RE: Definition of a Whale and a whale-like group and the Math Behind
I have an idea for a change in your experiment... i hope youll hear me out.
Whales have by far the greatest effect when they pile onto already well paid posts -- because they create the most vshares and drive up the number of vshares required to earn money.
A problem i have noticed with your experiment is that you seem to have inadvertently targeted some weird edge cases where a small whale is voting for a post with very little additional support. What you end up doing is knocking half the vshares off of a post making like 2 or 3 bucks.
Even taken in the aggregate, all the vshares earned from cases like this would be unlikely to have a significant impact on overall vshare value -- the extra vshare value youre creating all happens at the top of the payout list, not the bottom.
For example, users like @dreemit and @barrydutton. The whale votes canceled out there seem like they would have only added a dollar or two of value to a post worth less than a dollar.
IMO, it would be worthwhile to ignore whale votes that say were on a post of less than like 2 bucks and also added less than 2 bucks...
Even though i think the histrionic reaction to this has been over the top in many cases, i can sort of understand the bad feeling when someone gets $3 for a post total, then $2 gets knocked because it came from a relatively small whale.... the bad feelings created in a situation like this does not seem to justify the relatively small gain for the ecosystem.
I realize that even if its not much money/vshares, it still helps them achieve "linear escape velocity" but IMO that isnt such a bad thing if another whale doesnt pile on later. (and if he does, you can deal with that then, imo)
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually I'm going towards this way already.
//Edit: By the way, if an author can only get a vote from one whale but few or no vote from dolphins, IMHO that means he/she is not doing good enough, it's better if he/she can improve but not only complain.
Hi there. I appreciate sigmajin putting in a word for me like that, though I haven't been complaining, that's not really in my nature. In fact if you see my recent posts, I've been doing my utmost to keep everything and everyone positive. Also, I do have a significant number of minnows supporting my work and a few dolphins as well. These past couple of days a few less than usual, because there are a number of people 'taking a break' or so I've heard.
EDIT: I should also mention that the first day of the experiment, most people had no idea what was happening. Once I did find out, I no longer had a problem with it. I believe that you have steemit's best interests at heart abit, you have proven that over and over, with the way you upvote comments at the top of the list. I appreciate you.