I read an interesting post from @ura-soul yesterday that removed a couple of powerful votes from the witnesses rankings, and it revealed that the top 20 were unchanged. It seems there is actually a pretty fair distribution of witness votes in terms of final effect on the top 20.
That said, I also have been considering various people's ideas about how witnesses get treated by UA scores. I'm a little divided. On the one hand, they are already earning so much steem just for doing their jobs. Do the "staff" deserve the same rewards as the customers, particularly when being on staff automatically gives them a massive headstart above customer reward earning potential? Maybe, maybe not.
So that would more be an argument for why they not get upvotes even if they delegate to UA.
But should they be able to confer higher UA scored on others just by following them? Well if you take out their ability to get UA upvotes, it doesn't matter if they're witness-circle-jerking. Their following would only help non-witnesses.
I have to confess to not being exactly impartial here, since I think I'm followed by a few top witnesses LOL. But attempting impartiality as best I can, it does actually seem that their opinions on who is contributing enough to the platform for them to want to see their content should bear weight just like anyone else's does. Once you get into how much you reduce the power of that weight though, well gosh, how do you possibly decide that? It would have to be pretty arbitrary. Most people don't like arbitrariness anywhere near their money making. So that could bring a lot of unwanted contention into the whole ua-score space. Is it worth it?
To the last idea, downvotes on witnesses, well as has already been expresses by others, I think that would lead to massive vulnerabilities being introduced into a dPOS system that automatically has some significant vulnerabilities. I don't think the possible gains there are worth the threat potential.
These are important considerations to work out though. How do you treat the presence of highly privileged actors within a system that attempts to distribute rewards "fairly?" Determining what is fair is always a challenge within a group, but a worthy one to take on.
Just a note, the top 20 was not unchanged after the big vote was removed, some accounts changed places and some were replaced - but overall the changes were not huge.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought they changed positions some within the top 20, but it was still the same ones in the top 20. No?
No, for example, cervantes, drakos and utopian-io would not be in the top 20 without that vote.
Drakos right now is 21, but I see your point. I don't know cervantes, but I'm pretty sure we benefit from having drakos and utopian-io be there. Drakos was one of the few witnesses saying before the fork that he didn't think it should happen, and should be postponed. So this would indicate to me that maybe the larger accounts are using knowledge they have from longevity here and genuine concern about the platform to pick good witnesses.
Stranger things have happened.
Thx for commenting! :-)
But let's also distinguish UA from steem-ua !
Important clarification! Thanks.
As a matter of fact.... could you scroll to the @steem-ua comment on this post? And check my own response to it? I couldn't have given better "proof" myself than this:
==> meaning anybody could be ranked #1 post of the day