RE: Does pool rape actually exist?
Pure self voting is still bad, from the perspective of reward pool allocation. I'm not calling it evil, but I posit that we should not remain so neutral either. As I talked to a few of you that hold this view on rshares, it sounds like none of you agree that it's a good thing. Yes fine, don't demonize, be civil, but I think the language of this post goes too far the other way. All from establishing a view of rshares that I think is wrong, which I want to get into now.
Rshares are the implementation details of a more abstract concept, one that strives to assign value so that the reward pool is distributed. This much is obvious. The more stake, the more of a say you have. Let me give you a different analogy other than pie. You are playing a game, in which you are a government, with finite resources, and the means by which you are allocating the resources is by stake based voting by the community. The better you allocate the resources, the more resources you would be getting potentially later (by price of the token). Actually this is pretty close to not even being an analogy... Yes, the person owning a lot of stake has a lot of say in how this happens, and yes, they can funnel it to themselves and friends, like we see in some governments, but if that's what's happening, people catch on, and the perception is not positive. And that will reflect badly on the platform and on the price.
What am I saying here? Exactly that cases of bad allocation of stake, even if the stake is theirs to play with, give negative value to the platform. That's why we cannot simply wave our hands and say "but it is theirs". That's why flagging exists, and you can have respectful disagreements over this concept, although of course as you mention, people need to be more respectful about it.
My request is that we stop saying there is no reward pool abuse. Because from the lens of looking like a shitty government, it still appears to be so. Instead, we direct people to be civil about it, and we direct people towards education of what we have.
Thanks @meno @crimsonclad for your perspectives earlier, tagging so you can see what I'm going on about.
Great comment, @eonwarped. I think one thing that people get mixed up on is the fact that investment gets you influence to decide on where the pie goes, but it does not entitle you to a piece of the pie. Others still have their say. The problem comes in when people attack others for simply exercising their say. Which, in my opinion, seems to happen a lot more in the case of whales.
Regarding my own efforts with opposing reward pool abuse, I have tried to be respectful as much as possible...certainly to a higher degree than the other side ever has, but I found that it was answered with downvotes instead. I'm ok with that, because I feel it is important to be able to voice your say in any way possible.
Hi @eonwarped, you may find this post from me useful in explaining how flags can help distribution of the reward pool and it explains why I feel more of us need to flag more and not let the "it's our SP, our vote" crowd get away with self voting trash. The same argument works the other way to, "it's our VP, our flags", we can flag any content we feel necessary if it is posted on OUR blockchain
https://steemit.com/fulltimegeek/@kabir88/if-you-want-to-understand-how-the-flag-wars-effect-your-rewards-look-at-these-diagrams-you-may-be-surprised-at-their-effect
Perfectly said Eon... that's all I want, a balanced non demonizing conversation with everyone involved.