Hey, @ryzeonline, you do a fantastic job at speaking to both sides of a matter! I would say you're on a par with a skilled orator and or politician. I know the two can seem opposite, but sometimes they can be the same too. The benefit I see in a post like yours is that it allows people on both sides of the issue to self-reflect on how they act or react to things, and inner reflection is helpful!

I got to thinking about how you wrapped up 'Emma's Dilemma' and feel compelled to voice disagreement with some of your conclusions. It is a perfectly valid and stoic approach to take what you consider as "your lumps" when it comes to rewards that get deallocated. However, for some people, being silent in response to such a thing can build internal toxicity to unhealthy levels because it stifles one's expression of discontentment.

Suffice it to say that I agree with you that downvotes are not death, but the average Joe on the street—if you mess around with his money, it could quickly end up leading to less than desirable consequences. That's just something I heard Dave Chappelle speak to when he came out against ViacomCBS after they did him dirty with some contract shenanigans. Fortunately for Dave, things played out okay 👌, and this was after he harnessed his celebrity to appeal to the people's sense of justice and reason.

I like HIVE a lot. And I think after it first started because the map didn't match the territory, the DEVs realized that they had to operate in the clutch and try to perfect the natural problems that arise from a system that got coded rather amorally. I'm sure they would have liked to think that people wouldn't downvote (or flag) high effort articles for political reasons. And for the most part, for a while, the GUI reflected that.

I believe this changed for many reasons. One of the reasons was because they couldn't control the abuse factor, and this didn't matter whether it came from self-votes or bogus flagging that didn't meet the criteria. Essentially, they gave up, and they leaned into the law of the jungle or the desert of the real (if you will) that is HIVE. By now, we can get a lot more creative than giving up on some healthy written yet unofficial (or as official as you'd like it to be) code.

FUN FACT: Did you know that back in the old days on the American frontier, when a man unlawfully killed another, he was labeled by the local Sheriff as an "outlaw." They'd plaster posters all over town with the man's likeness saying something to the effect of "wanted dead or alive." It was the simple act of changing the man's personhood to "outlaw" (or Homo sacer) that allowed people to kill him and suffer no ill legal effect because the man had already flouted the establishment.

Of course, this is apples and oranges, and nobody on some internet dumbshit (HIVE) is talking about killing people. That kind of thing would be batshit crazy, not only that but also just plain wrong. However, I think comparative analogies in the mind space can provide words of wisdom to just about any situation. We should always contrast, compare, and analyze the nature of reality, real games, fake games, all the games, and last but not least, internet games.

Ultimately, I'm a free-will-oriented person. As an aside, I think people ought to carry a gun, but that type of thinking should not suggest that I think people should shoot each other liberally with reckless abandon. That type of power, whether it be to take a man's life, financially censor, or to prevent someone from speaking their peace. That kind of thing should not get promoted with irreverence. Downvotes are the closest thing we have to guns on the HIVE platform. They are not a toy, which is why we ought to promote a healthy respect for the tool.

There is a strong effort on HIVE by some of the fatcats and sadomasochistic whale barnacles to normalize the act of downvoting content. But I think it should be a bit more nuanced than that. If we're going to normalize the act of downvoting, we ought to at least come up with a set of predefined standards that merit a downvote. Even if it's just guidelines, it could help to restore a more habitable atmosphere. 93% nitrogen, 5% oxygen, and 2% argon are not sustainable for people on a platform that wants to grow.

Why is this important? We can try and normalize downvotes until the cows come home. Pardon the turn of phrase; that's a regional idiom that means "for a very long time." However, even if we could successfully do such a thing, it means we've got to rewire the brains of the new person every single time we get a new person. And depending on the failure or success rate of that, we won't retain new people in the same way that assholes cannot keep friends.

Anyhow, I think HIVE needs a constitution when it comes to not meddling with a post's rewards when said meddling becomes "meddlesome." That was just a little subconscious queue for a guy that I know who is not reading this comment as we speak. HIVE is an impressive experiment that manages to successfully juice people for their creativity.

All of that said, please bear in mind that if we don't want to turn into a bunch of snarky malcontents that when we reach the pinnacle, if we end up getting off on a minnow's pain, then we need to alter course a bit. Perhaps terraform the atmosphere so that when people remove their spacesuit helmets, their heads won't explode.

I know that this project is a work in progress. And I'm very familiar with works in progress because WIP is the title of every new article I begin to write. I obsessively go over these articles like a madman to try and make them grammatically as perfect as possible. HIVE ought to recognize that a successful idea in the marketplace of ideas will attempt to mold itself to market demands. This market rule doesn't work when inverted. Imagine a shoe salesman trying to get you to squeeze into something two sizes too small and then having the audacity to shoot you a gnarly sneer for asking him to grab the correct size.

HIVE must comprehend this sooner than later. If we don't realize how to tap into user creativity without serving up cortisol hits—then we're going to lose in the marketspace until we can get better at getting good at serving dopamine hits. Mind you, I'm only speaking to the nature of the game that we're playing, and it's competitive as fuck.

The super cool part about your post is that you've managed to validate everyone's feelings on the matter while also doing so in such a way where they don't feel too disrespected when you acknowledge the perspective of others in the process. It can be either a dark or light quality, good Sir! I hope you wield it well, as a mage of your caliber is no material for the dark side.

And a thousand-odd words later, this will have to be a post, or else I won't respect myself in the morning. Excellent job again, @ryzeonline; you've been in the back of my mind like a splinter because of not only your skilled wordplay but also your ability to quite possibly make the first and most effective: "Crypto for novices 101" manual.

Just imagine, in your mindsauce, how many people desire and crave to learn and understand all of the things crypto in an age of Zimbabwesque hyperinflation. The numbers are real, and it will take someone like yourself to explain the territory so that they can get over the map. I'm not a rich guy; I cannot financially incentivize this for you.

That said, I think if you do how you tend to do, and you post it in the Leo community, you will get paid well for your sacrifice. Not only that, you'd be educating the next class, people like me, people who aren't yet smart enough to suss the difference between a shit coin and an even shittier coin, although I do have the potential to, given a good teacher.

On a more technical note, Steem's blue paper spoke to putting upvote limiters into effect, and it was that function that was to prevent "reward pool abuse." However, people are, as people do, get jealous. They saw the said posts on trending self-voted by stakeholders with voluminous amounts of stake. Regardless of the built-in limiter, thus arose the tragic phenomenon of reward poolicing.

I think that you may have mentioned other Steem forks in an attempt to conflate their lack of downvotes with a failure to launch. I do not believe this is a fair comparison, and I will tell you why. All Steem forks lack the first-mover advantage, and this is probably why Steem, despite its centralized chicanery, still has the edge on HIVE in the marketplace.

They're sitting at 91¢ cent right now. And this, even though the entire downvote posse pulled up stakes and brought it to HIVE to dublup. So it is clear to me that the absence of organized downvote poolice or the so-called rampant "milking" going on there isn't hurting their value any. I believe that a lot can be gained in the decentralized business space when you appeal to everyday people.

P.S. You didn't think I would leave you hanging with that inferior cover of Levan Polkka, did you? No, good Sir, never that! Try getting this one out of your head before next week! [Insert evil laugh.] I've set up camp, and I'm in your head rent-free. You can call the cops, but I'm not going anywhere! This is a civil matter, Sir! Let's get civical!