Here is the problem, and it is elemental to the way that Steem/Hive works:
It is through the process of making and taking the bets that the value of a post is determined. Coupled with the proof of stake system, that effectively means that the same people with the most power to affect the payoff are the ones who have the capability of maximizing their payoff.
The problems with that are obvious and you almost/sort of touch on that in your very last paragraph as almost a throw away. It's a central issue, however. It is the crux of the whole problem. Curation and reward have been inextricably bound in the underlying system and to fix it, that is to remove behaviors which result in undesired results, the whole of the system has to be modified.
Unfortunately, that can't be done at a mechanical level and still be able to refer to the result as Steem/Hive (and I keep referring to the systems as they stand like that because they are identical in implementation). It is certainly possible to imagine a system which decouples curation and tipping/reward and it's probably a good idea to do so because it would have a number of positive knock on effects.
I just don't think it can be done here.
Specifically as regards downvotes, the idea of "free downvotes" as it stands already violates one of the central axioms of the system, effectively that your stake determines your ability to affect the distribution of the rewards pool. Giving people free 100% downvotes means that your stake is effectively multiplied when it comes to reducing the power of other people to be rewarded from the pool. If it were simultaneously matched by the same number of free upvotes, at least there would be some sense of parity.
At that point we are just back to giving every new account 15 SP for free, which at least is a lot easier to keep up with and see the immediate problems with, as opposed to providing a multiplier for SP which is semi-obscure.
This. The present curation mechanism also has a number of negative effect that severing curation from rewards eliminates.
This too. I expected a far different result from EIP, and remain mystified why we got what we did. I'm glad we got this result instead of what I expected, but I do not understand why we did at all.
I don't agree with the "free downvotes" part. You have to be able to direct values upwards as well as downwards. And you should not have to "lose out" on money by directing rewards downwards instead of upwards. The previous system created a false motivator. Everyone only upvoted because they made money with this.
Here's the problem. That is absolutely false, provably so, always has been, and this was known before the system was designed.
There are no financial rewards for voting on Reddit, Fakebook, or on any platform that preceded Steem, but voting has strongly featured on all social media because that's a lot of what social interaction is about.
What curation rewards actually are is a deceptive mechanism to reward whales.
I have never - ever - cast a vote because of rewards. People do not actually have opinions because it makes them money. If they claim they do, they are lying in order to get money.
Society actually long pre-existed money, and is far more valuable in every sense than money. Were Hive structured to effect societal values the fake rewards for curation would not exist. Steem was structured to make the founders rich, and it did. They're gone now, and we're on Hive, because the exit of the founders removed the core purpose of Steem, and caused it to die.
Hive needs to restructure it's rewards and governance to reflect the actual valuations society depends on, or it too will die. Governance being subject only to financial influence ensures that when monopoly arises Hive will become the sole possession of the monopoly, exactly as did Steem. Presently the whales that ninjamined their stakes exercise that monopoly power over governance, all ~dozen of them or so (if you count inactive whales, a couple dozen or three), and do so for reasons known only to them.
In time their stake will pass to others, and the reasons Hive is governed will become the reasons those new stakeholders have. This is the factual reality of DPoS as undertaken on Hive presently.
I correct "everyone" to "the huge chunk of the stake".
And definitely, hive needs a restructuring of the value proposition of this. Removing "curation" is from a game theory point of few not good. We want to have people with a good stake act in their interest for the good of the platform. Motivating this the right way is difficult.
I believe that curation is a good idea, but I also think that there should be a risk for the voter if done irresponsibly (losing stake for voting plagiarism or milk posts for example).
Ignoring you said 'curation' when I think you actually meant 'curation rewards', I will move on.
And this is something you can undertake with the betting proposal?
If anyone were to listen to me on the subject (and they don't, which means I can safely say anything I want to), I would probably point out that "curation" doesn't mean in any other context what it means on the Steem blockchain. Not even close or near.
What it means here is that you are fiscally rewarded for interacting with the blockchain, effectively. It is a system that starts with the basic assumption that unless they pay you to use it, you won't. That the basic value proposition is a net negative from their perspective.
Anyone who has ever designed games can interpret that. More importantly is that anyone who uses the platform understands that even if they can't articulate that, and it is a persistent erosive force on the community.
That it is coupled with a user experience which is at least five years behind cutting edge in the social media space, a market in which being six months behind means you have a real problem? Is it any surprise that the heyday of Steem was two years ago or more when the payoffs, in a very literal sense, were notable money?
The present curation mechanism has a huge number of negative effects that breaking it away from any kind of reward system would improve, and not just for consumers but for developers. If they can no longer fall back on the assumption that the value of the token will motivate people to use their interfaces so they don't have to be very good, we might actually see some development on that front.
And that's not to minimize the work of SteemPeak/PeakD. They have put in a whole lot of work to bring the user experience on the Steem blockchain up to something that was acceptable around 2013. That is a huge amount of work. But it's inherently limited by the nature of the schema underlying the database which is the Steem blockchain and the mechanisms by which users interact with it.
Mechanically, the screwed up downvote system are a lot less destructive than the ultimately designed-to-fail "curation" system. In a real sense, we are protected in an ongoing way by the fact that people don't actually want to go out and find content to downvote. Not a lot of protection, but a little bit.
The downvote mechanics reward the wrong thing from people, just like the "curation" system. Part of the problem is that they tie fiscal control to a lot of mechanics which shouldn't have a financial toehold in decision-making.
I absolutely believe that it is possible to imagine better systems. I absolutely believe we should do so. I likewise absolutely believe that doing so will be no part of the efforts of any of the Steem/Hive developers because their bread is buttered by staying locked into a system that rewards behaviors that they have already developed, whether or not it serves the needs of the greater community whatsoever. Sad, but there it is.
I suspect that present circumstances do actually necessitate Hive evolution towards natural societal valuations, or Hive will diseventuate. You're not wrong on any point you make above, but existential circumstances force the whales that have inherited the founders' position as the purpose of Hive either to effect a robust purpose for Hive, or it will be abandoned by people that need a functional mechanism to ensure survival.
It's literally an existential threat to humanity that we do not have functional society at present. Hive will evolve or die. You may be right it will not evolve, and I am continually faced with demonstrations of that refusal to evolve.
However, plenty of goodwill and understanding is possessed by devs experienced with Hive, and faced with existential threat today. I fully expect a functional platform to arise, because it is necessary to surmount the burgeoning threat(s) faced by society presently.
Very shortly people will not have interest in wasting time on the internet, but will need censorship resistant communications. If folks don't need it, they won't bother with it, and if we don't need communications, Hive will die.
It is possible to chip rocks and survive. If Hive does not enable society to maintain forthright communications but remains a mechanism to economically favor oligarchs, it will not survive cost/benefit analyses. I believe it can, but not without radical improvements, including enabling people to access it even though ISPs try to stop them, domain registrars doing the same, and similar censorship efforts.
Normalcy bias is going to kill a lot of people. Hive can survive, but only if it surmounts the philosophical deficits that presently effect governance.
I think there are some ways to avoid this. To be honest I have not completely researched this and neither completely calculated it through because I want community input on these things first before I dig deeper into it.
An easy way to avoid this is to base curation not only on how close someone got to the actual result but also on how big the distance was between after the own vote and the final result.
(After I voted 1$ it got to 1 out of 20$ (final result) which is a bigger distance than after a whale voted 19$ and got to 19$ out of 20$).
However, I do think that the general approach is
a) Less controversial than downvotes
b) More what we actually want.
So in the provided example the bettor/curator would receive a larger curation reward for their $1 bet than the whale's $19 bet? Not sure I understand how you mean this.
It would get a larger relative curation not a larger curation value. The 19$ bet could still get 5$ curation (around 25% of the bet) but the 1$ bet could get 50 cents (50%)
Well, that's definitely preferable to the extant system, IMHO. At least it supplies a superable reason for curation rewards.
I'm not actually sure that is where we need to aim, TBQH, but it's sure food for thought.