Inconsistency of flagging is perhaps the worst possible outcome. It is important to remember that Steem is an experiment in decentralized budgeting and governance.
With great power comes great responsibility, and whales have a responsibility to their fellow steemians to vote consistently and in the best interest of the platform.
It is clear that some people view this is a game to be played selfishly rather than as a team. The system was designed to prevent abuse by small players, but short of a benevolent dictator, is helpless against larger players.
A misbehaving whale is like a majority shareholder voting to dilute minority shareholders disproportionally.
Steemit is based on the idea of a quorum of stakeholders being necessary to approve disproportionate dilution. A large whale represents their own quorum and thus has greater responsibilities to fellow token holders than a small minnow.
Those pushing for more linear rewards are removing the need for a quorum and the end result is the pathological behavior displayed by some whales will play out on a wider scale.
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So are you in favor of keeping the n^2 algorithm? There was a pretty wide consensus for moving the algorithm closer to linear than superlinear. I don't agree with full linearity, but I also think that n^2 is too much and won't exactly scale well if STEEM/Steemit should ever gain mass adoption - or at least more widespread adoption.
And I also think that there are far too many people who expect popularity to not yield corresponding results. This is social media, after all. Every blogger isn't going to be "popular" and every blogger isn't going to, nor should they expect to earn the same amount of rewards as other bloggers, especially the popular ones. I don't agree with "flagging because of disagreement on rewards" or "over-rewarding." I think that flies in the face of the entire concept of "popularity." Others are certainly free to flag as they choose, I just choose not to do that.
I'm not sure if that's true. I think the worst outcome would be targeted flagging of certain users based on bad concepts of "fairness." It isn't necessarily inconsistency - it's the idea that rewards should be reduced simply because other users aren't earning enough. What is "enough" and how should each individual voter be distributing rewards to everyone who is not earning "enough" for their content? Isn't that the entire purpose of the voting mechanisms in the first place?
In a stake-based system, the rewards are distributed according to stake. If a post earns or doesn't earn, it's mostly due to the fact that voters have decided that your content is or is not subjectively "good" and deserving of the rewards that they can allocate. (I acknowledge bots - but this is an argument based on the underlying theory of the system.) Those with the most stake or "investment" in the system are the ones with the most weight to decide how it should be moved forward. Was this not what the code was designed for? To allow those with the largest investments to have the most influence on which content to support and how to move the platform forward?
I have stated many times that distribution for the sake of distribution is a failed strategy. (Which is why I'm not a fan of the guilds that are designed to do that.) If this platform is meant to be used for a UBI, then change the code and make it so. If it's to be used for social media and popular content, then make the code reflect that. But actual investors need to know so that they can choose whether or not they want to buy or sell their STEEM. Constantly shaving incentives from investors won't encourage more investment. Trying to turn the platform into a UBI strategy - at the expense of the actual investors - won't work.
There is the code and there is the fact that this is still social media. The social media "rules" still apply to users and content just as much as the voting algorithms do.
And I would like to add, for anyone who reads this:
If a whale flags your post, take the issue up with them, not the users (or one specific user) that happen to be upvoted by them. Trolling and spamming other people's posts or personally attacking the other users because you received a flag is a childish response.
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I'm in favor of the new curve and eliminating curation rewards. I am not in favor of full linearity.
Consistency allows the platform to adapt, inconsistency leaves everyone uncertain and uncertainty what people fear the most.
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I agree, mostly. But does this not also apply to the investor argument as well? When investors buy into STEEM with the understanding that they will have the opportunity to earn a certain percentage on their investment by actively engaging on the platform, then that percentage is later reduced...then reduced again...isn't that a problem as well?
There is a lot of uncertainty about what the next changes might be, because of the fact that previous changes have left those buying in high and dry. You say that you want to eliminate curation rewards. What then would be the point of actually investing into this currency and using that stake to allocate the rewards pool based on the algorithms? What should the casual reader invest in if they have no incentive to vote on content? Why would anyone choose to invest and vote?
These are some of the things that investors look at when deciding whether or not to buy - not only buying the currency, but buying into the vision of STEEM/Steemit itself. They won't invest if there is an actual likelihood that their returns can be pulled out from under them on a whim.
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Returns comes from the increase in value not increase in the number of steem .
Removing bots and the bad voting incentives would make the platform instantly more valuable, businesses will be more interested to integrate steem and the trending page would look a lot better quality wise.
If curation rewards are removed , whales would be a lot more likely to share their voting power for the good of the platform and they will also spread their upvote a lot more which will increase retention.
Curation rewards is the reason of this greedy mentality that is killing steemit right now and I for one am glad to hear that dan want to remove them.
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Aw! I knew Dan was in favor of eliminating curation reward for a long time now but I hadn't realized all the implications. This one in particular that you just mentioned.
There might be others reasons and I would be interested in reading about them. I think this reason is enough for me to actively ask people to begin to consider eliminating curation rewards.
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perhaps the dollar value of the steem at the time the it was acquired should be factored into vote weight, so someone who got steem when it was 10 cents would have less vote weight than someone who got steem worth $1 per steem
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I'm not sure that sounds right. We can't taint coins such that their properties are different from one unit to another. Currency needs to be fungible for a rational valuation to be made.
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Let's try to learn something from this: it's not a good thing to give a lot of power to unknown people whose loyalty is also unknown. This is what happened when the blockchain was launched and random people had a chance to mine steem for free.
Next time somebody launches a new blockchain they should give power to only a small group of people who can be trusted to work for the ecosystem until it is mature. Otherwise there will be problems.
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That is exactly the lesson I have taken from this whole experiment. Unfortunately, the legality and regulatory environment around such a solution is far more questionable.
People claim they want decentralized, free market, open, and censorship resistant, but in reality what they want is a well managed, curated experience designed to meet their needs.
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It is definitely.. and as much as loyalty is concerned, there's no way to force anyone, as people are free to flip-flop whenever and for whatever reasons. I'd like to think that everyone's on the same boat though, just perhaps that FUDding could be well replaced by better ways of communicating, I guess.
Just to quote off someone in steemit chat:-
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Yeah, this really is true. Nobody cares if a service is decentralized if it doesn't work as well as centralized alternative.
We have seen thousand of "let's put this service to the blockchain" projects and pretty much all of them fail because decentralization is expensive and makes the service more difficult to use.
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Yup.. if anything I've always thought centralized beginnings are much better. I think Steem / Steemit is off to a good start this way, for its rather centralised user experience (are there any other activities on the STEEM blockchain other than Steemit-related stuff?). But I guess something that most didn't foresee is that we should've spent a longer time managing small amounts of money as a group (although arguably pre July-4 were supposedly those times). After close to a year running, I guess there are lots of lessons to be learned from whatever has happened in the community. Very valuable, just because no other platforms pulled this off :)
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Also an important lesson to be learned: don't launch a blockchain in the USA, do it somewhere else where the regulations are not so bad.
Steem is still suffering from the way how launch was made. There are still some people who consider Steem to be a scam because of it. There should be a full explanation why it was made like that on the steem.io website (I might be able help you with that).
Yeah! There are usually quite big differences between preferences people say they have and preferences they actually have in the market. Especially in the cryptoworld, where people say they want all kinds of egalitarian communities, but don't actually use them because they fail so easily.
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I hardly think that paying for AWS or any other servers or amassing the technical skills necessary to mine (in whatever way that is possible) comes at no cost ... In fact, it's quite risky as there is no known market at the time and the entire venture is speculative, and, as such, those people are securing the blockchain at a potential loss.
And can you define 'a lot' -- maybe in terms of percentages? Is this more than 5% but less than 15% (combined)?
Also, what happens if someone decides to purchase STEEM at these low prices (or possibly even lower ones) and becomes vocal (meaning, they decide to do what they want with their stake) ? What's the difference between buying it and earning it from mining rewards?
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It's important that any kind of young community includes only people who share a common vision and are willing to work for it.
Cryptoprojects are suffering from delusion that everything should be decentralized as much as possible even in the beginning. But it's very rare that random people who don't have anything in common can work effectively together.
It would be much better if a small community ruled the whole project when it's still young. There would be very little drama and other stuff that will distract developers from doing the important job. Over time the decision making power can be distributed to a wider group of people when the platform matures.
I have written about this earlier: How to design efficient and resilient DAO
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I like how you used the opportunity to respond to my questions.
/end sarcasm
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What happened at launch of Steem is irreversible, so it's not very interesting to think about it anymore. Individual cases are all different. For some 15 % might be too much and for some it's not an issue at all.
It's better to use this case as an example to see what works and what doesn't so we know in the future what kind of problems are possible when launching a new chain.
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... from a very small group located in an isolated section of a forum 99.99% of the inhabitants of Earth (especially those who actually use social media) never knew existed.
I'm curious what the result of this "experiment" would have been had things been done differently from the beginning.
Perhaps instead of focusing on people who have no clue when it comes to social media and giving them all of the power (to destroy), the initial offering should have been posted in a more "social media" type environment.
Had the site been allowed to blossom with social media oriented members, instead of power hungry crypto-enthusiast (no offense to any of us), before the bootstrap I think we could have seen much more positive results.
Also I feel the economics of the platform was not fully tested prior to launch and due to that many changes have been thrown at the userbase repeatedly and we never know what the rules are from month to month.
It ends up being more of a site about game theory and how to maximize rewards against others instead of a group of people freely sharing information and the off chance of getting some tips for their post.
The atmosphere here is cutthroat compared to any other social media experience alive today. "Toxic" is the most oft-used word to describe Steemit from those who've left, and I tend to agree. The entire site is "toxic", not just a few individuals. The design invites it, hell encourages it to some point it seems.
Which is exactly why smart contracts will be dominated by companies like Google in the future.
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By "random people" I mean people who just happen to be in right place in a right time. Better way would be to give tokens (or an opportunity to mine tokens) only for people who have clearly indicated that they are willing to commit for the project in the long term.
I'm not sure if that would have been any different.
My choice would have been to give power to the people who actively work for the blockchain and ecosystem. Basically something like the reward pool system that Bitshares has. Most of the money should be in the reward pool in the beginning and people would have to earn it by blogging or with worker proposals.
Well, for me this was pretty clear. Steem is totally new system, nothing like it has been existed before, so some parts of it are necessary to adjust along the way when we see how they actually work in the real world.
I've been thinking that it's not have been a good idea to promote the idea of "make money by blogging". It means that most people who come to the site want to make money, and if they don't, they complain and finally leave the platform telling everybody else how it sucks.
Better choice would be to market Steemit as noncensorable platform for people who actually need something like that. They don't care how much money they earn. They don't give a shit about little bugs. All they need is a place where they can communicate freely with the world. That would make much better userbase for Steem.
We might be able to steer the userbase to that direction by reducing author rewards and giving them to witnesses (who are underpaid currently).
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So make a guild that downvotes bad behaving whales, instead of incentivizing sycophantic behaviors to get rewards???
One that greys them out?
I really don't have all the data on the drama, I just know that I would like to matter in the math.
You have given us a great tool here, it's too bad that personalities are causing overly emotional responses to rock the boat.
Time will tell,....this cloud has a steem lining,...
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Damn. If that's true that means I have to relearned everything I've ever learned.
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Lol, it's hard to unlearn the first thing you learn in life, obey or else,...
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Indeed. The way this is done can be based in a "Corporate Governing Culture" where the concentration of power is in those who have the most shares in the company: "I have more shares than you, I have more power to do what I want and you can't stop me."
Or... This can be done in a "Socially Self-Governing Community" to determine the direction of things where power is distributed to each individual so that no one person has more power than others in the community. Rewards and flags are decided by the actual users who user and create the community, not by power players who have the power to abuse and create injustice all on their own. Yes this can happen with an overall community, but that requires more effort. As it is, the balance of power can only be changed if other power players get involved to correct what another did, and that just doesn't seem to happen. 50 power players for thousands of people is not scalable, especially when a community potentially reaches 1 million.
Everyone has that responsibility, whether hey know it or not. Having one person, or a few decide that for everyone just because they have more money... is not too responsible.
Preventing abuse by small players can be mitigated by other small players who have more ability to help than depending on 1, or 50 power players to help everyone across the platform.
I am trying to get us to shift from the corporate decentralized power structure, to an egalitarian decentralized power to the community of users who build and create the community.
"Communities are built by humans, "clever technology" is merely the infrastructure." ~ @denmarkguy
Can you explain this more? From what I understand, you mean that the bad behavior of one is going to be worse when shared by many people who have the same mindset/behavior as others? That might be so if the bad behavior of one who has a concentration of power was corrected by another one who has a concentration of power, but this isn't happening. A quorum requirement, would that be satisfied with an elected council that reviews certain action, like flags? If no, please elaborate on what you mean.
Thank you for the feedback.
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With a simple majority of 'good' stakeholders, couldn't the negative effects of 'bad' stakeholders be essentially neutralized by just countering their votes?
On a smaller scale, the @asshole user was deemed 'bad' and the @seraph bot was able to counter it by just upvoting everything it downvoted.
Where it could become 'interesting' is everyone's subjective perception of what is good and bad. What one group seems to agree with and think is 'good' - a different group seems to think is bad. I guess the worst case scenario is that most of the major stake-holders just end up in a giant stale-mate of canceled votes, leaving everyone that is left with more influence + curation rewards.
The main way I could see this becoming a problem would be if the 'bad' stakeholder just started splitting into a lot of little accounts and moving SP around to make it difficult to automate a counter.
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I dont understand the last sentence. Today a whale vote has more weight per value than a small vote due to exponential rewards.
When we remove the exponential reward power is relative to economic value. A whale then has less power, due to the fact that his power is not accelerated by the rewards curve anymore.
Am i misunderstanding something?
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I was perfectly consent in the end. The posts ended with a down vote. My up votes were to bring attention to the issue and get help gathering additional flags while negating opportunity for curation rewards. It was a strategy to achieve a consistent end.
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