How is it that the actions of a tiny minority are okay when it comes to upvoting and a few people effectively controlling nearly all the influence and allocating nearly all of the reward pool, but not when it comes to downvoting? If you look at the overall net effect on the system, the effect of countervoting is far, far less than the effect of outright whale voting given the n^2 rule (i.e. 0^2 is still 0 but 1 trillion squared is one septillion, a number so large that I would guess many people are not familiar with that word).
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Yes the current system has flaws, but spam downvoting is not the answer.
The "net overall effect on the system" as you see it is neglecting the most important part, the human element. This is far more nuanced than math.
The 'human element' is being stirred up by people such as yourself who probably know better and actually understand how the system works, but enjoy fanning the flames to manipulate those who may not. It is sad to see. Perhaps try working to reduce the misunderstandings rather than encourage them?
The fact that you genuinely think 'dissenting voices' on this are "stirring" and "manipulating", just shows you're out of touch with how regular people think.
A process of "counter-voting" to address defects in the system, begs the obvious question... why not seek consensus on how best to fix voting imbalances and fix it?
Why make a platform that is already confusing for the average user, even more convoluted?
As I stated earlier, it is not entirely clear that it can be fixed that way (not saying it can't, just not necessarily). Some problems require a degree of subjectivity; that's why we have voting at all, otherwise we could "fix the code" and make it reward the right content all by itself. It may just be that we need a two-way voting structure. Most equilibrium systems in nature (or created by humans) achieve stability through a balance of opposing forces. It is very difficult to make a system of upvotes without downvotes stable, perhaps impossible (see post by @bitcoindoom).
This does not mean that improvements in algorithms and code can't be made, and I support that, but they aren't necessarily the same issue nor solutions to the same problems.
@smooth
You may be right - fixing the problem may not be code and may require subjectivity. That can be debated and discussed.
Who exercises the subjective judgement and under what mandate – that can also be discussed. It may be there are more elegant solutions than what is being done at the moment. E.g. Moderators voted on by the SP holders (a la Witnesses), and the method may not be a flag but a way of reducing the voting weight of specific votes. I don’t know. However having that conversation and getting people to debate a proposal, tends to lead to more buy-in, in my opinion. At the very least people understand what is happening, when and why.
Anyway, 'the experiment' is here, you're well within your right to conduct it, I'm well within my right to disagree, we’ll see how it plays out. Hopefully I'm proved wrong and the platform benefits from it.
You trolling me?
No
Oh I like spam upvoting. I hate spam downvoting.
It is possible to see the negative connotations of both and seek some kind of consensus on how best to address it. However I can see that point is lost.
I guess we'll see how the experiment plays out.. cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Thanks for doing this!