I agree, it is some kind of authority but a community backed one. The problem with going back to non-linear is the added incentive for bidbot growth isn't it? It is no longer an organic system or free market, it is highest bidder wins, vote trader wins. It is looking much more like a corrupt government supporting pyramid schemes. I am not a technical/algorithm based person, I watch behaviours and the behaviours here don't seem conducive to longterm success. I don't mind too much as to what actually happens but what is going on now leads nowhere different to where the world economy is now, in the hands of a very small few.
On my phone with a sick baby here, hard to go deeper at the moment.
I'm also not an algorithm guy but to boil it down to something quite evident, n linear incentivized selfvotes. Not just for the top of the pyramid but basically for everyone with just some stake at his disposal. Now, with the introduction of delegation everything was set for bid bots and SP leasing. So you can now either rent SP to milk self-vote return or lease-out SP with a kick-back that equals self-vote return. So my point is, before trying to neutralize this behaviour with a central authority I would rather remove the mechanics that enabled it in the first place.
I wouldn't advocate to switch back to n square, yet the factor community approval was much more important back then. Even a single whale vote was not so significant as long as nobody else joined in.
Stake-weighted community approval was the logic that really excited me, we don't have that anymore. Now it is stake-weighted self-votes (using own or leased SP, or other sort of deals)
Finally, in terms of curation rewards, for me as a manual curator, the best thing I can do economically is to pick 10 random posts per day that are older than 30 min and stand at 0.0 $ payout and vote them with 100%. In contrast, while we had n square it was absolutely worthwhile to be the first in digging out popular content. I'm manually curating now since 1.5 years, but the fun of it is just away. I still feel obligated to do it, but it gets harder and harder for me to convince myself.
All the best for your baby!
Cheers!
Yes. It is insane. I have paid delegation at a price where I need to self vote about 40% to get it back. I SV about 30 or so. But, I am able to spread the 70 relatively wide on posts and comments. Many delegations are so expensive to return it is in the 90s but, human greed always wants 'maximum' return doesn't it... regardless of the harm to others.
The bid bots are being paid for their stake in the pool but, it comes at no cost to themselves at all. At least with the delegation, they must give up ownership to the pool temporarily. It is a disaster for community, content based development.
Sad isn't it? Better curation still is if they then pay a bidbot to follow you....
Thank you. My wife is with her now so i have a few minutes.
I don't have the answers here but working within the current system, this is a temporary solution to a few fundamental problems. Perhaps it would give some better insight into how to deal with these things in future hardforks.
We have an opportunity to change at least on platform a broken economic system yet, we are behaving identically to those who taught us. Can we do any better? At the moment, it seems unlikely.
I can relate 100 % with these sentiments. I observe and analyze behaviors too. Things don't look good, short or longterm.