Plagiarism is something I totally support the use of downvotes. Cycle voting is not gonna stop even if we do, and I think downvotes should be used for the following reasons exclusively.
Racism, hate speach, plagiarism,
The cycle voting could be really easily fixed but is there a will for that?
If you vote for someone that you already have voted for and has pending payouts from your vote your next vote value should be -50% stacking up eventually to zero. It will probably be a valid reason to stop the cycle voting or at least limit it to a degree and gives a chance for more engagement and more curation. Which is the most important aspect here.
Everything else probably is fair game if you take into account that everyone is doing it from what I have seen so far. I do tend to vote those that support me more than those that don't, unless their content is exceptional good. Something something game theory.
I also just upvote content that I know a whale will vote for it even if I get to disagree with the said content. Let's say conspiracy theories or fear-mongering in general which is something that people really support for some reason. I will upvote it cause it will return revenue to me so there is that.
I will add downvotes are not a tool to resolve into an argument, if people cannot handle different opinions they shouldn't be here in the first place. Expressing a radical ideology it will get controversial really fast happened to me yesterday. Just because I upvote someone that does not automatically means I agree, In that case I will say why I think he is wrong he is welcome to correct me, but when that someone claiming the journalism tag requests from me to stop commenting on his posts I will have to call bs and it is a valid reason to down vote.
I am not going to take a lot of space, I will probably make a post in the future about it but I will also downvote someone that is exploiting the reward pool constantly.
It's not unfortunately. The only fix is the use of downvotes. Anything else can be worked around by rotating stake over the necessary amount of accounts.
You say yourself, you vote for the revenue. Exactly that's what we've been trying to counter. But of course people hate you for lowering their revenue.
If you cant win them join them as they say, I am not here to stand in higher moral ground, I just speak for what I have seen and experienced the last 4 years here. Let's say 3 cause I wasn't really active the last year on steemit. I will be here though and will try to support anyone that will come up with some sort of solution whichever way I can.
I do still vote outside of my own cyrcle and I do search for content outside of the trending page. Which trending page does not have the most important sorting parameter yet which is a)sort by votes and maybe if possible b) sort by comments. I don't see any dialogue happening at the top trending posts and without dialogue there wont be any kind of think tank formatting to get some ideas or proposals going.
Of course, it's the culture, and this was not meant as a personal criticism. I just don't approach it this way.
I know well enough to recognise the intend I can tell who is really concerned about the future of this site and your actions do speak volume, so don't worry about that.
I can be responsible with my downvotes and I do use them don't worry I do not abuse them, the well being of this community was and still is in top of my own personal gain of the extra couple of bucks I would be getting if I was to participate in the game theory aspect of things. But I cannot fight a whale not alone and hardly if I got the assist of other dolphins would make any difference. I think there should be a "Hivewatchers" thing that would had the stake to fight the whales face on but with great power comes great responsibility and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is hard to get people on board on this mentality. And sadly its been 6 hours since your post and I don't see any whales popping up to have a discussion for the matter. I am anyway I support your view of things and I understand that personal responsibility comes before collective responsibility. I hope you get the support you deserve but if I know you well I know you will go on heads on on your own whichever the case I will keep on supporting you as my witness as I do since day 1, You have never let me down.
I hope to see some whales jumping to this discussion soon. It is a very interesting topic. Keep safe man. I ll be visiting this post hoping for more engagement and more arguments.
Most of us post on a Blockchain because we can express ourselves as we want to. We should give this right it other people,too, that they disagree with us.
Don't feed the trolls - it's action and reaction. If you don't react to "serial downvoters", most stop quite fast.
I can express my self in myriad other blogs, I am not hiding behind my finger saying I am not here to make some earnings and It happens to be here because I stand behind the ideal of decentralisation at least most of us I want to think we do.
Downvoting is a tool but it need to be used wisely and with respect and not as a mean to abuse power and or silence the truth.