RE: UserAuthority (UA): explanations, applications and implications
As it seems you were thinking a lot already about how to improve the platform, I would be curios to read your opinion concerning the idea of diminishing returns to make it less attractive to upvote the same accounts (including ones own ones) again and again ("circle jerking") and also to make repeated flags on the same account less effective (downvotes should be used to decrease the reward of low quality content but not to 'hunt' users because of their different opinions or any argument in the past).
In the linked post I described the idea like that:
"How about if after each vote on a specific account (including ones own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before."
The diminishing returns implementation is something I've supported from the first time I heard of it suggested by @rycharde some months back, in this post. On point 13 I'll quote it
Pretty much the same thing, though we can quibble on the details. I'm currently looking at ways to implement it in a new SMT I'm thinking of because it's extremely unlikely Steemit will implement this even though it's a great idea. It's also an anti-spam measure, increasing the number of accounts needed to take advantage of the free SP delegation by orders of magnitude.
Maybe you have a better insight into internal Steemit discussions than I have, and I would be curious why actually probability is so low that this idea will be considered one day? Do they just don't like the idea or would it be very complicated (respectively needed too many system resources - one had to save the information who upvoted whom for a while ...) to implement it?
I ran it by several witnesses at the time the post was published and it just didn't sit well with them. Most of them didn't agree with the idea that clique voting should be disincentivized in the first place. And the others thought it would be too complicated and processor intensive. And they have a point.
But really Steemit Inc. are very relucant to change anything so fundamental and their eyes are fixed on SMTs really, there's no political or engineering will for anything like this. I think a parameter change is as much as is likely to happen. Don't forget that for any hardfork, even if it is crafted over months, it's up to the witnesses to agree to adopt it in the end.
Still I think it would be a good thing to do to spread things out more. The rewards are heavily going back to the top guys so it's not great for the platform as a whole, in my opinion. People disagree with me on that, usually saying that the large investors deserve the "return". Well their return is so massive that I think they should be economically encouraged to curate with a wider net.
This. It's easy to like rewards when they're pouring in, but every reward attained comes at the cost of an other's rewards, and at this stage Steemit should be investing in growth, which depriving new accounts of rewards definitely doesn't do.
It's not that people able to game the system are somehow nefarious, but that they're gaming the platform out of utility for many, and this shoots themselves in the foot.
Your diminishing returns mechanism can be tricked, has some unforeseen side-effects, and is very computationally-heavy because it would require a running timer function and the complete vote-history of voters and votees, all in real-time:
My HF22 proposal
upvote_reward = UA * SPworks far more effectively and efficiently to honor the intended use of your own proposal, because the only thing needed to successfully combat the upvote/downvote actions of said very wealthy (high-SP) account it to let the community collectively** unfollow** that account.PS: I'm not trying to "shoot down" alternative proposals, like you have proposed via diminishing returns , but by design the UserAuthority simply outperforms other mechanisms.
I am not really convinced yet, that to 'honor' the amount of (weighted) followers would solve the problems, even if it is a really interesting idea.
For example whales wouldn't unfollow each other because of the mutual consequences, but if a minnow decided not to follow anyone anymore it wouldn't have much impact.
I wonder why 'honest' content could not be properly rewarded anymore in case of diminishing returns? Everybody still could upvote every other account with full strength, but just not so often anymore per day (he still could do it but then would earn less).
And concerning delegations you know my opinion already: I see no real reason for that - the positive effects of delegating Steem power are overestimated, the negative effects (vote buying as a consequence) underestimated. I would reduce it respectively make the conditions harder (for example extend the timescale in which one could use delegated Steem power again).
I've yet to test it, but I'm pretty sure the combined UA-weight of all minnows exceeds the combined UA-weight of all whales. One minnow follow more or less indeed doesn't matter much.
What about honestly liking and upvoting 30 well-thought of comments from the same user? Or what about liking and upvoting a lot of jokes from the same user found at the @traf account (including user @traf as well)? Diminishing returns in that case also makes no sense, those exist already btw, via the voting power "battery" mechanism!
PS: once again, I don't want to "shoot down" your proposal, but UA (if/once hardforked anyway) solves the exact problem you are addressing, it really does! And if you're not sure, just try to think of scenarios, of anticipated user behavior on that scenario, in case UA would be deployed system-wide.
No problem, I like that there are many different ideas, the more, the better. Keep me informed about the progress of your idea ... for example about some testing (in case that's possible).
I am somewhat stubborn, though, too. :) I don't think it is really necessary to upvote 30 articles/comments of one and the same author per day. You can upvote a few and if that is still not enough you can write something nice instead. :) Can you really write so many good articles in such a short timescale? I can't. @trafs short posts are a matter of taste, but in case you like them you may agree that the work load to produce them is not really high - so if you upvote only 2 or 3 per day that may be OK (of course that's only one possible opinion).