Id be willing to entertain moving to 60:40 or 50:50 reward:curation as a reaction to too much self vote abuse hence spam.
RE: Self-voting, Vote Trading and Enlightened Game Theory
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Self-voting, Vote Trading and Enlightened Game Theory
Thanks! I think anything in that direction would be helpful.
There must be a author/curation split level at which self-voting actually becomes less profitable than voting randomly. That would not be the optimal level either, but some curation percentage slightly below that would mean that it was easier to earn Steem with a quick glance to evaluate quality, than by self-voting. I might try and consider the maths more thoroughly later.
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There cannot be less profitable to self vote than voting for some else, after all you're getting both curation and author no matter what.
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Yes, I see what you mean. I should qualify my statement by saying:
If the curation percentage is high enough, then it would only be more profitable to vote on your own content if it could compete with the quality of other posts. For example, at a 99% curation reward level, the most significant factor in deciding what to vote for would be the quality of the content (instead of whether of not it was yours).
I'm certainly not saying that having such a high percentage would be optimal, just that such an equilibrium level must exist. Your point has clarified however that a mathematical deduction of this level isn't possible.
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Since VP is weighted by the holdings of SP, the actual point at which self votes may become more valuable than votes from the community depends on the SP of the account.
~10,000 minnow votes are yet unequal in ability to impart reward than one whale vote.
For minnows, self votes are silly. Since people like to receive votes, they also like to reciprocate when they receive them. HF19 leaves minnows with ~10 votes they can cast daily before causing their VP to be unable to fully recharge. By self voting a minnow can receive those 10 votes.
However, by properly curating and casting those votes, accompanied by relevant comments, on the posts of others, the entire pool of ~100 votes those others possess becomes motivated to reciprocate with votes on the comment. Also, by voting other's posts, and commenting relevantly, those votes can attract followers who might upvote your posts daily.
Self votes don't even compare to the returns proper curation offers. This yet ignores the real value of curation, as the intercourse with those whose ideas you find interesting is worth more (at least to me) than financial rewards.
I haven't addressed pandering - in which minnows seek to gain votes from whales. It is a problem, as it deprives the community of content of higher quality panderers might generate were they to actually concern themselves with something other than rewards. It also focuses rewards into those accounts already possessing substantial holdings, and clogs the comments section with irrelevant fluff.
This makes no sense. Regardless of curation level, by self voting you increase your rewards. Since this seems to be the only consideration of self voters, they'd still do it. Upvotes on a post increase the author reward for the post, and that's their goal.
This imbalance is untenable. The white paper states the intention was to distribute ~90% of rewards to ~30% of accounts, but, as the chart shows ~99% of rewards inure to ~1% of accounts. The various selfvoting, botnet voting, vote timing collusion, circle jerking cliques, etc., are degrading the ability of the platform to grow, and thus causing Steem itself to not appreciate.
It is the weighting of VP by SP that causes all these problems, and additionally makes of Steem a security in the estimation of the SEC (at least according to my understanding of the regulations), which is a whole 'nother universe of problems I suspect none of us wants.
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Under a hypothetical 100% curation / 0% author reward incentive, you will make most reward by voting on the posts which subsequently receive the most votes, whether these are your posts or not. So the optimal strategy is absolutely to vote on the best posts. A 99% curation incentive is little different. Of course, at 99% curation / 1% author reward, nobody would bother to post, but somewhere (I suspect much higher than 25%) is an optimal level.
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You are pretty much right, except that a) financial rewards aren't the only issue that determines participation. It actually matters very little to me, personally. But, I am weird =p, and b) because financial rewards are so important to so many, characterizing the most upvoted posts as the 'best' is inaccurate, unless by best you only mean 'the best post to game for financial rewards'.
Again, I believe the real solution to the problem that rewards are being too concentrated doesn't involve the split between curation and creation rewards, but rather how VP is weighted by SP.
I have posted numerous times on the matter, and my views have so far been but reinforced as time passes. Full and in depth exposition of what I think is the best way for Steemit to move forward would create a wall of text here, and that wouldn't be appropriate.
I'm not particularly against changing the split. I just don't think it addresses the central issue.
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I have read some of your arguments elsewhere and have some sympathy with them. In practice though, I just don't think Steem could change to the extent you would like, but increasing curation split may be feasible. I'm aware that many unresolved issues would remain.
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You may well be right that Steem won't make those changes. I'm not sure that not making those changes will be optional, in the long run. The SEC may have the final say, and that would be devastating for Steemit, and, in particular, @dan. Not having Steemit would devastate me, so I advocate those changes I think will optimize Steemit.
I do appreciate your reasons for finding such changes unlikely. Frankly, I share your pessimism regarding the likelihood of Steem adopting them. As I have said before, though, Steemit code is open source, and at this very moment forks are being written. If Steemit doesn't optimize, it will be likely to be superseded by a platform that is less centralized.
It is the plethora of issues that stem from one matter, and that is weighting of VP by SP, that most strongly, IMHO, advocates for addressing that particular issue, rather than continuing to sprout a variety of mitigations for each symptom, and that includes altering the rewards split.
I am a Steemit fanboy. I really want to enjoy this platform indefinitely. A couple of the symptoms of the essential design flaw of Steemit are of existential potential, even if we disregard my speculations regarding growth, appreciation of Steem, and discouragement of new accounts. These are the SEC, and Sybil attacks, at least.
Improving curation rewards at the expense of author rewards can't address either issue.
TBQH, until today, and on occasion in the past when I've managed a post that gained attention, around 2/3 of my rewards are from comments, rather than posts. Since my comments usually accompanied by my votes (presently I am desperately trying to recharge my VP, which threatens to never recharge unless I do. I apologize for my rudeness in not voting), increasing curation rewards would be very beneficial to me personally, financially.
I think. LOL Of more import than the ratio of rewards still, is the fact that I can't gain curation rewards if I can't curate, and the VP curve is preventing me from curating. Indeed, as I have explained before, the VP decay rate is driving self votes due to so many fewer votes being available.
In the vote desert, where minnows can only cast ~10 votes/day, new accounts are starved for votes. Desperate to get SOME rewards, many of these new accounts self vote. If minnows had ~100 votes/day I suspect this particular cause of self votes would evaporate.
Self votes to gain exposure, by driving comments to the top would still happen. Self votes from accounts just mining the rewards pool would too, but changing the VP decay rate would impact whale self votes, by increasing the amount of self voting necessary to maximize the rewards mined thereby by an order of magnitude. I expect this would have dramatically greater impact than altering the curation/creation rewards split to any reasonable ratio.
One more observation regarding altering that ratio is that a good post takes a lot of work. Casting a vote takes almost none. Regardless of the impact on self voting that increasing curation rewards may produce, it is difficult already to justify granting a quarter of the value of a post to those that need do no more than cast a vote on it.
Bah! I apparently am incapable of not producing walls of text. =/
I apologize if you find it annoying. It is not my intention, but is a result of my intention to respond substantively.
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I agree. Jumping straight to 50/50 might be a bit too big of a change, but I'd be very curious to see how moves to 66:34 and 60:40 would pan out.
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IDK, I think that spam should be taken care of with the tools we have. Self voting abuse might not stop by changing the ratios and it might make some people upset to know that their work is valued less than before simply because some are abusing the system.
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I think it would help reduce the problems and self-voters would be more inclined to spend their votes on quality posts instead of only themselves. So authors might end up getting a smaller slice, but of a much bigger pie.
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Why would someone that is focused on making profits over everything consider anything like that though? In the end I see it as a pandering to the few that abuse at the loss of everyone else, making creting content less incentivized because we want to attract those that abuse the system won't guarantee that the ones that abuse the system will even consider this, considering that their profits are the highest ROI and that will be hard to say "hmm should I take 50% OR 100%, or should I take 99% or 100% and if we bend over backwards for these tools I'd say that we are just as spineless.
I don't sympathize with abusers, and I don't think we need to compromise with wrong since there will always be wrong, no matter what.
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I see what you're saying, but I suspect most self-voters are actually being rational agents, but with short-term preferences (possibly shorter than they intend!). If the economic incentives change so that some pretty minimal curation activity nets them more profit than voting on their own low-effort content, then the abuse will decline and/or their content improves to make it more profitable for them to self-vote on it. The network wins.
Do you think the abuse should be dealt with in some other way?
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Like I said, I think we are compromising the authors for the curators at the cost of maybe winning over some short sighted individuals, who might not see any value in changing their ways in spite of incentives.
If that happens then our only course of action is what we have now: warn of the pitfalls of self voting (making the platform look like a joke/scam and the insufferable lonely and cold place such people deserve should everyone do that) and if that doesn't work tell anyone and everyone who will listen, HEY! Is this OK?!.
It's the same for spam and self voting, they are equal in my eyes. I wish there was some kind of incentive for flagging people and there isn't, but flagging is very effective if the account has enough power.
If a post is worth $100 and there is only one vote and you vote and nobody else votes, you're not going to get any more than if you voted for something that nobody voted for, because as far as curation rewards go you're not getting paid 25% of what the post makes split 2 ways (12.50), you get 25% of what your vote was, the other 75% goes to the author, so if your vote is $0.12 then you get back $0.03 for voting.
I think people have a misconception when it comes with curation rewards. You get 25% of your vote, your vote being a function of how many votes are cast thus far and their weight behind them over the rewards being voted on, so that if less people vote or less large accounts vote your vote will allocate a larger portion of that reward pool as it's not as spread as before, other than that without powering up you won't see a change in the curation rewards.
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<"...you get 25% of what your vote was, the other 75% goes to the author, so if your vote is $0.12 then you get back $0.03 for voting."
This is much different that what I understood. I thought that curators received 25% of the post value, so that the curator in your example would receive $25.
I am now alarmed that it is my comments that produce over 2/3 of my rewards LOL
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The 25% does go to curators but that isn't split equally among lets say 30 votes(that's unfair for those with large votes), but depending on the votes themselves, so it would be the same as you getting 25% of what your vote was even though it is out of the "25%". Also votes allocate more to the author in the first 30 minutes, gradually settling at 25% at the 30 minute mark, but I forgot what they are initially, it might be 85% goes to the author if it's right after it's posted. I think that was supposed to change so for all I know it might not be so anymore.
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I am not following, I guess. If curation is allotted 25% of the total rewards for a post, and (in the example you gave) where only one vote applies, then for a $100 post, that vote would seem to be worth $25, regardless of timing.
In a real world situation, where there are likely to be many votes on a $100 post, then the timing of the vote would clearly change that, due to the allocation you mention.
Right?
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The problem with flagging is that there is a pretty severe opportunity cost.
A person flagging is granting rewards to all posts which have active votes instead of using their vote to gain rewards. Yes, some people will do it (perhaps gaining social capital) which is good, but if we simply consider rewards, and not reputations, I think this action actually isn't economically rational.
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I think utilizing the tools we have will create a lasting impact which will pay back in the long term, so we have to self sacrifice and bite the bullet with flagging.
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