Shake Out: Experiment, Danexit... What's next?

You spent hours creating content and the very first comment it had was to inform you that it had been downvoted for an experiment? Damn! and when you checked it actually had 4 whale downvotes, How awesome is that?

I was upset that i had to check to see if i had violated something. I spent the next two hours trying to figure out what happened. Then I realized it wasn't just me, and the experiment had been running for quite sometime and that some people had the same sentiments i had when i encountered it.

photo credits to the owner

I felt bullied. Although it was explained the experiment won't affect user's reputation or rewards, but the fact that you see you're getting flagged will not sink well with you. Sure we know we are in beta phase, we understand we are a part of a bigger experiment, but we are humans. Steem had already gone into series of pitfalls dragging down steem price into lower lows and it makes it even more frustating to see get downvoted after a whale upvoted. I'm sure the experiment was meant to improve our current conditions but I was hoping keeping users motivated to stay was part of its objective.

At hindsight, it would have been better had we been informed that an experiment was forthcoming. I guess being open with the community would have no profound effect on the objective it was trying to achieve other than users being ok with it.

Though I had negative feelings on what had transpired, I still support these efforts as these are the drivers that would later propel the platform. Its how innovations are born, through trial and errors.

Then comes Dan's exit, a recent shakeout in the community. Probably the best time for traders like me who went 75% in steem.

Check out @HeyTaiZen's Tweet: https://twitter.com/HeyTaiZen/status/842430010443083777?s=09

We already lost a ton of money on @Steemit. So what? We knew that going in based on what u & @ToneVays have said al… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…

I was weighing my options to bail out or hold on to steem, then figured out my votes were carrying some weight and i'm starting to get rewards from content. And so I thought they might have found a solution for distribution of voting power. They finally got it right on that one.

The experiment for sure will have good output that will soon send us to the moon. For fundamental traders.
Dan's exit would have been a huge blow outright but that didn't happen. It even drove steem higher to 50%. Good thing i hodl.

It's safe to assume there are two sides behind that surge. Either a whale(market maker) marks up prior to exit or its the 1st big leg to the new trend.

If its the latter then were good because i'm still gonna hodl. If its the former, I'm still ok with it, I accept the risks. It will just give me another opportunity to increase my position further.

Image Source

I'd like to thank @abit and @smooth for listening to our sentinments when it comes to distribution of SP and coming up with the experiment. Hoping all the best for the community and steemit.

Don't think of this as an investment advise. I'm just expressing my take on it.