It sounds too complicated.

My suggestion is to take a step back and simply let community dynamics play out for a couple of weeks - groups tend to alter behavior automatically to resolve issues without the "system" having to be changed. 

Here is a comment I wrote on [another thread](https://steemit.com/ned/@abit/ned-started-voting-randomly-on-new-posts#@alyssas/re-abit-ned-started-voting-randomly-on-new-posts-20160602t141902104z) which was complaining about Ned upvoting noobs:

>It is better that the rewards get spread about rather than just concentrated on a few.

>Suppose the voting bots are designed to look at your blog posts, assess the average earnings and then compile a list of those with an average above a certain amount. They then automatically vote for any new posts people on the list make.

>If the "usual suspects" are no longer getting the rewards and the new people are, then the lists start to change. In fact if the whales spread their love far and wide enough, it will become impossible for a bot to tell from the previous average, which will be the new high paying posts. The owners will be forced to log in and read - because if the rewards are genuinely going to those with great content you should be able to find this out only by reading...

>And lo and behold Steemit's problems are solved!

Well, the fact that this post has almost $1k in upvotes in 7 minutes without a comment is rather telling that something needs to be done. I would like some clarification - it may be obvious but I missed it in the post. 

How is M decided? Why don't N people show the unblinded vote? It seems we should see the results of all votes or am I reading something wrong? 

How does this prevent all the bots from automatically 5 staring the typical "high value" posts? Right now it seems that bots are doing a lot of voting for you, ned, and a few others posts. If the 5 star bots are still the majority vote, they still win because they (currently) have the most weight and (also currently) most number of votes. 

Overall long term I see this as a good plan once there is much more content - however it doesn't seem to fix the problem as it stands right now. The bots continue, and as long as they are all close (5 star for the "big guys") then they still win.

EDIT: So M is the subset of N that choose to reveal their vote. I guess I was confused because there is no reason *not* to reveal that it didn't make sense to have a different number there. I see it though. My other question still stands.

It's too complicated and there could be lots of legitimate reasons for not revealing your vote. Also I think we're in danger of losing sight as to why we reward curators. 

They are rewarded because of their contribution and contribution is not just limited to voting, hence a mindless piece of code can do it. No, we must reward all of curation, not just voting. 

Also lets keep in mind the function of voting, if I vote something up on facebook it is because I like it, if I flag something as inappropriate (I've never done that) then it's because it's spam. IF facebook had a downvote button, I  would use it to show my displeasure with the content in question.

So before we go any further, we either have to add a spam vote button, or turn the downvote button to a spam button, I believe this is an important function if Steemit is going to function like other social networks with the bonus that one can make money.

Here is my simple solution to the problem (although of course I realise the coding may not be simple):

1. Every vote starts off being weighted by the same by the system and there are no extra prizes for being the first to vote on a soon-to-be popular post.

2. Voters who comment on the post they upvote get a new (secret) classification.

3. If a voters comments are continually downvoted as spam, voter is classified as a bot and the vote shall forever more be classed as valueless.

4. The more comments, the more replies to their comments, upvotes etc. the higher value those votes have.

5. The algorithm is based on, comments, replies, reply votes, etc. but the main thing is the exact formula is a secret.

6. Voters who comment AND share on a rival social media platform will get a higher voter status (still secret).

7. Voters who vote, comment, reply, share and post their own (value, or at least non-negative content) are awarded the highest status.

8. This is the biggie; the algorithm resets every 2-3 months and everybody's vote goes back to an equal footing (except the known bots, they stay negative. There can be a slow residual increase on a curator's vote value over the course of time, but this should be years.

It is important to skew it this way, simply because the rest of the platform is skewed in this way, we are encouraged to be long-term investors, in lieu of the fact that we can only withdraw over a 104 week period. So by the same token, curators and contributors alike should gain advantages by showing long term commitment to the system.

So in summary there is a heirarchy that makes sense.

vote = n

vote + comment = n + 1

vote + comment + share = n + 2

vote + comment + share + comment reply = n + 3 (each comment reply assigned value)

vote + comment + share + comment reply + original post status = n + 4

vote + comment  + spam vote = n -1

and so onto voter value

Voter value = 0

Voter value + 100 votes = 0 + .1

Voter value + 100 votes + 100 vote/comments = 0 + 1

Voter value + 100 votes + 100 vote/comments + 100 vote/comment replies = 0 + 2

Voter value + 100 votes + 100 vote/comments + 100 vote/comment replies + 100 vote/comment replies/shares = 0 + 3

Voter value + 100 votes + 100 vote/comments + 100 vote/comment replies + 100 vote/comment replies/shares + 100/vote/comment/replies/shares/original content = 0 + 4

There we go, the figures and the timescales are arbitrary, but I bet that would work and any bot sophisticated enough to game that system, would actually be contributing to the system, so would deserve rewards.

Is it possible to just have votes be secret like Reddit has done? You know something is voted up but you don't know how many votes it received or how much money it recceived? Of course people could still check the blockchain with their bots but it might make voting more honest for people not using bots.

What if you keep it like it is BUT give the **option** for "advance mode"?
If you press the "advance mode" button you will have the  5-star way of voting, if not it stays as it is!

So the "lazy" users will not be affected and the advanced users will just click on that button!
That "advanced mode" can get more advanced  at any time (more options) without the fear it will heart mass adoption since it is targeted to advanced users only! (they choose it)

Let me see if I got this straight.  the problem is we don't want the  bots to come in and just upvote  on every post that dan or  any other post and take all the rewards and make it unfair to the other members, right? or am i way off base?  if i'm right then could you add more of the voting  power to the people that contribute more to Steemit?  for example the bots  probably don't post  any content , they probably just come on and just upvote post,  But  the members who are posting content  and adding more value to the site could have more weight added to there voting power.  So basically if i am a bot or just try to come on here just to upvote and don't add any content of any kind it makes my voting power pretty much useless. now if i am creating good content and posting regularly the my voting power goes up. and when i do upvote something then the more i share in the rewards. wouldn't that take the power away from the bots  and give it to the people that contribute to steemit? You could combine  your steem power with  a contrubuting power ( how much content plus the quality of the content contributed to the site) to determine your voting power.    i don't know if that makes any sense at all or am i just way off base?

There is a lot information left on blockchain to make prediction. Who voted for whom in the past. Top 50 payouts. Just username is enough to predict. How could we hide reputation of the person?

The more info we hide, the less interesting it becomes to average people. People starting to use bots, because they wanting leverage their knowledge, so knowledge should be public for everyone to leverage. 

For bots having same voting strategy is not profitable, it's encourage people to invent more sophisticated algorithms and it's good. 

Why people perceive that if @dan recives 10 votes in first minute as wrong thing with a system? For me it is perfectly right. He has reputation and system fast and correctly measures it. There is no problem with that for sure.

Is it problem that first voters make profits? Make vote allocation linear? We could do it anytime, but they do work of measuring reputation, they should be compensated then! Is is useful, we could take post like this and filter them and put in "reputation" category or something. Top ten reputable post! Public information is useful for everyone.

>  This downside may be insignificant considering how many people trust the same service to collect their vote, secure their private keys

Huh? I thought the private keys are client-side.

>  Is the proposed user interface simple enough that most people can use it without thinking?

Without thinking? I doubt it. Upvoting something good can be done without thinking. But when I rate items on a "stars" scale  (Amazon, etc.), it does require thought to decide if an appropriate rating. Also if you look at how many items often get rated, there is a concentration of 5 star and 1 star ratings. That suggests to me people don't like thinking about the fine gradations.

Here's the kernel of a simpler alternative, which captures some of the prediction market component without needing blinding, and also without needing a complex UI.

Post score is a number from 0 to 1 which changes as votes are cast. Perhaps this could be displayed as a "star" or numeric 1-10 rating (tbd, and this aspect could be split tested). Each vote is viewed as a prediction of whether the future post score will be higher (upvote) or lower (downvote) than the current score at the time the vote is placed. Votes are evaluated for payouts on the basis of how much the post score changes between the time the vote is cast and the end of the scoring period (24 hours?).  Total payout is some combination (tbd) of resulting score and vote weight cast.

This provides an incentive to downvote, if the post is getting too many early upvotes relative to its more thoughtfully perceived quality, or vice versa.

EDIT: One detail I omitted is that every post starts with a prior average of 0.5 with some predetermined small but nonzero weight. This provides a basis for evaluating even the first vote, and it also provides a mechanism to continue to give some very small weight to later votes that endorse a strong upvote (because the average will never quite reach 1, even if all votes are up).

Another issue: This looks like a one round system, which means people who vote after the blind period are shut out from participating, especially if the blinding period is short. If the blinding period is long, then vote results won't be available for ranking or display for a long time. Both of these are bad for usability and user engagement. I prefer the attribute of the current system where even late votes still "count", although they may not numerically count for much (casual users are probably more influenced by the former). Add multiple rounds? Well, I'll not go there.

I downvoted the post not because I disagree with the post or think it is a quality post but because I do not think that the interests of Steem are served by every platform or devteam update or request for community feedback pulling thousands of dollars from the reward pools that go to ordinary users. The reward consensus algorithm also disproportionately rewards these posts since they are the only thing that 100% of Steem users have in common (aside from being human, etc.).

Can someone put this into words that make sense to me so that I can form an opinion? Being stupid sucks. :/