Those that provide original content for the platform could do their own experiment and stop using steemit for a few months. It would be just as easy for many of the top original content providers to take a break.  That is an experiment I would like to see and we could make it public and resteemit over and over

I have been begging for this experiment since last summer. Great to see it done. I never considered it could work with only some whales involved.

Maybe first stab
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dennygalindo/a-day-of-fasting-on-votes-for-the-whales-9-9-16

Yup, that about sums it up.

exactly.  

but you are missing one vital thing: experiments are meant to measure something.  This goes FAR deeper than a lack of communication and shakes the foundations of what makes an experiment an experiment.  

What is the hypothesis?  to my knowledge this is more Throwing Spaghetti on the wall.  Yes the lack of communication was a failure.  But then again there was much more bad to this experiment than good.

Good perspective on mitigation, Resteemed

Cool experiment! I see my vote went up a bit already.  How did you hear that this was going on?

Are they trying to kill steem for good?

An interesting experiment, but as you say your, requires better communication to users.

I'm all for experimentation too...and this is a good thing for us under-whale-ings but communication is severely lacking and that is not going to be a good thing for our peeps.  I appreciate your post and will probably do my own to spread the word.

Now -- if I only knew HOW LONG this experiment would last now that we know it's in process.  hmmm...

Take a look at: [The Steemit Test](https://steemit.com/steem/@nigelmarkdias/the-steemit-test-what-s-in-my-heart) which was written [based on a call out](https://steemit.com/steemit/@nigelmarkdias/calling-out-asshole) &  a [quiz on flagging](https://steemit.com/steemit/@nigelmarkdias/does-downvoting-a-post-help-build-steemit-take-the-survey)
What do you think? @neoxian
https://68.media.tumblr.com/3ad04e71792576959057f182abc7f0d3/tumblr_ojfb3udR3b1s13tcmo1_500.gif

Lol #daywithoutwhales

A downvote was applied to partially counter earlier whale votes as an experiment to reduce whale domination of voting influence. Not intended to express an opinion on the content nor result in a net reduction of rewards or reputation (automated notice)

Props to the whales for doing this. Hopefully it last a couple days so we can see the real effects.
My guess is that guilds/curation will have to adapt, people will have more power and the rewards will be spread out a lot more which is a very good thing and there will possibly be less bots too.
I'm not sure the price will increase however as this is a temporary thing and people know it won't last

I agree that it is not the best way to do it, but there will always be other greedy whales who don't agree, so it's this or nothing.

I'm with you. This would have been an excellent experiment if conducted correctly and with people being notified.

This is going horribly wrong though. They are downvoting posts way more than the upvotes they have received, corrupting the results... And the timing is just fucked. Tomorrow payouts switch to 7 day cycles, so why would they do something like this without telling anyone on the last day that people have an opportunity to earn a little liquidity. 

My post was trending, and probably would have been top two or three if I hadn't received four downvotes as part of this experiment. I see the cryptofiend lost $50 dollars on their post, that was published nearly a day before the experiment apparently began. I'm wondering how many others had their successful posts murdered because they were good enough to receive a whale vote that had to be counteracted by far more whale downvotes..

There's no point doing such an experiment if everyone is not on board, and clearly, there was not enough effort taken to get everyone on board or we would have known about it in advance. So this experiment is both useless and inconsiderate. I'm rather disappointed because it is being done by a couple of the whales who I was under the impression actually gave a shit about this platform.

Thanks for informing us I had no idea! Now I understand why my vote power got up ;-) Cool! Let's rock! 
Resteemed your post

Well said! I agree.

this is a perfect analysis @neoxian - I fully support the experiment and you are right in terms of the communications - most of these guys are indeed tech developers - no marketing people therefore no official announcement, also as we are in BETA I am fine with that too. 

In general such social media "platforms" do have internal and external communications gaps to be filled once out of Beta - not a steemit problem. Seen this in almost any comparable platform.