I have been preaching the value of honest curation for so long so I agree with that sentiment but I don't see how this will achieve this.
50/50 seems like it would amplify the curation sniping game which is mostly content agnostic (some use certain metadata in their vote prediction strategy) and reward those that predict votes.
Will some manual curators get lucky from time to time and predict organic voting based on the substance of content? Perhaps but I am convinced the vast majority of profitable curation will be simply mapping out autovotes and beating them to the punch.
Will honest manual curators will have any conceivable advantage over a bot curator? I am doubtful of this.
As for free downvotes, I think this notion reflects a very optimistic view of humanity. I would go so far as to call it naive. Now the bad actors can still self-vote but additional they have a quiver of free downvotes to employ to any users that would take action against their abuse.
I have been told by my colleagues at @steemflagrewards to wait and see about this but I don't think it will bode well for our kind that have sacrificed our SP against abuse.
The network lacked proper incentives so we created them. Think we have a good system going of crowdfunded moderation.
Now, I am concerned with out ability to reward the activity of finding and dealing with abuse to include the push back we get from abusers when they have free downvotes.
I guess the plus is SFR will be able to downvote a couple times a day when there is some really egregious abuse. Of that, there is no lack.
Appreciate you at least trying to do something even if I don't have the greatest expectation. It is what it is. Maybe if this doesn't pan out, you can give our off chain solution a look and consider supporting what we do.
You can't see the measures in isolation from each other, they work together.
50/50 on its own doesn't quite get us where we need to be. But in conjunction with free downvotes, poorer quality content will likely take a hit and people will be less profitable with their content indifferent curation practices.
I believe the majority of downvotes will be used with fair intentions of bringing down overvalued posts. There will be some who abuse their downvotes to cause grief onto others, but overall it's a worthwhile price to pay for a real chance at achieving largely honest voting behavior platform wide
I see. I think if these changes do, in fact, make voting less predictable then there is a good chance of effecting a change in behavior from content agnostic voting.
It's a big 'if' though. We would be happy to supplement the probability of that hypothesis coming to fruition if you would be interested.
Perhaps, we can put in a motion for SFR to follow snipers to any abuse and work to zero them out. No payout on the abuse. No curation rewards on the post.
We have bodies with varying amounts of time that can be willing to evaluate the content but may need a hand zeroing them. Then the snipers get diddly squat.
Food for thought.