Well, some call it "adjustment of rewards", some call it (at least in some cases) pure arbitrariness and ego gratification of some whales and members of the inner HIVE circle.
For example here the reputation of a user who made a Splinterlands proposal got crushed from about 50 to 9 ... I just wonder why? :
https://peakd.com/spsproposal/@mangowambo/convert-busd-dao-holdings-into-dec-dai-lp
Or here I guess it must have been really necessary to reduce the reward of this post to zero:
https://peakd.com/hive-117778/@andrianna/owl-diamond-embroidery
It's true that some (often new) users don't comment and interact a lot (whereby also often they are not to blame as only very few voters add comments to their posts - also a consequence of auto votes), but I wonder what prevents the 'dilligent' downvoters from communicatiing and giving some friendly advice first before attacking the 'sinners'? And yes, they feel attacked, even if experienced Hivers will quickly come now and explain that it's just a mechanism of reward distribution. However, the huge number of users who has left HIVE due to these kind of downvotes has another perception.
On Twitter you HIVE fans are always lamenting why nobody recognizes the greatness of HIVE? I tell you: they do know HIVE (during the fork everybody was talking about the STEEM/HIVE conflict), but simply too many potential users fear to get attacked when posting there.
That said in some cases of low quality posts, spam, plagiarism or very high rewarded but mediocre posts I agree with reducing the rewards.
I don't understand, both posts have explanations in them, one by @azircon and one by @galenkp, the former I also think was a bit overdone but the latter has quite a history of farming autovotes I've encountered myself as well.
I don't think everyone knows about Hive but choose not to be here due to the very few cases of bad downvotes, that's silly.
The first one is a proposal where it is only about to agree or disagree with a suggestion. If you disagree with the proposal it is enough to downvote with - for example - 1 %! There simply is no reason at all to downvote with 100 % (and it makes no difference as only the SPS stake of the voters is counted, not the percentage of the vote).
And abuse of autovotes in the second case? Nearly everybody who is downvoting this user is getting tons of autovotes! I would not upvote this user normally but considering all the autodownvotes I try to help a little bit.
P. S.: Concerning your last point I think you underestimate the psychological effect of the downvotes. Open for example CoinMarketCap and choose HIVE. Then read the comments. One of them (with 7 likes - no, I didn't like it) says
"$HIVE platform full of antisocial idiots - gonna short this shitcoin to the ground"(https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hive-blockchain/). It is not that I agree with them but this is how quite some people are thinking.
I will provide further explanation. I have discussed with mangowambo as well and he doesn't have any problem with it. So I don't understand why you have any problem.
I DV'ed the proposal at 100% to discourage spamming of proposals. As you know everyone have ideas and they can write a proposal. But just because you have a good idea doesn't make it a good proposal. It requires additional thoughts, consensus generation before it can/should be published. Notice how few community proposals actually passed :)
Also notice how few proposals in general are forwarded. My method is working.
Oh Adriana? That's a spammer. Has a very long history of spamming. It was not even a person for a long time :) you don't know a lot of things
I appreciate that!
Just lets be honest. He knows very well that expressing his anger could lead to further problems for him as a blogger in future. I don't say you would downvote him for that, but there is the possibility of it, which already can cause users to be very careful of what they are writing.
I fear the effect is that nearly nobody (who cares the least about his HIVE reputation) is still daring to put a proposal because nobody can guess in advance what HIVE whales like you might think about their ideas.
As you are here I would like to tell you that actually I rather often agree with your point of views (not always but more often than you might think). I see the problem not in what you say and do but how you do it:
I suspect you are reluctant to admit that your statements often contain more than just a pinch of arrogance. Why not replace it by kindness and a more communicative approach in some cases? :)
(Not that I would consider myself perfect - not at all ...)
In my eyes her posts are too good to call her a spammer, but actually I partly understand the downvotes. On the other hand this exact post was not bad at all. My approach would have been to at first give her a friendly hint to interact more with the community, and only after that wouldn't help I would consider other measures.
For example when she asked for the reason of the flags I would have given a friendlier answer than @galenkp (oh no: I am triggering the whole community now) by giving her a chance to change her behaviour. Actually she is replying to more comments than before after I suggested it to her.
Well, even if I am here since 2016 lets say yes: of course I don't know everything (as you - of course - also don't know everything).
If there is more behind that certain account than I know, so it might be, and I happily would admit to be wrong.
I agree with you regarding my arrogance. It’s not just a pinch. It’s often a lot :)
Believe me, I know about that personality trait and I am concerned about it too. However, I often use it to my advantage.
Mangowambo doesn’t blog, so that hive reputation number doesn’t matter to him I told him if he just post any random blog I can provide a single upvote and that rep number will be restored.
Adriana has a really have a very long history only a few anti-abuse people know. I don’t want to discuss it in detail as it take a long time. Just will tell you, it was not a person but a modeling agency :) Please believe me.
PS. The person behind that account is NOT a she, it's a he :) Yes, the lady is real, but she doesn't manage the blog :)
Lol, you show a sense of humour (and also honesty) here, which I didn't expect! Nice to know. :)
If you meet me in real life you will see that I am just like this in person as well. People who met me during Splinterfest will agree. You can ask them. I will look forward to meet you. Hopefully next one will be in Asia.
I am the bald guy in grey jacket. I expect you know the rest of them.
Also, please let people short hive :)
Most people who writes that word “short” doesn’t even have the first damn clue what that word actually means. Let alone the impact of it. It’s not that easy to short hive :) Also more people short hive better it is for us the stakeholders. Every time there will be rally it will be boosted by short covering.
FYI, I am shorting things since I was 16 years old :) I have shorted anything under the sun except probably ginger root futures :) Now I am 47 :)