RE: Let's Make Downvoting Great Again!
It seems to me that people got the totally wrong impression/perception of what a downvote/flag really is in my mind. They seem to think it removes something they have already rightfully earned. Or that it is somehow an attack on them unless they have breached some "rules" such as plagiarizing etc.
I try to explain it like this to new people: Anyone who holds STEEM has the ability to contribute to the giant "Pie" that is the blockchain. No matter what other stakeholders think, you have the ability to express yourself and add what you want. However, all stakeholders have the ability to decide according to their stake how rewarding your contributions to the pie should be from the scarce amount of rewards that can be given by the blockchain they hold a stake in (It is very important, in my experience, to stress how it is not the people who gave you an upvote who gives you a reward, all stakeholders to give value to the token through their investment are giving you a reward, it just so happened that only some noticed it in the time window where rewards could be given. An imperfection of the design perhaps.
I think it is ultimately the UI that is to blame for people having the wrong "feeling" about flagging. After all, it is the job of the User Interface help provide a User Experience where the most healthy and natural set of actions are experienced as indeed natural and healthy. That there is no large mismatch between expectations and reality.
My only suggestion would probably be to remove the display of pending payout until after 7 days. Then have one set of tabs like we currently do that displays posts based on vested votes, and another tab that displays posts with the highest final payout over the last X days (that the browser can select in any useful fashion). On top of a few other utilities I could mention, I think this would also help restore the view that payout means nothing until it is indeed paid out.
upvoted for visibility. Hoping for a fruitful discussion.
Finally, there’s a reason why every country has public – or at least the collective coming together to jointly finance – basic cleaning. If everyone is left to do it on their own, people won’t put in the effort, them alone, to clean the neighbourhood. And when nobody does it it results in a messy street that reduces the wellbeing for everyone.
I think similarly, we’ll need to collectively fund these types of flagging. After all, it doesn’t take that much Voting Power when many people join the idea, to defeat the majority of abusers or at least make it far less profitable to the point where it makes no sense. I can imagine a community account that people can delegate to that does these types of flagging and where the transparency of the blockchain means that anyone can scrutinize it’s behaviour and openly discuss if it does anything wrong.
Not saying this is the solution, but it will have to be the community building something together.
I would also support the change to a downvote to replace the current flag.
You could still keep the flag basically as the equivalent of a "report" button. Just for the worst kind of abuse like posting child porn, plagiarized content etc, although I can see the community taking it upon themselves to create a feature whereby clicking a flag you send a link to the article to the equivalent of steemcleaners, or some stakeholder capable of nuking a post.
This is absolutely the way to go. And this should not be a blockchain feature, but a Condenser (steemit.com) feature. In the steemit.com Terms of Service Steemit Inc. reserves the right to not read any copyright infringing content from the chain. This does not modify the chain obviously, but it does stop access through the steemit.com portal only. This is what should also happen for the most vile content that there is a human society consensus about, such as child porn, but it should only be used in the most extreme of cases, not simply for plagiarized content.
This is what "reporting" should be. The idea of the "flag" needs to go.
I wholeheartedly support trying this approach, at least. Ironically, I think it would create a truer free market here, as it would render downvote-terrorism powerless. Controversial views would no longer be a liability...except for witnesses, I guess, who could have voted removed. One step at a time.
Personz for flag-change mayor.
Nice to have agreement across the aisle. It's cool that though we read the situation differently there's still a solution which looks like it solves the over all problem to some degree.
Step by step. But I think you'd make a better mayor 😉
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
Agreed.
The big problem with hiding the "Potential" Reward payout is then no one will know when someone is scamming the system. Example: Slowwalker giving himself that $4.00 self upvote. I am sure it was for visibility like your self upvote, to bring notice to an issue, that may need to be looked into.
If it were for visibility, he could simply upvote and decline payouts, right?
In this case I would say no. He did it, (in my opinion) to show people a problem with the self vote. You see it is not against the rules. It is in fact an option when you make a post or now even a comment a little check box that says "Upvote post". He wants to change that. While it is not against the rules, the steemit community believes it should be used in a more ethical manner. In @slowwalker 's use it was used in an ethical manner, once again that is just my opinion.
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153