RE: Why Down Votes and Flags are an Unavoidable consequence of Game Theory
Thank you (@dantheman or Steemit?) for this excellent post.
I have a question in regards to the the following:
A community consisting of mostly good people can fight of an infection of anti-social individuals hoping to get something for nothing, but only if they have the power to deny rewards or claw it back. In the case of industrial pollution, the people should be able to deny the factory their profits if it comes at the expense of everyone else. This is highly subjective, but a coordinated shunning of purchasing a factories products would shut them down without violence.
As the quoted paragraph says, what is considered an 'infection of anti-social individuals' is 'subjective'. Should Steemit Inc therefore create a Terms of Service agreement for the STEEM chain, which would prohibit certain behaviors and/or content, and thus make rules clear and equal for everyone?
I don't think any one person or group should define the rules. They should emerge naturally as a result of each individuals voting decisions. Obviously we have a lot of voting power we could use, but using our voting power creates its own kind of pollution.
I have stated in the past that a constitution of sorts may be helpful in guiding peoples voting and helping people reach consensus. I think the best we can do is remove the stigma of a down vote the best we can.
Currently the down-vote is labeled as a reporting tool for:
Is it effective within these constraints?
Furthermore, what exactly does this mean:
Should a down-vote become merely subject to expression of individual opinion, such as a down-vote on Reddit (ie. if I don't like something just because, I can downvote it).
If so, what stops a select few, whom have the monopoly on voting power from abusing this power - for example to censor things they don't like or have conflicting personal interests with?
In my view as long as stake is heavily concentrated, stake-weighted voting will not simply not ever work very well. Stake needs to be more widely distributed or the entire concept is an exercise in fooling ourselves. This is not at all limited to downvotes but applies equally to a bunch of oligarchs deciding where the rewards go with upvotes.
It is little different from an election in a population of 1 million people where one of those people, the dictator, gets 1 million votes. That is not fixable within the confines of a stake-weighted voting system. While less extreme than this 50%+1 example, unequal voting weights will still always convey power that is superlinear in size of stake, for both theoretical and practical reasons.
It remains an open question whether stake in a system like this will ever be well distributed.
What do you consider "well distributed"? And do you not think there should be incentive for people to accumulate stake? If you're mostly talking about original mega-whales, I do see such concentrated stake as problematic if it were to persist. But there seems to be lots of powering down, so we're heading in the right direction and hopefully it will continue to a meaningful extent. Not to mention, we're starting to get more distribution of voting power (via delegation), which should help just as much as distribution of stake when it comes to what content is getting upvoted, no?
As for use of the flag, this is where I see concentrated stake being the most destructive. Imagine a content creator with a large following considering committing to steemit. If they see whales downvoting posts just because they think the author is being rewarded too much (or not engaging to the whale's satisfaction), what are the chances they would bother bringing their following here? Slim to none. If we don't get that under control, I don't think we'll ever experience substantial growth.
It was more of a general observation in response to the question about what happens when a few people have power and abuse it. I wasn't referring specifically to the original whales but that's certainly an issue currently. As I said it is unclear whether stake and power will diffuse sufficiently to negate or minimize these problems, but that doesn't mean they won't. I see little in the way of strong evidence either way, and examples from other systems where power and stake both concentrates and those where it doesn't. Our own system is too new to draw many conclusions from it.
Not necessarily. There will always be a degree of golden rule where those with the most stake set the rules on those to whom it is delegated. In any voting system, stake is power, ultimately.
Regarding your example of a content creator being downvoted, it really depends. As the post discusses, there can be cases where there is a single large gain or loss in one place but a large number of small gains or losses elsewhere. If the rewards are redistributed from that content creator to many others, and that does more good in the aggregate, it may be a net gain. This is likely impossible to measure or answer objectively. Voters having different views on things is not necessarily abuse.
Also concentrated stake can take multiple forms. Services which collect up voting rights from many users and then deploy it in a concentrated manner can be a form of stake concentration and can lead to exactly the kinds of voting abuses described in the post. But it is difficult to ever say objectively when or if this is occurring. Again voters may reasonably disagree.
Wow!!!! @tombstone I seriously now have an immense amount of respect for you.
With my own personal experiences from whales abusing their power (although I could see where they are coming from). I feel that it is something that needs to be taken into consideration, and needs to be controlled.
I feel that the abuse of power not only is driving away new members, but big ones. As previously stated in posts, and now backing what you say here. I can only agree 100% with you that as someone who has a decent following elsewhere on the internet, my steemit following is mainly derived from in house building. Occasionally, I advertised, supported, and promoted Steemit on these other platforms and social media, but the biggest problem I have in bringing over people to Steemit, is that it is to easy to google "steemit" and see news stories about abuse, problems, and even hacking.
A lot of people get excited about Steemit and then run into problems and realize underlying issues. For the most part, as someone who is able to pursue and talk to people based on their needs, wants, ideology, and understanding. I feel I connect with people on a personal basis and that becomes a better way for me to understand how to bring to light something useful like steemit.
I am trying, to build, help grow, and develop this wonderful community, even with small problems and simple obstacles I find that there is always something to learn, a reason to continue the fight, and more importantly a reason to share this experience.
Thank you for this bit of information from someone of your influence and caliber, it has given me great joy to understand more about the way things work, and the insight from someone who obviously cares about Steemit as a whole and not just about their own self.
~Timbo
Yep happening. See @haejin..
I think payout voting thread replies dialogue is undervalued and could use heightened reward promotion too.
This is why we need a way to punish those who abuse down voting without posting. Punishment is also subjective.
There is no objective way to handle things and people can always lie about their motives.
After re-reading the original post, I think I'm starting to understand your points.
One of the issues with the current implementation of downvotes is that they are a lot more powerful than upvotes, in regards to censorship. For example (I'm making these numbers up to illustrate a point), an upvote on a blank post from a whale X could get it from $0 to $10 in rewards and barely improve its ranking.
A downvote from whale X on a post with $200 could remove $50 in rewards, and obliterate posts ranking.
Would it make sense to change the implementation to require a consensus on downvotes, if down-votes should be made equal to upvotes, so that down-votes would have their own pool that starts at 0, just like the upvote pool. This way, a $50 reduction would require same amount of down-vote consensus as the $50 increase.
Could this at least partially reduce potential for abuse?
Another question I have is that if Steemit shards into sub-reddits, would it make sense that each community gains the ability to set its own rules (or community guidelines) for what the desired behavior is?
An upvote and down vote have equal power if you compare equal times.
A post with $200 with an up vote of X would add $75 while a down vote would only remove $50.
The order of voting shouldn't matter when calculating its impact on the final reward.
Likely what actually happens is they up voted using a sliding value for their voting power, and then when they down voted they used a higher percentage on that slider. This is speculation on my part.
@furion
Adding plus Fat Trimming.
You are right 'subjective' "Punishment" serves no purpose to life. If used at all it needs to be objective. I also disagree that everything that can be used for good can also be used for bad, i.e. love.