Thanks for a great comment and mature discussion really appreciate it,
And I know your team works hard on creating an amazing platform. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
But I just think this sounds worrying "Everything will be monitored and elements like friendships will be a constant consideration in assessment and in the decision of what algo is applied. But there will also be people who will argue that friendships are a form of circle jerking. So it will always be thin and sometimes even difficult lines to thread."
Having to monitor friends and stalk what you upvote really? Use algo? See how that worked on YouTube. Pure disaster. YouTube values the algo above people. Having to monitor every move human does is going from the baseline of humans can't be trusted. That will put people in a mode in look for flaws in humans. That they will try to scam things. This is not building a good core foundation. It goes completely against the Bitcoin and Blockchain movement. Why do people like these platforms? Freedom and not Big Brother government being above them all the time.
Friendships happen across platforms these days. And you for sure shouldn't be rewarded for hunting down friends that upvote eachothers quality posts. That will surely create lots of toxic energy. And I know your project tries to distance themselves completely from Steem at the moment but I think it's way too early to do that. Should wait until SMT system is coming out and it has been tested properly before doing a major switch.
I think a more humane approach would be to trust people more and talk to them. Use capitalism to fuel the engine and also let Steem influencer have a part in the rankings by giving out money. People love their influence. The Intellect tries to fix humans by looking at them as a problem. This won't make people feel free and empowered.
My first day on Steemhunt I got a rank of 15 with the old system. Since a Steemit user came and influenced the rankings. A hard working Steemian. Now in the new system he would have way less power. The 2nd day I got a ranking of around 130. Even when I had a better post. It demotivates passionate Steemians that have invested a lot in the platform. Clearly this group should have more influence. You let them have influence by delegate. So they should have influence in rankings too. This is still using the Steem platform a lot. So distance is not going to work.
Again thanks for an adult conversation I will be following this project with great interest. Can be interesting to see how it will go.
If you saw how much Steem is gamed for money (I have dust accounts trailing my comments just to frontrunning the Steemhunt upvote, around 30% of submitted hunts are plagiarized, etc etc) I think you would understand the need for those measures.
When I say everything will be monitored that means that when we release something new we need to keep an eye on its impact, on its effect and because there is money in play we also need to monitor gaming. I hate to say this but a small minority will do everything to maximize even the smallest profit.
We do not think that people are bad de facto but we know that there’s a small group who just can’t resist temptation.
Now it would be easy to hit those (until they find the next hole to use) but that can also damage what you mentioned before, friendships, so that’s something we need to monitor because if not you take use to the cleaners over that. 🤷♂️
YouTube has a for profit focus in which they know what content sells best to premium advertisers. Our focus is for fairness and to minimize gaming the rankings. Our focus is for the users (no system will ever please everyone), their focus is for the shareholders.
Thanks for a great discussion. I hope later I can turn this in a post. 👊