RE: Community Service Announcement: You Control Steem. Vote for Witnesses.
I agree with what you said. The primary responsibilities of the witness role include maintaining a reliable server, publishing a useful price feed, deciding on code changes, influencing interest rates, etc. To frame it as a popularity contest may not be fair though because, IMO, someone's decisions are a reflection of their character. If they have taken steps which harm others, as an example, then it's reasonable to consider they may take similar steps in the future with regards to their responsibilities as a witness. In a way, it's the age-old question: "Does the character of a politician matter?" I think it does, even more so because the weight of the actions of the witnesses on the platform are determined by their amount of Steem Power. As a witness, their Steem Power increases. I can see a valid reason to choose one witness over another (all else being equal) based on that alone with the thinking that one person will use their increase in Steem Power differently than another.
I won't get into what people perceive as "harm" here. Clearly that's open to wide speculation along various timescales with all kinds of different expectations (some healthy, some not).
What makes Steemit interesting is the social network aspect of the platform. Some witnesses do their thing and don't interact much at all with the community. I don't "know" many on the top 19 because of this. Others take risks with their posts and with their actions. I think there's room to reward either type, depending on an individual's preference for risk.
Mostly agree, but a couple of comments:
The increase in SP is not a particularly significant factor any more, post-HF16. Not only were the rewards reduced 80% but that SP is not vested for two years, only 13 weeks. Many witnesses do power down to pay expenses, support projects, and possibly earn a little bit of pay for their efforts. So, not only are you no longer voting on someone whose SP will be increased for (at least a good part of) the next two years, but it won't increase very much or very fast (due to increased rewards) and may not at all (if cashed out to pay for expenses, etc.)
Please consider the possibility that 'being invisible' and not doing anything that could offend someone could be a strategy (and arguably an abusive one, if you think witnesses should be involved) for getting voted and especially staying voted as witness. If you are already in, it can be smart (from a purely self-interest perspective) to not rock the boat, even to the extent that means never doing anything helpful.
But again, mostly agree.
Good thoughts, thanks @smooth.
I had an interesting experience today where I had three trending posts at once, along with (for a time) the number one trending post. In 9 months, that's never happened to me. It felt great! A certain individual used 3 powerful accounts to downvote them all right before the first was to payout (I think they actually removed a vote or two also). It was an interesting emotional experience. I chatted with them and they assured me it was nothing personal and just normal curation because they don't like 3 trending posts by the same author. That seemed quite subjective to me. Anyway, it was interesting, because even though I've mostly agreed with the "it's your SP, you can do what you want with it" mentality from an intellectual perspective, I was surprised how demotivating it was emotionally to watch rewards go away. For a moment, I thought the many votes, views, and comments meant the community valued what I had posted (and I think they did) and that I was about to be rewarded with a nice payout. To have one person, one OG Bad Whale, take that all away was discouraging and reminded me again how this system (in it's current form) is... kinda screwy. It's like, if I had provided less value to the community as to not trend so much or if had known about this one whale's preferences concerning a single author trending three times, I would have received more rewards than I did.
It reminded me, there's a difference between intellectually knowing something and then having an emotional experience around it. I wonder how things would be different if the whales experienced the same thing and how it might impact their actions. Sorry to ramble, just wanted to post this somewhere and didn't feel like doing a whole post about it. I also was curious of your thoughts on this, as you've also been doing a fair amount of downvoting as part of this process.
The whales have been 'downvoted' by the market. :) Maybe not exactly the same thing, but some of the same feelings likely exist.
I agree with you that there is an issue with how rewards appear to be 'taken away'. We've done a lot of brainstorming how to deal with that such as not showing the unpaid reward amount in the UI (if you go look it up yourself from the blockchain, that's on you, arguably), but nothing has gained widespread support including from the Steemit team who runs the web site.
FYI, my current downvoting bot places the downvote immediately after a whale vote so the reward doesn't increase, stay high for hours, and then be 'taken away' with a late downvote. The effect you see from my bot is just a smaller increase. Occasionally I do vote manually though (or the bot has glitches) so this doesn't always apply, but 99% of the time currently, it does. Of course, I have no control over Mr. OGBW or anyone else.
The way your bot works makes sense. This was a funny case because I had already received the downvotes from abit and yourself and figured the 277 votes and 131 comments meant the ~$59 potential was a real, valid, non-whale reward. Since it was my first time trending in the number one spot, I thought that was special also. When it got smacked down to $9 minutes before payout, I was certainly surprised. Same with the other two posts. The market is a nebulous force, but it's funny how we as individuals feel differently when actions are taken by another individual. The problem with hiding the potential payouts is a post might still be high up on the trending page and receive much less than other posts with a similar or even worse ranking. The more irrational the system of rewards appears, the more frustrated people will get with it. Then it starts to appear like a rigged lottery or a broken slot machine, one which only benefits the financially powerful. I think that perception may be more dangerous that many other negative perceptions as far as future adoption. Yes, hopefully Steem Power will distribute as whales power down, sell, and new whales are created. My concern, I guess, is with bad actors who aren't powering down and selling or they aren't doing so quickly.