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RE: Steem 0.17 Change Proposal Introduction
The one change that stands out to me as a potentially bad idea is removing the four post limit/penalty. With auto-voting what it is today - and many of those auto-votes coming from large stakeholders - I think this would be a terrible incentive for anyone receiving auto-votes to post as much as they possibly can. This may sound like a good idea ("Alright! More content!"), but more isn't always better.
It could also reinvigorate the role of sock-puppets on the platform. This is something that hasn't been much of a problem lately, but could quickly and easily be renewed.
Just something to consider.
The market can adjust though. IMO, the limit is too arbitrary. And some folks are capable of putting out more excellent content.
When the authors that got votes from bots started abusing the power, the rest of community will likely stand out and start flagging, and it will ruin the author's rep. Given that we'll have 7 days to review, it's easier for the "good people" to react. I don't think a wise author will do so, unless she/he need quick money, or the account is compromised.
By the way, it's up to the bots to implement better voting algorithms. Most bots are voting for money, they have incentives to not vote for contents that will be mass-flagged.
With the cultural stigma of the downvote this kind of abuse hasn't been discouraged even with efforts from a minority. Your votes and Dans were the only ones that mattered and they were countered by other whales to keep the rewards high despite the abuse. I'm not sure those same whales will turn a new leaf if somebody like @ozchartart went from posting 4 times daily to 10+ times daily.
That you and others disagree and your point of view doesn't happen to prevail in one instance doesn't mean the system doesn't work. It works when stakeholders actually agree on what constitutes abuse. There is no objective definition.
That said, it also works to an extent even when there is disagreement, in the sense that incentives favor choosing content to upvote that won't be downvoted at all, whether or not the downvoters succeed in driving the post value all the way down to zero.
I will agree with you there. The risk of wasting voting power wouldn't be worth it when seeking ROI, particularly from curation, which is already not that high for most users.
The question is - what can be done when the abusers are actually the larger stakeholders, as was the case a few months back? The other large stakeholders mostly took no action. So, if there is no reaction and other stakeholders don't have enough power to make a difference, the abuse goes on unabated. I don't know what the solution would be, but having the post reward limits/penalties would at least be able to curb that.
What other back-end options do you think there could be that could address abuse vs. unwillingness/ineffectiveness to mitigate it on the front-end?
I would say the same stake-holders are still "pod voting" The accounts change, but the behavior doesn't. No changes to the system will stop a few accounts that vote for a handful of accounts each day.
Maybe the builders of the bots can build a feature where they can vote on some of their fav. accounts on odd days, and different accounts on even days.
Downvote, and it is still effective in shifting the incentives even if you aren't a larger stakeholder.
Consider a whale who has a choice of where to deploy one of his or her valuable and scarce 40 (full) votes per day. Choice A will get downvoted and Choice B will not. The incentives then favor B.
Unfortunately this isn't an instant gratification solution, but because it takes time for incentives like this to work, but they do work.
Is that whining I hear? Jk ;)
I have the same concern. We may need to allow more active downvotes on these types of contents.
Or, we could just avoid the problem as much as possible by not willingly opening things up for abuse. If users want to post more than four times, they can do that. They just won't earn as much. And chances are, if they're posting more than four times per day, the quality of their posts probably won't be that great anyway and probably won't be deserving of large payouts.
The four post limit/penalty doesn't seem to be a big deal in need of a "fix."
I don't think it discourages engagement. It discourages abuse - in the form of sock puppets and spamming. This is anecdotal, but I haven't seen many complaints from users who think that this needs to be removed. The limit doesn't mean that a user cannot earn - it only limits how much can be earned after a certain number of posts. With a stake-weighted system that can be and has been abused, I don't believe the limit is an actual problem.
if they spam post the bots will run out of steempower eventually or garner flags from pitchfork wielders
You're right. We may ask this first; how many articles/posts does a professional writers create per day?
Not all posts are going to be (nor should be) professional writers. Approaching it from that angle impairs the growth potential of the system to reach a much larger audience from the start. There are many different use cases for this blockchain, professional writers being only one of them.