RE: @snowflake's really interesting proposal - Turn whales into moderators and give dolphins all the voting power (TLDR Version)
As the votes for my work trickle in, I pay attention to the names. I want to be able to work my way up, as I've been doing since day one. As I climb the ranks and pass those who have supported me, I want to be able to give back some day, so they too can climb.
Say you vote for me. Seeing me become successful is an investment in yourself because there's a strong chance you will receive a vote in return(especially if we're building bonds and friendships, socializing, working together as a team towards a common goal). As it stands, I'm at nearly twenty percent of this limit of 100MV. Once I get there, I can no longer help the people who helped me. I don't like this idea at all.
Where's my incentive to climb the ranks? If it becomes my job to go around looking for things that aren't worthwhile so I can give it a down vote, when will I get a chance to look for the things I enjoy... and how can I show my appreciation?
Those whales are already viewed as negative by a growing populace of those who want to get to the top by skipping every step in the middle. Imagine how much hate they will receive when the only opportunity for the whale to interact is to place a negative impact on those who may wish to climb.
I'd like to work my way up so I can leave a lasting positive impact on those who have been there for me.
I see an entire set of new problems if those looking out for each other have to go around downvoting people just so the others who they'd prefer be rewarded can succeed. I'm not saying I'd be dishonest bastard like that, but let's be honest and look around at society and use that as our template.
Once you are about to become a moderator you can just use a different account and start to build up again with this one, you will be able to upvote with the other too. It's totally up to you if you want to be a moderator or a user.
You could use multiple accounts and you would accumulate more voting power in each one so essentially you would be climbing the rank.
The 100 MV limit is also not set in stone, when it is becoming common for many people to have more than $8000 in their social media wallet then the 100MV limit can be raised. But today they are only 0.2 % of users who have this amount in their wallet.
It won't be the only way to interact, whales can have smaller accounts too and upvote things they like. Nobody will be forced to be a moderator or a user, both gives different benefits, you can chose to be whatever you want.
Moderators won't be able to allocate reward to a specific user, so they won't downvote because they "prefer" they will downvote because they think the content is not worth the payout.
unless they downvote everyone else.
This wouldn't work as the content that didn't get downvoted by the whale would get downvoted by other moderators which would make the whale downvote moot.
We've seen this situation play out many times on steemit, where a whale upvote content and another whale that disagree with high payout would downvote to reduce rewards.
The scenario you describe would only be possible if whales would coordinate the attack and that there was more bad whales than good whales in the system.
What's the point to any of this if I can simply get around it by opening multiple accounts. If I have 10 accounts all sitting at 100MV, that essentially makes me ONE person with 1000MV worth of voting power to play with. Nothing changes. Instead of a user getting one vote, they get ten.
That's why the formula is key. It must be a more complicated formula. Either polynomial ending in exponential or ending in asymptote at the dolphin level.
If I sign on to Facebook... do I need one account to enjoy status messages and another account to argue under news feeds?
This was asked in the question above, but if you want to use your 1000 MV for influence, you can split it into 10 accounts. (One of the proposed changes in the upcoming HF will actually let you delegate the voting power to the other accounts without even having to transfer it.)
If you are using your SP for influence though, then you will not be collecting 'moderator' awards. You would basically be giving up a large chunk of money in order to have that extra influence.
unless youre using it to vote for sock puppets. And since you split up your account into a bunch of different accounts to beat the moderator status, you probably have a bunch of them
People could do that, yes. But they would be sacrificing a big chunk of cash (moderator rewards) in order to have the additional voting power. There would be no more curation rewards, so the only incentive to do that is the ability to upvote more posts (presumably your own).
To oversimplify it - there are two scenarios of this:
The other thing to keep in mind is that there are really only 50 users who have enough SP to create more than 10 'user' accounts. The ability/risk of abuse on a massive scale is not that big.
Even if there is some abuse of this to some extent (which there probably would be) - I think the net effect of the dolphin/minnow users having more say in the voting process would be a net plus.
I'm sure the experts will come to a logical conclusion. I've noticed though, those with a passion to create and drive to succeed do just that here. I've witnessed a few lackluster performers want the same success. This is life. I was in management for many years. I suppose I could get used to being paid to evaluate again, as long as pay was worth it. I have to run @timcliff. Good talk.
Ok, ttyl. Same to you!
Well, to me, it just seems like unnecessary micromanaging and a ploy to take the power away from those who've earned it by paying them off. I don't mean to sound negative or criticize. I could be missing something. It is late and I'm not feeling a clear head at the moment. I am the type to just go with the flow though...so whatever happens, happens.
I mentioned it in reply to @snowflake's post, but I am only in support of the idea if there is backing from the major stakeholders.
If the platform is successful though and attracts millions of users who get actively engaged in the platform and excited about "leveling up" - the large stakeholders (and the rest of us) should all be very happy about that.
I think this change has a real possibility to spark that level of interest and engagement.
You pay someone 10 bucks to flip burgers, they'll want 15. You pay them 15, they'll want 20.
I don't disagree, but there are a lot of differences between that and what we are talking about here.
You won't receive any financial benefits for having all these users accounts. If you were to put your stake in a 'moderator account' you would earn some steem in proportion to your SP and so you would "climb" as you said faster than if you were just a user.
Being a user allows you to give reward, being a moderator allows you to earn reward. It's up to you to decide which you prefer, you can have both in fact.
Note that if you upvote crap content you will likely waste your voting power as you will be moderated by a whale.
potentially to yourself
Which is no different than the current system.
Too many holes. Give more power to new users means more users creating ten accounts and voting for themselves. If half the place is here to downvote and the other half is here to upvote, that's a great way to create animosity. That could lead to terrible side effects and more fighting. I'm not being hostile here, by the way. Some I can agree with, but I see an entirely new set of problems coming from a change such as this and feel it requires a thorough examination. I really must be off though. Have a good day.
Also, your incentive to climb the ranks would be that you could actually influence rewards. The more SP you had, the more your vote would be worth. 100 MV would basically put you at the status of the highest whale, and you would have a large say over what got rewarded. Anything beyond 100 MV would give you additional 'moderator' rewards.
I did make an edit to the post though to account for users who want to use their first 100 MV of SP to remain a 'regular' user.
It could be setup so that everybody's first 100 MV was their 'user' account, and anything beyond that would be a separate moderator account.
The main idea behind the moderators is that as the primary stakeholders, they would have the ultimate say on the rewards. [Edit] Whales can already do this today, the main difference is that they would no longer be able to have as big of a postive influence on handing out rewards. (More power would be given to the rest of the community.)
there are three possibilities:
3.A hybrid outcome -- good whales will exercise restraint in using their downvotes, and only be involved to a limited extent. Bad whales will take advantage of the system to their financial b enefit.
None of these possible outcomes is positive
I replied to the sock-puppet abuse part in the other comment.
Regarding the downvotes, yes - there always will be a stigma associated with this.
There are really two separate issues:
The proposed solution does not address the second issue. It arguably will make it worse, since there probably will be more downvoting. I guess whether or not this gets significantly worse depends on how much perceived abuse there is, and how actively the moderators are dealing with it.
I proposed that downvotes are called moderator vote because that's essentially what they are.
All of these moderator votes would be hidden from the interface, the average user would have no idea what's going on behind the scene.
I'm oldschool. If you want something, you work for it (that doesn't mean slave away swinging a hammer). If there's something positive at the top of the tree, I'll climb the tree so I can have it. Sure, I could just cut the tree down, problem solved. Then the tree dies and there's nothing else for anyone to climb.
I started out with the same amount of SP as anyone else who didn't buy in. My vote was worth the same as all others, every step of the way. It wouldn't feel good to know had I started today, instead of months ago, I'd have far more SP and value in this account five months from now than I do today, if those changes were to go in effect. That's kind of a shot in the arm because I never felt like this place was unfair or required a change. I felt like you had to work up, be patient, and persevere. My vote was weak on day one. The way to change that was to build up the power, so I did, and still want to. It never occurred to me that I could simply change the rules in my favor.
I'm tired and rambling. All apologies.
There is still a ladder to climb. Earning (or buying) 100 MV of Steem Power is still a lot. I've been working very hard here for almost 6 months, and I have 32.3 MV. My vote is worth about a penny.
I'm happy to keep climbing, but I'm weird like that :) I don't think that many mainstream users are going to stick it out for so long just so they can add a penny of rewards.
I think that the reality is that the current ladder is just too steep to incentivize regular users to become an integral part of the platform. If you have to work your tail off for a half year just to have 1 penny of influence, then what's the point?
The platform is still in beta, so now is the time to change things if they need changing.
This formula must change
Either make the climb less exponential or experiment with polynomial that allows a quick rise to 1c then asymptotes at dolphin level
I want to keep climbing too and for some reason I've never met a hill too steep to climb.
I'd suggest, rather than the voting power steadily increasing, once it hits a certain plateau, the steady increase becomes more gradual until the whale's vote hits a "maximum".
The problem with a gradual taper is it creates a clear incentive for people to create multiple accounts.
You'll still have your hill :) You just have a point to reach where you will be at the 'top'. You will also get a lot more reward for actually getting there.
Try to look at it from the perspective of a mainstream users. I know you and I don't have a big issue with putting in a ton of work for very small incremental gain, but it is a big turn-off to the platform for the majority of users.