A General Donation is added to RBEF’s account to be used at a later time when a project has been approved for funds. A Direct Donation is added directly to an individual project and does not go through the RBEF account. The amount donated through a Direct Donation is deducted from the project’s requested funds. For example, if a very generous person donates $20,000 to a project that requested $100,000 from RBEF, the requested funds are dropped to $80,000.

Monthly Donations Requests

Projects may elect that they require monthly donations rather than a lump sum. The amount of funds required will reset to their requested value every month, so all users know how much funding they have received and how much more they need in a given month. Monthly Donation Requests are treated a little differently when they wind up under Deliberation:

Requestor specifies the funds needed every month (Y) for X months.
RBEF calculates the complete cost of the monthly payments and uses the total as a lump-sum request to be voted upon by members.
The complete cost of the monthly payments is used to determine the request’s Voter Quota.
The total cost is taken from RBEF’s Available Funds and transferred to RBEF’s Reserve Funds, to prevent over-extending its available funds in the future.
The project receives funds, from RBEF’s Reserve Funds every month in the amount requested for the duration requested.

Resource Donations

A feature that is not currently implemented in the core build of RBEF, but will be added immediately after RBEF core is functional, is Resource Donation. These will be a third form of donations that can be both offered and requested. These donations will use a process independent of the funds donation system explained in this document. Using this system, donators will be able to offer a certain amount of resources, or a project will be able to request a donation of certain resources. These requests / offers will not expire until fulfilled or cancelled.

When a donator offers resources, such as “20 Solar Panels”, projects in need of the offered resource will respond with details of their project and why exactly they need this specific resource. When a project submits a request for resources, such as “100 Chairs”, the request will be treated exactly like a funds request: it will be open to have the resources donated directly to it. The only difference is that resource requests cannot be deliberated for RBEF support because RBEF will not be storing physical resources.

Erroneous Projects

Some users may propose projects for reasons other than the intended use: Funding projects that work toward a Resource Based Economy. In order to maintain the integrity of the RBEF project, a variation of system commonly known as a “Karma System” is in effect. Each new project begins without any negative marks. Users viewing a project have the ability to give a project a negative mark to indicate that the project posted is spam or not related to working toward a Resource Based Economy. Once a project receives enough negative marks, it is removed from the system and the user is restricted from posting projects for one month. A project needs to receive a negative mark from 10% of active users or 100 users, whichever number is larger, to be removed from the site.

(Zeitgeist Corporation Plan) - Renamed to RBEF

Ryan Rowland (rrowland) and Eugene Nosko (Venux)

Author: Venux | Created on: 30 Aug 2009, 10:53 | Views: 1024 | Downloads: 145

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