Can we handle a little openness and honesty here on Hive. I think we can; it's healthy. Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), like Hive, is not a democracy as we tend to think of it. And that alone is not a bad thing at all. Yet, there may be a weakness intrinsic.
What's fair?
This is the magic question oft-asked in a lot of situations. One vote per person in making decisions? Nah, not ideal here on Hive. Think of a newcomer to Hive who just joined after reading a Tweet (and welcome, by the way!). That person's vote should not be the same as a dev who's been on chain since the start five plus years ago, who understands its workings, and is actively building every day. One-person one-vote sounds fair, but I think it would hardly be fair.
Rather, is it fair to have a "voting power" based on how much you've got in the game (thus, POS or DPOS). To me, this second option is likely better. And, this is how we do it on Hive.
However
There may be an unintended consequence baked inside.
Simply put, two things may be at play:
- A small Hive fish may fear speaking up contrary to whale due to fear of retribution.
- A small fish may feel compelled to go along, support, cheer, or "fan boi" to a whale's views in hopes of garnering patronage.
Free speech is a good thing. It's constructive, most of the time. Yet, in the case above, [1] one person keeps quiet such that free speech is encumbered, and [2] another person feigns support such that free speech is distorted.
In psychology, and business and politics and elsewhere, they call this "groupthink"...a culture that promotes thinking that goes along with the leaders, that discourages different thinking and different voices, and can frequently result in bad decisions or bad actions.
The work flow that yields the bad result is simple: leader X comes up with an idea at the board meeting that's as dumb as a cold hammer. Everyone recognizes it as dumb, however, no one speaks up. The leader might have a temper, may not like to be challenged, and may have a tendency to "clap back" or even berate anyone who questions his ideas. So, everyone sits quietly. Maybe someone says, "Yeah, okay." A few others nod. And there it is, seeing no objection, the motion carries.
In private conversation, I've had Hivers convey to me that they're simply not going to question a high-reputation person, even though that high-rep person's actions were highly questionable. I don't blame this Hiver's decision to stay out of the fray. I get it. The fear of retribution by a walloping downvote is real.
Understand, I like the reputation mechanism of Hive, a lot. To me, it serves as something of an instant street-cred-check at a glance. It helps me know the author that I'm reading or the person with whom I'm communicating. Also, and I'm not sure of the back end angles of this, but Reputation also seems to serve as something of a curb to spam. Similar to Resource Credits, which literally and automatically will halt a low-RC spammer or multi-poster, I think a multi-poster with a low reputation number would be prone to some "corrective action." Maybe a more experienced Hiver would comment, "Hey, slow down there buddy." Or, downvotes may come. Those downvotes loudly say, "Stop it, enough already." In this way, the reputation system works.
One thing that irks me at times is the fact that I'm just not sure how reputation works on Hive. Literally, I don't know the mathematics that go into it. I understand, this is my own fault for not doing my research. Is it time on chain? Hive Power? Upvotes? Upvotes by others with their reputations factored in? Other variables? None of these?
Since I'm writing this, I figured I should in fact do a little research. This page, and comment by DXXXZ, helped me...and it has a diagram and I like pictures ッ. I re-worked the flow chart to a vertical format (below) because my brain works better that way. To me, the money line in the text was:
Your reputation score is independent of your own HP, rather it is dependent on the reputation score of the voter and HP of the voter, upvote/downvote weight.
Okay, so I understand there are three factors at play:
- Your rep, as determined by...
- The voter's rep
- The voter's HP (which sets their upvote/downvote power)
That helps me a bit. The picture helped as well.
I'd push back a little bit on the line "Your reputation is independent of your own HP," though. Since one's own HP sets upvote/downvote power, and since rep scores are compared in size in the process, and since voting impacts reputations, HP ties into the game theory calculus of establishing reputation.
Am I right on all this?
For any reputation nerds, that site above linked to the more official sounding https://hive.blog/faq.html#What_is_Reputation which also linked to this thorough, but possibly rather outdated, post from 6 years ago.
A Justin Sun II moment?
Consider this what-if? What if a millionaire decided to buy up a bunch of Hive. That's great, to the moon! But, what if that buyer really had malice in mind. Maybe they're not going to try a complete takeover, but wanted to wreak harm in some way?
I'm guessing that with a load of Hive Power, that wreaker would have a high Reputation number? Certainly they'd have a lot of downvote power, thus they'd carry a big stick of fear.
If The Wreaker went rather rogue, would Hive do a total witness fork again? Probably not as it'd be too much effort. In the final cost-benefit analysis, why bother?
What if The Wreaker went further rogue? Fork now? Or, what if The Wreaker was also a manipulator and toggled the fine line between being just a local Hive thorn-in-the-side and Justin Sun II? He's an annoyance to deal with, but still not so much of a hassle so as to go through everything of early 2020 and start entirely over again.
In this way, The Wreaker hangs around, a blockchain nuisance. And yet, the small fish may be compelled to just keep quiet and perhaps try to curry favor. After all, it's better to keep your mouth shut when the mob boss is carrying out his bad actions on your street block.
I'm not too concerned with something like this happening, really. If a whale turned to the dark side, my guess is that other whales would band up and set him straight. Aligned incentives are powerful things. It'd be a grand whale war sloshing around in the Hive ocean (and it'd be great entertainment for everyone else to watch with popcorn).
Just to be clear, I'm not hinting at anyone here on Hive. Instead, I'm actually thankful for Hive whales. They've helped me at times with upvotes/rewards and with encouragement. They also seem to actively do a lot of curation and question answering to help smaller or newer Hivers. I'm a big believer that most people with high reputations or Hive Power got there due to good old hard work and commitment to the chain. I'm just thinking out loud here.
Solutions?
To be honest, I don't know a solution. I don't even know if there's a problem that needs a solution. And this circles back to the fact that I really don't know the math that makes up Reputation. Still, as 
I don't know. I'm simply relaying some thoughts here, hopefully constructive in some way.
:)
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