I think any belief in the wisdom of the crowd is a fallacious assumption. People lack the virtues needed for just self-policing which is why rights such as freedom of speech must be coded into law and enforced with violence in the real world. Encouraging downvoting will open new avenues of self-righteous mob-mentality witch hunts where gangs will begin voting against those with whom they disagree or those who have downvoted them instead of honorably curating rewards.
I've noticed that the changes proposed by Steemit almost always favor the largest wallets and that's no surprise considering their stake, however I do appreciate the recent attempts towards open and honest communication on the blockchain.
Agreed. Wisdom of the crowd just doesn't work when money is involved. Increasing downvotes and as a result, toxic behavior, is a terrible idea.
Except that the Whale experiment was an overwhelming success.. But what do I know, I only witnessed the crowd chher it on and it was completely about money.
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The whale experiment was completely different. It was 2 whales capping influence at X vests. Any vote that was cast that was higher than that amount was countered (negated) with a downvote. It had nothing to do with quality. It was simply removing the largest votes so everyone else's votes had more influence.
The Whale Experiment was directly in response to the Crowd who demanded vociferously one singular fundamental change in the much anticipated hardfork at that point. I know exactly what it was, and it wasn't just two whales, FTG and Abit and Smooth and I'm missing a couple more all joined, along with all the Whales like Ned and Dan that Stopped voting, and my point was that wisdom of the crowd isn't inherently wrong or mistaken, especially in that instance. The platform was buzzing with activity like it hasn't buzzed since or before, there has still not been any more successful experiment that drove engagement and brought more traffic to the platform. Don't try to marginalize it to the efforts of the two people that began it and sacrificed most to maintain it, it was the response the community had that also played a large role in it, and like I said the participants included not only the people who Downvoted but the people who Refrained from voting. Yeah, Flagging is enormously beneficial to the health and integrity of the platform and I'll keep reminding you forgetful lot that thinks the very very worst of everyone else. Give everyone else more tools to police themselves and they will surely turn to raging trolls. Nonsense.
The whale experiment you refer to achieved exactly the purpose of the Huey Long algorithm I have proposed: limiting the profiteering potential of perverting curation via financial manipulation.
The only differences were that the algorithm was different, and it wasn't cast in code, but done by altruists. It didn't last because it wasn't cast in code as the Huey Long algorithm would be. No downvotes would be necessary from the Huey Long algorithm to achieve the same purpose.
There's limiting the amount of rewards a post can earn, and then there's limiting how much one vote draws from the reward pool, not the same thing and it has been pointed out before that people will simply overcome those limits either by splitting the stake up or by making more shit posts. Interesting is the fact that you abandoned the conversation where you initially brought up your suggestions and are trying to claim that "no, really guys, it would work".
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BTW, it was only a matter of time until the whales that did not agree would have tried, and probably succeeded, in splitting their stake up and not been noticed, which woukd have been completely in line with the then just released linear rewards. Like I pointed out initially to your suggestion, the limits only act (emphasize ONLY) to encourage such splitting / hiding behavior, why would you expect anything less? As such, it makes it harder to detect abuse and the milking, and it hinders the overall gaming aspect of it, the luck aspect, which is what happens when one post receives an overwhelming support, something you think ought not to happen and a burden that I think ought not to happen since the potential for earning such rewards would bring people to the platform, which if you have it your way, would never happen.
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Except downvotes or negative votes work in any other social media system. So because users won't get paid out every post now its an issue? Just remember what system we came from. This no way at all effects how users post.
You can almost bet anti-abuse groups will pop up because of this. And their incentive is the curation the get for helping someone out who was attacked. So its a win win.
Neither @curatorhulk nor @freezepeach who have undertaken to mitigate flag abuse concerned themselves with financial rewards in the slightest. Their incentive was non-monetary. Society is far more valuable than it's economy, and disregarding that is less than optimal.
I dunno what happened to @curatorhulk, but @freezepeach is around. Instead of postulating their motives from nescience, just ask them why they do it. Curation rewards already exist, and no one is countering flags to receive them, nor have I ever heard of anyone doing so for that incentive. Far more valuable returns were their goal.
Fairness, opposing bullies, censorship, and idiots are all real reasons people have acted to oppose flags. Apparently, those are more valuable than curation rewards.
@curatorhulk is still around! I've gotten upvotes from them (and I'm not a target of flags).
That is good news. Last time I approached them about some friends that were being flagged I received no response from them.
This is completely different because money is involved. When money became involved it changed the game. It can't operate like any other system. The community has proven that downvotes will not be used altruistically or responsibly but instead levied personally. Which will happen again here for the vast majority of downvotes, guaranteed.
Nothing has been 'proven' because what happens under one set of economic rules and balances are very different from another.
It could very easily work out exactly the opposite of what you are claiming because the trolls are willing to pay the high price for their abusive downvotes, but others are not willing to pay that price for altrustic annd beneficial downvotes (which increase rewards to legitimate users and contributors by pushing them back from the milkers). So by keeping the cost of downvotes high, as it is now, you end up with only abusive downvotes and toxicity, but with cheaper downvotes you have non-trolls willing to use them for good.
Lol of course. You can make any counter argument for just about anything and we can't 'know' for certain how it would go unless it is first tested. However, stepping back and thinking logically, do you actually believe that is how this is going to play out? I think we both have a pretty good guess as to what is most likely to happen with free downvotes... and that is them being used primarily for personal reasons as opposed to responsible and altruistic curation.
Given that context I highly doubt this change ends up encouraging people to purchase steem and likely is a net negative to both the price of steem and steemit.com.
We agree on this
I think they are likely to be used for both. In fact they already are, just on a very small scale, and that small scale introduces a severe imbalance in the system which opens it up to a vast degree of milking and other value-destroying behaviors. That is a far bigger problem than a relatively small amount of trolling. That is my view.
But, again, we don't know until we try. The rate of iteration on Steem/Steemit is far too low in my view. If we only get to try something every few years there is really no chance of reaching a better outcome before Steem sinks permanently into obscurity.
Then why not test things with SMTs and communities first before implementing them on a larger scale that takes so long to implement changes?
It will be at least months before SMTs are ready (I don't know the schedule for communities) and even then will likely be additional months or years if ever before any SMT becomes large and valuable enough for such a test to be meaningful at all, and even then it won't be clear whether such results would scale up to the entire Steem platform. For the foreseeable future the primary concentration of value on Steem will be the STEEM token and therefore the native Steem reward pool will be the primary motivator of voting behavior.
Honestly, SMTs and communities were a bit of a scam sold to us by Steemit as being something that: a) going to be was finished in a reasonable time, b) would instantly power all sorts of large and valuable projects which don't currently exist, and c) would successfully compete with countless other existing and in-development token systems in the blockchain world. Maybe (b) and (c) would have had a better chance had (a) actually occurred, but it didn't.
To be clear I think SMTs and communities are fine and I'll welcome them when the come but they aren't even close to a panacea to solve all of Steem's problems the way many seem to suggest (nor do we have even the remotest idea when they will actually exist).
There are efforts under way to attempt to improve this as well. We'll see. But I'm not in favor of putting all eggs in the SMT basket for sure. I'd rather take advantage of all of the available opportunties to try to move forward.
People don't flag whales because whales can flag them back far harder, not because it costs them VP to do so. It takes thousands of minnows to flag away bot votes on shitposts, and they're not going to do it. One whale can flag them all into the negative and then none of the minnows posts will be visible at all.
The only people that will take advantage of free downvotes are those that already use their VP to downvote, either because they don't care if they're flagged into the dust, or because they have enough SP to deploy.
You neglect that minnows can be crushed by retaliation. Making downvotes free to minnows does not protect them from retaliation. That's the real reason minnows don't police whales, not because it costs them VP to flag.
I mostly agree, but I would say it is additive. You have the risk of retaliation and also the cost. Reducing the cost helps somewhat, but it doesn't go all the way, and indeed may not work.
Seriously can't understand how more people aren't seeing that this is what will happen.
It's mind boggling that they think this is a good idea and will improve steemit.com... literally mind boggling.
This is such nonsensical position I don't know where to begin. People cannot police themselves that's why they must be policed by people.
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Police don't allow mobs to go around lynching people which is the type of behavior this change is encouraging. It's not about community self regulation either like it's being sold. This only empowers the largest wallets, of which there are few, with the largest ones being those who are proposing these changes. It's regulation by the 1% just like the mainstream media where billionaires use their power to produce propaganda rags for their cause and stifle dissenting voices. All of the changes I can see Steemit making are ones that favor their position on the blockchain, including normalizing a culture of downvoting behavior, and providing free downvoting mana so the largest wallets, most of whom are anonymous and could easily be multi-accouting, can more easily steer the reward pool into their own hands.
No this "type of behavior" is not encouraging anyone to act like a troll. Complete nonsense. Those that act like troll will do so regardless of the change and the change will not change people into trolls.
How does this ONLY empower the few? You seem to think that with free downvotes the large stakeholders will all of a sudden start flagging like a Troll, and that's fine, you can think what you want. I know different, I know that the large stakeholders do care about the health of the economy, and the distribution of steem I know so from the innumerable efforts going on at the moment and from the unprecedented and still without a doubt most successful things that has happened here, the Whale experiment.
Also, police used to pose with the lynch mob. Fact check your shit that thinks the police keep people from lynching people, they absolutely are completely powerless against a violent mob. I don't know what world you got dropped off from with such unadulterated nonsense.
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What makes you think "the Whale experiment" was a success?
Go back in the blockchain and see it for yourself what absolutely everyone said.
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You mean this stuff?
https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/the-whale-voting-experiment-explained-including-downvotes-from-abit
Looks like a total clusterfuck with zero data on what happened and therefore no way to measure success. Most of the comments are negative and it looks like several people left the platform over it.
https://steemit.com/steemitstrike/@kafkanarchy84/steemit-strike-apology-to-followers-and-announcement-of-indefinite-break-from-blogging
https://steemit.com/steemit/@karenmckersie/hello-abit-smooth-steemit-stike-notice-is-on-your-experiment-did-not-work
However I did not ask what other people thought of it, I asked why you thought it was a success. Care to answer that question or not?
Yes most people were up in arms about it, yet the experiment was meant to last a couple of weeks and it extended for a couple of months if not more and numerous people who were against it changed their tune mere days later. Your confirmation bias is showing btw:
https://steemit.com/whale-experiment/@benjojo/the-whale-experiment-orca-support
There are more I'm sure but I literally picked the first one (after I typed the quip about confirmation bias to you) out of the results:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Whale+experiment+steemit&ia=web
I told you to look back, I didn't say look only for what tickles your bias. In that thread I linked I'm right there in the comments commending the efforts of both abit and smooth and spelling out why it is a success, but it was a success because it empowered people and because it demonstrated that the large stakeholders aren't idiots and understand why people want to power up, and it's not when they see reward pool rape and such faggotries. I wasn't the only one, I'm positive that every single one were adamantly against it completely changed their tune days later, and I knew that because I was there and read their comments and posts.
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I'm not biased for or against the so-called experiment. You asked me to search for it and the first thing that popped up on Steem results was chaos and people quitting over it. That is why I asked for your opinion in the first place, because you claimed it was a success, and I wondered why. Clearly your claims that everyone approved of it were demonstrably false, and I still haven't seen anything in the way of data on how or why it was a success, only that a certain subset of people approved of and are cheerleaders for it. Expecting large accounts to act in concert for the good of the community rather than self interest is naive in my opinion, and I don't think anyone is prepared for the chaos that will be unleashed with free downvotes, but I hope that I'm wrong and you are right.
https://steemit.com/discussion/@whatsup/remembering-the-whale-experiment-thinking-about-distribution
Second result from the search list, how deep did you have to go to find those outliners, or you searched specifically for "whale experiment fail" lol? That post explains why it was a success. In the comments more people doing the same.
https://steemit.com/steem/@abit/whales-no-voting-experiment-going-on
Yeah it was a "cluster fuck" and it had no 'control' but it was an experiment not in the strict scientific method way but as "Let's see what would it be with a different reward distribution" and the site was Lit. Like never before or ever since, we should be lucky to have that kind of engagement and reward distribution again. Go. And. Read. It's surely extremely hard to not run into post after post talking about how good the experiment was, though you seem to have burdened yourself in digging up the initial, reactive posts as if that means jack shit besides blasting the bias you have of "que wisdom of the crowd".
Top comment from that @abit thread :
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Yuge success, unequivocally the most successful thing that has happened to steem. Guess what the price did: Slyfuckinrocketed. Success, suck on that suka.
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If you think the price of STEEM had anything to do with this then you clearly don't understand how the crypto markets work.
My lazy ass needs links to that trove of info about the “Whale Experiment”, care to point me in the right direction?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Whale+experiment+steemit&ia=web
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I am glad you pointed out your comment was entirely nonsensical. People cannot police themselves contradicts claiming they must be policed by people.
Read your comment again. Laugh with me.
I don't know if you realize but my comment summized the position @skepticology made, I don't know how you got the idea that it was what I thought considering how I prefaced it.
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