You're right it's different, but tolerating blatant votetrading (which just means you're selfvoting 10x per day if you trade votes with 9 other people on 1 daily post) will quickly lead us to become like Steem. There has to be more to curation than just looking out to receive the highest return cause without proof of brain curation this place is going downhill and you're going to end up getting lower return in the end since no one will want to buy into a nonworking curation platform. I'm sure you're aware of the flaws of a platform where having stake is everything and selling votes is the majority of curation that happens, taking a look at Steem's trending daily tells you easily what the flaws are and why that's not a platform you want to be on where no one new has a chance to get curated for putting in work.
People who are trading votes and maximizing returns in post rewards this way are not helping the platform move forward, they are instead riding on the backs of others who are curating properly but still getting a higher ROI % than them. I'm sure you understand what's wrong with that.
Thanks for comments in detail. Personally I love both system. Regarding vote trading agenda, I think it is tricky situation. As not a native speaker(English), it is difficult for me to read and write English sentence. In my case here, I was trying to make simple as practice. It might be regarded as vote-trading because it is true. but most case I enjoy seeing posts (pictures with simple comments) w/o burden to take time in understanding like instagram. Posting requirement at some community in Hive system not be easy to meet for not a native English user. Isn't it another discrimination? Posting with my native language is not adequate for Hive culture to promote communication and curation because here most people use English. So what should I do? I agree that thankful voting habit to my visitor can be developed as a pool but I cannot answer why I do not vote to lower power visitor. ( I do not ignore every lower power visitor.) But it is due to action of the balance between ROI and Proof of Brain.
Posting in your language is fine, even there one could assume a certain amount of effort has gone into a post, even though it wouldn't be easy to check if it's plagiarism. But a big stakeholder as you people would assume you're not plagiarising knowing that's not allowed and at the same time they'd assume you wouldn't be votetrading but using your stake on initiatives to (for instance, curate and welcome newcomers from the same language that may be arriving). The point is that votetrading activities once detected are easy to track, if you always have the same 5-10 people voting your posts and all of them also have your votes and you all share same activities of 1-2 posts per day, low effort, low engagement from anyone outside the circle, etc, it's easy to determine that this isn't genuine curation, most likely just autovoting without checking what's being autovoted and probably just a "silent deal" to vote on eachother as you all know that's how you can earn the most.
Regarding the hive vs steem stats, I don't care about short term trends, we need to keep pob working for long term health and distribution. Whatever is happening in that godforsaken place is nothing I as a curator would like to see here and I'm glad that's not the case but we can't go easy on those using some of the same tactics as they do there to increase their returns here.
Also thanks for not overreacting and getting weird over this like your friend did.
I think my friend was frustrated as down-voted without notifying in advance. Regarding black and white photography, I also thought that it was useful idea for amateur user as not a expert content provider, relieving the burden of what to post daily. If you notify before down voting, he might not overact.
He's not even using the community, just the tag: https://peakd.com/trending/bnwphotography
notice anything weird about the rest of posts compared to his original $16+ post rewards? Yeah the other's aren't votetrading. Just cause you have more stake doesn't mean your photos are worth more than other members doing the same thing. You're already getting higher curation rewards from your stake, don't try to also get max post rewards as if you're selfvoting 10x and you're fine. It's quite simple really and there's a lot of leeway to vote for friends and have them vote back, but if you're constantly doing it, never skipping a post, never posting more than once per day it looks like quite obvious maximization of voting power. There's nothing stopping you from thinking, oh this 1 picture is already at $10 so I'm not going to vote this person today and use my vote somewhere else instead to make this platform fairer, but somehow that thought process is nonexisting to all of you in the same voting circle. To maybe look around and check how others are doing or the difference between rewards of people doing the exact same thing but not having the same amount of voting power as you. I've even seen those same people commenting on you guy's posts and being ignored both from the comments and their posts just so you guys can focus on voting on each other in exchange for votes. Don't try to play dumb please.
OK. It's an old issue since Steem starting. I respect your action. I don't mean to listen your words like "Don't try to play dumb please." And you should also consider you've got over $100 rewards because of your high stakes once you post. What if you don't think others also think same as your post? and why persons like my friend should be blamed for it. My point is whether you announced before you down voting. The situation is same like a hen and egg paradox. I apology in advance if you feel unpleasant on my answers. Down-vote and its justification is an issue about balance and mutual understanding. It will always induce exhausted emotional conflict.
I don't need to warn you before I downvote abusive behavior against proof of brain and curation, mate. If you think my posts that I don't self-vote, forfeit half of the rewards to hbd.fund and have many weeks where I go without posting compared to you and your friends farming one low effort post per day are even considered the same as to what you're doing where you're providing quite literally close to 0 value to Hive then you're more gone than I originally assumed seeing your responses.
respect
If he's frustrated over 5 downvotes, imagine how frustrated others are seeing 100+ posts overrewarded due to blatant votetrading.