The Whale Voting Experiment Explained (including downvotes from @abit)
There are many people in the community that feel strongly that the current distribution of stake is preventing the platform from scaling to billions of users. There is pretty much no incentive for a 'regular user' to buy SP, because even a relatively large investment of a few thousand dollars does not provide practically any influence.
Figuring out a way to make the platform more appealing to 'regular users' to invest is really a key issue that needs to be solved if we all want our stake to grow in value.
The million dollar question is how do you achieve this in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders, and does not open the doors to abuse. Here is a post with some thoughts on the subject: Would you be willing to give up some of your influence, in exchange for earning additional interest on your balance above 250 MV?
The initiative that @abit is doing is an agreement with many of the whales to not vote for a period of time, as an experiment to see what happens when the dolphins+minnows get more influence. It is an experiment. It is not the solution to the problem.
The experiment will only work though if all the whales participate. If only some whales abstain from voting, and others continue to vote - then the ones who continue to vote will just have way more influence. The only solution to this is to convince them to stop voting, or to counter their upvotes with downvotes.
If the experiment helps the community to reach a consensus on a solution to the stake/voting issue, then it will be doing everyone a great service. We need to figure this out / get this right in order for the platform to scale.
IMO, one of the bigger problems of the experiment is lack of communication, so I am trying to help out with that.
Disclaimer:
I am not running the experiment, and I am not personally involved. Everything below is just personal views, observations, and opinions.
What is the goal of the experiment?
Based on my understanding, it is to try and see what happens if the whales do not vote and the dolphins+minnows get to control the rewards pool.
How long will the experiment last?
I don't know.
Isn't all the downvoting going to be bad for the platform?
The goal is not to have to downvote. If whales do not upvote, then the other whales will not have to downvote to counter.
The experiment will only work though if all the whales participate. If only some of the whales participate, then with the n^2 voting algorithm - it will just give the whales who do vote a ton more power. The experiment only works if none of the whales are voting.
Are the whales still allowed to upvote at all?
Yes. If they upvote with an appropriate vote weight so that their upvotes equal that of a dolphin, then the experiment will still work.
Will less rewards be paid out because the whales are not voting?
No. The platform will still pay out the same amount of rewards, regardless of how many/few whales vote. The only difference is that upvotes from dolphins and minnows will now have more influence on where those rewards are allocated.
now watch out coz when @abit did -100% my top whale was "created" who you have on top now. rest were far below him. lets see how fair this experiment is ;)
I got -68 vote from @abit yesterday on a post. Can anybody explain what that means?
@timcliff, thanks for the effort to at least try to clarify what's currently going on. In general, I appreciate your efforts to put some of the technical underpinnings of Steemit into non-technical terms for those of us who are primarily content creators and little else.
Your post (and need to make it) suggests we have a certain lack of communication between the developers/Steemit and the users. There's a lot of "black box" type stuff that seems to happen, and the community only finds out about it post-fact. It's not that people need to know about technical details... but there's a danger people losing confidence. If you think about it, in the earliest days of Facebook, Zuckerberg was actually quite active in user forums interacting with the community over development stuff. Same with Tom at MySpace. Same on several other long lived user-generated content venues.
Sure, experiments have to happen... changes get made... and maybe the decentralized format adds extra communication challenges precisely because there is not a centralized repository of plans and actions. In the current case, I think a lot of people felt in the dark as to whether this was an actual "Steemit experiment" or just abit running some stuff to see what would happen. I'd like to think we're all onboard and trying to go in the same direction... but is someone actually driving the bus?
It was a collective decision among several of the whales. It is not my place to say who is/isn't involved.
I could be wrong on this, but based on the fact that at least 50% of the whales need to stop voting in order for it to work, I believe there is buy-in from more than 50% of the whales.
Would it be scary if I said no? ;)
It's a decentralized bus, and everyone gets a steering wheel the size of their stake.
Hehe, yes. Exactly!
Yeah, makes sense.
No, not scary... but I just can't stop thinking about what happens when you blow up a balloon and then set it free to fart it's way around the room in a totally uncontrolled pattern until all the air is gone...
@neoxian's reply (just above yours) is pretty awesome :)
As I stated on @mynameisbrian's post:
If we want a "fairer" distribution of influence/rewards, the first thing that can be done - that actually had widespread support - is to adjust the n^2 rewards curve...which has been excluded in the next hard fork. Instead, the dev team has decided to plow ahead with more contentious changes. This "experiment" really serves no purpose and will only result in more of the same wrong-headed thinking, in my opinion.
I think most/all of the people who are doing the experiment are in favor of changing n^2 to a more linear function.
That's irrelevant to any of the points I made. This "experiment" will provide no valuable data. It will only irritate users - mostly the ones receiving the flags. We don't need to run a test to figure that out.
If the whales who are still upvoting stop upvoting with their full stake, then there will be no downvotes.
I disagree.
You must not have seen the trending page today.
The experiment has not been fully running for 24 hours yet.
[Edit] no downvotes as a result of the experiment.
There are posts on the trending page with whale votes from today.
Yes, I know / agree. It will probably take at least 24 hours to get to the point that enough whales either stop voting, or are countered.
On a related note - I'm going to conduct my own experiment.
Will there be zero communication between you, your scientists and the experimentees prior to said experiment? If so, it just may be the perfect shitstorm. Hahaha ;)
cue @mynameisbrian to collect this thought for new comic idea
There will be no details. I might let everyone know when it concludes. And just so everyone is aware - my reasons for doing this are subjective and my criteria is completely arbitrary.
Lol! Sounds promising.
Satire rules!
I don't understand why this experiment is being conducted. The source code of Steemit is open for everyone to see. We all KNOW what happens when all whales decide to stop voting. Why do we need an experiment to find out about something we already know?
Explain
Well, the votes of minnows and dolphins count more. Surprise! ;-)
That is true. There are other factors to consider too though - the price of STEEM, user engagement, curation rewards for dolphins/minnows. If anything, the experiment should be fun for the 'little people' once the drama over all the downvotes settles.
The worst developments I see are that people disliking the experiment are currently being silenced by just tagging them as drama queens, naysayers, whiners, etc... and the fact that there hasn't been any communication about this experiment with normal users beforehand.
Amen to that! The whales can vote in whatever fashion they want and I'm free to express my opinion about the senselessness of this experiment. Isn't this the beauty of Steemit?
Valid concerns. I don't disagree. At the end of the day though, it is the whales' SP, and they are allowed to vote with it as they please.
I am all for working on the voting allocation, and I understand what he was trying to do.
From the end user's point of view, it was a bad idea.
If he felt it was necessary he could have announced it first. He could have set some real criteria.
He can use his stake how he wants, and flagging is just downvoting... blah, blah. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
If SteemIt is at all interested in building a happy user-base, they really need to consult with some people who care more about people than technology. People who understand human nature and all of that.
I agree 100% it should have been announced first. The goal is for him not to have to downvote though. It is basically up to the other whales to decide if they want to 'play along' with the experiment.
Sorry Tim, I respect you greatly. He didn't let the other whales decide. He decided.
There was a lot of conversation in private slack and other channels with the other whales. Not everyone was contacted though, which is an issue. There are a lot more whales involved than just @abit though. [Edit] I am not 100% sure on this, but I believe more than 50% of the whales are participating.
Thanks for being cool about it, Tim!
Hopefully things will pan out for the better.
Nesting limit...lol
If so, these downvoted posts are getting 5 votes at -3% when they haven't even accumulated a $1 payout...this is going to start affecting people's rep scores if it isn't fixed.
I'm all good with tests, but there was clearly zero communication within the "testers" community.
I agree communication was an issue. That's why I created this post.
Are there examples of posts getting flagged below zero? It was my understanding that they were trying to make sure that the downvotes did not affect rep scores.
Are Smooth, Bernie, and his alt accounts also doing this? I'm seeing multiple downvoted posts that are an hour or so old that have yet to have a whale vote. (Other than whale bots(?) voting at very low percentages. i.e., created, wang, summon, etc.)
I believe so.
Below zero? Nope, not yet. Haha
Like I said, I'm totally down with this experiment and I fully understand the "whys" and "hows"...just wish there would have been better communication between the whales and the community. A lot of people are bummed because it was sudden and unexpected - add that to the fact that a few of them finally had decent payouts and it can cause a bit of a disruption in the force. Lol
Agreed 100% that the communication was bad. Hoping my post will help :)
As long as the payouts do not go below zero, then it will not hurt the user's rep score.
Steemit is getting harder and harder to onboard friends. @smooth and @abit are causing people to quit the platform.
Enjoy your new rep.
Not sure why you flagged me, but have one right back.
He bought a lot yesterday. Be careful. He will buy more then flag you to negative. :)
That's my sales tactic to boost the price of steem. ;)
Steemit seems to be becoming more and more toxic by the day, thanks to a few SP holders having SP proportional to the size of their egos.
Steemit is becoming a masochistic organism and it's sad to watch. I see a slow death, not yet inevitable, but momentum is on the wrong side.
I quit because of all these wars. Flag him flag her - insults and confusion. It's like catholics against baptists arguing. Who would want to read that Bible or join either church.
@htooms your voting power is too low now. You voted too many times today. Remember there is a limitation of around 40 full-weighted votes everyday, no matter upvotes or downvotes. I myself has run out of voting power as well. I'd like to suggest that you power up a new account, then your downvotes will be more powerful.
I see this post was exempted from the experiment.
Edit: Ok, looks like it got the treatment too.
It will probably be 24 hours before it gets to the point that everything is canceled out. A lot will slip through the cracks before then. The whales that are countering other whales upvotes are building lists of other whales that need to be countered. I believe they are focusing on the posts with the highest payouts first.
My latest post has must less votes then yours. I received a vote from @created and got downvote whale love. This post was voted by @created and has not. If you are going to run an experiment, you need to be consistent.
I'm not blaming you or anything, but I'm just saying the lack of consistency looks bad and @created is already on their list
[Edit] @created was added to the downvote list after it had voted on my post. I have no issues if anyone wants to downvote the post.
The post has now been downvoted :)
Yea, sorry man. I didn't mean to be "that guy". I'll give you some upvotes...
No worries :)
I'm not sure the experiment will do much but make dolphins the new whales and whales who don't participate mega whales.
Besides everyone knows the conditions are temporary and artifical so will adjust their behaviours (posting and voting habits) accordingly.
I'd rather something along the lines of what you're advocating being implemented in a fork (the platform limiting vests for upvoting to a certain amount & compensating larger stake holders with interest). That kind of experiment would yield meaningful results.
Making the dolphins the new whales (temporarily) is essentially the purpose of the experiment from what I understand. The whales who don't participate are being countered by other whales downvotes.
As far as implementing something like this as a HF, that would be a huge and extremely controversial change. A lot more data (via experiments like this) would be needed before making a change that significant to the actual platform.
Also, if this was a long-term thing, that wouldn't work either. If whales are able to power down, and then power up lots of little accounts - they could still act as whales and go unnoticed.
Counter voting for the purpose of this experiment is a terrible idea. As most authors won't get the memo nor care, they'll just see the downvotes and the zapping of rewards that could have been.
I'm not sure what the data of dolphins being the new whales will show. It certainly wouldn't show the likely impact of limiting voting vests.
But oh well... let's see how this pans out.
This is one in a long list...but is precisely the most obvious point. It also makes a mockery of the initial premise. Wtf is sp for if our community promotes people with more than someone else flagging others legitimate content?
Either upvote it or not.
This experiment will not even provide us with an untainted dataset!
There is a separate conversation to be had about downvoting in general. Even without this experiment, there are tons of users that are downvoting to counter other people's votes. (Dan is doing it, Bernie is doing it, Smooth is doing it..)
There is still a lot of disagreement over it, but the general consensus is that anyone is allowed to upvote/downvote however they chose. It is their SP, and if they want to use it to cancel someone else's vote - that is entirely within their right as a SP holder.
I do not know what the goals of the experiment are. I would imagine that after all the dust settles from the initial drama over people getting downvoted, the dolphins and minnows may actually enjoy the platform quite a bit more for the duration of the experiment. Personally, I like how my upvote can actually make a few cents of difference now.
I know it's been said before, but this would be a lot different conversation if this was something permanent. Obviously this would not be fair to the main stakeholders of the platform, and I suspect most of them would power down and either cash out, or power up a bunch of little accounts to get around it.
Since it is a temporary experiment, I see the potential harm as fairly minimal.
See my post tonite on all this, it is also in this list of comments. Nite guys
This is a big move. because theres a lot of dolphins. If there were a ton of whales, concentration wouldn't be a huge problem like it is now.
@nanzo-scoop, your comment is 100% my thoughts. :)
Wow. This guy gets it. This "experiment" cannot even be called an experiment because it has biased itself out the gate.
Abit doesnt understand this. Unfortunately so.
You really do a great job of explaining what's going on, thank you
Welcome :)
Well... I up voted your post. Usually I'm lucky if I manage to toggle a vote $0.01. I managed to take your post from $7.85 to $7.99 so that is a first. It could have been that other people voted or the price fluctuated but bumping a post by $0.14 is definitely a first for me.
I've notice my upvotes have more of an effect as well. From the perspective of a dolphin, this is definitely a fun experiment! I expect it will increase quite significantly within the next 24 hours. There are still a lot of active posts with whale upvotes. Once those are no longer in play, the dolphins' stake will have a lot more weight.