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101 sats \ 3 replies \ @abetusk 4 Jan 2022 \ on: [RFC] Ranking SN posts meta
Here are my 2 sats:

Trusted

The issue here is how to quantify how much a user is trusted. You're now talking about a large effort of essentially human involvement or some algorithm that's ripe to be gamed.
Further, it sounds like this is pretty divorced from any Lightning/Bitcoin model of incentives.
This quickly descends into moderators etc. which is something I've been advocating for a while, at least in some weak form, and have received significant pushback on.

Trustless

I don't quite understand what you're proposing. Multiple people can stake the post and then receive back their sats? Is upvoting staking? How is upvoting different from staking? Or can you now have another option to 'stake' the post to bolster the post and then maybe get back sats depending on its upvotes?
Here's an off the cuff proposal:
Have upvoting be variable for each person, depending on how many posts they've like before.
For example, say I upvote a post by @koob (for 1 sat), now, the next time I upvote a post made by @koob, it will automatically give 2 sats, 3 sats for the subsequent one, etc.
This facility is automatically run in the background, can be changed by the user to either be turned off on an individual basis, on a global basis or otherwise be tweaked by the individual.
The idea is that this "builds in" a trust model, where people who submit quality content are then automatically given more "power/trust" to submit other content. Bots and the like that submit crap content might get some traction but not enough to overpower the trusted folks.
The ramp up might not need to be linear and one could imagine something like a logarithmic ramp up, with clear communication at each 'jump' in sat expenditure.
One could even imagine a 'trusted' user (ranked by the 'average' sat upvote they would receive for a post, say) having a higher default for upvotes as well.
These are all just "default" policies of the site that could be overridden and are only meant to guide "good" behavior. Anyone could dump a lot of sats into their account and then tweak their own default upvotes to mimic the same behavior.
I just want to remind you again that the point is not to eliminate spam, it's to make sure it's mitigated against and that any effort by spammers to abuse the system will make them pay.
One way to look at it is to try and fix arbitrage situations. If there's an avenue that spammers think will make them more money by some small expenditure of sats, then that's an arbitrage opportunity for them. The way to fix this from an economics perspective is to close that arbitrage opportunity so that any outlay of cash will not be recovered from the effort.
How are you noticing unwanted posts? What do they get out of it? My feeling is that an economic foil has to depend on the type of attack.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 4 Jan 2022
The issue here is how to quantify how much a user is trusted. You're now talking about a large effort of essentially human involvement or some algorithm that's ripe to be gamed.
Trust will always be violated or gamed on long time scales. I'd never argue we'll be able to create a perfect trusted system (Bitcoiners know this better than anyone). WoT might however provide a better, less gameable model than alternative trust models. Also, such a model would allow users to have their own WoT (where they are the source node of the graph) so that their feed is no longer a commons.
Multiple people can stake the post and then receive back their sats? Is upvoting staking? How is upvoting different from staking?
Upvoting and staking would become the same thing. Every sat put into a post would go into a pot with the sats from other posts, then get distributed to all stakers at some interval depending on how well the posts do.
How are you noticing unwanted posts? What do they get out of it? They are low quality, promoting something, or are off topic. They get the attention of users.
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @abetusk 4 Jan 2022
Upvoting and staking would become the same thing. Every sat put into a post would go into a pot with the sats from other posts, then get distributed to all stakers at some interval depending on how well the posts do.
I'll have to think on this but this sounds like it might be ripe for abuse.
They are low quality, promoting something, or are off topic. They get the attention of users.
My point being is that you should use this test to then push for economic action. Maybe there's an off-topic sat pool that gets filled up on a per user basis that then devalues their ability to promote or submit posts. Maybe promotion posts require a sat expenditure by the poster to overcome some lower threshold (maybe flagged by users?).
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 4 Jan 2022
Re: trustless. Other than UX and legal considerations, the biggest unknowns are:
  1. how to structure payouts, because
    • posts come in at irregular intervals
    • upvotes come in at irregular intervals
    • the ranking curve favors newer content over old
  2. how to thwart large economic actors from taking over the page
    • maybe a downvote could solve this, but it's unclear how
    • e.g. a new dog coin comes out and creates a post promoting the coin and puts in 100,000 sats; how do we knock it off the frontpage in a way that costs the poster and rewards the defenders
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