RE: The horrendous failure of curating Quality Content
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Why is this brought up so often when it so rarely happens, though? Especially that it gets zero'd out.
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Why is this brought up so often when it so rarely happens, though? Especially that it gets zero'd out.
Because it’s a systemic problem. The system itself has a problem.
Whether or not the abuse is rare is not the issue. The fact that the system allows such abuse with impunity is the problem.
The fact that it is brought up so often should, in and of itself, be a strong indicator to those who have the power to initiate change that some serious consideration is warranted.
Some fairly straightforward countermeasures would go a long way toward minimizing the threat.
One simple improvement would be making DV power a witness parameter, similar to HBD APY.
Another would be to allow free “Counter DVs” that are less powerful than DVs, but free, and can thus be used by “the community” to proactively counter DV abuse.
Yeah I just feel it's brought up way more than it actually occurs, and some times in posts that were barely even relevant. It's quite a complex situation to fix, I'm not denying that it can be a big problem down the line. I mean imagine if someone like Elon has been buying up stake over the years and decides to fuck over everyone here after powering up just so the system doesn't become a competitor.
Either way, I'd love to discuss possible solutions, do some simulations through them to see weaknesses and how they could potentially be abused as well, etc, just a bit tired of hearing the same complaints over and over without many not even attempting to come up with a solution or discussing them (not you, I know you've proposed some ideas in the past similar to now, but it's just not been something that has clicked for me or felt right yet).
That idea of a system where downvotes are measured through a similar way we provide witness approvals would go a long way. Instead of HivePower determining the influence of a downvote, the community would have to vote for you to have your downvotes have certain power.
Granted someone could just vote for their alt and give it nuking power, so this measure would need some tweaking, but I like it. Either the community gives you the power to downvote hard, or your downvotes is worth pennies.
I think this idea has merit. I think it may require quite a bit of changes to Hive code. But it is just as valuable to the future as other software changes, so hopefully it gathers support.
I appreciate that.
Without question, any proposed changes need to be thoroughly examined for potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities to various attack vectors prior to implementation.
The more I've thought about it, the more I am drawn to solutions that ultimately empower the witnesses. The witnesses are the ones we are predominantly relying upon, to safeguard against hostile forces.
My basic thought here is that giving a strong lever to the witnesses (e.g. enabling them to quickly ramp up or down the relative strength of DVs) would preemptively discourage potential bad actors from even attempting to game the system on a large scale, because their efforts could be squashed in very short order, i.e. by a majority (or super-majority) of the witnesses adjusting the controlling parameters.
My current suggestion in that regard would be for two new witness parameters to be added via a future HF:
dv_strengthandcounter_dv_strength, with a max and min for both hardcoded into the HF.Every time rewards are distributed from the rewards pool, if there are DVs or Counter-DVs associated with a given post, then those values get modified by the median values from the current top-20 witnesses for
dv_strengthandcounter_dv_strength.Whenever
dv_strength== 1 andcounter_dv_strength== 0, that would represent today's status quo.This would allow some experimentation with very limited risk (because the witnesses could quickly restore everything to the current status quo if any problems were to arise).
For example, the witnesses could start by slowly reducing
dv_strengthfrom 1.0 to progressively lower levels.As long as community-wide anti-abuse efforts (related to plagiarism, spam, etc.) remain strong, then the potential for DV abuse keeps being reduced, without an increase in other forms of abuse.
However, if and when other forms of abuse begin to ramp-up, the witnesses could respond by quickly ramping up
dv_strength.Just implementing
dv_strengthas a witness parameter would be a significant improvement, imho.Even so, I would like to see free "Counter DVs" enabled as well. It would be harder to implement (codewise), but it would help democratize DVs and make them much less toxic. People who receive DVs without any significant Counter-DVs will know that those DVs were 'deserved'. People who receive DVs then get loads of support from Counter-DVs can feel vindicated. If other people wish to pile on more DVs to counter the Counter-DVs, then so be it. As long as it's a community affair, rather than simply 1 or 2 whales acting unilaterally, then that's all worthwhile engagement, imho.
In fact, there might be some front-ends that would tweak their trending algorithms to specifically elevate posts that are receiving a lot of DVs and Counter-DVs, because it would promote posts that lots of individuals are passionate about (on both sides of a given issue).
For a Counter-DV system to work, the strength of Counter-DVs would need to be significantly less than the strength of DVs. I am thinking 25% to 50% might be ideal. However, as a witness parameter, the witnesses would collectively decide what's best.
Would it be possible to set up guest accounts on Hive without official registration? One feature of easy access is commenting.
I often feel the need to simply react to certain content on platforms by commenting without having to register straight away. Not everyone wants to have their own account and produce content. The registration requirement is present on all major platforms and it's annoying when you really only want to comment, nothing more.
I think this possibility is underestimated.
Especially if you can comment without registering, it seems to me that in the long run it will bring new users who first get used to the platform without becoming immediate actors themselves. Since almost all forums/sites have a registration requirement nowadays, that would probably be a unique selling point again.
I suppose it would also encourage the easy sharing of content, because if non-hivers can react to content by commenting because, for example, a post was shared on fb, yt or others and they saw it and want to react to it. It could then be shared even more for this reason of easy access.
A second aspect that is probably less considered is that of unbiased commenting, when users who do not receive votes can also speak freely as guest commentators, since they receive neither rewards nor downvotes anyway.
I would find it interesting if only because it enriches publications with guests who don't look at rewards or whether they could make themselves popular or unpopular.
@starkerz and @theycallmedan (@threespeak, @spknetwork) are working on tying ceramic accounts to Hive. The idea is that you can easily start posting and commenting simply by linking your email address or some other identification method to a ceramic/Hive account. The account can receive upvotes and any earnings from your comments would be exclusively associated with you. At some point in the future you can claim those rewards by following through with the full onboarding process.
Also, @anomadsoul and the Leo folks are doing something similar, see their recent DHF proposal where they explain their plan for One-Click Onboarding (and add your support to the proposal, if you think what they're planning to do seems worthwhile).
Thank you very much for this info. One-click onboarding sounds good.
I did this on Steemit and called them Guest accounts. I published posts that described Steemit and contained the posting key. I invited people to use Guest1 as the username and paste the posting key into the password box. It was very simple and worked. This let them comment on posts and get feedback. I think it helped them form a bond to the platform.
Very interesting. Have you already considered this for Hive? How did you monitor whether the guest commenters actually used guest1 etc. as their username and was it safe for you to give out the posting key? That is, the use of usernames that already exist as their own account did not lead to confusion? Not that there aren't some jokers out there.
It has been a while, but it seemd to be fine.
I kept it simple: Guest1 is username, paste this long string into the password box. No one said anything bad, and most were short 1-2 word comments. I didn't run any numbers at the time, or if I did I have forgotten. it was a huge response , but enough that I knew it worked and could be scaled up Guest2, Guest3.
Excuse me if I keep asking, but if you don't have your own hive account, you can still log in using the regular login procedure by entering Guest1 as username and the Posting Key (which you published publicly readable on your blog)? Have I understood that correctly? How does the system recognize it if the existing Posting Key does not correspond to the usual username (which would be mine)? Or how did you make it to work?
I am not very skilled in the technical things.
In any case, thank you for the info and it's very interesting that this had a great response.
No problem.
I created a new account, with a name Guest1, and then publish a post on Hive, which invited potential new users to come in and try the platform for free by using the username Guest1 and the posting key I published in the post.
Thanx.
Exactly.
It happens enough that not only are current users intimidated, but keeps users away from the platform because of this feature. I've used many other blockchain platforms and because of Hive's reputation they'll never sign up. More people know about Hive than is thought and they'll never come, because unequally weighted downvotes are equated with censorship.
Rationalize all you want, it's how it's viewed and that's what matters. The masses aren't going to blog, so if you want them to come, standards must be lowered and whales must settle for smaller votes as 'crap' content earns and those users build stake.
It's that or stagnation and the proof is that Hive's userbase is now smaller than ever...
You might want to read the thread under @trustparadox's reply to acidyo.
I did
Please look at my blog. You will see several posts with over 200 upvotes and zero rewards.
and what have you done to get hivewatchers downvoting you?
Reused my own content: words and pictures and most recently upvoted my posts with my stake.
Reposting or just re-using here and there?
I would repost.
I stopped this practice more then 2 years ago, because I decided I was being lazy, and I had an endless supply of ideas coming out of my head.
Although I certainly wrote some posts that I felt were good enough to repeat.
Hivewatcher's bot Spaminator eventually stopped downvoting my posts to zero after a few months I think.
But after that they still gave me a downvote on every post, but it was really small. it was a constant reminder not to fall back into the habit of reposting.
Unfortunately I am still technically Blacklisted, so every so often someone who doesn't work for Hivewatchers, but looks up their blacklists will vote my posts to zero .
Unfortunately in April I had my fifth year anniversary and wrote two posts on two consecutuve days. The second post focused on the 80 or 90 thousand upvotes I had given out and how that reflected a focus on engagement. I credited my ability to receive upvotes to my willingness to give out a large number of votes, focusing on the importance of engagement and interaction with others as vital to bulding a network of followers.
Someone read the post and posted a picture in the comments of a chart of votes I had given my self. They were very angry, and soon after that both posts were voted to zero. A suprisingly angry response, and the downvotes came from a new account I hadn't seen before , which was precisely downvoting my posts exactly to zero. An amazing amount of effort to punish me I guess for boasting and voting my own posts.
It's fascinating how I had the badluck to stumble into the radar of someone who gets really angry about self upvoting and has friends willing to downvote people to zero for it.
It is unpleasant and disaapointing to see good posts earn nothing, but I know many people feel there is no alternative then this one tool . It seems that everyone in the blacklist is a nail, and they all get the same hammer, until the downvoter decides to stop. Such is the random nature of things on a large platform.
I understand we all have stake, and do what we wish with it, including some do this. It's a strange type of freedom, which ironically also involves pressuring someone to stop doing what they would like to do, or suffer the wrath of someone with more stake. No system is perfect, but this part is disappointing.
To be more precise Hive watchers stopped voting my posts to zero over a year ago. It was only after someone commented on my five year anniversary post that they were not impressed with my self upvotes that an account called adm started voting my posts to zero again.
Please look at my blog. You will find several posts with over 200 upvotes, but purposely zeroed out rewards.