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RE: The definition of vote collusion @cryptopassion et Al.

in #steem7 years ago (edited)

Your are right, as long as it is easy to game the system it will be gamed. The problem in my eyes is that none of the responsible users (for example witnesses) is trying to implement any technical solution to make self-votes (including multiple own accounts) or circle votes less attractive.

There are ideas like for example diminishing returns (to make is less attractive to upvote the same accounts again and again) or introducing a sigmoid reward curve (which makes it less attractive to upvote own comments as long as nobody else has upvoted them, but at the same time gets flat in the end to prevent extreme rewards for single posts).
Also the idea of @scipio to implement a system based on UserAuthority is very interesting.

In my opinion a 'self-vote police' (even with good intentions) can't be the solution of the problem, but instead of that any intelligent implementation to make self-voting less attractive is required.
The problem has become even bigger since it is possible to delegate Steem power. Everybody seems to be so enthusiastic about this feature, but different than the majority I think it causes more harm (extensive self-voting with borrowed power + vote buying) than it helps.

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While acknowledging that vote bots in particular are a real problem for the platform, I feel compelled to argue hard against diminishing returns. Full disclosure I have a lot to lose from that kind of paradigm shift. But so do other quality content producers who engender regular readers or write content within a given community.

My mycology posts are regularly upvoted by the steemstem account and its many followers - which in turn has been garnering a curie vote as well.

I would like to think - and of course reasonable minds can disagree on this - that my posts, although a niche topic, are generally of a high quality - both in terms of informational accuracy and, for those interested in learning about the topic, entertainment.

However, my posts garner almost all their rewards from repeat votes. These votes are not based on collusion or predetermined - they are the result of meticulous work to ensure consistency of production.

However, in a diminishin returns paradigm, content creators like myself would be penalized in effect for writing quality posts consistently for a specific audience on the platform. That seems like a result that would run counter to the intention of a diminishing return switch in the first place. And the ironic part is bot voters could fairly easily work around such a scheme by staggering votes among different accounts.

I offer no alternative solution but cannot support that particular option.

I feel compelled to argue hard against diminishing returns. Full disclosure I have a lot to lose from that kind of paradigm shift. But so do other quality content producers who engender regular readers or write content within a given community. My mycology posts are regularly upvoted by the steemstem account and its many followers - which in turn has been garnering a curie vote as well.

Voting power would recover also within a system of diminishing returns, that means of course the steemstem account could upvote you regularly with full strength, lets say three times a week (how fast voting power for accounts one had already voted for before would recover still had to be discussed). However, as soon as you started to write four mushroom posts a day (which actually anyway you are not doing because it takes some time to produce quality content), then of course every steemstem vote for you would be significantly weaker than the previous one - especially also if until now steemstem would also have upvoted every of your comments ...
By the way I think I can claim with the same right like you to produce quality content because every of my articles contains sources, own thoughts, often text in two languages, and I spend much time taking and then selecting the photos. I also would lose some of my rewards at a first glance, but I just don't care, because I think the platform would grow faster with the implementation of diminishing returns, and in the long run my earned Steem would have a higher value.

However, my posts garner almost all their rewards from repeat votes.

Exactly: because the circle voters need not to seek for new authors which they could vote for: it is enough for them to upvote the same persons again and again. If that would be less profitable than before they may for example find YOU and your mushroom posts and upvote them, too. :)

However, in a diminishin returns paradigm, content creators like myself would be penalized in effect for writing quality posts consistently for a specific audience on the platform.

I think actually circle voting 'spammers' with a high (short post) frequency would be penalized, because it would not be worth it anymore to make a lot of short comments or minimalistic articles within a short timescale and then upvoting them themeselves or with their second or third accounts again and again.
Instead of doing that they were forced to curate content of other people than the usual ones as well.

because I think the platform would grow faster with the implementation of diminishing returns, and in the long run my earned Steem would have a higher value

I agree with this - and the fact that I agree with it weakens my original protestation substantially.

However, as soon as you started to write four mushroom posts a day (which actually anyway you are not doing because it takes some time to produce quality content), then of course every steemstem vote for you would be significantly weaker than the previous one - especially also if until now steemstem would also have upvoted every of your comments ...

Moreover, I think I misunderstood the nature of the problem such that I've also mistaken the nature of the solution. I only ever post twice a week, in terms of substantive mycology posts, because to do more than that really isn't plausible while maintaining depth. It's only in this recent sbd bubble I've been posting other non science content as often as daily -and even that feels like a lot to me.

But i see the problem diminishing returns would address involves posting frequency on an entirely different scale - and I agee with you that actually the posting/voting patterns that would be affected are unlikely to hurt most quality content creators by virtue of the sheer amount of time it takes to create that content.

Nice to hear that I could convince you (maybe partly). I might be wrong, but I really think it should be as you wrote yourself now: diminishing returns (implemented in a correct way) would affect high frequency spammers more seriously than people like you.

You may also think about the advantages of a sigmoid reward curve: It makes self-voting on an 'empty' post less attractive as it is rather flat at the beginning. But it also prevents extremely high rewards (other than n^2 did), because in the end it is getting flat again ...