That's fine. Attempting to describe how content consumers are stakeholders and votes can be considered a form of tip. Wasn't presenting an argument. Merely an idea.
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That's fine. Attempting to describe how content consumers are stakeholders and votes can be considered a form of tip. Wasn't presenting an argument. Merely an idea.
Fair
I'm curious, smooth. You've always been an enigma to me. Were you involved with creating the original vision, methodology, terms, general direction of this project?
No, I was a community member who found the project from their first post on bitcointalk. I was then a top witness for the first several years. In both roles I offered feedback and input to the development team but I've never been a part of it.
So just going along, play-by-play in a sense, like we're all doing.
I'm getting close to five years on the block myself.
Witnesses, developers. That's all fine. Respected roles.
Over the years, from my perspective and based on the behavior I've witnessed along with the role I played, after this long, I doubt the usage of downvotes will ever match that original vision. Consensus. Majority of people, over the years, aren't using them for anything other than countering exploits and abuse not because they're doing something wrong. It's because that's how they'd prefer to see things. Attempting to normalize downvotes to coincide with that original vision is going against the flow. That's an observation, not an opinion. I'm not anti-downvote. I feel confident at this point pushing to 'normalize' downvotes to coincide with that original vision is a lost cause. It's hard to find someone who's being honest fully against downvotes being used as a tool to counter exploits and abuse. That's the way the world went. Probably worth looking at and reconsidering what downvotes are meant to be used for.
Actually I don't care about the original vision. A lot of it was pretty dumb, and quite possibly designed in large part to extract the maximum value for the founders regardless of longer term project success (which they did in some ways).
From first principles I know that a system like this needs either effective downvotes or some suitable substitute to avoid a race to the bottom where the most exploitative take progressively more of the rewards and any other investors flee because there is no value to watching yourself be exploited, nor are there good prospects for appreciation in such a system.
And I totally get where you're coming from. I personally believe one of the biggest mistakes was offering/marketing this platform to anyone to create content and earn, without bringing money in the door. Content is a product. Consumers pay attention to and buy that product. That's why I bring up those consumers. That role is neglected here. I personally believe the content should be bringing money in the door not just sending it potentially out. So I say voting is a form of tips. I point out how that brings new money into the ecosystem, all while the consumer technically isn't spending money. So I say it's a good deal, because it is. All I'm doing is flipping over the 'traditional' business model here, trying to show how it makes money, rather than being an expense.
Downvotes would be needed to combat all that other nonsense that has nothing to do with genuine content and real consumers. People do spend money on content these days. From nearly my first day here I couldn't understand why this 'business model' hands out money to content and personalities that do nothing to attract actual people. There's far more potential in attracting paying consumers. 'Consumer rewards' rather than 'curation rewards' for instance. I've asked my kids, "Do you know what a curator is?" No, they don't. But they don't have a problem grasping consumer rewards. Some rebranding here would go a long way.
From a writer/artist/entertainer perspective with a good business mind, I can say that original vision from years ago highlights the fact they didn't even know what they were building. In the past I've described it as a knife, and people are confused, wondering why they can't cut their food. I see the same tool but if you turn it over and use the sharp side, it's much easier to succeed.