RE: The HoboDAO Contests Begin!
it's necessary for the intended consequence of bringing all profitable behavior into light.
I don't understand what you mean by this sentence.
Would you elaborate on your idea of a vote-selling scheme? And/or "undermining honest curation"? When I sponsor someone, it is because I have read their content and have chosen to support them. Is that not honest curation?
It's also not content-indifferent. I, a real person who has read some content, want to support the author of that content.
Perhaps the disconnect between our perspectives comes from how we consume content. I like particular authors, and I subscribe to them. It matters to me, the whole of their body of work, what they've done before and what, based on that, I can expect from them in the future. You presumably read whatever happens to be in front of you at any given moment, and find what they've done before or are likely to do in the future irrelevant?
Forcing all profitable behavior into the light is just the curve making it difficult for exploiters to hide their farming or circle jerking activities in micro voted comments and avoid scrutiny and possible detection from free downvotes. Basically if you're farming 10c comments all day, you're losing so much money to the curve you might as well just vote honestly. That's the intended effect of the curve.
You may not be using the scheme in a content agnostic way, but the scheme itself is indifferent to how you use it. If someone sponsored a bunch of their own new alt accounts and produced dull but perfectly coherent content, they get to enjoy votes they effectively paid for; votes that wouldn't have gone their way otherwise and votes that are content agnostic. This is why I'm against the scheme.
Honestly improv, the best way to support an author you like is to just vote for them. Or you can send them a little bit of money if you wish, as a tip. Paying for them to get a vote either directly (eg bid bots) or indirectly (eg this scheme) usually results in some price that needs to be absorbed by the system. Please have a think about it.
I do think about it, and thank you for your respect in this conversation.
I know this is important to you. And it is to me, too, because I think @steembasicincome is a force for good on the platform, a force that lifts up poorer members of the community, and is not the same as a bidbot.
You are concerned about the possibility that people aren't using it like its stated intentions, that they're sponsoring alts. I don't think that's a thing that happens with this project. I think SBI does a good job of making sure no one can do that.
My experience with it, which goes back to nearly its inception, is a tremendously positive one. It's usefulness building support for projects like freewritehouse has kept those projects growing. It's useful as contest support, because it helps people who are engaging on the platform stay engaged. And, of course, its mission to provide a basic income through the power of Steem, I think is a worthy one.
I acknowledge that it's so lofty a goal that it might be met with skepticism. But because of that goal, they do a few things. One: it's built sustainably. No one gets to say, "here's a sum of money, now upvote this post for that amount". Rather, it's a lifetime investment. Also, there ARE finite resources, so buying levels for yourself would be considered an abuse.
Two: you have to sponsor someone else. You will never get as large a personal return as you would by behaving selfishly. You must be willing to lift up others in the community.
Three: the people behind it work hard to make it a force for good. They support community-enriching projects by sponsoring them into the program themselves. It is run by people trying to make the world a better place.
Anyways, I hope you'll do more research into it. Don't dismiss SBI as just an elaborate vote-selling scheme. See the impact it makes. See the projects that use it. Evaluate how much good (or bad, if you come to that conclusion) has come of its efforts.
And thank you for the respect. It means a lot.
that was quite an interesting negotiation. Rarely see it in this quality here.