RE: So, You want to change the reward pool?
Add those two things together and you have HUGE incentives to vote for those who you think are going to receive the most votes
We have this already. Strategic voting for curation rewards tends to keep rewarding the same people or you have to try and second guess what a whale is likely to vote on. I tend to think curation rewards should not be too big. I think whales already do quite well from curation and the rest of us just make cents at best.
What we need is something that keeps the minnows engaged. They need a chance to get some attention if they are doing good work without having to buy their way up the trending page. Maybe communities will help with this. We have the ad-hoc Running Project community and that's helping some people get more attention.
While I know you disagree, the reason I like the bidbots is enthusiastic minnows can gain some stake! I know we have abusers, but they could be flagged.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
I've said several times I'm not bothered about minnows gaining a few extra dollars, although I understand the profits are low. It just seems crazy to see others spending hundreds to get on trending. It's an arms race that's for out of control. The big winners are those who sell the votes. I realise some of them redistribute the profits to delegators, so there's an argument it's spreading Steem around. It's just something I'm not interested in doing
This is one of the biggest problems I see here right now. The bidbots are out of control and people can easily get themselves a reward of $100 +. I don't see how changing reward curves back is going to make this better. If anything, it'll make things worse and make bidbots even more profitable, as long as you have enough money to throw at them. It's taking away so much from people who try to be honest and not use them. I wish there was something we could do about these bots.
People own their stake, they can rent, sell or buy stake. The site wasn't filled with quality getting to the top anyway. I don't have a problem with people investing in their content. It is a choice on all sides.
I understand it can be disappointing for those who don't want to use them, but I really question if they are an actual problem or the focus on it is the problem. My opinion they at least give people an option for visibility that they didn't have before.
The more options we have to stay engaged the better in my opinion.
There is no saltiness in my reply. :)
Oh no worries, I didn't think there was!
You are right ofcourse, it's people's own stake and they can use it however they like. I guess it's the idealist in me who doesn't like this idea though. I'd love to see a site where good content does rise to the top. Where rewards are based on quality instead of who you know and how much cash you have handy. To me, that would be a more interesting and inviting site and it would probably invite more people over than a trending page where either crap rises to the top through bid bots or where whale fights are in the spotlights.
I guess Steem needs other things to grow, because Steemit just shows us humanity at its finest, which is more of the same inequality you can basically find anywhere else.
And hey, as long as you don't check out Trending/Hot too much, you don't notice these things. Just gotta make sure to follow the right Steemians to make this site work for you through your personal feed :-)
I've proposed adding bot voting limits (idk how this could possibly be enforced, but if bot owners were able to be slightly less greedy in hopes to regulate overpromotion, I think bot bidding limits would be ideal
Buying a profitable bot vote is essentially buying resources from their community and bringing them into ours. I strongly encourage it. One of the things that's really hobbling our effectiveness is community-minded users buying into the idea that all bought votes are bad.
On the flipside buying an unprofitable bot upvote generally does the reverse, and a lot of bid-bot in the strict sense votes are really hard to make a profit on even when Steem isn't falling like a rock.
I agree. Many of the accounts that are selling votes are not whales they are developers, who took the risk and rented delegation. The bots are distributing votes to non-whales. I see this as a win.
The main issue I think is promoting spam posts and them getting to trending