Great post with some sensible suggestions! I always do the 100% power up option and have never even considered powering down, because I eventually want to become a respectable dolphin. As you said, with whales powering down and the little guys like me powering up, the Steem distribution will become more even and a whole new dolphin class will be empowered. It's just a matter of time, and smoothing over these rough patches until then. I'm also buying Steem on the dips, with a series of staggered buy orders each sitting about 25% lower than my previous order. After all, when there's blood in the streets it's often the perfect time to buy. But I wouldn't go all in, cost averaging is King as nobody can predict exactly what the bottom will be.
I do think the much talked about "experiment" was well intentioned and has certainly benefited me personally, so I'm in favor of it. I've seen the impact from my voting increase and my curation rewards double. But it's definitely a double edged sword, I can understand that a lot of people feel hurt from the flagging. If only all the whales would cooperate in not voting, that could be avoided. But achieving such consensus is very difficult. I noticed downvotes are being accompanied by explanatory comments which is good, but probably communications around this could have been done in a more effective way at the start.
If they were all commented you'd be right on the mark. It wouldn't make it "ok", but it would help smooth things over. However even this post just got flagged by @smooth with no explanation given despite no whale votes and only being worth about $20.00 something dollars.
I think in that case it's not really so much abstaining from voting, as lashing out. I could be wrong, but without an explanation I'm left with the unenviable position of trying to imagine why someone I consider a friend and regular supporter, is suddenly flagging me. And that's sort of my point. This hurts, emotionally it makes anyone on the receiving end feel slighted.
he mentioned he didn't want to take part in the experiment anymore . We're mixing personal opinion up with fair distribution of rewards.There are no whale bots that ever upvote me, same with several others and I think this is what @berniesanders was getting at when
Is a post telling people that we're nearly past the worst of it, and now is a great time to buy, really worth $20 something when the rewards pool is so low?
I think only the community at large has the right to determine that. But downvoting when there are no whale votes present just because you disagree with someone, while claiming to be part of an experiment to see what happens when whales "don't vote". Makes the result invalid.
I still don't know why @smooth downvoted this post and coming from a person I admire and respect so much, I'm just baffled.
Hmmm, now that you mention it I'm a bit curious too. $20 doesn't seem like that much, makes me wonder what the threshold is for triggering a downvote. And I thought it was only to counter votes from other whales that don't want to play along. Seems there is some lack of consistency here... would be nice to know the exact criteria being applied. Also I wonder if it's being done manually? To ensure the experiment is fair, running a bot to apply the criteria equally across all posts and ensure comments get left would be best.
A downvote is still a vote. That's my point. Whatever the reason, you can't say you're seeing what happens when whales don't vote and then suddenly start voting, regardless of if that vote is positive or negative.
You're just being intellectually dishonest when you do.
Even more so when you flag content that doesn't have the requisite criteria of having any whale votes at all in the first place.
I'm just curious because I've never seen @smooth act this way. I expected better and it makes me disappointed. He's usually my biggest supporter.