RE: Improving the Economics of Steem: A Community Proposal (My Response)
You're completely right that self voting is not an issue, the issue is abusing that self voting, which is what the proposal is geared to, it's not about self voting but abusing it.
As for bidbots, from my understanding the stance of steem was "your stake, your choice" and I'm not certain but I think that some steemit stake is delegated to bidbots. That said, I don't buy the explanation that a nefarious or underhanded tactic is in play with the changes. To me that is tinfoil hat worthy, the simplest explanation for these unintended avenues of abuse is that they were either unintended or that they were thought to be negligible.
We cannot hide the post payout for numerous reasons, some technical and others because of user experience.
Hiding posts payout goes counter to the ethos of transparency that steem was created on, an ethos that has been rippling through society and especially businesses for the last couple of decades and it will not change. Yes some things are not compatible with complete transparency, that's why we can encode memos and why nextcolony will not be a good game in complete transparency just as poker would not exist in total transparency, but in the context of curation, it's very important as it allows people to evaluate if a post is worthy of their vote or not based on how much it's rewarded at that moment, otherwise a lot of posts will not receive anything and only the exceedingly high quality will get votes as it's not worth the risk to gamble on a post that isn't almost guaranteed to make bank. That's why trending is a good system, because it will propel the content that is most valuable to the top but it won't penalize content that isn't trend worthy, and that content is what the community deems to be worthy of the most attention and it thus acts as a marketing strategy by putting our best foot forward. Content discovery would not really work by random. The way it's structured now works really good, with "new/hot/trending", and with content discovery like trending, the problem isn't content discovery or trending, the problem is that not enough policing happens on here and it allows people to cheat, so content discovery is hampered by the cheating as is trending, since now the pool is allocated by bidbots and not organic curation. One of the statistics on downvoting was less than a percent of the total votes are downvotes, much much less. I think it was 0.011%, and considering the noise that flag wars account for, it's probably closer to 0.001%. That is the problem. If more people would downvote the overpriced crap, almost all these issues would not be of any concern. Then content discovery and tending would change, but they are predicted on the behavior of people. If more people are policing the network, we should see immediate and long term benefits.
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I don't think it tinfoil hat worthy to question the agenda of powerful people in any ecosystem's motives, considering the world we live in has shown us that 99 times out of a hundred those motives amount to acquiring more power. But with that said, I very much agree with your point on hiding the payout. It does impact transparency and may cause problems for mid-level content.
What are your thoughts on the second suggestion? - to create a part of the site where one can vote on a random stream of content within selected tags and earn double curation rewards? I think this would incentivise fair voting and give new users a chance to have their content discovered easily. Understanding though that trending/hot/new tabs would remain, and content could be discovered that way too, just for lower curation rewards.
Also, why are you being flagged? Have you pissed someone else off?
Lol yes, I just saw who this seemingly nobody is that wasted 80+% of their voting mana, it's @ackza, a complete douchebag that tried to say shit about Elie Powell saying that she has no stake and does less than any rando on here, under the 3 month retrospective post by steemitblog. He seems mad at the truth, that it's not her job at all to hold stake or pander to the community. Dillweeds like that are hilarious, they latch onto anyone that they think will mildly approve their unadulterated hatred for steemit and try to incite them to hate as well. Fucktards that I especially enjoyed calling em out on their ridiculous asshatery, good on him for thinking I am worth all that voting power and the perfect encouragement for me to keep going. Flagging to me, is like Prison is to Bronson.
As for your suggestion on a new section that would roulette content for users to choose from it's would be a good idea, especially with tags, but it could also work with filters, so that for example you use search engine notations with -actifit to avoid certain content. Right now though, there's not that much activity that one can easily scroll down the new tab and discover all kinds of stuff, but certainly in the future there probably will be a need for better content categories.
I'm not saying don't question the motives, just that it's not only speculation, and even if you get the answer from the horse's mouth, that's not much but their story. If the intent is malice and you have reason to suspect so you need to gather all the evidence and present it to them or the community, because simply questioning or being skeptical of people's motivation or intentions isn't doing anything but casting doubt and uncertainty and it's borderline slanderous.
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We disagree massively on that. Perhaps if I said, "these cunts are definitely up to some shady shit" that would amount to slander. But, being skeptical, and encouraging others to be skeptical, of a party that has historically made changes that have hurt this community, especially when I have made it abundantly clear within my language that I do not know for sure, is far from slander - I'd consider it closer to common sense. I am certainly optimistic that everything is above aboard, but I have to consider otherwise, especially when I have been expecting since the bidbots started to monopolise the network, for there to be a future, further power grab of sorts.
I'm not one to devalue inquisitiveness yet there is a line between valid questioning and pointless questioning, just as there is a line between slander and borderline slander. I can't think of any questions that are pointed to one's motivation or intent that don't also fall squarely in pointless questions, maybe I need to ruminate on it some more. It's exactly like asking a bankrober "why did you do it" or "don't you know it's wrong", or "are they trying to pull a fast one on us".. Even if you hear it from the horses mouth, not that such insinuating question deserves an answer, it never does, but even if it's answered it all amounts to their story, you couldn't know it's true until later, after the fact if their actions contradicts their answers, and asking "are they trying to grab more power" is purely speculation, it's not productive or insightful what so ever. I didn't say it was slanderous, but borderline slanderous, because there's absolutely no reason to answer such a question and it serves then, as it's purely speculation, to cast doubt or shade on their intentions. Equally, you can ask them "did you know that such and such changes would be this catastrophic" and they can say that it was a possibility, or that they did not forsee it, though you can't blame them for taking risks or for not being able to forsee it. Now, is it slander to ask about their intentions? It depends on the point of the question, the premise, which could be an innocent mistake or ignorance/naiveté or much more insidious. I'll say this about your last remarks,calling it "a power grab of sorts", that speaks enough to say that you don't think much of them, and if you were in their shoes I'm almost positive someone calling your remark slanderous (not borderline even) would be meet with approval from your part.
The changes, such as linear, and delegations, were demanded by the community at large, these changes were almost necessary as well, so we can have the invaluable experience that they brought and not have any excuse to repeat them.
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