I've been thinking about what to do about these but I don't have any great answers beyond what is being done.
I do think the $25 cap is too high. Even without any overvoting, $25 will show up pretty high on trending some days. I would reduce it to $5 or $10 and make more posts per day.
Ultimately a big part of the issue here is that Trending is misnamed. It should really be called "Most Voted" in which case no one would be surprised that these show up, right?
As for curation, the curation algorithm is designed to address this automatically. Repeated high value posts that get high votes (whether it is these or just a consistently popular author) will attract earlier and earlier votes which return more of their Trending rewards to the reward pool. Burnpost gets most of its votes between 1 and 3 minutes which means 40-80% of curation is returned to the reward. Voters get something, which is fair IMO because they are consuming their valuable vote power, but they don't get anywhere near as much as they would get doing actual curation (more effort).
What about posting them with a “invisible” tag. I single special tag. Will they still show up on trending? I guess so...
It was my recollection that the 'experimental' tag used to do that in the early days of Steem. That was the reason I originally used it for burnpost. It seems, though, that posts tagged experimental now do show up, possibly because milkers were using it to hide from downvotes. Same with comments.
It is a tricky problem in an open system when any feature which can be used for good can also be abused for harm.
What can we do about burnpost? I understand the original intent behind it and I support it. But it continue to "trend" and occupy the landing page of steem. We are getting serious on on-boarding, and if new people coming in just sees burnpost (Potates are lower now!) it just makes us look bad. Please do something about it so that they do not show up on trending. You know the argument against it is mounting. I am sure you can come up with a solution. Can't burnpost be at least capped like Potatoes? This is an optional project, right?
First of all, @sbdpotato and @burnpost are quite different, and I'm not sure they should even be lumped together in any discussion. @sbdpotato is raising funds, and is now getting most of its funds from SPS, which makes capping payouts relatively harmless. By contrast, @burnpost raises no funds, and is instead a method by which voters can vote for 'None of the above' when it comes to distributing rewards. Capping rewards would be overriding the will of the voters and IMO @burnpost should rather remain neutral. If you think @burnpost is getting too many votes, take it up with the voters, or create better, more compelling content that is more attractive to voters than 'None of the above'. (I've already stated my view that probably the best solution overall is for "Trending" to be renamed "Most voted" or "Most rewards", which would be a more accurate description of what it actually means, and get rid of the misleading implication that it is actually the most interesting or attention-worthy content.)
I added a line suggesting that voters consider later votes to reduce trending. The burnposts are now down to one per day, along with comments (but the comments tend to trend less). To me that seems like pretty reasonable accomodations to those who want to minimize the impact on Trending, but I'm open to other constructive suggestions.
On your claim that 'the argument against is mounting' I think we will have to agree to disagree. From my perspective, the true measure of support is the voting, and everything else is a bunch of hot air. As long as it continues to get votes, that tells me there is significant (even in some sense very large) support. As you can see from Chart 9 here, not only does it continue to get votes, but support for burning has generally continued to increase.
As far as getting serious about on-boarding, I think that is nonsense. There are only a small number of accounts created per day and a good chunk of those are created by @steemmonsters, which doesn't even use the social rewards system at all (data is here). And of those small number of accounts created, very few ever become or stay active users.
In four years we have had all sorts of different populations of posts on Trending, none of which has ever done much to drive growth or increase successful onboarding, and after four years I doubt very much that we are going to ever see Trending be a true driver of growth. Without a new UI and/or use case for Steem becoming popular (which could be revised steemit.com, could be another site, could be games such as steemmonsters), I don't see this changing. Voters seem to agree, and increasingly prefer to preserve some value in the Steem ecosystem by reducing selling pressure and burning rather than blindly continue a failed model.
Potatoes and Burnpost are both devoid of content. So from that perspective they are identical. Background mechanics of steem is not of interest to content creators and consumers. While I respect your software prowess, you must respect that this is still a social network.
You better understand the reason burnpost is getting vote is because people’s auto-votes and bot votes are piling up for curation reward. It’s a fact, I know it and you know it
We talked about both steemmonster and that their on boarding is different but they are not the only source. Also people actually like to look at trending, maybe not you but I do. Since trending is called trending and not most rewarded that discussion is a moot point
This failed model is the place you and I are talking on. If you are jaded about it that’s your prerogative. I rather appreciate the blockchain I have, rather than the blockchain I wish I had. I rather improve the blockchain from within with all its components. Without people there is no steem for investors.
Finally there are 38 accounts higher than my investments in steemit and at least 10 of them are either non-human or repository. So I am putting my money where my mouth is. Also I support your witness and I honestly think your contributions are important to this ecosystem. Although you do not know me, or you never asked for it, when very recently you went out of top 20 I lobbied for you to get you back. You are at your current position within top 20 exactly because of two votes mine, and theycallmedan’s which I lobbied for. Please understand I think you are a valuable asset and you belong inside top 20 but please listen to the people. Not everything has to be code, sometimes it can be people too. Many thanks smooth, I wish I can have this conversation off the chain but you are not on discord unfortunately.
It is and it isn't. steemit.com is (and similar web sites are) a social network/application built on top of a blockchain. But there are other applications built on top of the same blockchain which have nothing to do with content creators and posting and content. One of them happens is steemmonsters, which as I mentioned is among the most successful in bringing on new users. There are also social-type UIs which don't use the same Trending page as Steemit. I don't agree that the entire blockchain and economy should be held hostage to steemit.com's crappy UI.
I've stated numerous times that I don't believe this, nor agree on the point. The curation system is designed to, and does, penalize 'easy' votes, whether that is @burnpost, or any author who constantly gets high votes. Votes on @burnpost earn very low curation rewards (especially the main posts; comments are a little better) and people could easily earn more by: a) delegating to a curation or vote selling bot, or b) picking some non-terrible content at random and voting for it.
As I mentioned, I'm very happy to make accommodations such as suggesting that people vote later and encouraging spreading out votes on comments instead of the main post. That said, I still feel strongly that the option to vote for none-of-the-above in terms of payment for content should be there. After all, as I mentioned above, the entire network and economy is not based on paying out to content, and serious questions exist about how effective the content payment model is. (And despite all that, posting more better content that rises above @burnpost is yet another way to push down the visibility of @burnpost; complaining that its ranking and visibility is too high is the same as complaining that the quality and voter appeal of other content being posted is too low, is it not?)
I also absolutely agree that filling the entire tending page with duplicate posts is pretty serious disruption (that being said, it is also a serious disruption which could be addressed at the UI layer, for example, by collapsing posts by the same author, or some similar approach). But I don't agree that a single top level post where people can vote for none-of-the-above (which is, after all, consistent with and does fall within the social network concept of rewarding content; it is just a manner of expressing a different view on whether and how much content to reward) is too much of a disruption.
Indeed we are talking on this platform without each of us voting our own comments up to $10-$20 or otherwise extracting unsustainable value from the system. It works quite well in this manner. I am not at all jaded on the social aspects of the platform, or even in cases when discussions do earn some small votes (which I often give out myself), as a mechanism of distributing stake to active and engaged participants. Unfortunately, too many users on the platform do view it as a vehicle for extracting value, which is one reason that voting for none-of-the-above is an important and necessary alternative.
In my view, improving from within is exactly what we are doing with initiatives like this one which work within the existing code and rules to improve the outcomes. The biggest victims of money being drained from Steem include those making sincere contributions of content and effort. Who suffers lower rewards on their high value content contributions, when the price of Steem is 0.15 rather than $1. Who will suffer when the price of Steem is 0.01?
Is it not people who are voting in favor of directing rewards to @burnpost rather than paying them out, often ineffectively to milkers and other exploitative schemes which are extracting value from Steem to none of our benefit (other than the milkers themselves, of course)? Yes, some of the votes, maybe even most of them, are automated, but it is always people behind the decision to vote in that manner. IMO their votes should be respected.
Thank you for your support of my witness position, BTW. I wasn't aware of it.
And now you are aware of it. Both Dan & I voted you in top 20 when you got out after the proxy.token fiasco