CHIP 2023-07 Network Upgrades only on Saturdays

[BitcoinCashPodcast]

@ShadowOfHarbringer

That said I agree that celebration is important, making history with significant event is also important, but they cannot come at a cost of forced labor for everybody who does not want to work at Saturday (which is most developers, probably).

This idea of “forced labour” is absolute nonsense. It’s already possible for May 15 to fall on a Saturday, and nobody has made a single objection about it. So clearly everyone is ok with things happening on a Saturday, at least sometimes.

As mentioned prominently in the CHIP, the date is known far in advance. So everyone can for one week out of the year, have their days off on Wednesday & Thursday instead of Saturday & Sunday or whatever they prefer. There are clearly solutions to “oh we can just never work on a Saturday”, as mentioned also in the CHIP many companies do specifically do tech rollouts on weekends or early mornings to time with the lowest user activity.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

@BitcoinCashPodcast

The key question remains. If everyone is so set AGAINST weekends, would they be FOR a set schedule on e.g. Tuesday? Surely all the arguments against weekends are arguments for week days (and against a randomly occurring day, which has only status quo for justification)?

I am for any weekday earlier than thursday in order not to force devs to work weekends.

You can pick any one, which one gets picked is not really important to me.

My reasoning and justification for having a fixed day determined by a simple algorithm is simple: It creates order and replaces chaos.

Order is generally better than chaos most of the time, and since decentralized projects like Bitcoin Cash will naturally cause a lot of chaos, we do need some order and stable, fixed environment for people to work with and place their expectations in.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

@BitcoinCashPodcast

This idea of “forced labour” is absolute nonsense. It’s already possible for May 15 to fall on a Saturday, and nobody has made a single objection about it.

Well, honestly it could be that nobody simply thought about it deeply.

But now that you touched the topic, people may actually form opinions of what they actually like.

[BitcoinCashPodcast]

Monday is probably a bad idea for the same reason as Friday. People are unfocussed.

Tuesday could work, perhaps we should see if there is interest in locking upgrades to Tuesday, and then compare/contrast the reactions to Saturday. I personally think Tuesday solves probably none of the issues the origin of this CHIP is intended to address, but perhaps we have uncovered separate issues with scheduling that people are more willing to fix.

[BitcoinCashPodcast]

Exactly, so in the least we are doing well to have created some discussion & thinking on this topic which I hope detractors can appreciate, even if they don’t like our proposal.

[freetrader]

I am mostly neutral on this, with a small preference to sticking for a date-based schedule like the 15th of May regardless of which day it it falls on.

I’m not even sure that’s always possible, as some upgrades in the future might simply be impractical to do in the date-based way. It’s also pretty moot to pick a weekday when the globe spans 24 hours so it’s either not that day yet somewhere, or already past that day somewhere else.

As long as the date is settled as long as possible in advance and enjoys majority support, I’m fine with any option.

[cculianu]

To me every day is a Saturday. So to me, this CHiP already is active in my subjective experience of reality.

That being said I am persuaded by @fpelliccioni ‘s arguments to such a degree that I would vote for not doing this Saturday thing based on his nicely formatted post…

There are people on this planet unlike me where Saturday is a unique day and for them it might be extra stress to force it to happen on a weekend each time….

[cculianu]

Thursday in English comes etymologically from Norse via Old English and it was “Thor’s Day”. It’s a lovely day for that reason because Thor is a very powerful God linked to luck and success in risky endeavors. Not that BCH upgrades are risky but stil, extra fortune from Thor on his day is always welcome.

In Latin languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese), etymologically the various words used for Thursday are some variation of “Jove” which is a shortened form of the Roman God Jupiter.

Thus even in Latin languages Thursday is a very fortunate day to say the least. Jupiter being the most important of the Roman Gods and also linked to fortune and luck in risky endeavors.

Thus if we had to pick a day, I think the portents are good for Thursday.

That being said I’m happy with status quo which is date-based.

EDIT: whatever you do don’t pick Friday. Friday is Freya’s day (or Venus’s day for Romance speakers). Not sure how good a match those two goddesses are to all things BCH…

[freetrader]

@cculianu

Thor is a very powerful God

Does he beat Odin though?

Putting in a word for Odin’s Day (Wednesday) here. /s

[_minisatoshi]

@ShadowOfHarbringer @fpelliccioni @tom How would you react to such a proposal but where upgrade days always fall on a Thursday?

[cculianu]

Odin is the most powerful yes.

In Latin languages Wednesday is Mercury’s day… (miercoles, mercurdi, etc). Mercury as a God governs ideas, communication, computers and electricity (according to modern Pagan theology).

Not a bad day either!

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

@_minisatoshi

@ShadowOfHarbringer @fpelliccioni @tom How would you react to such a proposal but where upgrade days always fall on a Thursday?

I would react like “meh, as long as most devs are OK with it, I am fine with it”

[fpelliccioni]

Formatting changes minds hahahahahahah

[tom]

@BitcoinCashPodcast

@tom

So, what about moving the media hype? No CHIP needed. There is literally nothing to see, nothing happening for normal people when a protocol upgrade is finalized. It never made sense to me to have a livestream of an event you can’t see. An event that has a timing that isn’t even very exact.

If it doesn’t make sense to you to have a livestream of an event you can’t see, but the community has consistently done so & benefited & enjoyed it & thus continued the tradition then that means that you just don’t get it, not that it’s not important or nonsensical or without value.

That is a very strong (emotionally laden) way to avoid answering the question.

Question:
Why not simply move the media hype to an appropriate day?

[fpelliccioni]

@_minisatoshi

@ShadowOfHarbringer @fpelliccioni @tom How would you react to such a proposal but where upgrade days always fall on a Thursday?

What’s so special about Thursdays, I don’t understand?
I would stick to May 15th and let luck be with us; if it happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday (family days), then so be it.
Guys, I hope this comment isn’t taken the wrong way, but come on! We are going in circles over a minor detail.

Here are the May 15ths for the next 10 years:

2024: Wednesday
2025: Thursday
2026: Friday
2027: Saturday
2028: Monday
2029: Tuesday
2030: Activation of Agenda 2030, no more days of the week or dates

[tom]

This proposal has been handled very different than most CHIPs, and I think there is a learning moment here after most stakeholders voted no. Learning moment of what makes a proposal work and succeed. As someone that has been part of about half of the activated chips in the last years, I’m willing to take a stab.

The first part of any CHIP always starts with a problem that needs to be solved. We discuss the problem with stakeholders behind the scenes in most cases in order to steel-man the problem setting and its possible solutions.

Only when a baseline of support has been gathered is it time to write the CHIP. The idea can certainly evolve over the lifetime of the CHIP, but mostly in minor ways only.
This also means that the title should be picked mostly about the problem being solved, not about details of the solution being proposed since that causes confusion and an unneeded emotional attachment to a certain detail that may not even be required.

In this case I’ve brought up the steelman counter argument various times: why does the event need to move to make the media event move? I have not seen any single argument to go against this alternative solution to the problem (low “live” engagement of the content generated).

But I’m all for eating my own dogfood and I’ll steel-man it anyway.

The value proposition of an upgrade-space or video is probably best compared with the Apple announcements of new iPhones. Sure, we’re not at all that fancy and we lack budget (ha!) to make that comparison. But there are plenty of equals too.

• We introduce a bunch of new things that people may be able to get their hands on in some time in the future.
  Specifically it is not instantly available. Which a live-stream-upgrade may give the impression is the case. For your audience it is not instantly available.
• We have in-depth talks with people that understand the new features and how this ties into the existing stuff.
• We have talks with ecosystem players that didn’t build the actual feature, but are talking how they will exploit it and do more exciting stuff in the future.

I could probably find more points, but I do believe this adequately covers the value proposition and may convince content creators to focus on those instead of making it a “live” event.

[kzKallisti]

Nobody seems to have made a single argument for May 15 besides “it’s the way it is so let’s not change it”.

IMO this is a strong enough argument by itself. Without strongly compelling reasons to make a change, the default answer should be not to make a change.

There are some valid reasons presented in favor of this change, but I do not think they’re compelling enough to warrant the change, and potentially has unforseen downsides with little upside.

[kzKallisti]

Proposing Thursday instead of Saturday seems more agreeable, but I’m still not convinced by the rationale to make a change in the first place.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

@tom

In this case I’ve brought up the steelman counter argument various times: why does the event need to move to make the media event move? I have not seen any single argument to go against this alternative solution to the problem (low “live” engagement of the content generated).

TL;DR

You can create media hype on any day of your choice - it just takes some creativity - and creating a livestream event of a non-event (a boring upgrade that does not do anything by itself - just opens doors, like all BCH upgrades) is also kind of pointless.

[BitcoinCashPodcast]

@tom

Question:
Why not simply move the media hype to an appropriate day?

Because a de-sync’d, non-live event will not have the same emotive appeal to the vast majority of people on the planet.

It’s like saying “Well, Christmas/New Year/The Superbowl/Election Night/any other major societal event falls on ||inconvenient day or time||, why don’t all the TV channels just run their coverage on ||more convenient day or time before/after the event||?”

Things are live when they’re live, and people want to watch & be involved in live events - not some awkwardly offput alternative for scheduling reasons.