I have been vocal on Discord and in various comments on Hive about my dislike for the current Layer 1 downvote protocol -- which sanctions and enables ‘free stake-weighted downvotes’, ostensibly as a method to police and punish ‘bad actors’.
I understand (to some extent) the historical precedents that led to the current system. I recognize that a very real free-rider problem exists when downvotes are costly and downvotes are being relied upon as the primary weapon to punish and/or disincentivize ‘bad actors’.
In this post, I am not arguing against the current Layer 1 protocol (I might do that sometime in the future, though).
All my commentary herein is directed toward the Proof of Brain tribe.
I have been an active member of the POB tribe since Day 3 of its launch. I have been and remain bullish about the tribe and its token. An exceptional community has arisen; many members of the community are veterans of Hive/Steem who are interested in experimenting with better ways to do ‘proof of brain’. Also, there are a fair number of tribe members who, like myself, are new to Hive and thus bring an ‘outsider’ perspective. Both perspectives are needed if the tribe is to reach new heights while avoiding past missteps.
Personally, I see DVs as toxic, especially within a tribe/community, except for clearly-banned activity that is objectively demonstrable, such as plagiarism.
When it comes to spam, circle-voting, over-rewarding, and other activities that are potentially harmful to the tribe, but involve significant degrees of subjectivity, I gladly offer my time and skills to help develop suitable alternative methods (that either don’t require DVs, or provide safeguards against malicious abuse of DVs).
First Draft of Proposed ‘Rules for Downvoting’
For the sake of the POB tribe, in the near future I will be formally proposing the following (or similar) ‘rules’ governing downvoting:
- Malicious downvoting of any POB post is prohibited.
- First offense will result in a warning.
- Second offense will result in the downvoting account being muted for a period of 10 days.
- Third offense will result in the downvoting account being permanently muted.
- Suspected alt accounts will be muted as well (e.g. accounts with significant delegations or transfers from the muted account); independent account holders receiving legitimate delegations or transfers from the muted account can appeal by providing evidence of independence relative to the muted account.
- ‘Malicious downvoting’ is defined as downvoting any POB post for any reason other than [1] plagiarism or [2] behavior determined to be improper via an approved community-consensus protocol.
- ‘Plagiarism’ includes copy/paste plagiarism, ‘spinning’ (rewording without attribution, e.g. for the purpose of evading plagiarism-detection algorithms), and partial plagiarism.
- Evidence of plagiarism must be linked by the downvoter in a ‘comment’ to the downvoted post.
- Downvoting for improper behavior other than plagiarism shall be governed by a community-consensus protocol (to be developed in the near future).
- de minimus downvoting is permitted, provided it does not result in a cumulative POB reward reduction for a single post or comment exceeding 0.5 POB. Any downvote(s) cast after the 0.5-POB threshold has been reached on a given post or comment will be considered malicious.
- de minimus downvoting can be used for whatever reason, such as a ‘flag’ to alert others to investigate the post, a form of playful banter, a statement of dislike for the post, disagreement with the content, etc.
I am planning to submit a formal proposal of the above (or similar) rules within the next week or so (in accordance with the request for such proposals outlined here by @proofofbraionio, under the heading “Moving Forward”).
Please feel free to provide constructive suggestions. I will consider incorporating helpful suggestions into my upcoming formal proposal.