Let's Make Downvoting Great Again!
A downvote/flag does not mean you did something wrong.
^ This is an idea that we need to cement in the psyche of all Steemians, including new members.
Currently there is a stigma against "flagging", and it is preventing the community from downvoting content when it is has unnecessarily high pending rewards.
This post will explain the view behind why it is essential to the success of the platform "make downvoting great again".
My Views
I have always held the belief that flagging/downvoting from any stakeholder, for whatever reason they chose, should be allowed/accepted/encouraged. You can read the details of my position in this post, which I wrote 10 months ago.
While I have always held that belief that anyone can use their stake however they like, I have still had a personal policy to only "flag" content for reasons of abuse, and not to use it for "disagreement over rewards".
I no longer hold that view. I have come around to the idea that we need to make downvotes a regular and accepted part of the platform, if we want to be able to combat abuse and effectively distribute rewards.
All Steemians benefit from an effectively distributed rewards pool
New users are attracted to the platform by the potential to earn rewards. Existing users produce high quality contributions in hopes that they will be recognized and rewarded for their efforts. Visitors come to the site to consume content, and they will be more likely to stick around if they find content that they like.
If a large portion of rewards is going to users who are contributing to the platform, then everyone is incentivized to make the platform better. If more and more of the rewards pool begins to go to users who are not contributing, then we loose the incentive for community members to make the platform better.
We all have a vested interest in having the rewards pool distributed to the users who are adding the most value to the platform.
Quick thoughts on self-voting
If users are going to reward themselves, their friends, or their alternate accounts for producing content that benefits the community - there is nothing wrong with that. Self-upvoting in-of-itself is not a problem, and it is not abuse.
What is a problem is when the upvotes begin taking a disproportionate amount of rewards from the rewards pool - significantly more than what the content is worth to the community.
Example:
Why downvoting is necessary
The unfortunate reality is that many users are going to use their stake to reward themselves at the expense of the community. Users who have been added to auto-vote lists may begin to produce lower quality content, because their potential to earn rewards becomes almost guaranteed - regardless of the quality that they produce.
Downvoting is the mechanism that is built into the platform in order to lower the rewards on posts that are overvalued. Value is a subjective opinion, which is why the platform gives the entire community seven days to reach consensus on what each post/comment is worth.
If downvotes only happen once in a blue moon, the average user is going to feel hurt/harmed if they are one of the unlucky ones that receive a downvote. If it becomes a regular and frequent used part of the platform though, users will begin to consider it normal. If anyone is taken by surprise, mentors can explain how the platform works, and point to the thousands of posts and comments where it occurs every day. We need it to become a regular thing.
Proposed Changes
These are proposed changes that I feel will help the community to better distribute the rewards pool to the most deserving users and content:
Required
- Have the community reach a consensus on the idea that stakeholders are allowed to use their stake however they want.
- Have the community reach a consensus on the idea that any stakeholder is allowed to disagree with another stakeholder's upvote, and express that through a downvote.
- Have an organized community group (similar to SteemCleaners) with delegated voting power specifically to be used for the purpose of downvoting serious cases of voting abuse.
Optional/Suggested
- Have an organized community group with delegated voting power specifically to be used for the purpose of countering acts of retaliation / flag wars.
- A UI change to condenser (steemit.com) to change "flag" to "downvote".
- A separate voting power pool for upvotes and downvotes, so that users who downvote are not put at an economic disadvantage by having to sacrifice their curation rewards.
Discussion Encouraged
I understand that this is a very emotional issue for many Steemians. There are a lot of users with very strong beliefs.
Please keep in mind that as we discuss we may not all necessarily agree on what is best for the platform, we are all trying to express our views on how to make it the best. Disagreement on these tough issues is OK and expected.
It is through discussion and debate that we arrive at a consensus for the best path forward.
Replace "content" by "contribution" and that thing might actually go somewhere.
If Steem isn't in need for more content at this time it's misleading to focus on telling people to produce, find or post quality content to get rewarded.
Posting quality content can be a noble contribution to Steem but it's far from being the only kind of contribution.
Explanation for high upvote : https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/temporarily-pausing-my-anti-abuse-efforts-while-sbd-is-off-the-chart
Great point. Update made. Thanks for the suggestion!
Help me out...what IS the right kind of contribution to bring to steemit.com?
How about a better variety of topics instead of spending 90% of them in talking about SBD value fluctuation?
I had this idea of introducing a market within Steemit. For a transfer of X SBD, you mail goods to the benefactor.
+1, @transisto can you answer this? I presume you mean curating (aka voting), witnessing, and development contribution.
What if downvoting/flagging was reserved for a certain type of group, similar to Witnesses? We could vote in our own community-police, who have the 'monopoly on downvoting' and are charged with keeping the community respectable.
This would be very similar to how governments have a monopoly on violence in our current societies, which I feel does not conflict with DPoS which is also very similar to our current political systems (represented democracy).
For longevity and objectivity, the 'community police' should be a different group than the Witnesses.
As such, when flagging powers are being abused, we can vote to take away those powers from those who abuse it and vote into power more honest people.
This makes more sense to me than flaggingpower based on financial prowess, as the current system is. We can't stop flagging done by people with more money unless we can accumulate more than them. If the powerful people are corrupted, we are thus powerless to stop them. But a voted-in group can also be voted out, regardless of their SP.
It is a good idea.
Best response to the flagging wars I have seen! Everyone that wishes has a vote, then we vote on honest steemians to flag abusers! But they would become corrupted as well......
what should I say about @checkthisout ?
If this kinds of thing happen again, the system of the STEEMIT would be totally demolishted.
I' d like to ask you "WHAT DID YOU DO?"
I strongly recommend to find out 'Who is @checkthisout?'
It's very obvious who it is, as they are now mocking Haejin.
It's one of the top two flagger/abusers on the platform, and it's not Transisto. Who could it possibly be?
(Self-vote: visibility)
Your comment is not worth the 4$ you have given it! I'll down voted.
Theory applied :)
Self voting in a reply to this is not setting a good example. I'm not even voting on the post as I think it's done well enough
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
Feel free to downvote if you think it is making too much ;)
I couldn't dent it much and you do good work. It's crazy what some posts are making lately when you work it out in Steem and US$. I'm doing okay, but I see others just being greedy and it's frustrating.
absolutely essential topic for the future of Steem and which deserves even higher visibility!
disappointing that the Whales are shying away from upvoting it, as they are busy farming SBD! If anything they are trying to cover the extent of the abuse going on! My post exposing the wide spread abuse of the self vote was quickly censored by Bernie (yes @ rewardpoolrape is him)
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part
I agree. His comment is not worth 4$! It must be downvoted. Please like and follow.
^ Another example XD
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
http://www.steemreports.com/incoming-votes-info/?account=slowwalker&days=200
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
It's all visible...
@checkthisout is @grumpycat.
Self Vote Abuse has been rampant on Steemit for some time, @checkthisout just made it impossible to ignore any longer (and may have been one of his objectives)
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part
I think it would be good to have downvotes and flags. Flags having a negative consequence to rep and downvotes not.
Downvoting will continue to be tied to reputation (that is how the blockchain works, and there is not enough incentive to change it), but it really only has a net negative effect on someone's reputation if their post or comment gets voted below 0.00 payout.
There is talk about after communities are implemented, creating a new 'flag' feature at the UI level that can be used to get moderator attention. Moderators at that point would have the option to hide the post/comment, as well as downvote.
But the real question isn't that: what is reputation for? For me it just serves to give an indication on the number of SBD SPs gained by the user nothing else. What do you think of this reputation system?
It is well known and acknowledged by the dev team that the current reputation system is very limited. It really serves one main purpose (which it does fairly well) and that is to provide a mechanism to hide content from spammy or abusive users.
Yes, for small spamming accounts it works very well, but it also penalizes some new accounts that make beginner's mistakes :-( .
Regarding your article, I find the suggestion to create two separate reward pool very interesting. I think there will be other issues that we don't think about right now, but I would like to know more about your vision of this possibility. Can you tell me more about it?
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
With two voting pools, users do not have to sacrifice curation rewards if they choose to downvote.
But that would decrease the hesitancy to downvote too. As it is, most users will pause before using more than 2 or 3 downvotes.
That is the intent. Currently users who fight abuse for the good of the platform are actually penalized financially.
It would also be nice if 70+ rep users like you make a topic every time they find a cheater, so more people will flag him (and the reporter gets some reward for his contribution).
https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153
Yes a separate pool for downvoting would be ideal because we would each benefit from having the choice to use our stake both to upvote and downvote. If I did not have to choose between an upvote and downvote I would use my downvoting share to counter abuse. When it is a choice between an upvote and a downvote, why bother fighting abuse when the vote can instead be used to reward others doing good work, run a voting bot, and/or self upvote?
A separate voting power for downvotes would also remove the sigma of doing something wrong and eliminate the huge power available to those willing to use the downvoting power.
Thank you for this discussion Tim!
You articulated this subject better than I could.
You are a good-willed honest person. So was Dan Larimer when he envisioned and created steem.
...just like Dan expected. There would more of a good will to self-preserve the platform by good natured people who had a VESTED interest in the success of the platform, it was also to be self-curating. It was a circular healthy prospect.
Until...
Some unnamed individuals pushed him away, and the organic growth got stifled. Which none of that actually matters today for a single reason... most being:
The STEEM blockchain is the first of its kind. I does (at its best) give freedom of speech, open opportunity to both old and new users alike.
Absolutely. AGREED.
We just need to realize it so we can all benefit.
If
flagwould be advertised asdownvoteand if it then would give me the chance to weight my downvote I would probably be engaged into a mechanism you describe.Agreed. It is one of the items in my proposal.
I think the problem cannot be solved (solely) by flagging (the bigger the abusing accounts the more hopeless it will be to fight against self-voting with flags). Instead of that (or in addition to that) the system should be improved in a way that self-voting, circle-voting and spamming would be less attractive again. That can be tried for example by ...
implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including own ones) again and again.
reintroducing the restriction to four full paid posts per day (from some hard forks ago) which was very reasonable.
thinking about other ideas like a sigmoid reward curve. Due to it's flat begin it would be far less attractive to upvote posts on which nobody else is voting (self-voting of comments would be less attractive). As it also ends flat, extreme rewards (like with n^2) would be avoided, as well.
considering also other ideas like the one of UserAuthority from @scipio.
Other ideas appreciated!
There should be an open discussion (and yes, I especially would like to hear more from the witnesses here) about how to solve the self-voting problem.
These are really good suggestions. The witnesses and stakeholders have actually talked about them quite a bit.
The problem with the diminishing returns and 4 post limit proposals is they are only a deterrent. It may seem difficult to a ‘normal user’ to setup 20 or 100 accounts, but for the people who are abusing the rewards pool for hundreds or even thousands of dollars - they will put in the two hours of effort to create a bunch of accounts to get around the rules. The users who stay “in bounds” will be at a disadvantage, and the net result is the true abusers would be able to extract more than they could today.
The alternate rewards curve would help lower the amount of rewards that go to abusers, but only to an extent. The ones with enough SP (including leased delegated SP) to get over the initial ‘hump’ would still be able to reward themselves a lot through self voting.
UserAuthority is an awesome idea, but unfortunately it will not fly for STEEM rewards. The reason is that it breaks the contact with all of the existing SP holders that bought SP under the premise that more SP meant more influence over rewards. It could very well be something that could be implemented with SMTs though.
Thanks for your well-elaborated reply! Good to know that you are discussing the matter and also seeking other (additional) ways to solve the problem than with flagging only.
On the other side your answer leaves me somewhat discouraged: my suggested ideas may not be effective enough. I always think that we must be able to find any solution within the system itself (which is more 'elegant' than flagging - which has always something of a 'subjective nature') ... but maybe that's just wishful thinking ...
Nevertheless let's all keep seeking, collecting and discussing ideas.
Agreed :)
I got flagged for writing this same article, then Transisto funded an auto-downvote bot with lok1/elfspice called "sadkitten" to follow and downvote any vote I made for myself arbitrarily as retaliation:
https://steemit.com/curation/@lexiconical/make-flagging-great-again-on-self-up-voting-and-a-suggestion-for-improving-curation-on-steemit
Resteemed, but I have no hope. Grumpycat is now the standard.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/279
nextgencrypto commented on Aug 16, 2016 • edited
This is nothing but another method for Dan to control who he wants to see earn and who he doesn't. I expect we'll see him and his inner circle stifling whales they wish to see stop earning as soon as this is released.
Just a reminder, this is being implemented because of the feelings of 1 person who will use his control over the witnesses to push through anything he wishes. Don't let it be disguised as fixing voting, he's trying to suppress accounts he doesn't agree with.
bytemaster commented on Dec 27, 2016
I still think that the first principles are right on this concept. Unfortunately, having logical first principles and appealing to the masses are two entirely different things.
Will probably self-vote this for visibility later as idgaf anymore. Flag it if you don't like it. #grumpycat
Sorry to hear about the flag war. IMO that aspect of the platform is one of our bigger issues.
I’ve responded to that issue already in a few other comment threads, so I won’t repeat myself here.
Regarding grumpycat and the abuse, I shared my views on that in reply to your post in the subject. (Great post btw.)
Nothing personal, but I am downvoting this comment over disagreement on rewards. Hoping other people start to do this more too.
Have at it. If there is a penny still pending to Grumpycat, this is a highly suspect decision.
I think you'll find the game theory here renders your solution useless.
Here's another example.
In my view, it is the broken window theory. One broken window in a neighborhood that goes unfixed leads to people not giving a f about the neighborhood and everything going to shit. Unfortunately we have a lot of broken windows at the moment.
I'm afraid you are correct.
I do not know if it makes me a hypocrite, but I did not much care for the broken window theory when it was applied to NYC policing. However, I didn't even live there at the time. When I moved there later, it sure was clean.
The truth is, I labor endlessly, both literally in the physical sense, and mentally in the temptation sense, to use my stake correctly and provide as much value here as I possibly can. But I just can't do it after looking at this image anymore:
or this one:
How can you, truly, justify taking away my $7 while this goes on?
Is it only because I can't (or, even if I could, won't) nuke your blog and articles back, because I know you to be on the "good" team?
From another comment I recently made, to add some substance to my votes here:
As I was warned early on by another quality user of rep 72+ who now appears jaded, "almost everyone around here is dirty."
I mean, you can literally vote yourself money with a click. Anonymously, on the internet. Is any of this a surprise?
The stupidity is really those of us that thought they could invest here and operate in good faith for any period of time without going fucking insane.
Well, I hath gazed too long into the abyss, and now it gazeth into me.
I am trying to change things so the big broken windows get fixed. In the meantime, you are a broken window that I can do something about 🙂
There are always going to be ‘bad’ people in the world that exploit others for their own personal gain. My view is that the amount of people that are in that camp are actually less than the ones who want to do good.
If/when the good people start looking at the bad that is going on in the world and using as a reason to stop doing what they think is right - that is when we start to have a real problem.
" In the meantime, you are a broken window that I can do something about "
What you really mean, is you can push me around, but you're fine with this:
Randowhale randowhale downvote @lexiconical/steemit-is-ruled-by-a-communist-party… (-100%)
You are just proving this is an ATM for robber barons by misallocating your VP to me, while the real problems burn down entire blocks, rather than break windows.
You are a hypocrite.
Did you miss the main complaint about "broken windows" being that it's fascist overreaction?
K.. I think we are done.
I wasn’t really going out of my way to downvote you. I was ‘fixing’ what was in front of me because it was in the context of a conversation we were having. I assume you are doing it on a bunch of other comments too, and I left those alone.
The impression that I had of you were that you were one of the ‘good ones’ who just got fed up and went dark. Based on the tone of your reply, you seem too far gone for me to help, so carry on. Use your stake to reward yourself if that is really what makes you happy.
I’ll keep doing what I can to fix the windows. It is a pretty major problem, and not something that I will be able to win on my own.
I don't understand. You seem to be saying that it is OK if you vote for your own good posts and replies simply because you give yourself less money than some others? I don't believe that your smaller financial gain is is more than others make (despite hard work and original content) on their good post? Not to complain but $7 would be a good haul for one of my posts. To get that kind of reward I would need to pay a bot which instead of being free, costs me a portion of my wallet. It seems to be counter to the argument.
It's not that I think that those who have put in more time and effort don't deserve more compensation but wasn't one of the founding beliefs that the compensation would occur through gaining a larger community around you and their current curation rather than a blogger multiplying his reward based on previous financial gains?
If you aren't willing to depend on your following for their honest and current curation in order for you to stay competitive shouldn't you be arguing with checkthisout rather than against him? He too is giving himself the ability to gain attention from other potential bidders and making more money from his own votes on the side.
Maybe your argument is that you believe that checkthisout's content isn't high enough quality to give him to have the right to upvote his own contributions? I don't ask this in support of any blogger in particular but how do you determine quality from other people's content?
Lol, isn't that obvious? This isn't content:
Well said crypto fam. But is it not possible for those witnesses voted in to solve these glaring issues so that this platform can continue to grow.
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