I wrote this comment as a response to @blocktrades post:
https://peakd.com/hive-102930/@blocktrades/proposal-reduce-hive-inflation-by-reducing-curation-rewards
And it was long. So I decided to publish it as a separate post.
Enjoy!
If automatic voting is bad for the network, why do large stakeholders do it?
Stakeholders use automatic voting because:
(1) It takes less time (compared to manual curation).
(2) They earn more money (due to the 5 minute curation period).
Solutions:
Flat curation
Tacking problem (2) first - bring in flat curation. So that it no longer matters when you vote on a post or how large the post value is when you vote on it. All curators will get 50% irrespective of their voting choice (as long as they avoid poor content that is downvoted).
Empower manual curation
Then tackle problem (1) by encouraging users to empower the manual curation communities like @ocd, @curie etc. Users delegate their stake to the curation community. In return they receive a proportional share of the curation rewards from the community; this will be the exactly-the-same-50% that they could get from using an autovoter or manually curating themselves.
Pay manual curators
Allow curation communities to reward their curating teams by upvoting their posts or comments. This will need to be done in a transparent fashion and there should be an agreed limit that curation teams state in their delegation requests. In effect this takes the curation team salary out of author rewards. An alternative would be to use the DAO fund with curation communities applying for small amounts of funding.
To avoid an over-concentration of power in a few curation communities, encourage other specialised communities to put forwards curation teams. Or individuals with good track records.
Get some real rewards out there
Get some real trending posts going by having a weekly contest under which the top curation communities all agree to upvote the best three posts of the week (as voted on by their own curators based on the delegated stake of the community etc etc).
Make it easier to find good posts
Make it easier to find good posts by having a front-end which collates all the posts voted on by the curation communities (and allows you to filter only those curation communities which you prefer).
This should also help prevent abuse by curation teams and ensure no return to poor quality posts with paid-for-votes.
Large stakeholders who do not want to delegate their stake could instead just look at this front-end and pick a number of posts from those which have already been voted-up by communities (in addition to their own preferred authors or communities they support). With flat curation these large stakeholders are not penalised by voting late or voting last.
CONCLUSION
It's a very simple set of changes with almost no coding required - just the flat curation change.
It does put the (hive) power into the hands of a smaller number of curators - but the idea would be that these curators are the ones who are actively curating to find the best posts.
It would remove any need for automated voting, would pay manual curators, would make it easier for (large) stakeholders to find and upvote quality posts without being penalised and could generate the kind of large payouts that would incentivise authors to create posts that are worthy of large payouts. Plus the marketing that these large payouts generate.
It doesn't solve the final issue of auto-voting, which is their use by authors that are in a circle-of-voting. But who is going to put the bell on that cat? Maybe the newly empowered curation communities? An argument for another day.
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I think 'flat curation' is worth a shot - seems a long time ago that you first mentioned this.
Auto-voting trails, especially those following solid curation projects, could be seen in a different light, with those trailing getting a 'fair' share no matter their place in the queue.
Yes! I've talked about delegation to curation communities but curation voting-trails would work equally as well under flat curation.
It may even be better, since you could switch voting-trails instantly rather than waiting for your delegation to be returned.
I like. Auto votes have become like curation squatting. Anything that can break break this cycle of the same authors shooting to trending at 5 minutes and giving genuine cuaratirs a fair share of the pie are worth a try. This proposal seems to be well thought through.
My only concern is that trying to get those with most to lose behind the idea would be difficult even though it would be better for everyone long term.
I don't think there would be a drastic change in terms of curation rewards.
Those people currently "winning" at curation (mainly through bots and auto-voting?) would get a little less. Those people who typically vote late (manual curators and curation communities?) would get a little more. There would be more curation paid out overall due to the removal of curation rewards going back to the reward pool in the first 5 minutes.
My guess is that there are quite a few whales (and curation communities like @ocd) who would do better under flat curation than they do currently and who could get behind the idea.
Hopefully the bigger change would be quality authors getting larger author payouts through better curation. Particularly newer and less well known authors.
This could bring an increase in retention of new quality authors. And a rise in quality posting to chase those bigger rewards.
Sorry for delayed response. All you say sounds good and I hope the idea is given serious thought.
!ENGAGE15
I like some of the ideas, but this brings a lot of problems. Why would this encourage good curation?
If you get 50% anyway, upvoting any random shit is just fine. We currently have 99% upvotes and 1% downvotes per day...
If there is no benefit of good curation, why would people do good curation?
Also, your proposed centralization of power worries me. I don't want like three curation giants to be the main deciding parties of what is good content and what goes to trending...
So, as you say, only orcas and whales need to be convinced that this is good for them too? 😎
The flat curation has been implemented at a few of the hive-engine communities: LEO and STEM for example. I think it'll happen for Hive at some point too as the feedback seems to be positive so far.
I agree with everything you wrote. We’ll see what really happens.