The downvoting feature should be disabled - not strengthened.
Work on better reward schemes, not arbitrary punishment features.
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The downvoting feature should be disabled - not strengthened.
Work on better reward schemes, not arbitrary punishment features.
There probably isnt a better reward scheme that doesn't involve downvotes. Even with downvotes it isn't clear there is a scheme that will work well, but that is the best chance.
Anything that lets people push rewards toward themselves and/or their conspirator is likely exploitable. Downvoting works because it doesn't allow doing that, only pushing rewards away from a particular point and scattering them to the rest of the community.
To strengthen the system we must weaken the individual actors.
On the matter of disabling downvoting, I had an idea to do exactly that, but not for the reason you probably would like. My idea is to disable downvotes and watch the system collapse (worse than it already is). Then, perhaps, people would learn an increased respect for the value of downvotes.
Weakening the individual lessons the incentive for individuals to invest here.
Less investment means lower price.
This is the exact same reasoning behind Marx's failed ideology. And it will fail for the exact same reason.
All systems are ultimately wealth creation vehicles for individuals. Lessen the ability for individuals to earn, and they will support a different coin with better economics.
The better one is able to reward an individual, the stronger the community.
Weakening individual voters from unilaterally directing rewards does not weaken the ability of individuals to earn, in fact it probably strengthens it. The reward pool is short term zero sum. It always goes to someone.
We don't need to get into Marxist ideology to see that people voting for themselves (either directly or via obfuscation schemes which accomplish the same thing) does not accomplish anything productive for either the individual or the community. It is a dog chasing its tail. It is like going into business and then going out the back door of the store, walking around to the front and walking in as a customer. Pointless.
The way to earn in a non-Marxist sense is to offer something of value and then have actual customers (i.e. other than yourself) want to buy it. Translating that back to Steem, post something of value and then have other people vote for it. Since we can not prevent self voting (people can always do it through other accounts or obfuscation schemes), the only way for the system to reward actual value is to have other people to identify non-value and object to it earning rewards. There is no other way.
Everyone here keeps going around and around without facing the real problem.
By definition, most people can not create above average content.
The changes that are being tossed around in the OP will take away the majority's ability to earn Steem.
Which takes away the majority's incentive to hold Steem. Because to hold Steem means an 8% per year loss to inflation.
And without an incentive for the masses to buy and hold Steem, it becomes worthless
Value is not necessarily the same as content. If I see a real community of users joining Steem, posting pictures of their dinner, and getting upvoted by their friends, all while helping to recruit other friends to join Steem, I'm not going to object to that at all. The content may be worthless in a broader sense but their presence is not, and it is perfectly fine to reward it.
To be fair I am not a fan of the superlinear concept, at least not beyond some very minimal level, because I do agree that it shuts out the non-stars if taken too far.
The 8%/year thing is kind of nonsense. Any successful cryptocurrency will grow in value by a lot more than 8%/year. Typical growth rates are 30% to hundreds of percent, even averaged over several years. Even passive (non-voting) investors who are 'losing' 8% per year would benefit enormously if Steem really took off, and getting the rewarding mechanism to work better is something that can help it do just that.
The reason to hold STEEM is not to milk out a few percent of more (potentially worthless) STEEM in rewards by exploiting the voting system, it is because you think that STEEM is going to be worth a LOT more in the future.
What you are advocating will stop Steem's growth in its tracks.
How many accounts are here? How many will produce "quality content".
What will the rest of the accounts do once smooth and friends start downvoting their work? Have you not engaged with the community? The biggest issue for most users is that nobody upvotes their work. Now you want to have others to downvote it? You realize that the downvoting will be arbitrary right? Most likely accross political lines. People stop creating content here now, because it isn't rewarded. Just wait until it starts getting downvoted and see how long people last.
All that will happen is that those who write articles or comments that most resembles mainstream thought will be rewarded most - that is human nature. People upvote things they agree with - and with a cheap downvote, they will downvote what they disagree with.
You can see that dynamic at play already in this very comment thread. Say something popular, and receive upvotes. Say something unpopular under your scheme, and you will be downvoted.
Welcome to the Steem echo-chamber.
Not to mention that those who want to continue to upvote themselves will simply open multiple accounts to obfuscate their actions.
Also, even if you are successful, then what is Steem? A place for professional authors and photographers to reward each other? That's a pretty small community.
It certainly stops being social media if every post is critiqued - and then has no possibility of reward if it doesnt meet with smooth's definition of quality content.
If I take a picture of my dinner and my friends here like it - the way people use Facebook - is that quality content? Will I be critiqued and downvoted by a professional photographer who is envious because I have more friends (and thus more reward). Do you not understand that this is how downvotes will be used?
Why fucking bother post on Steemit at all if there is no incentive to be here? That's already the biggest reason people leave - they were told they could post here and be rewarded for it. And they don't get any votes. Now you want to make it even harder for a minnow to profit? Not only can he no longer invest in himself, but now he has to please all the critics? Why wouldn't someone just go to back to Twitter or Facebook if they arent going to be rewarded anyway?
One downvote large enough to erase someones entire earnings for a post that she worked hard on - that is all it will take for someone to leave here and never return. And it will happen in droves.
There is barely any growth (in fact over the past few months probably shrinkage). New users sign up but churn is massive. People don't stick around. Web traffic is declining, too. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com
That's exactly right, because the voting is being used by people who self-enrich. The (broken) economic incentives push the system in that direction. New users who show up won't be the targets of downvotes to any great extent; they're barely visible and no one has any reason to downvote them if they are being sincere in their participation. The targets will be all the worthless cookiecutter paid-vote crap that you see on trending day after day which does nothing to attract traffic and sucks the reward pool away from the newcomers.
You are contrdicting yourself here. Taking a picture of your dinner and sharing it is not 'working hard'. If you post your dinner and people enjoy seeing it and reward you a little, that's great, but if you aren't rewarded, it is the same as Facebook and hardly the end of the world. People who do work hard to make a big contribution will occasionally be downvoted too. That will sometimes happen and is unfortunate, but they will also benefit day after day when their ability to get rewards is not destroyed by parasites using self voting, paid votes, etc. Better protecting of the reward pool from the rampant and growing self-enrichment that exists will benefit those making a real value-added contribution far more than it ever hurts them.
If I had a STEEM for everyone who got downvoted and said they were leaving and will never return I'd have a lot more STEEM than I have now! It is absurd, and even more than that, self-limiting. If people do leave (which they don't) then there are more rewards left to retain the rest of the users and attract new ones.
There is no perfect system but we can make it less grossly dysfunctional than it is now.
A downvote isn’t “punishment.” Some people may use it that way, but it is essentially just a disagreement from one stakeholder on how rewards have been allocated by other stakeholders.
You are a veteran member. You know that's not the purpose of downvotes in the original paper. It's to vote against things that are otherwise offensive and you want to save other people from seeing it.
Downvoting based on reward smacks of envy or banker's haircuts .
Good lord!
Even more reason to get rid of the downvote in todays environment.
It wouldnt take much much of a stake for the same group that are responsible for FB and Twitter taking down conservative, freedom, and anarchist sites to completely censor Steem.
Except...a downvote doesn’t “censor” anyone on Steem. It is only an interface function that hides posts and comments when they are into negative rewards or reputation. Other interfaces that are not Steemit don’t hide such posts and comments.
Until you have downvote bots with thousands of accounts...
It's stake based, so more votes doesn't matter unless we return to some kind of superlinear scheme. It just makes it look intimidating.
Just like demonetizing Vloggers on YouTube doesn't censor them either...
Was Pewtiepie censored? No. Did mainstream media take away his ability to continue to earn in the same way as he was? Yes.
Downvoting opens up Steem to the exact same kind of abuse.
Imagine the Saudi royal family buying up a massive stake and then using government apparatus to downvote anyone critical of them...
Demonetizing is a quaint concern at this point when lots of content is being BANNED altogether from these sites on a daily basis. I say having Steem thrive so it can provide a censorship-resistant platform where people can communicate AT ALL is a very worthy goal even if it means some people may get unfair or undeserved downvotes.
Rewards are a nice bonus, but you are never entitled to them. And it is also worth considering that Steem also provides censorship-resistant payments, so content providers, activists, etc. can get donations, sell memberships or merchandise, etc. and support themselves in ways other than rewards, and without being completely BANNED by Paypal, Visa, etc. Again, 'censorship' by downvoting seems a quaint concern when measured against the the serious threats to freedom that exist in the world today.
I dont understand how you all cant see this.
Even among yourselves right now - people are taking a side on this comment thread - and upvoting the points they agree with.
Which comment in here represents good content?
Votes are always used to reward those opinions that people agree with.
Downvotes will be used the same way.
This is just basic human psychology. It takes more energy to interface with those with different viewpoints. Also, humans function like quantum attractor fields that repel energetic stances incompatible with their own.
Dissenters are generally ostracized from communities for a variety of reasons. Of course, many times they are onto something quite substantial that the community-at-large is not ready for.
This is not harmful. It happens all day every day on reddit. People vote what they like or think is good/interesting, downvote what they don't like or think is worthless/stupid. In the case of steem not only do the most popular comments get visibilty (as on reddit) but they get a bit of rewards too. That's all fine.
What is harmful is when more and more stakeholders opt out from voting on merit (whatever you think is merit is fine) and use their vote power for personal gain, because the incentives support doing that. The incentives need to change.
And now, I have upvoted the comments I agree with - and messed up the "flow" of this comment thread 😊