I 100% agree about one week not being long enough. I expect this process to play out over several months and I'm still not sure what the outcome will be.
As for my votes, I had steadily delegated out (nearly) all of my SP over the course of HF19/HF20 as I saw that voting was largely useless and it became a pay-to-play dominated system. I kept a token amount undelegated to be able to engage on comments, downvote spam or clear abuse, etc. That's why you didn't see my votes, because I mostly wasn't making any.
Since HF21, with the hope that the culture does change, I have undelegated most of my SP (some is on long term leases and my current plan is to let them cycle out). I plan to vote/curate/downvote. But if I see that the culture is reverting to one of paid voting and self-voting then I will go back to delegating it out like everyone else (self-voting would be another option, largely economically equivalent, but too much trouble for me personally).
Where this goes? Easy to tell:
Whales or their account holders will use advanced downvote tools to censor the whole rest of the network, just as it pleases them and for free. Meanwhile, the trending page is full of Like-Train posts.
Sounds like a good platform to be on, right?
At least some of us can now not only search for content to upvote, no they can also search for contet to downvote. That's a cool new hobby.
Hard no. The graph does NOT show the number of users, it shows the number of accounts which is not even close.
It also includes Steemit in the whale section, which does not vote (at least not for the undelegated portion of their stake) and is entirely irrelevant and misleading.
The categories are also pretty arbitrary and all of the bars are large enough that even modest changes in the cutoffs would start to shift a lot of the mass of one bar from one of these arbitrary categories to another.
And finally, none of this really matters for the purposes of proof of brain being preferable to paid votes. As long as stakeholders reach a consensus on payouts which align with value added to Steem then the system works. Whales have at least as much incentive to support that sort of alignment as anyone else. The people who don't have this incentive are vote sellers and self-voters who make more personally by undermining the system for everyone else.
It is good to fight abuse in all possible ways! Anyway, it will not stop there. Downvotes will take their independent purposes and we'll see where that goes. Especially considering automated downvote bots.
My organic range is so small, you could automatically silence how many accounts of my size, just with your free downvotes? Let's say if I'd posted every other day once, what would be the number?
and if you think I'm talking out of the blue, you might be a bit wrong at least.
I can't play NC anymore, because attacks are too cheap. It's Vietnam all over the place...in the very same week that HF21/22 implements free downvotes and systematically downvoting just starts. Trust me, it's scary for small members of the community.
You might wanna check out my latest post about that: https://steempeak.com/palnet/@manniman/9-weeks-of-nextcolony-game-over-now
This is the result of adding my name into an automated system and then forgetting about it. So I'll leave NC behind and I would have to do the same with STEEM if my name would end up in a downvote list.
I don't know anything about nextcolony but if you don't mind how about a brief intro and tell me why you can't play it any more and what if anything that has to do with HF21/22. Thanks.
The attacks just burn my earnings, so I can't progress anymore. They are made by an automated attack bot, and I can't dodge them efficiently. My fault at this point is, that I'm too small to fight that guy and now I will never ever be big enough.
The same could happen with all my author earning if I'd end up on a downvote list. Also, just a single person could be enough.
Sounds to me like a flaw in the game design. Thanks for the feedback. I do understand that people can get frustrated when they are assaulted by too much downvotes, undeserved downvotes, etc. No one wants that.
If they are invested, they will get frustrated. Usually, they will just go back to Facebook or Reddit and start talking bad about STEEM.
I often talk to people Face-to-Face about STEEM and why they should join. I don't expect that people are that responsible with their downvotes, as you would be.
If you read my comments, you must think I'm insane. But tomorrow I'll fly to a meeting, where influencer onboarding to STEEM will be a big part of the agenda. We're on the same team.