Negative Curation Rewards?
This was an idle thought that crossed my mind this afternoon... At the moment, there has been quite a great deal already written about the ideas (pro/cons) of auto-voting and vote selling, and how that results in behavior that is perhaps not beneficial for the ecosystem, or at the very least are the unintended results of the underlying economic incentives for curation/author rewards
Most of the focus so far (and given that I'm not really an avid follower of the internal debates on the mechanics/economy of the Steem ecosystem) has been on the reworking of the curation/author reward balance and the addition of a down-voting pool that won't eat into your regular upvoting "allowance".
However, as far as I understand it, this doesn't address what I see as the central problem with voting. The problem as I see it, is that there is absolutely not real economic incentive to actually care where your vote goes! Of course, there is a positive economic incentive via the curation rewards... but if your vote goes towards terrible material or plain scams, then there is no economic penalty. You essentially get zero rewards, but that doesn't really matter in the end as it is where you started to begin with!
In fact, this is a problem that I see with curation and upvotes for usage models. Everyone is all too happy to give out sweets and candy, but very few people/groups will follow up properly and do more than remove a vote (or promise to not vote in the future, aka blacklist). This leaves a potential scammer sitting with no negative consequences for bad actions... at worst, it is zero consequence!
So, I would like suggest the idea of a "negative Curation reward"... in that, if your vote goes to a post that garners a total negative vote (hidden or rewards less than zero), that you actually lose stake! This would have the immediate economic effect that people should really care where their votes actually went... however, there are more than a few unintended consequences I'm sure... first and foremost of which would be the weaponising of the downvotes to be even more nasty than they are at the moment.
However, this is a floating of an idea... of course, I'm not foolish enough to think that such a simplistic idea would be a fix for everything with no consequnce. However, the general concept that stake can be not only gained but also lost (something that doesn't exist at the moment...) could be a possibility for exploration? The reason that I've used a Palnet tag is that perhaps that this is an idea that would work better when the difference between rich and poor isn't quite so large!
After all, in the real world, we have both positive and negative consequences for our actions... it seems strange that here on Steem, we only have positive consequences, or larger positive consequnces... and at worst... zero!
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It would be better to give a negative comment first or ask and not give a vote at all instead. That is what I do.
I do not like the downvote since people abuse that too. A scammer will always find a way voting for himself.
I think its better to read and vote manuel, but its attractive to give that out of hands.
I would also prefer to do the same... however, I guess I am talking about rules to affect behavior that isn't a projection of what we would like others to do. A negative comment whilst satisfying for the commenter isn't really an economic disincentive to change bad behavior, like plagiarism or something like that.
@bengy like the idea, but I still think they should increase the reward for any content creator that post consistent and consistently upvoted material on a regular basis. Like if you do 28 post in a month and they are all upvoted at the end of the month the platform awards you a bonus of steem or sbd whichever. This would motivate more creators to do good post. Thanks for sharing!!
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That would also be a decent idea... however, the definition of "good" is a slippery concept!
I do think there needs to be a balance but having the possibility to lose steem may be a step too far. For sure, flagging inappropriately because you have a vendetta or disagree with someone on something that was said months ago and you are being childish about it needs to stop.
If some of the automation was turned off that would probably cause people to be a bit more active so they can't just set their votes on auto and leave it alone. Maybe bonuses for upvoting more manually could be a way to incentivise engagement?
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I think this also discourages voting for anyone who has discussed sensitive topics here, since if they pissed off one of the large accounts voting up their posts, only to see that post get hit by a down-vote from an irritated whale, you suffer for it as well.
I don't know... our curation rewards are pretty small the begin with (as it is split up in so many different ways!), so losing a similar amount on a post is likely to only cost on the order 0.001/2/3 SP anyway/.. for manual voters, it isn't really such a big deal, and a big whale will likely be wasting much more VP (Mana) to make that happen anyway if they were the only one disagreeing on a controversial but valid post.
You may be underestimating the shear pettiness of people.
And even if it's only minor, it's still something that is acting to discourage interacting with certain posts based on their topic, and anything discouraging interaction is not exactly what steemit needs, however small it is.
Ha... yes, I think there will be a great deal of pettiness from a small group of people... but I still think that making sure you know where your votes are going and having an economic incentive to do so will result in a better landscape (despite the occasional extreme behaviour....)
Sadly... there is no way to fix arseholery... well, no ethical way at least! The loss of STEEM would be quite small for most accounts anyway (on the order of 0.001/2/3, consider how much you get on curation rewards due to the multiple ways the curation reward is split). So, for most accounts that are voting honestly it wouldn't make much a difference one way or another... however, it just adds that extra risk for people who don't know or don't care where their votes go... which might encourage some people to care a touch more?
Bonuses for manual voting is a nice idea... but how can you tell the difference between a manual vote and an auto vote... sure, at the extremes they are obvious, but the gray area is quite large! I also think that adds to the problem that there are just rewards and candy/sweets for everyone all around... and if you are a bad actor, then there is little to no consequence.At worst, you are at zero net positive/negative.... sure your REP is harmed... but that isn't a real economic disincentive!
It's one of those where do you fight fire with fire? That's not an ideal situation as it can lead to unsavoury wars as we've seen in the past and accounts decimated. Not encouraging for a new user. Or do you calculate final post payout based on the percentage of down votes vs upvotes (as well as take in to account stake)? This way there could be less effect on flagging?
Surely there can be an algorithm made that checks to see if someone has steemauto (or some other auto voting service) that can take someone off this curation bonus list.
Maybe there is no other way around than to remove steem power/steem but who would police that in a "decentralised" platform? The only other option is to remove rep to a point where that person can't post anymore? Or take away RC?
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I hope that it isn't a fire vs fire situation!
This is supposed to affect curation rewards only, just to make people take a good look at where their votes go. If a post has a net positive payout, then the curation reward would be split normally among the upvoters, whilst a penalty (SP burn) would be applied to the downvoers... the reverse would also be true, if there were a net negative payout (which would still be a zero from the author point of view) then the downvoters are rewarded with a "curation" reward whilst the upvoters are penalised with a SP burn.
Essentially this is making a vote a stake/bet with a chance of a small return.. rather than a free regenerating resource that it is at the moment. It could have the side effect that flag wars will slowly deplete the two side's SP over time...
Anyway, this is a rough sketch of an idea that would be more for addressing the question of why you should care where a vote goes, rather than seeing it as regenerating free and consequence-less action, when in fact, lots of these "consequence-free" actions result in a large scale consequences.
As for the curation bonus checking... I fear it would be whack a mole. It would be hard to see how the two votes would be different, and if they were slightly different (incoming from different IPs) then it would be relatively easy to circumvent.
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