Oh, I don't have a problem with different points of view.
What I can't stand is someone coming to participate in a system, and then bitching about important core functionalities. If you don't like the premises on which the platform is built that's your thing, but don't annoy those who try to make people understand what the whole idea behind the reward pool distribution is.
And sure, you are right. There is no rule to participate. It's just that the system can't work as it was built when people don't.
You yourself question the premises by saying "the system can't work as it was built" and so you invoke rules. I take the same freedom in questioning: Are you saying that non participating in the downvote-actions makes a person a questionable up to a bad participant? Does this imply that they will face disadvantages even though they write in high quality (whatever that might be)? Does that not translate of being in service for the readers and distract them from the exhausting conflicts?
Do you see how this "must be a good steemian" leads towards corruption if someone even thinks (even if he is reassured otherwise) that he will be left aside when he is not a "good steemian, fighting for the good"?
To take part in actions which require detectives investigations skills to find out about using bid bots and multiple accounts requires totally clean records and credibility on the side of those who want to work on the regulations. So far I have not seen one big account "A" not voting for himself on "A".
Correct me, if I am wrong but that is the role modeling with a very high impact on how people perceive a system. Otherwise, they leave in masses and note it as "hypocrisy" in their minds. Even though, they have done it themselves. But from what I think it's like advertising for own content, not paying for the ad, but compensating for it instead. Which is the strangest thing.
No, I don't. I say it helps the system to work as intended, but I don't judge. There are many reasons to not participate in it, and I accept that decision.
My upvotes distributed by curangel don't depend on having used the downvote power. That'd be silly ;)
And our downvotes don't target people who upvote themselves once in a while, or even daily. It's always a decision on the individual case. The infographic above shows what clear abuse looks like. People trading votes on a constant basis, giving 50% and more of their rewards to always the same users. And again, we don't ask everyone to agree with that being worth a downvote, everyone should make up their own mind what kind of behaviour they want to see on here. As I wrote, it's provided as inspiration, not an order.
So 50% is the arbitrary cutoff then? Anyone that gives 50% or more of their votes to the same people is an "abuser". Hmm I actually see a lot of accounts that fall into your arbitrary definition on here.
By the way, people forming groups and mostly interacting in those groups is normal human behavior. That's pretty much what a community is. Expecting people to scour the site and vote for 10 or more 'quality' (whatever that means) posts each day, mind you by 10 different authors so we aren't voting the same authors on consecutive days, isn't.
Yes, it is arbitrary, and not a fixed number. And yes, a lot of users could improve.
Forming closed groups is not how you build a big community. If we want steem to grow, it's important that a lot of people look outside of their group. Especially the ones with a bigger stake - if they group up with other big stakes, there won't be a community except these groups.
And past experience shows that very clearly. We had thousands of people join over time, who left again because they didn't feel like valued members of the community, because of group behaviour. Retention is the number one problem, and the only way to improve that is to break the circles.
I'm absolutely aware that it's not a realistic expectation that everyone scouts the blockchain all time. I don't do that myself. That's why I started a curation project that makes it easy and still profitable to distribute to the wide userbase for myself and every other stakeholder. They can still keep some for supporting their group directly. But as someone said earlier today, at some size you have to stop being a boat and become the tide, or there won't be enough water for all the boats.
People are always welcome to buy more steem, power it up, and form their own "groups". In fact one could argue that kind of activity would be more beneficial for prices than arbitrarily voting as many authors as possible, like the 2k you mentioned in the post.
One thing that was interesting was that you didn't mention anything about the quality of the posts of those users you call 'abusers' (again whatever that means in an open system without rules), yet later you talk about upvoting quality content. Are we about quality or are we about spreading the wealth? There seems to be some contradiction there. Your arguments lean more towards the latter, and if that is the case then yes we should just be a true POS blockchain, where stake determines reward.
That's short sighted. Buying is beneficial for the price on the short term. As soon as they feel like their group is big enough, that stops and turns. We need growth and a big active userbase, using steem for more than handing out rewards, to become sustainable.
The whitepaper gives guidelines, and colluding groups are mentioned as one of the main forms of abuse. The quality of their posts is irrelevant as long as it is evaluated by their group only and not all of the community. This is how the concept of proof of brain works.
It is about both rewarding quality content and distributing wealth, and there has to be a balance. Downvotes are the tool we have to move some from the latter to the former. The goal is not to get to "only quality", as it shouldn't be "only distribution" either.
The creators we upvote are not randomly chosen, but by a big group of curators. The downvotes similarly are decided on by delegators using their stake to use the function of downvotes as it was intended. Standards on quality and what is overrated obviously differ for everyone, and that's good because it makes the community varied.
After last SteemFest I actually suggested to give stakeholders the possibility to opt out of the reward pool to receive their share of the rewards without having to find ways to farm on posts. I would be fine with that, and still support the content creators with most of my stake.
That proposal didn't get a lot of traction, the general consensus was to try improving Proof of Brain. The EIP is all about that, and all I do is participate in the way the system is set up.
Fair enough. Though I would argue that the term "general consensus" is a misnomer as it really is just a few of the more influential whales and witnesses that decide most of the direction on here. The community was mostly opposed to the EIP when it was proposed, it was extremely lopsided as I recall, though it was pushed through anyways. Consensus is mostly a fantasy on here, stake weighted rules in more ways than one.