I am relying on well reputed other people to let me know about things I have no knowledge of. I believe I know which person you speak of, and I am wondering where the moral high ground is when pretty much all of us have benefited in some way from the preminer votes. I know you benefited immensely. I got about maybe 12k steem power from ned/xeldal/etc posts votes.
For this reason, I am altering a parameter of the new system, to have everyone start with the same reputation and stake, a beginner account.
It wasn't my idea to use votes as a counting method, I personally thought it was fine to just field comments. That turned out funny when @archange's bot auto-posted because of how many comments the post got.
It's a nasty little mess we are all in here, isn't it?
So, I am not going to open slather on this, but rather, make sure every possible bad actor mitigation system is included in the parameters of the new platform.
Today, I was invited to answer questions on a discord hangout. It made me realise that muting could have a negative effect on reputation as like a hold on some part of it, and if enough people mute someone, then they can become temporarily a zero reputation, and then they have to make amends.
So, I'm not 100% sure what to think now. I did a bad thing yesterday, flagging a sweet little russian lady who dropped a link in a discord chatroom. I felt very bad about it. If you recognise what you do wrong, then you should have a way to rebuild your reputation, within the confines of strict limits.
I am going to ask this person of what you speak, regarding prison. It sounds pretty serious to me what you say, and I have no way of knowing either way, and I'm not going to mediate on this either. The person in question has been putting some time and effort into helping with this so far, so they seem ok to me.
I have to think further about this. Maybe there is no need to be selective about who can join, just copy the whole user list as at 5th august. Everyone gets the same stake and reputation, and can use muting to suppress reputation. I think it could work out really well, actually.
"For this reason, I am altering a parameter of the new system, to have everyone start with the same reputation and stake, a beginner account." - I like the idea. Might as well make the start as fair as possible. But will it be possible for people to create tons of accounts just to gain stake like some have done here in Steemit? They'd be the whales we have here today very fast.