@ebryans: while I respect you, before accusation, please make the numbers right.

I'm new here so I can't say if you're right or wrong.
However I hope the community will flag every bot comments and posts used to make money. Bots and multiple accounts makes no sense in a *social* network.

>What happened to the flattening of the rewards curve and the n2 realignment?

Maybe in HF18? Source: [sneak comment](https://steemit.com/simplicity/@steemitblog/update-on-simplicity-cutting-complexity-with-steem-0-17-0#@sneak/re-bnoise-re-steemitblog-update-on-simplicity-cutting-complexity-with-steem-0-17-0-20170316t225532396z).

Flag because I disagree

Good job!!
Maybe we can block this hf17 assault on the little guys.
I just unvoted all that have already switched.

Automatic payout of rewards to other accounts is hardly going to make it any easier to do what people are already doing. A bot can automate these payments, if they fit into some nefarious plans. This change puts this function on-chain and makes it accessible to people without bots.

This business of bot voting you mention is highly specious. Votes are scaled according to SP *of the voting account*. Multiple accounts even with a sum of SP same as a single account do not have nearly the same power to affect rewards. And furthermore, the procedure you describe can be done already right now, posts, comments, whatever. So why is it happening so little now? Maybe because it doesn't pay off.

I am voting for the HF, FWIW. I think this is going to be a tight election but there's so much misconceptions about how the system works and what even the new ruleset will entail. I don't think partitioning rewards is really worth doing but maybe it will engage more users in conversation seeking to make the witty remark of the day. This is the only questionable element in my view. 

The rest of the changes are good, although I am uncertain whether they are still using a reverse auction on the extended single 7 day payout. They should be, because otherwise vote sniping (or downvote sniping).

I, like many other witnesses, want to see the square or better still, linear (no scaling of weight according to SP) rewards distribution curve. As a very niche writer and with infrequent posts, since the 'no whales voting' and 'whales downvoting whales upvotes' "experiment", I think my rewards have gone up maybe 3-10% or so.

It's more fair, and the power curve, log<sup>10</sup> turns whales into rockstars that every groupie wants to present lines on their rack to them for the privilege of getting votes. Right now, (and mostly unchanged in HF17),  50 accounts with a sum of 100,000 SP, ceteris paribus (all else being equal) versus 1 whale with 100,000 SP, the whale's vote still works out to (on average) more than 10x the group. 

Hopefully people will start to understand the actual situation. Yes, whales are overly affecting the payouts in the forum. It was designed to do that, and this was a dumb idea. So was inflating the steem to 300 million. I believe the person who was behind both of these ideas has recently, famously jumped ship. I don't think there is more than a few theories in the WP that actually were not thoroughly thrashed in the field.

Hmmm I have valid reason to be confused as I mentioned already a few times those past days. I really have to sit back and just relax . It's getting very hot here.

Due to your comment spamming on @chitty 's [post](https://steemit.com/steem/@chitty/to-my-witness-supporters-lets-vote-on-hardfork-17), and your call for clarification of my objections, I'll detail it.

The crux of your argument is that whales will benefit from the hard fork with new ways to abuse the platform. In a way, I empathise with this and would oppose anything which is clearly _only_ giving power to whales, or increasing their advantage out of proportion with the rest of us.

But actually this is not the case here. While there is potential for abuse, as @timcliff pointed out, but in my opinion the good outweighs the bad. The cheaper and easier account creation is a benefit, so is removing the posting limits. Anyone who spams opens themselves up to flagging, which will reduce their rep and cripple their account, as it should be. I should underline that bots are not seen as a bad thing by everyone.

Your whale / bot commenting example in particular does not seem credible. You contention here comes down to the fact that whales can influence payout disproportionately, and through collusion. As long as power is stake based, we will have this with any change.

Collusion is recognized as a core problem of Steem, one that the founders were very aware of from day 0 and wrote in detail about in the original whitepaper. This is comment spamming by another name, and like any spam it opens the spammer to down voting. Obviously minnows flagging whale comments don't have much impact, and that's where the whale policing whale idea comes in, problematic as it is.

I believe we need some different changes to deal with the whale power disparity, changes which will not result in cutting features for most users, nor the freedom to the platform, etc.

But really, HF17 should be broken into a few hardforks, and we may see that.


> The rewards pool has just been hijacked and the rewards have gone …. To where?

Where ever they are allocated by voting, as it is now, but with separate pools. Your comment show you understand this, why sow the seeds of doubt?

> Why is it that there are, allegedly, two witnesses who are already refusing to put these protocols into effect?

Have you got a reference for this? Otherwise it is a rumor your are propagating.

Too much FUD, too little analysis. 😕 Also your numbers have not been updated since conversation with @abit, if you stand by your correction you should do this. Flagging now because it's poor informatively.

---

Just scanned through the comments and remembered your accusation of censorship. @sneak roundly rejected this, rightly. I've seen you commenting this around and it's not true, more FUD.

<p>This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the first half of Mar 17. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $3.31 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.</p> 
<p>See the full rankings and details in <a href="https://steemit.com/curation/@screenname/the-daily-tribune-most-undervalued-posts-of-mar-17---part-i">The Daily Tribune: Mar 17 - Part I</a>. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in <a href="https://steemit.com/curation/@screenname/introducing-the-daily-tribune-most-undervalued-posts-of-nov-04---part-i">our initial post</a>.</p>
<p>If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.</p>

I'm sorry I didn't get to this earlier.  I think you raise some legitimate concerns but these things have been discussed many times before both for and against.  The only way we will know for sure is to try it out.

@ebryans - there are a lot of ways to use the platform for good and bad. You are right that there are new ways to abuse the platform, but there are also a lot of good things that will come from it as well. I encourage you to read <a href="https://steemit.com/hardfork/@timcliff/latest-info-on-hf-17-from-github-date-tentatively-set-to-tue-7-march-2017-16-00-00-utc-11-00-00-est">this post</a> with an overview of the HF. It is a _little_ out of date (a few minor changes have been made since I wrote the post) - but it is fairly close. 

I will be deciding on my support for/against the HF this weekend and posting my decision and reasoning in my witness post.