we can't 'know' for certain how it would go unless it is first tested
We agree on this
I think we both have a pretty good guess as to what is most likely to happen with free downvotes... and that is them being used primarily for personal reasons as opposed to responsible and altruistic curation.
I think they are likely to be used for both. In fact they already are, just on a very small scale, and that small scale introduces a severe imbalance in the system which opens it up to a vast degree of milking and other value-destroying behaviors. That is a far bigger problem than a relatively small amount of trolling. That is my view.
But, again, we don't know until we try. The rate of iteration on Steem/Steemit is far too low in my view. If we only get to try something every few years there is really no chance of reaching a better outcome before Steem sinks permanently into obscurity.
Then why not test things with SMTs and communities first before implementing them on a larger scale that takes so long to implement changes?
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It will be at least months before SMTs are ready (I don't know the schedule for communities) and even then will likely be additional months or years if ever before any SMT becomes large and valuable enough for such a test to be meaningful at all, and even then it won't be clear whether such results would scale up to the entire Steem platform. For the foreseeable future the primary concentration of value on Steem will be the STEEM token and therefore the native Steem reward pool will be the primary motivator of voting behavior.
Honestly, SMTs and communities were a bit of a scam sold to us by Steemit as being something that: a) going to be was finished in a reasonable time, b) would instantly power all sorts of large and valuable projects which don't currently exist, and c) would successfully compete with countless other existing and in-development token systems in the blockchain world. Maybe (b) and (c) would have had a better chance had (a) actually occurred, but it didn't.
To be clear I think SMTs and communities are fine and I'll welcome them when the come but they aren't even close to a panacea to solve all of Steem's problems the way many seem to suggest (nor do we have even the remotest idea when they will actually exist).
There are efforts under way to attempt to improve this as well. We'll see. But I'm not in favor of putting all eggs in the SMT basket for sure. I'd rather take advantage of all of the available opportunties to try to move forward.
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I get that, and it does make sense. Regarding these changes specifically, do you think they will encourage people to buy more steem and encourage more people to use steemit.com?
I feel like we are so focused on appeasing the small community we have here instead of focusing on making this more attractive to the 7 billion other people out there... that we end up focusing on the wrong things, this being an example.
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The goal is to address the failures of the reward pool to serve its intended function, which is to attract and reward those who add value to Steem, and to also serve as a content discovery mechanism which makes Steem/it attractive to general web traffic and recruits more users into the economy.
What we have seen over time is a spiraling downward as the alexa rank of steemit.com has dropped (so fewer people are even seeing it, likely due to the shit content that is posted and 'promoted'), along with the price of Steem and its ranking and visiblity to cryptocurrency investors who might buy it. And at the same time, the reward pool mechanism has been undermined by rampant milking which (along with the price) has been the main reason that hardly anyone can earn any meaningful rewards (without buying them, which doesn't count), and also the main reason why there is less highly-attractive content and poor content discovery, leading to a decline in general web traffic and potential growth (because, after all, if there is nothing but garbage here, or at least nothing but garbage that is easy to find, why would there be any general web traffic).
As I alluded to earlier, there are numerous parallel efforts to address Steem's stagnation and decline, as well as the slow pace of progress on any and every effort that might do so. One of those is SPS (DAO), which is intended to provide funding to numerous decentralized efforts (development, marketing, promotion, etc.) where Steemit Inc. has not been knocking it out of the park to say the least. Another one is the revamp of the reward pool mechanism, of which enhanced downvotes are an essential part. The development team working to reduce the cost of hard forks is yet another. And perhaps also SMTs and communities, someday, if the slow pace and mixed quality of development from our one centralized and shrinking development team is finally able to pull it off.
I do not know and I can not guarantee that any or all of these will actually work and pull Steem/it out of decline, but I think they are credible, sincere efforts, and I do know that we absolutely need to try or the tailspin will only continue.
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Literally most of your examples in this post.
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