Eliminating Malicious Self-Voting: Learning from Yours.org

Many of you have probably heard of yours.org. It is similar to steem in the fact that you content creators can get paid for their contributions but that is where the similarities end. Their model is something like this:
You pay $.10 to post (paid to the website)
You pay $.10 to upvote (split between all the previous upvoters)
You pay $.02 to comment (paid to the content creator, the content creator can raise or lower this amount)

Whenever I find a new system (or way of doing things) I always try and break it down to the principles so that I can figure out if/how I can apply it to the way I do things in my "systems." So what are the principles that make their system work well or possibly better than steem in some ways?

Paying to post

Principle:
This would lower the amount of people posting useless things because it would not be cost effective.

How steem uses this principle:
I think the risk of being downvoted is usually a big enough incentive for people to not post useless things.

Change suggested:
I do not think that a change is necessary.

Pay to comment

Principle:
This is an interesting idea but similar to the first. It would disincentivise useless comments and also give a revenue stream to the content creator.

How steem uses this principle:
Again, downvoting removes this problem and content creators are paid by the upvotes.

Change suggested:
No change needed. Interesting to think about comments as a way to monetize the content though...

Upvotes paid to previous upvoters

Principle:
This incentivises voting on undervalued posts because if more people vote after you, you will get your money back plus maybe even earn additional money.

How steem uses this principle:
Steem has the curation rewards which reward people for voting on posts that are undervalued similar to how the yours.org model works, the differences are that curators only get 25% of the upvotes.

Suggested change:

I think the curation model works pretty good for the most part to fulfil the same principle of finding undervalued posts. It could probably be tweaked but I don't have any suggestions at this point.

Pay to upvote

Principle:
Eliminates malicious self voting/excessive voting because you only make your money back if other people vote after you.

How steem applies this principle:
Steem uses the "Voting Power" mechanism to put a "cost" on voting. Every time you vote, your voting power decreases and it slowly builds back up over time. This does a good job of slowing down excessive voting but I don't think it addresses the problem of voting on low value content in a "vote farming" scenario.

Suggested change:
I still haven't decided exactly what I think the best way to do this is, but here are some of my thoughts. Right now, when you vote on a post, it gives the person a share of the reward pool. What if you paid that money out of your own pocket and you were only refunded if other people vote after you. (I am trying really hard to explain this so that it makes sense!!)

Let's try an example. I see a post and I upvote it. My upvote gives about $.02 right now so instead of it coming from the reward pool, that $.02 would come from me (maybe you stake some SBD or maybe it just takes it from your steem power). If no one else votes on that post, the $.02 would be removed from my account and given to the author. Now let's say that John comes after me and votes on the post with a vote of $.01. Now that $.01 would be split between all the previous upvoters (in this case just me). So now I still owe $.01 and John owes $.01 and $.01 would come out of the rewards pool. Now let's say that Sally comes along and votes with a $.02 vote. The total post votes is at $.04. Her vote gets split between John and I. That takes my owed balance to $.00 and John down to $.00 and Sally to $.02 and the additional $.02 would come out of the reward pool. Once our balance reaches $0 we no longer receive a portion of the split (we would still get curation rewards the same way you do now). So now we have a whale come along and give it a $2 vote. Now it is split between the previous voters that owe money which at this point is just sally. Her balance goes all the way to $0. Now the total payout is $2.04 with $2 coming from the whale and $.04 coming from the rewards pool. We'll go one more just to make sure I get my point across... Jane votes with a $1 vote. It goes to the remaining voters that owe money which is just the whale at this point. So now we have the whale with a $1 balance and Jane with a $1 balance. The total payout is at $3.04 with $1.04 coming from the reward pool.

What would this do?

I think this would cause two things to happen. First, I think that this will make the payouts more accurate to the value of the posts because you are not going to be wanting to vote on a post that won't get any more votes otherwise you lose your money. In other words, the higher the payout amount goes, the less likely people will want to vote on it. Second, it will stop people from just voting up their own spam posts. If they did, they would just lose their money unless other people come and vote on the post after them.

Conclusion

I don't know if this is the best way to do this but remember, the principle is that we want a system that encourages people to vote on good, undervalued content and to not upvote their own spam posts. This is one idea that I have come up with but if we can think of a simpler one I am all for it!

Let me know what you think and as always be sure to vote and resteem. (I just hit 180 followers! But that still isn't many for getting the word out). I am working out a way that I can share more of my reward for my last post with those that resteemed it and I will apply it to this post when I think of a fair way to do it. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks!