Oh, I'm not at all suggesting this actually be done. I don't think Steemit should be using the ninja-mined stake to vote (not even to support @burnpost, which I of course believe operates in a generally beneficial manner, and if I didn't I wouldn't be running it), and indeed shouldn't be weaseling around that by delegating it to others who vote on their behalf (which, unfortunately, they are).
My comment was addressed as what I see as some of the beneficial indirect effects of constraining the reward pool from its current size which I see as just inviting a scramble by many people to grab the 'free money'. In fact none of it is free. Steem stakeholders are paying for it twice, once in inflation and the again in lost opportunity to actually do something useful with that money. But yes I agree some leadership could also help.
@smooth, Do you really think most average users even know the size of the reward pool or how it works? Most of them still think stinc pays them for being here or some magical thing. So I'm not sure 90% of the users here would even understand this conversation, let alone stop being driven by "free money" promises because of it.
You aren't wrong about the "whys" but I think the experiment will prove no change in majority user behavior.
Honestly, we all keep yapping about potentials, when turning off self voting for once and for all, would quite literally end nearly every problem but bot rings and voting circlejerks, which are NEVER going to be completely eradicated, anymore than anyone has completely eradicated collusion from poker games yet in 200 years.
That's just not possible. In fact a huge portion of the voting power now goes through bots (a while ago I was told 30% and it may be even higher now) which means many people it isn't even literal self voting any more. Stakeholder delegates to bot then pays bot to vote for stakeholders posts (possibly on a different account). Stakeholder then gets the money back from the bot.
Even if this particular loophole were plugged there are an infinite number of ways to obscure self voting.
Not really, but larger stakeholders who allocate most of the money do.
LOL true!
I don’t belong on this thread but have to comment.
What?! You burst my bubble. All this time I thought SteemitInc was paying for my penny payouts!! What is a gal to do now? 😉
Interesting topic of discussion!
Isn't this breaking the common-shared agreement on technicality? It seems that code is law though so technicality is the law.
And why isn't it happening (other than the excuse that it is interfering with an 'organic' system)?
This community is not very organic and is becoming much less so considering it is now largely a blind pay to play platform. What would have pushed this post up the ridiculous scale is if I had voted myself into trending.
This is about as trash post as my heart will let me get but, it does create discussions that clarifies certain things for me and those who stop by my blog, from people who are invested heavily in the platform. You might not agree with the proposal (I don't agree with the proposal) but, the platform is floundering and there is so much that isn't seen, shared or being done.
The core problems I have with the bidbots is, blind voting, lack of engagement with the majority of it, narrowing of rewards/value heavily biased to those who already have stake. It might be idealistic but this was meant to be a community that backed value based on content the community found value in, not the author which is what is happening now. What happened to manual curation? ~25% not enough to engage in the community cosidering on top of that there is the likely appreciation of Steem value to come?
I self-vote now, it is my stake. Fine. But, using the bots is calling the community to vote on me also (blindly). I am saying that my post is worthy of community support and proving the worth by ordering them to support. That is not community consensus, that is dictatorship of a kind and the ones delegating are supporting all kinds of things they may not agree with (say, if I had used bots you delegate to to bump this up a bit).
There is a space for the bidbots but, I do think there needs to be a massive ramping up of community/manual curation on them still before flags are involved as flags come with no reward and are therefore unlikely.
There has to be some community engagement on content (which is all we have) to call this a community doesn't there? Otherwise, just call it an auction site and be done with it.
... Yeah, I am idealistic and not very good at maximising my own value at the cost of others.