Sorry, but I have to write again:
I know you hate it and I understand you, but I just try to make you bigger investors face the fact that downvoting (as necessary it in general is) plays a role in the downtrend of HIVE and is a very sensitive topic.
When people outside HIVE talk about HIVE, these downvotes are a topic if you want to accept it or not. And therefore, in my opinion, it's the least to explain one's downvotes, and be it for the silent, only observing readers. Also in my opinion, you old Hiveians are completely underestimating the psychological effect of downvotes on people who are not accustomed to talk about "only a redistribution of the rewards pool" every day.
I know for example that even the in my eyes rather harmless downvotes of smooth drive users away because they don't understand the reasons. Users like vanje reduced their activities after only one single of these downvotes (even if their posts earned well anyway) because they felt attacked! Also the user andyjaypowell complained bitterly in a private message about smooth's downvotes (at least recently he started to post more frequently again). Of course these downvotes are not 'malicious' but people don't understand why they are receiving them. Now imagine what people outside of Hive think, who understand the downvote mechanism even worse?
Do you think I write this to attack HIVE? How would I benefit of it? I write it because honestly I feel that most whales just don't understand which psychological effects downvotes can have. They are so technology minded (which you can also see in the fact that still automated voting is more beneficial than manual voting due to the fast diminishing curation reward with the time)!
By the way, I don't think the smooth downvotes are effective because he focuses on single posts with very high rewards instead to take the frequency of posting (and earning smaller amounts daily) into account. But that is another topic.
It's okay to discuss these things, I just don't think it's okay to single people out based on their use of downvotes when they could have legitimate reasons to be doing them which you seemed to ignore/not figure out.
I don't disagree with how downvotes make people react, even on reddit it's a problem even though votes are anonymous, but that doesn't mean people stop using it.
Ok, fair point!