RE: How to make Steemit great again in 5 easy steps!
However I really agree that flags have a negative emotional impact. I believe this could be solved by a UI change and outreach.
I disagree with the idea that ui change and outreach solves this. And yes upvoting things in a very specific way may take more time and effort, but if you care enough to downvote, my question is why waste the one resource this community has very little of, i.e. good will, in order to save a little effort?
Furthermore, how can anyone really support the idea of redistribution of wealth like that? A simpler solution would be to keep what we have but ditch curation rewards. The automated upvotes exist solely for 2 reasons. #1 is curation rewards and #2 is solidarity. You'll never do anything about solidarity voting. But ditching curation rewards removes an economic incentive to run a mindless bot.
Great comment though and thanks!
If curation rewards were ditched, what would be the incentive for holding Steem Power? After all, we already got rid of the hyperinflationary interest rates, and so far as I can tell that hasn't really made more people want to invest in Steem as was hoped for. Sure, having a greater ability to help others out is nice, but there has to be at least some personal benefit to holding SP or I suspect we would see an acceleration in power downs and sell offs as a result.
For example, VIVA has the dividends based on liquidity pool stake, so in VIVA you can get away without any form of curation reward since that compensates for it. But Steemit has no such other mechanism to take the place of curation.
Curation rewards incentivize the mindless bot behavior and it's the mindless bots that are being given as the reason for the whale war.
Ditch it and give people an interest rate for holding SP equivalent to what they would have gained from curation. It's simpler and it serves a valid purpose.
Curation will still occur because of solidarity. People like who they like and we upvote our friends even when they shitpost :D
VIVA was designed partly based on lessons learned from steem, so the comparison is a good one.
Under VIVA your ability to upvote tomorrow is partially related to whether or not you used your upvotes the previous day. The longer you sit idle and do nothing, the lower your power creeps. It's the opposite of steem in that regard. That's why it's called "participatory income". You get paid more for what you do, than what you did. But you continue to benefit from all your efforts, for life.
Steem could mimick this in a way by ditching curation rewards and causing all new funds regardless of source to be autopowered up, instead of entering general circulation. Then when people want money they could just start powering down. The incentive there is the price of steem will have risen dramatically because it pinches hard on the supply.
gee, I have been lowly participating the participatory VIVA and highly participating the anti-participatory Steem... What's wrong with me!? LOL... Gonna hit the viva chat later...