@therealwolf you are both absolutely right and oddly, also wrong. Let me explain...
You are right that Steem is struggling with being splintered into many different ideologies and that it is harming the system. I hate the idea of the reward pool going away, but after quite a bit of meditation on the subject, it is likely the thing to do.
However, there is a caveat. The issue is that by removing the POB system for STEEM and passing it down the line to SMTs we are actually admitting that POB isn't working while not saying it out loud. Would POB on SMTs work? In most cases, probably not.
I have thought about this a lot and I would like to see POB work, but there is a hitch. The main challenge is that people keep using POB as a weapon against people they disagree with.
It really comes down to this, we all want a decentralized protocol, but all of us have something we dislike and do not want happening on that protocol. It could be spam, porn, circle-jerking, self-voting or something less anticipated.
So, thus we have downvotes and not just upvotes. There are legitimate reasons for downvotes/flags, but then follows ideological warfare, bullying and censorship/demonetization issues. "That one guy supports Trump and I just so happen to have way more SP than him, so lets auto-flag trail the motha-..."
Will SMTs really solve that?
Hold the fucking phone... So, we're going to solve this with SMTs? Okay, but that's not going to solve it. If an SMT decides to make their token not have downvotes then we run into the same issue of no enforcement against bad shit, or some dude buying a shit ton of the token and upvoting himself 10 times a day for posting "stake preservation post" or something stupid like that.
On the other hand, even with niche topics if downvoting exists for an SMT we'll run into the same problems. Sure, you can find more like-minded people with a more narrow topic, but that does not mean that everyone on that topic shares the same ideological viewpoints, and if they do not agree the downvote feature can fuel ideological warfare and silo mentality that breeds extremism.
For example, let's say a Christian community decides to create Christoken, the token that rewards people for praising the Lord! Sounds like a nice idea to begin with, but wait... There are a lot of Christian denominations! They pretty much all disagree with each other on some kind of ideological stance, and are angry at the other group over that difference.
In Closing...
The lack of a downvote button leads to an uncontrollable situation, and the existence of a downvote button leads to the encouragement of narrow thinking and the oppression of dissenting opinions. Fixing Steem's problems by pushing those problems onto SMTs is not a fix at all. POB is in trouble, and we need to recognize that and deal with it head on.
How do we do that?
its a complicated issue, off the top of my head I do not have a solution for fixing the flaws of POB. But I believe it is important for everyone to admit that POB in its current design does not work so that we can fix it.
If people are afraid to admit this in fear of STEEM price going down in the short term, it could hurt Steem in the long term. We need to be brutally honest about the network's flaws so that we can discuss it and fix it.
One possible solution is removing POB from STEEM and keeping it only in SMTs with incredible flexibility baked into the protocol. If SMTs can try many different forms of POB, we might discover successful forms of it.
For example, people argue that having POB without downvotes does not work, and then they point out whaleshares. But it might not be that whaleshares is a failure due to downvotes, the project might have failed simply because too few people believed in it or it simply didn't offer anything Steem did not offer already.
So, SMTs can allow many projects to experiment with their own versions of POB, as long as we provide great flexibility in their POB features. And the POB designs that work best will shine through over time.
Good thoughts. I don't think a community policing the rest of the community is something that is going to be very attractive to the rest of the world. It's simply way too negative. People want to go to places that make them feel good, not bad. No matter how much "we" try to normalize the downvote experience it is still a negative one, even more so when money is involved. There is a reason Facebook doesn't have a dislike button.
I agree. I do not believe the downvote button is a good idea. That said, there is a legitimate reason people want it to exist. Facebook is centralized, at any time they can remove a person's content, but on a decentralized protocol like Steem there is absolutely no stopping people without something like a downvote button.
The issue with the downvote button is not that it exists, but that it can be used unfairly and unjustly. I also agree with you that it makes people feel unhappy and can deter people from continuing to use Steem. Primarily though, my concern is that downvotes are a matter of whim and are used for whatever one feels like using it for. This can cause it to create narrow-mindedness as one community of ideals can be stomped on by a bigger and wealther community.