If I purchased tokens in order to support content, that's coming out my pocket. Well, technically it's value moving from one wallet/account to another. Voting is a new form of tipping. We just call it something else and pretend we're not tipping.
I often wonder why it's necessary to stick to that old original vision from Steemit.
If I buy LEO (as example) in order to support content, that is coming out of my pocket. It's like buying a subscription or the rights to tip. It's also one hell of a good deal. Consumers can support/tip content creators at no direct cost since the money they spent remains in their possession. Consumers buying the tokens with the goal of tipping/voting is what actually has the potential to literally increase the value of the token. One content creator with enough of a voice could pull millions of tokens off the market at these prices and make one whale out of thousands of supporters.
If the entire platform was loud about that concept, consumers become the investors (but not the only investors). Instances of actual content is supported organically and gets a lot of eyes. Those eyes share and those instances of content traveling outside become free marketing for the entire platform. That sharing behavior is actually what helped Youtube explode onto the scene and become massive.
I look at some of these instances where downvotes are used to lower rewards. I suppose one the main contributing factors would be those voting aren't actually consumers. Acting as promoters, but blind. Pushing the work up to the high traffic area and even there it's struggling to get views. If a promoter did that in life with those results, they'd be out of a job.
But I often wonder if people would be bothered if a 'big name' showed up, made a few 'whales' out of thousands of consumers, then earned the most each day, plus had eyes and engagement galore. Downvotes in that scenario would seem out of place. But if those consumers, over time, got lured into the trap of setting and forgetting (auto votes without views), that would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. At that point the content creator did nothing wrong, yet they'd be penalized, because some third party offered a service/interference. **Hmmm. Just thinking out loud at this point.
Didn't read all that but I disagree with the very first paragraph. i don't agree that voting is tipping. Voting is fundamentally social and collaborative. If you want to tip, just tip.
BTW, this doesn't mean that you can't buy HIVE to support content with voting. You can, but it has to be within the consensus of stakeholders that content is worth supporting. And often it will be. But if you want to act purely independently, and not give other stakeholders a say over it, again, just tip.
That's fine. Attempting to describe how content consumers are stakeholders and votes can be considered a form of tip. Wasn't presenting an argument. Merely an idea.
Fair
I'm curious, smooth. You've always been an enigma to me. Were you involved with creating the original vision, methodology, terms, general direction of this project?
No, I was a community member who found the project from their first post on bitcointalk. I was then a top witness for the first several years. In both roles I offered feedback and input to the development team but I've never been a part of it.
So just going along, play-by-play in a sense, like we're all doing.
I'm getting close to five years on the block myself.
Witnesses, developers. That's all fine. Respected roles.
Over the years, from my perspective and based on the behavior I've witnessed along with the role I played, after this long, I doubt the usage of downvotes will ever match that original vision. Consensus. Majority of people, over the years, aren't using them for anything other than countering exploits and abuse not because they're doing something wrong. It's because that's how they'd prefer to see things. Attempting to normalize downvotes to coincide with that original vision is going against the flow. That's an observation, not an opinion. I'm not anti-downvote. I feel confident at this point pushing to 'normalize' downvotes to coincide with that original vision is a lost cause. It's hard to find someone who's being honest fully against downvotes being used as a tool to counter exploits and abuse. That's the way the world went. Probably worth looking at and reconsidering what downvotes are meant to be used for.
Actually I don't care about the original vision. A lot of it was pretty dumb, and quite possibly designed in large part to extract the maximum value for the founders regardless of longer term project success (which they did in some ways).
From first principles I know that a system like this needs either effective downvotes or some suitable substitute to avoid a race to the bottom where the most exploitative take progressively more of the rewards and any other investors flee because there is no value to watching yourself be exploited, nor are there good prospects for appreciation in such a system.