RE: Downvote Pool Deep Dive

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RE: Downvote Pool Deep Dive

justinw in #steem • 6 years ago (edited)

The concept of the EIP is about the combined effect of three changes, not just this one. The idea is to make desirable behavior more profitable, and negative behavior less profitable. Currently it's most profitable (and easiest) to delegate your stake to a bidbot and not even play, which is what many large stakeholders are doing. If it becomes more profitable to actually curate content, people will do that. That means more rewards for good authors, and fewer rewards for bidbot delegation (or self voting) and people who choose not to participate. So - if that goal is achieved, more people curating will in turn lead to more good content and people actually being rewarded for that good content. A small portion of 'free' downvotes is a piece of this puzzle.

I think if people are more likely to receive rewards from the effect of stakeholders participating, they will be much more likely to stay. If good content is being appreciated and curated, people will be more likely to stay. It's part of the value proposition of proof of brain and the current economic incentives don't fully align with that original vision. The EIP attempts to bring us back closer to that goal.

6 years ago in #steem by justinw

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jrcornel 6 years ago (edited)

Isn't it possible that proof of brain just doesn't work? I would venture to say that stake weighted voting and proof of brain failed when there is money involved. It was a nice idea but human nature and all that makes it work better in theory than in reality. Continuing down this path would be fool-hearty.

But to go down this path slightly... so you think the cure is for stake holders to spend their time on here sniffing out the 10 "highest quality" posts each day among the thousands of other posts? And we think that system will appeal to people? No one wants to come on here and spend all day searching through posts to find the "10 best", it's not fun, it's a job.

And what would compel people to invest money into that system?!

Again, I think you guys need to step back and ask yourself if this is more likely to bring in more people than it drives away? If the answer is no, or not sure, the idea should be scrapped immediately.

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8 votes

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justinw 6 years ago

People want to be rewarded for their good content. That concept is solid, no doubt about it. People want to be able to monetize their content. Giving incentive to reward good content drives engagement. User's seeing good content being rewarded drives user's to our front door. Using your stake to generate rewards is an incentive to hold SP.

Are there other things that can be done that help user retention? Absolutely - but most of them are front end / applications level work, not blockchain development... The first thing that comes to mind is communities, and the list of other things is certainly long, but attainable.

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3 votes

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jaki01 6 years ago

Under this article one can observe it again: people (whales!) are flagging comments of other users just because they disagree with their opinion!
NOT because of any abuse or over rewarded posts.
As long as you cannot contain this kind a flagging (for example by institute an elected committee with much delegated SP), I am strictly against a pool of free flaggs.

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10 votes

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trafalgar 6 years ago

It's not that downvoting doesn't have downsides, they are considerable. It's just that without a modest amount of free downvotes, we don't really have a realistic chance of turning this place around at all.

Currently, we're paying content indifferent voting behavior (self vote, vote selling) 4x more than curation. When we bump curation to 50%, there's still a 2x gap. The modest amount of free downvotes are further designed to bridge that gap.

I'm one of the ones who recommended these specific numbers for the EIP and I can tell you I'm very aware for the adverse effects. Let's say that at any given time, under the EIP they'll be around 5,000,000 SP worth of whales consistently being abusive with their downvotes on purpose. 25% of that is 1.25m SP out there making everyone's lives miserable.

Now look at the flip side, instead of next to nothing, if everything works out, you could have 100m SP worth of upvotes being cast in a relatively honest way that is reflecting their appraisal of the content. And half that money will be finding its way into the pockets of good content creators.

Maybe my numbers are a little optimistic, especially the latter, but overall it seems like a good trade off. We can't focus too much on the negatives alone without looking at the positives.

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8 votes

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jaki01 6 years ago

Thanks for not (yet) flagging me - just kidding. :)
Actually, I like your reply and partly agree with you.

Used in an appropriate way, flags are essential for the success of the community.
'Cheap' posts with huge rewards on tranding are a problem, together with the bid bots.

However, I also know that many users have suffered under unjustified whale flaggs, left (or will leave) the platform and spread that information. Even only just watching 'flag wars' (without being involved themselves) is really deterring for (potential) newbies.

What do you think about my suggestion (if interested you may read more in "My STEEM Vision.") to institute a committee of respected users elected by the community and equipped with sufficient delegated STEEM power, which could be called in such cases of flag abuse and then decide whether the flags were justified or not?

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2 votes

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eonwarped 6 years ago

Unjustified whale flags are going to happen with or without free downvotes. Sure, they get a little more juice proportionally, but I don't think of it as breaking (and it's also in fact why the % is not as high as what some people have been pushing for, which is 100%).

The downvote committee can happen today. Don't see what's stopping it. Good luck convincing enough people though. Actually, the downvote committee has a better chance of forming with free downvotes, and funded accordingly.

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3 votes

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jaki01 6 years ago

Unjustified whale flags are going to happen with or without free downvotes.

Crimes will happen with or without police ... Nevertheless I think it's good to have one ...

Sure, they get a little more juice proportionally, but I don't think of it as breaking

In my eyes it's already now way too much. I know people who left STEEM because of unjustified (at least in their eyes) flags, and I know people who didn't want to join after observing how people got flagged (often in an automated way) only because they spoke out their opinion.
(Just see how many comments under this article were flagged again ...)

... (and it's also in fact why the % is not as high as what some people have been pushing for, which is 100%).

... and I already wrote that I think the 'hybrid solution' would cause less damage than two completely separated pools.

The downvote committee can happen today. Don't see what's stopping it. Good luck convincing enough people though.

It won't happen if not supported by someone with a huge amount of SP (for example with a delegation of Steemit, Inc.).
Otherwise it's members either wouldn't dare to flag accounts with much SP or didn't care to write here anymore anyway.

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1 vote

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eonwarped 6 years ago (edited)

I'll go look for your thing, but this isn't two separate pools (since that is yet another idea).

My main point was that the abuse is going to happen anyway. And we need crowd sourced downvotes. Maybe your hybrid has the same problem, maybe not.

Then you might consider a downvote reversal committee as well. We have some of those around even today but could probably have more support.

Edit: oh, in fact that's what you were proposing. I misread the first time sorry :)

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2 votes

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firstamendment 6 years ago

I am not sure that bid bots are really a problem aside from creating envy. Someone's 2 minute blog of junk may earn 1000x more than an 8 hour blog of well researched findings, and of course there is a risk that anyone who bids too much could be crushed by a whale and lose their investment-while the bid bots still benefits. The few whales who come in the name of fairness wanting to help crush the bid bots I doubt will achieve the results they want. It may prove just to be the death knell to the block chain and their own investments.

I am not sure how this help makes things more fair if the bid bots disappear [supposing the price and floating circulation of steem remained unaffected, which it wouldn't], those of us who don't use them will still get about the same amount of votes and earnings.

Those who operate the bid bots, I presume, are keeping a big chunk of the Steem out of circulation. To shut them down would likely cause these bidbot owners to dump their Steem and flood the marketplace...for 13 weeks. If there is a mass dump it is going to hurt steem as an investment....for 13 weeks. One can't blame the people who have started to powerdown, it's is going to likely make steem extremely cheap to buy in the future for the companies failure to protect market value. Maybe this is what the whales want is to buy more on the cheap and have an even greater influence. The abusive whales, who likewise can buy more at a discount, will try to purge more and more people from the platform for an ideological differences causing them to be a greater problem than they are now. Sure the little guys could buy more too, but the little guys aren't earning 6 figures a year and could still be swallowed whole by the abusive whales off the platform. Even if an ordinary person had $10000 extra to spend during the crash, steem would be too much risk as an investment and depending on how low steemit went when they bought in they could still be swallowed whole by an abusive whale. For people in the 3rd world, they stand even less of a chance.

There are threats on the horizon; What steem cofounder Dan (Now of EOS and MEOS )says can kill steemit. Who knows if there is any truth to what Dan says, other than the current [lack of] leadership of steem. If the [lack of] leadership allows such changes to destroy the market value of steem, the MEOS (or whatever it is called) can ensure that by buying enough steem at a discounted rate they can destroy steem's primary utility internally and basically kill steemit.

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jrcornel 6 years ago (edited)

Ok, but what defines "good content"? Everyone has a different definition of what "good" is, with a major bias towards their own.

But besides that point, we likely won't even get to that part of the discussion because the vast majority of downvotes will be personal in nature instead of altruistic and responsible. What is your solution for that?

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10 votes

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jaki01 6 years ago

Under this article one can observe it again: people (whales!) are flagging comments of other users just because they disagree with their opinion!
NOT because of any abuse or over rewarded posts.

I am sure that won't bring new users here.

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6 votes

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jrcornel 6 years ago

Yep, case in point right in this very thread. Downvotes because they can, nothing more nothing less.

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4 votes

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nokodemion 6 years ago

Hey, jrcornel ...

I wanted to say I enjoyed your comments. You are spot on!!! Keep going strong!!!

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1 vote

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gray00 6 years ago (edited)

I think seeking perfection with this is really dangerous. I'm in favor of very slow and highly tested development for the curation and distribution systems of steem. The problem with current algos (curation) they are gamed with ML . But that brings you to the bidbots. The bidbots should be used as advertising in certain bidbot feeds on the front ends. I'm really much happier when we find front end solutions to a potentially , non existent blockchain problem. Maybe our problem's solution is just right in front of us. Advertising is a natural thing. How can steemit really innovate the advertising markets and turn them upside down completely? That's your bidbot fix.

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hobo.media 6 years ago

Hopefully you are wrong about that, because the Hobo Media project aims to do exactly what you just described. Allow for people to do the "job" of voting the top 10 best journalistic pieces on Steem for the day for large rewards. This concept should work if the theme is sort of like a writing competition, however, in order for that to work the reward needs to be significant.

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3 votes

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felixxx 6 years ago

Isn't it possible that proof of brain just doesn't work? I would venture to say that stake weighted voting and proof of brain failed when there is money involved.

You are talking about yourself, only.

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1 vote

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valued-customer 6 years ago

I see no reason that increasing curation rewards in any way changes the extant dynamic for profiteers. It just increases the value to them of upvotes. Increasing curation rewards will be adapted to by bots to encourage hassle free profiteering via delegation.

The actual solution is to remove the ability of stake to profiteer from their votes. I have repeatedly pointed out one mechanism that can do that, the Huey Long algorithm.

I am confident that better minds than mine, such as your own, can devise others. After the EIP fork fails, do give it nominal consideration, please.

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2 votes

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iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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3 votes