A Jealous Utopian Bot - Should This Really Be A Thing?
Part of the Utopian reward deal is that you can either have an upvote by the Utopian-io bot or by another bot. Both together is against the rules. As soon as a bot made an upvote - even if it happened on the initiative of a third party- the Utopian-io bot stays away.
The rules are clear as stated in this article about the bot
It Looks Like, Getting Votes By Multiple Bots And @Utopian-io Works After All And Seems To Be Normal After All
As you can see in the comment section of this article, the user @littleboy got himself "a minnowbooster selfgoat". Which is nice for him. The problem is that he also got an upvote by @utopian-io and @elear, which had a value of almost 8$.
A screenshot of the article from the Steemworld page of @littleboy @littleboy.
When you look on Steemworld again, when the upvotes for this specific article exactly happened, you will see that the @minnowbooster vote came two hours after the one by @utopian-io.
@minnowboster on 2p.m.
@utopian-io on 4p.m. of the same day
What Does That Mean?
- In case the bot has a built in protection against other bots, it doesn't work.
- If it doesn't have one, the user who clicked ok when rewarding @littleboy overlooked the upvotes by other bots.
- And provided, the upvote was only supposed to be smaller than it would have been without upvote by another bot, that didn't really work well, too. An upvote of almost 8$ is quite something.
In effect this means that with users ignoring the rule, those who stick to it get a smaller upvote than they should. At the same moment it is possible that this user doesn't have the necessary funds to get a 3rd party upvote himself. Therefore the consequence right now is that users who ignore the rules have an advantage over those who adhere to them.
In effect, the "jealousy rule" is dysfunctional and needs to be reformed or abolished.
What Are The Consequences?
Personally I like the idea of an exclusive vote. After all, it is about rewarding something that until now has never been rewarded and the sponsors of the voting power can use their Steem Power in better ways if it is suddenly all about maximizing the payouts.
If the rule should sustain, then the bot needs some tweaking - or depending on its current setup, @minnowbooster should be put on the exclusion list. Also important is to tell contributors about the rule, so they don't break it.
It is just a guess, but another problem presumably are votes by bots after @utopian-io did his job. That's why votes should be happening as close to the deadline for payout-relevant votes as possible to prevent this behavior. Alternatively, maybe a script can help, which reduces or removes an upvote again when the vote of another bot is detected.
If the policy is that other bots only reduce the voting power of the @utopian-io upvote, I think the penalty should be a bit harsher and the upvoting power must not exceed 10%. Otherwise it still would be profitable to get an additional external bot vote.
But of course, I am not the majority. I did delegate some SP, but that is only a fraction of the entire amount. I guess, the decision about this matter should be made by the delegation big shots and I could also live with a bot that is not so jealous anymore. Depending on the complexity of the changes, this could be the better option.
I hope that was useful.
Open Source Contribution posted via https://utopian.io
Nice post @doodlebear - Just wanted to share with you, our 8th episode of Crypto Nights with you. You'll particularly enjoy this week's episode. Look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks
Anton
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@antonburton/introduction-to-litecoin-crypto-nights-episode-8
You clearly have no idea of what you are talking about. What you wrote is a clear case of defamation against me. I will talk about this with Utopian admins and moderators.
.
Nothing personal involved, I only took your case as an example because I noticed it there. If it makes you feel better I can remove your name.
You are asserting that I somehow cheated.
Well, technically, I would call it unethical behavior what you did, whether you were aware of that or not. The thread is now supposed to clarify if this is ok or not and what kind of consequences should be drawn.
Hey @doodlebear I am @utopian-io. I have just super-voted you at 8% Power!
Achievements
-Good amount of information. Thank you!
-A very informative contribution. Good job!
Up-vote this comment to grow my power and help Open Source contributions like this one.
You can see the current behavior here: https://github.com/utopian-io/api.utopian.io/blob/0192febcb3c097ad17fc87ab69ff72f37fe0bf6c/utopian-bot.js#L94
If existing votes are from one or more of the bots in this list, the vote value is reduced. To my understanding, the bot doesn't "come back" to check if bot votes were added after its own vote. IMO this is OK, given the effort and user uproar of later (and possibly repeated) unvoting and voting with lower percentage. And in some cases it's not the author who payed for an upvote... I'm not involved with SP, so just my 2 cents...
Thanks for the answer. It would be possible to program the bot that it can find out who paid for the upvote because the mechanism always works the same way:
So, you have to check wallet memos if the link of the articles appears in any of them. Of course, this would leave open two potential backdoor: 1) Unknown 2nd accounts and 2) URL shortener.
When it comes to complaints for retroactive unvoting simply refer to the rules. They are the same for everyone.
Finding out who payed for the upvote is not so straight forward with user balances managed by minnowboster et.al.. And whoever want's a bot upvote will then do it in the last few hours before payout so that the next utopian run would not catch it in time...
I think the current version does it's job and I'm not sure if it's worth the effort to make it more sophisticated. Some users will always find a way around...
ok, I understand. Small change, which would need a big effort. Then this no 3rd party bot rule is off the table.
Just to clarify, I'm not a utopian dev. I came across the same thing and what I write here is is my own opinion. From the implementation I assume the devs are aware of the situation, but finally it's their and the SP delegators call.
it couldn't find out when utopian vote first before the user buy a vote. that should be the case. @doodlebear
Its important you may not get upvote from idealistic bot as a result of different upvotes from different bots yet its not adequate to punish extraordinarily on great work.
But rules which do not get enforced are no rules and users can always write something else and get themselves as many bot upvotes as they want. Technically, they don't lose anything.
You have a point on this. Stated by @elear.
Its necessary you may not get upvote from utopian bot because of other upvotes from other bots but its not sufficient to penalize greatly on good work.
[utopian-moderator]
I called upon @elear for more clarification.
I agree, too strong penalties would be counterproductive for the greater cause. But as I stated in my comment to @abdullatifphadia, rules are not rules when they don't get enforced. Either you do that or you change the rules. Otherwise you create an unfair system towards those who obey the rules, which eventually leads to a disintegration (even if it is just a small thing like Utopian) since their vote share shrinks and this possibly without having the opportunity to compensate this with a self-paid upvote by a bot.
OK for now I will keep your post pending.
Reason, your the write up seems like a complaint, thus no category.
Edit your post: check the category and find a way to place it in any.
For example.
If really you believed the bots behaviour is abnormal then place it under bug category. The rest is for utopian developers to look into it. Thanks.
I did place it in the idea category on purpose, because
A) I don't know if it is a bug and how exactly the inner workings of the bot look like
B) It is more of a request to change this upvoting feature in regards to 3rd party bots
That's why I would like to leave it there unless you want me to move it (which of course would be ok).
OK I'm sorry for prolonging this but we need to have the requirements right.
Since you are more focus on idea.
Why not be active by making the post "a suggestion" and edit all those form of complain .
ok, I changed it.
Nice post
To avoid any kind of discussions here I would advise to remove any direct mention from the post @doodlebear. We don't want to hurt anyone. I don't consider this defamation but still you can get to your point without having to do any direct mention here. Just an advise. Thanks
Nice Analysis !! Looking forward to reading more of your contributions!