As a content guy, I have a few serious concerns.
First, I think this would be repeating a very big mistake from the past: changing too many variables at once. If you changed all three of these at once, it would be impossible to gauge the impact of any one of them.
Second, the problem's outlined above involve the selfish use of upvotes at the expense of the success of the platform as a whole. Over my nearly three years here, I have not seen any evidence that would lead me to believe downvotes would be used in an unselfish way. In fact, all of the evidence points to the exact opposite. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that receiving (and I mean receiving not earning) a downvote creates a far worse user experience than simply not receiving an upvote. I think it is safe to say that a person earning a reward, seeing the reward and then having the reward taken away is far worse than simply never receiving the reward in the first place (and I am talking about feeling and emotion here, not logic). I am sure someone cashed a huge grant check to study that bit of common sense... but I'm not going to search for it.
Third, why the urgency to change this now? Why not see what communities and SMTs accomplish before adding in another variable?
The measures unfortunately all have downsides that increase as you tune up the dial. Curation leaves less for the author, Free Downvotes increase toxicity and at high levels open abuse to collusion, Superlinear leads to inequality and at high levels collusive abuse as well. Using a combination of these measures allow us to minimize the dosage of each poison individually while still having a sufficient enough impact to turn this completely failure of a content discovery and rewards system around.
Yes, I agree that downvotes suck. To say they'll be used selfishly is ambiguous, because unlike upvotes, modest amount of free downvotes cannot be used to direct value towards something, only away from something. That is to say, it's harder to profit directly from them. But if you mean selfishly as in some will use it with reckless abandon to bully and keep a stranglehold on smaller players that they dislike, and this would definitely increase toxicity on the platform - yes. Hopefully that's not the only way they'll be used, but an increase in toxicity is a considerable and expected downside. Again my intention is to use as little of these measures as possible, especially this one, but I'm afraid some is likely unavoidable if we're to have any hope turning this place around.
But look at the platform overall today my friend. It's complete trash. It doesn't work at all, there's no correlation between content appeal and rewards because the incentives are badly aligned. Our price and alexa rank are in free fall. If we don't attempt economic reform, we're going to just die out.
I don't think this is going to delay SMTs. It can likely be coded in a week. But it's the fundamental core to our value proposition and if we stick with the status quo we're doomed. SMTs can't carry a disfunctional core system, nor can Communities.
It's like if the house is on fire and we're still debating about whether to put it out or to go purchase a new couch to put in the lounge room that's burning down. Half the people are like 'aww but I've been looking forward to having a new couch' or 'I dunno, we've been saving a long time for a new couch and almost have enough money and now you want me to spend a bit of it on an increased water bill?' or 'bahh how sure are you that putting out the fire will increase the resale value of the house more than getting a new couch anyway?'. It's sort of insanity :p
First of all...
Now that I have that out of the way, you know me. I 100% agree that this is a raging dumpster fire. The content on here is a joke (and I don't mean the good kind). Where you and I differ fits right into the house analogy.
The house is on fire (super shitty content), I believe the fire department is on their way (SMTs), and there are three buckets of liquid sitting at our feet (these proposed changes). We don't know what is in the buckets for sure. We can only take a guess. I think one is filled with gasoline for sure (free downvotes). I'd prefer to wait for the fire department. I'd like to see if they can put it out before taking the risk that I am throwing gasoline on this already toxic disaster.
It sure would help if I knew how close the firetrucks are. If they are right around the corner, I'll wait. If they are 24 moons away, perhaps it is time to simply toss away.
haha I think it's very optimistic that SMTs are the panacea but you'll likely get your way and one of us will get to tell the other one 'I told you so'
But if they bring it out in the same hardfork then we'll never truly know that I was right :)
Exactly! That is why I say one at a time. The fire has already been burning for like 2 years. Its pretty much all burning methane at this point. I'm confident there is still plenty of bullshit left to fuel it.
And I certainly don't care about being right. If this place becomes a raging success, I will rip off all of my clothes and run don the street screaming "I was so fucking wrong! And I've never been happier!"
But to be fair I do some version of this every other Tuesday so it probably won't garner a very big reaction.
FTFY.
If we implement these changes you'll personally profit more from extracting rewards. These are the wrong changes.
I flag trash. You have received a flag.