Systematic burning is very short sighted. It let's go of the opportunity we now have of creating a well distributed and decentralized token. Building a "strong POB middle class" is good for the growth of the platform not only by incentivizing more people to come, be active, and stay, but also to ensure a good correlation between engagement and rewards for new users (the more people that have significant Staked POB AS opposed it just being held by a few accounts, the more it matters to engage and build a wide following). This is what you want in order to have a strong network effect and a pleasant social experience for users that drives growth. As opposed to new users only identifying and engaging with a small circle.
I really believe that laying a good foundation this way will bring far more new demand for the token in the long run, which will bring more value to stakeholders than the reduced potential selling pressure achieved by burning.
So imo that's how we should think of we're playing to win and not only to not fail.
A separate issue though worth its own discussion is what a stakeholder ought to do at times when there's simply not the time in the day to look through a sufficient amount of content to use up one's votes, or if one simply can't find contributions (posts) that seem worth to vote on. Is it ok to burn some then? Or is it still better to give a random surprise upvote that can give a bit of a pleasant feeling to someone almost at random? Not sure if there is a "right" answer to that, but curious of your opinion:).
You have a week to vote on posts. I would find it difficult to believe you don't think anything this week wasn't worth voting on. If there is such a dry spell, the curator should post. If all the rest are really poor, he could end up with 250 POB in author rewards.
To avoid losing out on curation rewards one still has to vote on at least 70 posts (assuming all votes are 100%) per week not to run up against 100% though?
Speaking for myself, I know that I can have some weeks where I really enjoy looking for underrated authors, reading their posts, and handing them a well deserved upvote. But then there can also be weeks where I just want to spend less time looking at a screen and instead relax more.
But my point above wasn't really about my own experience (I've been manually curating for almost 4 years), but more what I observe in other power users.
In any case, that's even more reason to want to allocate rewards not only to those making great posts, but also to those who engage with others and thus use their obtained stake to improve the user experience and growth of the token and website.
If someone has something against autovoting, say so. We really haven't had a conversation about this for POB. If your following a curation trial, you are still relying on a brain to curate, just not yours but a combination of other people's brains. I was wondering whether using this could mean the bot might change the vote you make or does the software avoid that somehow. You can do this at hive.vote. If we all follow each other we can give the posts the amounts they deserve without us all reading everything.
If I follow you and you follow me, could we cause a loop? You set to vote at 90% of my vote, and I do something similar, like to vote 95% of what you vote. So I vote 100% manually, the bot so votes as you with a 90% vote. Now the vote realizing the vote has changed with your account recasts the vote at 95% of 90%. The process repeats until the vote gets to zero or some point where rounding makes it constant.
This is what the short-sightedness really shines light on because there is nobody who can look into the future and say "yes, this is the perfect size for POB and any more people would ruin the platform".
I think @leprechaun said it best and I'd add that if you can't find the time to vote responsibly, find a responsible curator with a trail who can (link to @vempromundo's latest post)
I wonder if it would make sense for wallets or dashboard to provide a suggested list of manual curators worth trailing. I know from the past 4 years that the imposed need to curate in order to "not lose out" against inflation has caused people to just power down and sell on Hive in the past.
Anyways, I myself have mostly enjoyed manually curating for almost all of my 4 years here, so mot really thinking about myself in this case.
I think that's a great idea. There could be stats linked to it which highlight how many votes they make in a week, how many different authors, links to their hivetasks or hivestats, what authors/tags they frequent, etc etc, the list goes on. There are going to be problems with curation trails if no responsibility/accountability is taken by the curator, if all their data is blindingly clear to see they might think twice.
I prefer manual curating myself too, I think I directed that comment to you as if someone else was reading it, lol. I had quite a few to reply to yesterday morning and my belly must have been growling towards the end.