While I may not be the wisest. I do spend a lot of time on introspection. I also observe.
I cared about steem/steemit. I spoke up there only with the interest of heading off what I saw as negatives. Things that I would see scare people off.
Rather than taking the "who needs them anyway" mentality that some would take I was of the opinion that we wanted to retain as many people as we could. This included people that I personally did not like their content at all. I recognized that there were people that liked or enjoyed that content.
As to rewards. They voted for it.
As to the reward pool. Without policing people with power could game the system and create multiple accounts and just up vote themselves and their alt accounts and further consolidate the rewards within themselves. This happened on steemit to an extreme degree at one point. Witnessing this at least gave me a clue of why some people began policing the reward pool. This is why unless it is super aggressively down voting a post I don't usually comment. The down voting to $0 though should not occur unless it is plagiarism, spam, or abuse (stalking, doxing). The abuse category is one we need to be careful with as people can decide pretty much anything is abusive. To be clear I do not consider the fact someone offends a person as being abusive. People can CHOOSE to be offended by pretty much anything.
Doxing someone or posting things that endanger a person against their will though. That should definitely be countered.
Posting criminal material such as pedophilia, etc. that should be countered.
Forcing people to view NSFW or Pornographic material without their opt in should be countered.
I remember back when Steemit allowed animated GIFs to play in the news feeds for awhile before this stuff was policed. Imagine scrolling through the feed and seeing a blatant animated GIF of oral sex or some other activity without you choosing to see it.
That is eventually why the NSFW tag was created.
There are definitely some VERY important reasons for a down vote/flag and if our solution opens the door back to those then it would not be a solution worth pursuing.
I think all of us trying to think of solutions are aware of this.
One of the major reasons I stopped proposing solutions was simply two simple things I ask about any potential solution.
- Can it be bypassed using multiple accounts?
- Does it open doors for potential problems worse than already exist?
If either of those are true I don't really consider it a solution.
As to #2. There are some ideas that may still have problems but might still be worth trying as the problems could be of lesser negative impact than the current situation.
We simply need to be willing to revert. Layer 2 is also not an option that was available when I was working these things on steemit. That seems like the logical place to perform experiments.
If something is discovered that in practice is better than what HIVE layer 1 is using then at that time it might be worth considering implementing it.
As always, well-stated.
Socrates was deemed the 'wisest' man in the land by the Oracle of Delphi not for what he knew, but because he was aware of what he didn't know.
Yes, that is why it is wise to 'think out loud' and dialogue with others, especially with those who vividly remember why a certain prior change was made. That is why I view your feedback as so valuable. You see both sides of the issue; you understand the problems both before and after to current protocol was put in place; you focus on ideas, not personalities; you genuinely want to see this platform expand, yet you have observed first-hand things that have turned your own friends and family away. In short, I deeply appreciate and value your perspective.
BTW, I really liked your comment a few weeks ago, about your motivation being not driven by the monetary rewards, but the fact that the monetary rewards provide internal justification for the fact that you spend a lot of time on the platform.
Without the monetary reward I'd feel quite guilty about the amount of time I spend here. So many other things I likely should be doing instead.