I might gain an enemy or two for saying this, but in a way I'm at peace with that possibility. Whatever part of the human psyche makes patriots revere the constitution as a holy text, might be the same one triggering all cylinders on this particular phenomenon.
If we can't agree on this foundational fact, we simply can't move forward. It always hurts my brain to see people holding on to the white paper as if it was designed to be the perfect Utopia, the immutable constant that shall forever remain the same if we are to survive the crypto apocalypse.
This fanaticism is extremely unproductive and Its exactly the reason why phrases like - "That's why we can't have nice things" - are so insignificant, yet so popular. My point is that we must be able to operate without the idolatry biases and be objective about the issues laying bare in front of us.
The default chess move
For many when it comes to resolving conflict, or attempting find solutions usually starts with - "Well, the white paper says that...." - and anything following those words seems to land in the ears of the listener with the grace of a walrus. This is to say, most of the people who are having these conversations, developers, witnesses and OG steemians, know about the white paper enough to know it does not contain all the answers. Many things were not foreseen, there was no way anyone could have thought of how creative the abusers would be, and how the masses would react to the abuse.
Changing the voting Curve again
Might be part of the solution, but then again I'm probably not convinced 100% anymore. Every single time I think about how a new voting curve could be implemented, the thought is followed by ideas of how I could abuse it if I wanted to. This makes me stand today on the side of cultural change. The gargantuan task of educating as many people as possible and helping those who can become what we could only call "Steem's middle class".
If more and more people become dolphins, thus effectively creating a solid mid class, the steem ecosystem as a whole might reach a healthier balance. Basically, if we don't have enough people thinking long term, powering up, building communities, initiatives and what have you, there's absolutely no "code change" that can save us.
Please note that I'm not saying we should not change the voting curve, I'm simply stating the core of the issue might not be specifically there, it might not.
Because ROI is important
Whatever change we make, if we make one at all, has to be enticing to the investors of the platform. Basically, since Steem does not sell ads, or has partnerships with Pepsi or Coca Cola, we cannot believe naively that the "magic money" comes simply from the "amazing" content anyone is creating on here.
I may be using a lot of air quotes, but that is because no one has created a font for sarcasm and I'm attempting to be as clear as I can on my position. We cannot, we simply can't believe this fairy tale idea that removing greed from the equation is actually possible. Instead, we should attempt to see it as a tool, an enticing buffet served for the investors who are brave enough to be early adopters.
I get the bidbot hatred
I happen to believe its quite ugly myself, but I'm not willing to discard their role on attracting investment to the platform. As a matter of fact, just a few days ago @fyrstikken wrote about this very thing and said publicly, that if we where to destroy the current system, he would simply sell his votes for BTC directly. Can I blame him? I honesty can't. As someone who is literally holding a giant bag of Steem, he must think of his self interest first or he would be an anomaly that should be studied by science.
The simpler truth is that demand creates markets, and as long as there are people using the bots, they will exist in their current shape and modus operandi. What we are lacking or failing at, is creating the right culture as to not excuse the promotion and creating of garbage content.
In hardfork 38, we will get it right
Maybe, or maybe it will be 55, but honestly that is not that important, at least not right now. It might not even matter what the white paper said originally at some point in time, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. As with many technologies the ecosystem, the idea of this platform keeps on evolving and if we are not willing to adjust, we can't expect to be too successful with it.
My invitation to you Steemian, is to have an open mind, discard some of these semi-religious ideas of "how awesome it was back then" - "lets make steem great again" or whatever variation of that anyone will spit at you. The truth is that the experiment was never perfect, it was never ideal, it was simply the best attempt at the time.
Until then... Steem on...
Other posts by yours truly
• Thoughts on Steem's complicated Politics & Witnesses
• Open Mic Week 86 - Top 5 Selection and Honorable Mentions
• So I'm trying this Exodus Wallet thingy mcjigger
• I suspect my parents are sending me
• missing the farm
We need a constitution EOS style. Changes on the economic side of things cannot fix anything. People have exploited always and will exploit always.
We need set rules. A basic set of rules that offer a basis for us to govern ourselves or we will self destruct. And then the saying: thats why cant we have nice things will apply more then ever.
I respect fyrstikken. Hes here to make cash. We all are. But our actions do affect everything and some just dont care if Steem suceeds or fails. Hes looking at his bottom line more then anything. Who can blame him.
Hes one of the reasons that steem is where it is due to his investment.
We are all benefiting from his investment.
That is why we need rules that protect him and investments like his but also look for ways to protect the long term growth of Steem and the users that add creative value to steem. A way to keep the system protected from short term profit seekers.
We dont need a governing body but we need rules that empower the community and provide a way to keep this party going for a long time.
No argument from me there, my point however... at least the focus of this would be rant thingy is that the change must also be cultural, or the equivalent of cultural (lets call it that for now) because if we have people constantly powering down and cashing out...
if we have small accounts ignoring small accounts, thus never becoming middle class citizens sort of speak, the scales will always tip disproportionately to one side.
Do you know what is the percentage of people with very little steem power that have high reps. meaning, they won quite a bit of votes and just keep on cashing out, thus never entering the middle class bracket sort of speak.
its 1% turns out... Me, This dude, right here... this minnow account I use is a 1% that is crazy to me... im a tiny sand flea... and I'm a 1%
Tying this into yesterday's post: the white paper is a political/marketing document, not a technical one.
100% I started thinking about this because of @gtg's comment saying that he is not so much a politician, but he tries. Because I suspect that the political elements at play are an evolution of some sorts, so the "politicians" that got here first, sort of speak, played a different ball game all together and today enjoy a different level of relevance. It might be grandfathered in, and that could be debatable, but it allows them to be more visible which of course is key to any political platform.
To make my point clear, if a plankton developed steemmonsters instead of aggroed, the game would have to be 10 times better than it currently is, to garnish half of the attention it currently has. This is not an attack against aggroed, he has worked hard to get to where he is, but now that he has, he has visibility and the trust of the constituency, which is us.
We know a top 20 witness is not going to steal our keys, or do something to hurt his livelihood, because their career/position is very beneficial to them, and compromising that would be stupid to say the least.
I agree with this paragraph. I don't any votes right now lol
White paper were made to guide the operation of whatever it was designed for, but no white paper is ever complete and perfect, because they were usually formulated from what can be seen or projected, and since no one can accurately predict what is coming, no white paper can be 100%
Their is nothing in white paper that can't be perverted, because we have lost the love that supposed to be our guide.
If we love one another, laws or white paper will not be required because we will not be doing things without the interest of other people in our mind.
Thank you for your insight at all time.
Your thoughts may sound a bit too philosophical for the pragmatics of the world, but you are not off in the slightest. I think of it as cultural change, but we are talking about the same thing.
If we can't edify the right people, the right initiatives, promote the right things, support one another... Is the code really to blame?
I can't be so black&white about it, it does not seem to compute in my head this way.
People will sell their voting power, either for btc, or via bidbots, as long as that's the best ROI.
With quadratic rewards and a 50/50 author split, manual curation would be more lucrative, so people would do that instead.
n=whatthefuckever is just a silly diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the fact that a system that relies on the grunt work of curating the contents of an entire social media ecosystem plus some to work, but only put the power to do so in the hands of a few friends at the start, was bound to fail. Would other social media sites be able to serve people the content they wanted to see if much of what was selected to be visible to them was determined by 100 people?
n=1 is goddamn fine. Authors and curators should be around 50%. Directly being the author of content should not have an incentive, it doesn't need to be high for people to still want to produce content. Curation won't be lucrative until witnesses implement the same exact reward payout options to curators as they do authors, getting double pummeled on the <25% and SBD >$1 is what did things in for now.
Yes, absolutely. Each of those factors just exacerbates this perfect storm.
I understand the plan with HF20 is to return the lost curation rewards to the pool, rather than the author, which will certainly help.
A return to US$1 SBD would be great too, or as you say, the choice to be paid curation rewards with that split (doing so would really flood the market with SBD and may bring it back to the peg anyway).
I'd support either 50/50 author/curator split OR quadratic rewards. (I'd personally prefer both, but either is much better than neither)
That sound reasonable Matt, won't argue against it. I'm simply saying that if the culture change does not go along with that, then the "colluders" will find a way to "collude".
Granted I'm being a bit ridiculous, but lets assume a whale called @metoowhale sees, observers that many accounts are creating sock puppets, not interacting for real and voting on themselves with 10 sock puppets abusing the quadratic rewards...
What is @metoowhale going to do? He is going to "me too" with his giant SP, because he/she would be missing out on the cake.
So, yeah, that could be it, but only if enough people subscribe to the cultural change.
That's what's happening now.
Under quadratic rewards one's Mvests confer more weight (up OR down) based on the current size of the payout.
So if an undeserving 'analyst' for example, were to be disproportionately rewarded for his efforts, downvoting his payout by 50% would only require 25% as much as the power expended in upvoting it.
Given the choice between upvoting their own low value crap 50c, or downvoting somebody else's low value crap by 50c, people clearly choose the former.
Given the choice between upvoting their own low value crap 5c, or downvoting somebody else's low value crap by $5, people might be more inclined to choose the latter.
That was, as I understand, the justification for quadratic rewards in the first place.
If this was the case, this is the first time it was explained to me so clearly. Which makes me speculate that many don't understand it at all.
Is there a way to confirm this?
Sorry, do you mean the maths?
5 x 5 = 25
10 x 10 = 100
As the weight doubles (from 5 to 10), the payout quadruples (from 25 to 100)
If you upvote 10 and I then downvote 5, despite only having half your weight, I've taken 75% off the payout.
No yes, I get it... I understood it... I'm simply stating that, this would be the proposed HF idea.
Which by the way, makes me request something from you.
Would it be too ballsy ('merican word here) to ask you to make one of your explanation videos on how flags would work better under this system, making it stupid simple for people to understand.
The focus being on flags, and policing abuse...
Gotcha :)
I don't remember where I read that it was the plan, but it was definitely official, I think perhaps steemitblog?
They're going to cut the penalty period from 30 to 15 mins, and return lost curation rewards to the pool, instead of sending it back to the author.
I touched on the amplifying nature of quadratic rewards in that video, including that stat that 25% of the total weight could reduce the payout by 50%; but I didn't go into a great deal of detail.
We'll probably see more discussion around quadratic rewards soon anyway, as it looks like Ned will be bringing it back when he brings in account based (rather than stake based) voting for an SMT he's hinted at.
If that's the goal it would be much easier to just multiply the value of flags. And you wouldn't have to make whales more dominant and the rest of us more dependent to do it.
Multiply the value of flags for everyone?
(So if a hundred of us downvoted a whale, he could retaliate with devastating 1% downvotes and wipe out all of our $5 and $10 posts for the next month?)