RE: Added Two Witnesses To The List of Ignored Bot Accounts | Steem Ocean
@ura-soul, thanks for expressing your way of thinking.
... they operate vote bots that vote for huge numbers of accounts - which doesn't really reflect (in my way of thinking) an alignment towards personal community spirit so much as it is just an automated part of their 'business model'.
IMHO, many witnesses use vote bots. I you look at @pharesim for example, I doubt spreading 5165 votes in one week is done manually.
Could you describe what "personal community spirit" stands for you?
If you read @steemitboard's witness introduction post, is voting model (and not business model) is clearly to support newcomers and spread its power to create a win-win situation. Isn't that "community spirit"?
... bot powered voting pattern gives an unhelpful challenge to everyone else ...
As stated on your about page, your ranking is defined as this: "Each user is awarded a ranking score based on their benevolence [...] and in particular to see how willing they are to support others."
Isn't spreading votes to as many people as you can (instead of selfish or circle jerking votes) a clear demonstration of the will to support other, whether the way of doing it is automated or not?
Not that I want you to bring @steemitboard back into your page, but to make you see that your reasoning, although based on good will, is a bit biased.
The text on the about and ignore pages has been updated.
Thanks for your input. To clarify what I am thinking here:
I have no way of knowing who is using an autovoter, for example, to upvote large numbers of accounts - but ultimately it generally doesn't make any difference to me whether an autovoter is used or not. The issue for me is not so much whether autovoting is occurring, but whether the number of accounts being voted for is reflective of a real intention to help people based on a real human connection that denotes interest in and support of the content being upvoted... As opposed to a robotic upvoting that has no human connection and/or is really just a business agreement of some kind.
It's obviously not so easy to prove who is voting in that way, but if a service exists that auto upvotes large numbers of accounts in the context of a service/business arrangement, such as - i understand - esteem to do and steemitboard does, then that is enough evidence for me.
I stand by the decision to remove these two accounts and will update the notes on the steem ocean website to make the grounds for accounts being added to the ignore list clearer.
That phrase includes within it the points I just made, in terms of the intention of one or more real people to upvote/support/help other real people in real ways.. As opposed to robots upvoting to achieve a numerical goal and/or to exploit the economics of Steem with no other intention.
Can we say that someone is being 'generous' if all they do is upvote everyone who comes and supports them? How is that so much different to just buying votes from a bid bot? Or selling them from a bid bot?
There is an issue within the algorithm used here that relates to the way that it can be exploited by those who want to get to the top of the rank table.. They could just autovote large numbers of accounts with almost no vote weight and artificially increase their position. Doing so is not necessarily a sign of benevolence, but could be said to be a carefully thought out PR move to increase visibility and respect in the community, while actually doing little of any use. It's not an easy issue to tackle, without massively more processing and complex network maths. I think that just removing services/accounts that blindly automate their mass voting is a reasonably fair approach.
Does it seem unbiased now?
You have explained well. And earlier I see reasons with what you did.
Atleast it should have the terms and conditions