Discussion: Changing how the values of posts are decided.

... he purchased a ton of Hive ...

Or: he was a STEEM ninja miner (or bid bot owner) and purch.... ehm got a lot of STEEM and now automatically got a lot of HIVE. :)

Great! Prediction markets are not only a good way, mathematically it is the ONLY way to get some practical degree of collusion resistance. The super-linear curve of @vandeberg was a good step but it is by far not enough.

What such a system is lagging is a timing incentive since the only dimension here is relativity of bets.

I hope the post reaches some of the hive people
@theoretical
@blocktrades

We could even expand this system and start a new round of bets every week.

If a user thinks the post is worth more than it played out within a week he can bet higher and can get curation within a week again.

If a user thinks lower, then it only reduces the value it has to cross to get future payouts.

That is a really interesting idea, but wouldn't it lead to a lot of rampant over- and under-evaluation of post rewards? Obviously any rewards system needs to be created thinking about potential abuse from day one, so maybe it would be constructed in such a way as to be resilient to it.

If you rampantly over or under evaluate you will get less curation. That's the idea.

Here is the problem, and it is elemental to the way that Steem/Hive works:

It is through the process of making and taking the bets that the value of a post is determined. Coupled with the proof of stake system, that effectively means that the same people with the most power to affect the payoff are the ones who have the capability of maximizing their payoff.

The problems with that are obvious and you almost/sort of touch on that in your very last paragraph as almost a throw away. It's a central issue, however. It is the crux of the whole problem. Curation and reward have been inextricably bound in the underlying system and to fix it, that is to remove behaviors which result in undesired results, the whole of the system has to be modified.

Unfortunately, that can't be done at a mechanical level and still be able to refer to the result as Steem/Hive (and I keep referring to the systems as they stand like that because they are identical in implementation). It is certainly possible to imagine a system which decouples curation and tipping/reward and it's probably a good idea to do so because it would have a number of positive knock on effects.

I just don't think it can be done here.

Specifically as regards downvotes, the idea of "free downvotes" as it stands already violates one of the central axioms of the system, effectively that your stake determines your ability to affect the distribution of the rewards pool. Giving people free 100% downvotes means that your stake is effectively multiplied when it comes to reducing the power of other people to be rewarded from the pool. If it were simultaneously matched by the same number of free upvotes, at least there would be some sense of parity.

At that point we are just back to giving every new account 15 SP for free, which at least is a lot easier to keep up with and see the immediate problems with, as opposed to providing a multiplier for SP which is semi-obscure.

I think there are some ways to avoid this. To be honest I have not completely researched this and neither completely calculated it through because I want community input on these things first before I dig deeper into it.

An easy way to avoid this is to base curation not only on how close someone got to the actual result but also on how big the distance was between after the own vote and the final result.

(After I voted 1$it got to 1 out of 20$ (final result) which is a bigger distance than after a whale voted 19$and got to 19$ out of 20$).

However, I do think that the general approach is
a) Less controversial than downvotes
b) More what we actually want.

"It is certainly possible to imagine a system which decouples curation and tipping/reward and it's probably a good idea to do so because it would have a number of positive knock on effects."

This. The present curation mechanism also has a number of negative effect that severing curation from rewards eliminates.

"Specifically as regards downvotes, the idea of "free downvotes" as it stands already violates one of the central axioms of the system, effectively that your stake determines your ability to affect the distribution of the rewards pool. Giving people free 100% downvotes means that your stake is effectively multiplied when it comes to reducing the power of other people to be rewarded from the pool."

This too. I expected a far different result from EIP, and remain mystified why we got what we did. I'm glad we got this result instead of what I expected, but I do not understand why we did at all.

So in the provided example the bettor/curator would receive a larger curation reward for their $1 bet than the whale's$19 bet? Not sure I understand how you mean this.

This would be useful for those posts that continue to provide value long after their initial rewards have been paid. Certain posts explaining features,or linking to resources noobs need to find when they get here, do continue to provide value, and should continue to provide rewards.

Such posts are presently lacking incentive in favor of posts that merely have more impact in the short term, IMHO.

I am intrigued, but also befuddled by this idea. I think @lextenebris raises excellent points regarding curation rewards, that may be a lot of what perplexes me. Not grasping how this change would affect curation rewards, and since that's half the battle anymore, I reckon I should before deciding if this is better than what we got now.

It would get a larger relative curation not a larger curation value. The 19$bet could still get 5$ curation (around 25% of the bet) but the 1$ bet could get 50 cents (50%)

I don't agree with the "free downvotes" part. You have to be able to direct values upwards as well as downwards. And you should not have to "lose out" on money by directing rewards downwards instead of upwards. The previous system created a false motivator. Everyone only upvoted because they made money with this.

If anyone were to listen to me on the subject (and they don't, which means I can safely say anything I want to), I would probably point out that "curation" doesn't mean in any other context what it means on the Steem blockchain. Not even close or near.

What it means here is that you are fiscally rewarded for interacting with the blockchain, effectively. It is a system that starts with the basic assumption that unless they pay you to use it, you won't. That the basic value proposition is a net negative from their perspective.

Anyone who has ever designed games can interpret that. More importantly is that anyone who uses the platform understands that even if they can't articulate that, and it is a persistent erosive force on the community.

That it is coupled with a user experience which is at least five years behind cutting edge in the social media space, a market in which being six months behind means you have a real problem? Is it any surprise that the heyday of Steem was two years ago or more when the payoffs, in a very literal sense, were notable money?

The present curation mechanism has a huge number of negative effects that breaking it away from any kind of reward system would improve, and not just for consumers but for developers. If they can no longer fall back on the assumption that the value of the token will motivate people to use their interfaces so they don't have to be very good, we might actually see some development on that front.

And that's not to minimize the work of SteemPeak/PeakD. They have put in a whole lot of work to bring the user experience on the Steem blockchain up to something that was acceptable around 2013. That is a huge amount of work. But it's inherently limited by the nature of the schema underlying the database which is the Steem blockchain and the mechanisms by which users interact with it.

Mechanically, the screwed up downvote system are a lot less destructive than the ultimately designed-to-fail "curation" system. In a real sense, we are protected in an ongoing way by the fact that people don't actually want to go out and find content to downvote. Not a lot of protection, but a little bit.

The downvote mechanics reward the wrong thing from people, just like the "curation" system. Part of the problem is that they tie fiscal control to a lot of mechanics which shouldn't have a financial toehold in decision-making.

I absolutely believe that it is possible to imagine better systems. I absolutely believe we should do so. I likewise absolutely believe that doing so will be no part of the efforts of any of the Steem/Hive developers because their bread is buttered by staying locked into a system that rewards behaviors that they have already developed, whether or not it serves the needs of the greater community whatsoever. Sad, but there it is.

" Everyone only upvoted because they made money with this."

Here's the problem. That is absolutely false, provably so, always has been, and this was known before the system was designed.

There are no financial rewards for voting on Reddit, Fakebook, or on any platform that preceded Steem, but voting has strongly featured on all social media because that's a lot of what social interaction is about.

What curation rewards actually are is a deceptive mechanism to reward whales.

I have never - ever - cast a vote because of rewards. People do not actually have opinions because it makes them money. If they claim they do, they are lying in order to get money.

Society actually long pre-existed money, and is far more valuable in every sense than money. Were Hive structured to effect societal values the fake rewards for curation would not exist. Steem was structured to make the founders rich, and it did. They're gone now, and we're on Hive, because the exit of the founders removed the core purpose of Steem, and caused it to die.

Hive needs to restructure it's rewards and governance to reflect the actual valuations society depends on, or it too will die. Governance being subject only to financial influence ensures that when monopoly arises Hive will become the sole possession of the monopoly, exactly as did Steem. Presently the whales that ninjamined their stakes exercise that monopoly power over governance, all ~dozen of them or so (if you count inactive whales, a couple dozen or three), and do so for reasons known only to them.

In time their stake will pass to others, and the reasons Hive is governed will become the reasons those new stakeholders have. This is the factual reality of DPoS as undertaken on Hive presently.

Well, that's definitely preferable to the extant system, IMHO. At least it supplies a superable reason for curation rewards.

I'm not actually sure that is where we need to aim, TBQH, but it's sure food for thought.

I suspect that present circumstances do actually necessitate Hive evolution towards natural societal valuations, or Hive will diseventuate. You're not wrong on any point you make above, but existential circumstances force the whales that have inherited the founders' position as the purpose of Hive either to effect a robust purpose for Hive, or it will be abandoned by people that need a functional mechanism to ensure survival.

It's literally an existential threat to humanity that we do not have functional society at present. Hive will evolve or die. You may be right it will not evolve, and I am continually faced with demonstrations of that refusal to evolve.

However, plenty of goodwill and understanding is possessed by devs experienced with Hive, and faced with existential threat today. I fully expect a functional platform to arise, because it is necessary to surmount the burgeoning threat(s) faced by society presently.

Very shortly people will not have interest in wasting time on the internet, but will need censorship resistant communications. If folks don't need it, they won't bother with it, and if we don't need communications, Hive will die.

It is possible to chip rocks and survive. If Hive does not enable society to maintain forthright communications but remains a mechanism to economically favor oligarchs, it will not survive cost/benefit analyses. I believe it can, but not without radical improvements, including enabling people to access it even though ISPs try to stop them, domain registrars doing the same, and similar censorship efforts.

Normalcy bias is going to kill a lot of people. Hive can survive, but only if it surmounts the philosophical deficits that presently effect governance.

I correct "everyone" to "the huge chunk of the stake".

And definitely, hive needs a restructuring of the value proposition of this. Removing "curation" is from a game theory point of few not good. We want to have people with a good stake act in their interest for the good of the platform. Motivating this the right way is difficult.

I believe that curation is a good idea, but I also think that there should be a risk for the voter if done irresponsibly (losing stake for voting plagiarism or milk posts for example).

I suspect that present circumstances do actually necessitate Hive evolution towards natural societal valuations, or Hive will diseventuate. You're not wrong on any point you make above, but existential circumstances force the whales that have inherited the founders' position as the purpose of Hive either to effect a robust purpose for Hive, or it will be abandoned by people that need a functional mechanism to ensure survival.

It's literally an existential threat to humanity that we do not have functional society at present. Hive will evolve or die. You may be right it will not evolve, and I am continually faced with demonstrations of that refusal to evolve.

From my perspective, the problem with that is that the people in charge, no matter how much they argue they aren't really in charge, haven't inherited a system which is based around natural societal valuation. They have inherited an algorithm which attempts to define valuation and decide valuation which is unconnected to mechanics which allow individuals to demonstrate valuation.

As long as the purpose for what is a low rent social media platform is described as "existential," there might be an insufficient amount of self-awareness to actually build a product that people want to use and get value out of. Framing it in apocalyptic terms, particularly cast against what is on ironically being promoted as an actual apocalypse and certainly might be at local economic levels, just makes it all the more ludicrous.

You might could make a reasonable argument that the absence of a functional society/functional coherent community in the Steem/Hive ecosystem is an "existential threat" to Steem/Hive, but humanity not only has one functional society but hundreds, probably thousands. All of them work for local definitions of the term "work." Not all of them are aesthetic. Not all of them are equally effective. Not all of them are equally efficient. I don't like all of them. All of them work. All of them are functional.

Some of them have levels of dysfunctionality – but if we're going to hold it against societies we have to hold it against individuals doubly hard, and I don't think you're going to like where that goes.

Very shortly people will not have interest in wasting time on the internet, but will need censorship resistant communications. If folks don't need it, they won't bother with it, and if we don't need communications, Hive will die.

Then they won't be using Hive. Hive is not censorship resistant. It's just not. We've seen mechanically that it isn't, we've seen culturally that it isn't, we've seen technically that it isn't – it just isn't.

I don't have as apocalyptic a vision as you do. At least not for the greater Western world. Too much business, too much society, too much culture is dependent on high-speed, low friction communication. I don't think that people are going to be interested in transitioning back to an early 19th-century standard of living, at least when it comes to their individual experience. The Internet, good or ill, is going to be with us forever, and as long as there is a way to look at things, people will have an interest in wasting time on the Internet. Just like people had an interest in wasting time in libraries, wasting time reading books, wasting time reading newspapers, wasting time reading pamphlets, wasting time in coffee houses talking about politics they could never affect, wasting time doing all the things that humans have historically wasted time doing.

As I have said for years at this point, Steem/Hive needs to actually provide something of value to the user base. Not pay off the user base but give them a reason to make going to the platform and interacting with other people gratifying in and of itself. That is where the value actually lies.

Society doesn't need Hive. There are 10,000 other competitors out in the world and one of them will be equally as useful. Facebook and Twitter do the job for most people right now. Mastodon, for all the issues with their cultural milieu, does the job for their folks right now. Scuttlebutt, if you really want true decentralized, uncensorable communication, does the job right now. Arguably, all of those platforms do the job better than S/H right now. And if we're just looking at tokenized micro-payment reward systems, LBRY does the job better right now.

Normalcy bias is going to kill a lot of people. Hive can survive, but only if it surmounts the philosophical deficits that presently effect governance.

100,000 years plus of human societal evolution and there is no generalized consensus on "the philosophical deficits that presently effect governance". The guys behind Steem/Hive couldn't even successfully fend off a financial acquisition by a not particularly clever multimillionaire. I'm not sure that looking to them to solve the existential problems of humanity is thinking that's going to be profitable.

Hive just needs to be kind of useful and kind of interesting. Just the same as it ever was, just the same as everything has to be, and just enough. I know that phrasing things in an epic, titanic, over the top way makes people in cryptocommodity feel as though what they're doing is important. Sometimes what they're actually doing is important, though not in terms of calling off the apocalypse. If you want people to take you seriously you have to actually have a proportionate view of the world.

In that sense, it's too bad that COVID 19 dropped at the same time as Hive. It throws a very harsh light on a lot of the pretension that was previously just a silly affectation because, comparatively, it could be afforded. Now – not so much. Now if you want to sell an idea you actually have to stand in the towering, colossal shadow of a real potential economic collapse. It makes trite things look trite.

Hive can't even govern itself at this point. You only get to talk about existential threats to the governance of mankind when you can organize something more useful than a money sink.

Ratchet down the dialogue. Pull down the pretentiousness. Lay off the apocalyptic. Start somewhere you can actually achieve like "is this thing even fit for the purpose it was defined to fulfill?" Do that first and then we can talk about changing the world. We won't, but at least we could. Talk about it.

LOL I have no doubt I am pretentious. I appreciate being reminded of it, because I would prefer to not be.

"You only get to talk about existential threats to the governance of mankind when you can organize something more useful than a money sink."

But, this is my point. Alas, I am incompetent to design it, and don't know anyone that is.

I suspect you haven't read the papers I have regarding symptoms of SARS2 not discussed on CNN. Regardless, I am confident humanity itself isn't facing extinction. Money is. Society(s) is. But not the human species.

In a couple years the immunity of banksters to the AIDS, sterilization, and ability of the virus to become indefinitely dormant in nerve cells will no longer be unknown, but by then Hive won't have mattered for a couple years.

A functional platform could prevent that from happening. I don't think smarter people than I couldn't make Hive into a functional platform. Time is short to enable that uncensored flow of information that can enable people to undertake successful initiatives to prevent their deaths or forced slavery.

We'll see what happens. If the curious geeks read the scientific papers I have that reveal these effects of SARS2, how DRACO works, and enable significant survival of free society that's what will happen. If they don't, Hive dies. Of course, that's not my primary concern. It's just that Hive is about the only possibility I am aware of that enables that to happen.

I don't see pocketnet, Mastodon, or the others as potential as is Hive of making that happen, but that's possibly just nescience. At least, I hope it is.

Ignoring you said 'curation' when I think you actually meant 'curation rewards', I will move on.

"...there should be a risk for the voter if done irresponsibly (losing stake for voting plagiarism or milk posts for example)."

And this is something you can undertake with the betting proposal?