RE: Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?
To me it's all a matter of the percentage. If you're splitting your vote power 50/50 between self and others, I'll be ok with it, though I'd prefer less self voting. As it creeps above that I'll start to grimace, and at levels of 80%+ self voting it's just egregious.
It's not illegal, yes the code allows it, but it's a matter of community standards and etiquette which we all organically form by our behavior. No one can stop a person from self up voting 100%, but no one can stop a person from posting plagiarized content either. What we do control is the community reaction to the situation.
I feel like the bitcoin miner comparison is somewhat flawed. I think a better analogy is to consider ourselves shareholders. I mentioned in another comment elsewhere, that if you can show me a company where the shareholders voted that all profit be paid out to them in the form of dividends, completely foregoing spending on employee raises, hiring, development, improvements to infrastructure, etc... and that company is thriving... then I'll change my opinion.
That's essentially what 100% self voters are doing, and they're relying on other more rational voters to pick up their slack and keep the overall organization running while they continue to reap profits that others are foregoing for the sake of the business and a more long term vision.
If heavy self voters consider themselves short term investors and follow this valid profit strategy, it's up to long term shareholders to down vote them in the interests of the whole. If people feel the self voting practice is harmful to long term success , it's ROI needs to be mitigated and made less profitable.
We force people to self tag potentially objectionable content with the nsfw tag so that it can be properly filtered. If they don't they'll have that content filtered for them through downvotes. We do this because we recognize that having such content clearly and randomly visible on the site would be a huge deterrent to it's growth and success. There is no code, no rule prohibiting people from posting porn under the tag familyfriendly. So to me the "it's part of the code, it's allowed" argument doesn't fly.
Of course that kind of depends on how "allowed" is being used. If it means that we should leave heavy self voters to their own strategies and devices then I disagree. If however someone takes the "code allows it" stance and equally agrees that if self voters begin to be flagged into oblivion, they are equally ok with that, then I respect their viewpoint because it's consistent and based on community consensus.
Yes! I agree with the 50/50 concept!
Great comment! I agree, I like your analogy better in that, unlike mining, here blogging is the new mining and rewards are what interest people in participating in this platform. If those rewards are forever unreachable because too much self-voting, the platform itself will not thrive.
Yup. I envision it like some vulture capital firm in the business world buying up stake in a company, selling off it's assets and bleeding it dry at a tidy profit and moving on.
It really got under my skin when I saw a user who literally only up votes themselves, 100%, make a post touting how they're stopping their power down because they're so committed to the platform and asking for others to help them reach their Steem Power goals. That just seemed a bit too audacious to me. And they're getting legitimate sincere votes from other users who have no chance of it being reciprocated. Not everyone goes into a blockchain explorer or keeps an eye on stats, most would not have any way of noticing this kind of behavior.
I'd like to see some kind of visualization, badge, meter, have it factor into rep score, whatever. If someone comes on the platform and never upvotes another living soul, I don't think they should be able to build up to a 70 rep. I'm sure if people saw this community building metric at a glance, it would influence their voting behavior.
I was thinking along similar lines. If all comments and posts made it clear if the author voted them up, that would be interesting also. The reputation score might some day include all of this behavior, good and bad. That would be cool.
I think the stockholder model is precisely what it in fact is, even down to how your votes count by your number of shares. Crypto mining is not anything to do with organising the actions of a group. It is just participating in a lottery. I have seen attempts to argue that Steem was intended to be also a lottery, but this is wrong, because if it was, why have a voting system at all? Not that anyone with big SP is not entitled to do as they wish randomly distributing it.