RE: Introducing Smackdown Kitty
I'm still thinking about it.
There is a rather large class of people for whom self-upvoting their main posts is the only way to see any return, what with curating being rather slack for many. I also do it for the little bit of extra money and, as a remote second reason, to give myself a pat on the back. Because I can.
I don't really mind self-upvoting, tbh, I mind repetitive self-upvoting of spammy comments. Repetitive, self-upvoted main postings are very visible to everyone, but dito comments are far less easily noticed.
As a solution to self-upvoting spammy comments, I don't think this will work, as the people who do such things are in all probability the same people who will circumvent it by using an extra account or extending the scope of existing circle jerks. That means you can't solve the problem without judging the spamminess of comments and the voting going on. A bot can give an indication something is amiss, but in the end this requires human judgment.
For the purpose of Steemit, I am just a user, and not interested in bandwidth considerations. Get things to work the way you want them, and then fix the bandwidth problems, if any.
Edit: I like experiments, and I would even like to see how this plays out, as long as the bot owners have the good grace to kill the bot when things don't go as intended and the perceived problem isn't solved.
This has only been true for a handful of days so the way you've described it here is not really true.
It's precisely the "because I can" angle that the bot is designed to challenge. I get you, it's the incentive and why not? But I feel it's negative over all. We're highlighting an area that requires a systems level change.
In addition, I like experiments so much, that you can use me as a test subject. I will still be upvoting my own main postings, so that should give you something to work with.
Awesome, great attitude you have, disagreeing, and yet willing to try it out. Thank you
As I said in the edit, I would love to see this play out. I also believe the real offenders will circumvent your solution within hours.
I experience and hear differently.
@l0k1 made the point of saying it was intended for determined offenders, the hope is to add friction to it. You'd be surprised how much UI affects behavior.
You know where I stand, so I am not saying this for myself, but I suspect that if you want more universal support, you should focus on the comments, not the main postings. You run the risk of forcing an opinion on people by bot, including people who aren't doing much wrong.
I'll definitely consider just targeting comments, perhaps you are right. The comments are problematic in a few ways. They worth of them is not really summarized on the post so it doesn't open the commenter to the kind of scrutiny that Steemit relies on to keep abuse in check.
I don't understand what you mean. How is it forcing an opinion?
It is an opinion that self-upvoting a main posting is a Bad Thingtm; an opinion not shared by everyone. Using a bot to enforce that opinion could make you lose support. Saying that repeatedly self-upvoting spammy comments is a Bad Thingtm is also an opinion, but probably one shared by most users.
Also, to say that we should have self upvotes because some people don't want to or can't produce a post worth voting on, doesn't mean we should leave it as it is. Do we make able bodied people use wheelchairs to make wheelies feel better? I think genuinely disabled people find this insulting.
As described in the updated section above, smackdown kitty will be giving upvotes to any user it previously flagged due to self voting. The upvote will only be small, maybe 1%, but it will be another number to the user's comments. Yes, every one of their comments not self-upvoted. And if they resume, the counter continues upwards.