I agree mostly, #3 is the problem and that's what work needs to focus on. What puzzles me is the reasoning that users choose #2 because of that. Clearly the choice should be #1, or not?
With projects I meant trustworthy curation groups. In total there is a quite huge number of genuine curators here, which would be happy to spread more towards the tail.
I got into a lot of detail in my reply to azircon's question, and also mentioned the huge difference between #2 and #3 (your 1.) in the real environment. #2 benefits investors as a group over those who could've received the vote instead. It just doesn't hurt investors choosing #1.
A mixed scenario actually works well "if everybody did it" and #3 was solved. At least as long as the outgoing votes aren't mostly self-votes or votes for friends then (which seems to be the case for quite a few people voting on burnposts now).
And fully agree with the final note :D
Well #1 has to exist (which requires creativity and initiative on the part of the posters, so you can't assume infinite quantities at all times) and be identifiable. Certainly some of that does. I vote for it. It also in many cases (not all) has a finite capacity: If a post is already fully rewarded to the extent of its value by the time you considering voting on it, you can't vote for it, even though you might entirely support it getting the rewards it is already voted to receive. (An exception would be posts which are raising funds for something with a large or essentially unlimited budget.) This gets into the marginal vs. total question I alluded to earlier.
"Not" (by which I guess you mean not voting) is only a good choice if you think that your vote for none-of-the-above is causing more marginal harm by reducing rewards from #1 than marginal benefit by reducing rewards from #3. This is obviously a judgment call. If you think everything is working great then clearly you would have no reason to vote for #2. But IMO that's rather absurd given Steem's lack of success on almost every front: A system which effectively allocates budget to where it can do the most good and is most effective in drawing value into Steem should be akin to a superpower, particularly when few competitors have this. We're clearly not doing that.
In an ideal world: #3 wouldn't exist (or would be fully downvoted) and #2 would only be a sensible vote if everything in #1 were already fully rewarded. But we don't live in an ideal world, at least this blockchain and its rewarding system certainly does not. #3 routinely does not get downvoted because of too much drama, too much unrewarded effort, etc.
Also, most of these judgments are subjective in terms of what constitutes value and such, and that's okay. I am less concerned about people disagreeing on what or where is the positive value in good faith than people gaming the system to extract value from it or people not downvoting when the latter is going on (which then ensures it will, because there are always people who will take advantage when they can). That's a systemic problem here. Since we don't have a solution, none-of-the-above (i.e. burnpost) goes up in value from where it would otherwise be if we had more effective downvoting.
Likewise for curation initiatives. Sure there might be some excellent curation initiatives but I don't really see a good way to figure out what is good and what is not (is there anyone curating the curators?), and for the most part I am suspicious of them given past experiences and some of what I still see today. Finally, most of them don't downvote or don't downvote effectively, which is yet another reason for me to not support them and retain control over my own vote power instead. Still, if someone is able to convince me that this or that curation initiative is doing a great job recognizing value, then I'm open to being sold on delegating to it. That doesn't happen by default. When I support burnpost, I see that as an case of "do no harm" relative to delegating to a curation initiative that I don't know is helping or hurting.
Finally, I'm also comfortable that voters can decide how much of the pool should go to none-of-the-above. If burnpost gets no rewards for a long time I'll probably stop posting it. If it gets small rewards or large rewards, IMO that is just people making a budgetary decision.
I'm mostly on your side that it isn't harmful, and definitely not in relation to #3. I see a small harm when good authors simply get overlooked because it's convenient to be neutral and vote on burnpost. It's not motivating for them to see that it's mostly #3 and #2 out there, so everyone going #1 instead counts.
I intentionally avoided mentioning it by name, but
regarding curation projects I'm really happy how @curangel works out. While slip ups happen, the general allocation is pretty good in my view. It's public info which curator curated what, so if one of them goes bad it's hopefully recognized sooner than later. Votes also aren't happening instantly and there are a few people checking the queue from time to time. Downvotes are used and delegators can decide where their share of those goes (which isn't used enough, it would be nice to spread those further).
We mostly have very small delegators though, the original idea of giving an option besides autovoting to bigger stakeholders didn't go off. I also published the code so people could set up their own group if they prefer to have better control over who curates with their stake.
I'm open to considering some delegation to @curangel. Last I had heard (perhaps incorrectly), it had stopped downvoting, which made it a non-starter from my perspective. Thanks for the info.
Where can I find a curangel "mission statement" which describes the intended criteria used for upvotes? I'm all for spreading to a tail as a method to attract new users and promote growth (with some nagging concerns that this hasn't worked out so far) but what I've seen from a lot of curation initiatives in the past, there is often a lot of emphasis on rewarding authors just for posting even if the content frankly isn't very good (i.e. it may not be complete utter trash, but no professional site would pay a dime for it, nor would it earn much if anything on revenue-share sites) and certainly isn't good enough to attract a lot of traffic to Steem-powered sites or boost the value of Steem by a sort of reputational halo effect (in fact, often the opposite).
Which I guess is a long winded way of circling back to my support for burnpost: Apart from rewarding engagement modestly (which I support and do), I just don't believe there is that much being posted on Steem that is worthy of real, monetary value. I do find a few such items occasionally, but certainly not every day.
I'd love to see more, but I just don't.
Downvoting stopped for a while, that's correct. When I coded the project I expected the downvote feature to be used more than it actually was, and required it to use all its dv power constantly. It wasn't used nearly as much as I thought, so in the end I was constantly filling up the list which caused a small burnout after a few weeks.
It's up again, still using all its power, but more at once when vp is high. That way I only need to intervene every couple of days, and we're better prepared for more people adding stuff more infrequently.
There's a small about text on https://curangel.com/, but that doesn't answer your question I think. The mission of curangel could very broadly be stated to "reward undervalued posts". There's a upper reward limit and some other hardcoded rules to prevent the worst of abuse (i.e. max 1 vote per author per curator per week), but basically we leave our curators the freedom to define it themselves. The daily compilation lists the votes by curator which makes them attributable, and they're all available on our discord if there's a wish to discuss a vote.
So I'm not sure if the voting meets your quality standards. The tail it votes is huge, so there will naturally be stuff in between where not everyone agrees. Also, the vote values posts finally receive are a little randomized and not at all dependend on the actual quality of that specific post.
For my requirements its doing its job well, spreading value on an active base of sincere users. It doesn't fix PoB by itself, but it's a useful addition to the much required manual curation imo.
I'm not sure that it doesn't. I certainly don't expect everyone to agree on everything.
A huge tail is a good thing IMO, but at the same time it can be abused (if the tail consists of a lot of sock puppet accounts from people taking advantage of the idea that "voting for a tail is good" and not actual growth in the user base). My bottom line view on this is that as long as we don't see net user base growth and Steem gaining in overall visibility and influence (e.g. as visible in alexa rankings) it is all kind of a failure, even if well intended (not intending to single out curangel here, in case it seemed that way; it is even possible that with more support it could help turn the whole ship around).
@smooth I think this is one of the richest discussion I have read in recent time, and I keep reading it over and over again.
Just a comment on curangel's downvote. It is back and alive and thriving! It is being used daily (twice), and it is open to all delegator. Currently this is the only project that allows it as far as I know. I am one of the early investor in the project along with @pharesim's entire stake. I feel completely aligned with the goal of the project.
PS. if nothing else I will combine this comment thread as a post. So that we keep it organized and reflect/add/enhance it over time. Trouble is anything I post will be downvoted.... oh well.. that is life :)