Great article, that concludes the topic for me and I won't have to write anything about it any more :) thanks for writing it out so well!
Let me dive a bit into the political stuff about the socialism/communism definition, because you started and it's kind of a hobby of mine :D
First off, there are countless socialist schools. Their former main organ, the international, split up several times because everyone thinks he is right and the others are counterrevolutionaries.
According to Marxists, socialism is the phase of the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat". Communism means that socialism has advanced so much that the state disappears. Wikipedia
This is why communists today say that there has never been real communism, and by pure theoretical definitions they are right. They fail to see that every attempt to get there in the ways Marx described led to terror and suffering.
Libertarian socialism has lots of different branches itself and actually is a synonym for anarchism (except in the view of ancaps, a bit more on them later).
It all started with Proudhon's Mutualism (Property is theft. Property is freedom). Around the same time American small business owners developed a concept of left-market anarchism in opposition to the growing corporations which used the state to suppress their competition. That stayed a mostly American phenomenon though, in Europe the thinkers started to play with ideas which would base on abolition of wage labour and markets together with the state, mostly in favour of a distribution of goods not involving currency.
Based on Proudhon, Bakunin formulated anarcho-collectivism and Kropotkin anarcho-communism. The main difference between the two is that in collectivism people would get their share of goods depending on the work they submitted, thus involving some kind of currency at least in the beginning, while communism means that it's distributed completely freely according to needs (same as Marx:
"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs").
Both had big issues with Marx and basically foresaw that his ideas of a socialist dictatorship will lead to power structures which won't just disappear, but do everything necessary to stay in power and suppress everyone else.
Later in history, anarcho-syndicalism became very popular, which is the idea that trade unions and collectives can overthrow the state and capitalism, again building on the previous thinkers. Around the 1920s/1930s they were very successful in certain regions for a while (Ukraine, Spain before/during the Civil War - Orwell fought on their side and wrote the autobiographic Homage to Catalonia about his experiences), but in the end always brutally suppressed by Leninists/Stalinists, Capitalists and Fascists, often working together.
Their organizations still exist, but are very small in numbers. A famous proponent of their ideas today is Noah Chomsky.
There are countless further categories which can be taken more or less serious (A-feminism, green A, Christian A, A-pacifism, Egoist A, Primitive A, Insurrectionary A, Post-left A, Transhumanist A), as well as the "non-anarchisms" which also want to abolish the state, but keep certain power structures intact or even extend them and are not based on voluntarism, like National-A (National Autonomous Zones, natural hierarchies), A-fascism (similar to the previous, but less thought out and basically just a rant by a racist and misogynist kid against the Swedish state) and A-capitalism (money rules, greed is good).
Most info collected from Rationalwiki, because I'm really bad with remembering names and stuff and didn't want to leave anything out. It's generally a great site if you're interested in political theories, philosophies, religions and more.
This is my first time commenting on your posts. Actually first time visiting your post. I am not much of a writer, but hopefully that's alright, we all have our roles to play.
When I discovered steem nearly 2 years back, my first impression was; well not everyone is a content creator! So how does this thing will work? After nearly 2 years I can't really call myself a noob anymore can I? However, my first observation remains valid.
In a social network that is build on a blockchain, which actually pays the users, the most important thing is governance. Yes, we all love our freedom, we all have our freedom but not at the expense of others. Just like in real life you can't shoot someone because you are free, you go to jail if you do that (hopefully!)
So, NO, you circle-voters, you know who you are. NO you do not have freedom to do CRIME. We will come after you and we will hunt you down. So, who gave us this job? Well we took it upon ourselves. You say you don't like it? Fine, go where ever you like to go, or feel free to stay. But there WILL BE GOVERNANCE.
I don't like to comment much, but often silence is taken as weakness. Also the stage never remains empty, so if I don't speak, someone else will, and that someone else can be a criminal, a manipulator, a person who doesn't think anything else other than personal gain.
I am fortunate that I do not need income from Steem. But my privilege is not my fault and not my weakness either. Let us focus on content, social interaction, innovation on this blockchain. Price will follow. If you are a spammer, deep down you know that you produce spam, and we don't want you here. Who decides what is spam you ask? Crowd decides, collective up-vote and down-vote decides what is spam. It least it should. That is the intent.
Thank you @joshman for this thought provoking article. Got me to write this long! :)
You're welcome, and thanks for the comments! For the record, your writing seems fine to me! You're right about governance. I think one of the fundamental issues is that people are not used to decentralized governance, which is messy. That's why we see so many appeals to Steemit Inc. for guidance regarding 'official STEEM rules'.
Nice work on this post @joshman. Of all the various posts I have read on our post HF 21 / 22 "Steem world," this one was the most clearly written. At least, that is my perspective.
"In here" myself for nearly 1-½ years, if we accept the basic premise of your argument re: downvoting is great, here is what I extracted that stands out to me about the "rest of the story" ...
"... the result of a downvote is the return of those potential rewards to the commons where they may be claimed again. Hopefully by a deserving under-rewarded content creator."
... as perhaps something you may wish to write about in future posts. Why? I believe addressing the "hopefully" requires you (us) to address the other two features of our recent EIP changes. And how they "are working out" for us.
Wow, thanks! That's a glowing review if I've ever seen one. And I thought I was rambling!
Why? I believe addressing the "hopefully" requires you (us) to address the other two features of our recent EIP changes. And how they "are working out" for us.
Sure @joshman. You've written about downvoting. That is 1 of the 3 EIP changes. What about the impact of the other 2?
While I read that these changes have been very positive, the number of Steemians with which I was regularly engaging has dropped. Many of them the "deserving under-rewarded content creators" to whom you were referring.
I have neither the time nor the data access to determine how widely the reward pool has been distributed, both pre- and post HF 21 / 22. Given how well thought out this post I was, I thought you might want to consider tackling writing about it.
P.S. If interested in investing the time, here is a link to a post (look at some of the comments, as well) which I would cite as support for my statement about declining numbers ...
That's a good question about the actual distribution. I can say anecdotally, there are more eyeballs out there hunting for new content because of the financial incentive to do so. Seems like a data scientist would be able to measure reward flows over time. For example, the percentage of the pool that flows to certain rep or SP level users over a period of time, versus the flow of rewards being exchanged between high rep orcas and whales. Speaking for myself, I want to see less people with large wallets off in the corner exchanging votes, and more rewards going to smaller users. Unfortunately many of these people are so set in their ways, they cannot be reasoned with, so the only option is to send their rewards back to the pool through downvoting. This is of course controversial, as you can see from the downvoting of this particular post (all retaliation). Everything is of course on the blockchain, and you can see for yourself who out there is really trying to support the community versus enrich themselves. Steemworld and Steamocean both have tools to evaluate voting patterns.
Thank you for investing your time in this response @joshman. On this …
”Speaking for myself, I want to see less people with large wallets off in the corner exchanging votes, and more rewards going to smaller users.”
… we are in agreement. But …
” I can say anecdotally, there are more eyeballs out there hunting for new content because of the financial incentive to do so.”
… not sure I can agree with this, as in the “circles” in which I have always engaged the rewards seem to have dropped. In some “circles,” of course, this does not appear to be the case. Although, it leads to an impression the word “circles” has now taken on a different meaning …
It would sure be nice if there were a simple method, for anyone interested, to obtain global (blockchain wide …) “hard facts,” about the reward pool distribution. Then we would no longer just be speculating … I know @steemchiller is working on a “data mining” feature in SteemWorld. It will be very nice to see what that will be capable of providing, once available.
I didn't say there was enough eyeballs, I just meant there were more than before.
Some of those eyeballs are former bid bots and have serious steem power behind them. I have voted several posts from small blogs who later got a 'lottery vote' from one of these accounts. I am hoping that trend continues.
Funny that you say things like "But Socialism Is Bad Right?" or "But we were taught that socialism is the root of all evil!" while in germany it's the exact opposite.
We're all taught that our socialism is awesome and we need more and more and more even though we already pay 70% taxes :)
Hi @joshman, I think you are just about the only fair person i have seen, when it comes to flags.
I do admit to bristling a little while reading some of what you said. But its a great post. The bristling is only due to seeing so many people have their accounts trashed just for sport, which is why i call out abuse when i experience it and see it.
That may be a great role for you to play, intervening when people are being abused without justification.
I just lost close to 20 steem from a post the other day and it wasnt a case of plagiarism, bit bots, self voting and i was not even being disrespectful lol
that makes a change I guess
One thing that does disturb me is the increased visibility of a functional Chain of Command here.
I agree with some things you said, but in many cases, you jump to conclusions that I would not have, and in others you simply declare something to be true, and then use that "truth" to build your case.
"without the unsung heroes fighting abuse on this blockchain, the reward pool for honest authors and curators here would be complete shit, because the exploiters would take over"
If that is true (you say it as though it is), then that shows how fragile this blockchain's code really is. If it takes a secret team of "heroes" fighting bad guys and spammers behind the scenes, just to keep the place from falling to complete shit, is it really decentralized? Sounds to me like there's a small group of people deciding what's acceptable and what's not. A bit like vigilantes. Let me guess, most of these people have massive amounts of STEEM, in other words, are untouchable whales and insiders?
Like I said, you say many things I agree with. It's just the stuff that clearly comes from out of nowhere and you just say it like it's a foregone conclusion, like "The only way to fight this is..." That's dangerous talk. I hope you recognize that.
Lastly, if all that you say here is true, why is it not mentioned anywhere in the official descriptions of this site/chain? Not mentioned in the white paper, not mentioned in any rules, or guidelines, or anything official? Why are these unspoken but extremely important new rules, laws even, coming to us from random members of the community? If this is true, it needs to be codified and posted for all to see, not dragged out by vigilantes looking to justify their NewSteem behaviours.
Lastly, if all that you say here is true, why is it not mentioned anywhere in the official descriptions of this site/chain? Not mentioned in the white paper, not mentioned in any rules, or guidelines, or anything official?
Did you read the whitepaper? It makes it pretty clear how the voting is intended to work to distribute the reward pool, why downvotes are necessary in this concept, and what's considered abuse.
Of course I have, several times over the years, not that it was ever updated.
The issue is that "rules" are appearing in places they shouldn't, like this post, and the NewSteem vigilantes are all quick to back each other up and enforce these rules with their huge stakes... but I'm saying that if these truly are rules/laws, they MUST be written down somewhere official. Much of what is being said here in this post is NOT in the official source of rules/laws/guidelines for this blockchain. (Otherwise, this post would be spam, and definitely not worth $20+, if it's just restating what is already common knowledge!)
If these concepts really are laws of the land, let's write them down, and live under rule of law. Making up new rules as they (mainly unelected insiders and whales) go along is NOT acceptable to me and shouldn't be to anyone who values decentralization.
Not sure what you refer to. He's not talking about a secret team of vigilantes, but generally of people who use their downvotes against colluding groups and defective voters, who don't use their stake to evaluate content but to maximize their own rewards. That aligns completely with the whitepaper, which explains that downvotes are the only way to fight these behaviours.
It's obviously not common knowledge that the reward pool is not thought to provide a maximum apr to investors. I recently had a discussion where one of them told me that voting is a form of tipping.
If these people would have read and understood the whitepaper, and would act according to it, all of this wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately it is.
Otherwise, this post would be spam, and definitely not worth $20+, if it's just restating what is already common knowledge!
The governance of the reward pool is decentralized. You can disagree, but my opinion isn't spam. I have been supportive of you and your initiatives, but now you're just insulting me. I value dissenting opinions, but you are just behaving like a jackass now. Downvote it if you don't like the rewards. It has already been nuked by $20 in downvotes and low and behold, the calvary came. Why do you suppose that is?
And you wonder and whine about why your support and engagement here is like pissing up a tree. We're done.
just to keep the place from falling to complete shit, is it really decentralized?
Yes, that's the point. There's game theory at play here. That's called decentralized governance.
Sounds to me like there's a small group of people deciding what's acceptable and what's not. A bit like vigilantes.
It's small because most people don't get involved with governance and fighting abuse.
Let me guess, most of these people have massive amounts of STEEM, in other words, are untouchable whales and insiders?
Nobody is untouchable, ask haejin.
It's just the stuff that clearly comes from out of nowhere and you just say it like it's a foregone conclusion, like "The only way to fight this is...
I am one stakeholder getting involved with governance stating my opinion, as is my right. You can disagree, and have your own opinion that's fine.
why is it not mentioned anywhere in the official descriptions of this site/chain? Not mentioned in the white paper, not mentioned in any rules, or guidelines, or anything official?
Here we again, another person appealing for centralized governance. Do I need to explain again that the governance is decentralized? People will disagree and express it with votes. If that is too messy for you, too bad, downvotes are a central feature of this blockchain.
During the 7-day voting period, upvotes and downvotes are applied to posts in a constant tug-of-war (at least that's the way it was designed).
If that were the sole case of then there why are down voted post and comments greyed out?
When the timer ends, voila, you have consensus and payout.
So why are post greyed out prior to the end of the timer? If it is only about payout, why the greying out of content?
The down vote system has been broken since inception, if down votes were only about the pay out, then your statements would be acceptable. But down votes are not only about pay-outs. They are about plagiarism and abuse, and a couple of other things that pop up when the down vote button is clicked.
Normalizing bad behavior is a bad idea, it has always been a bad idea, and always will be a bad idea to normalize bad behavior. I have seen the results prior to HF 21/22 of down vote abuse of individuals on steemit, and of various dApps.
I down vote for one reason and one reason only and that is plagiarism. After down voting the person, I leave a comment why I down voted, I give it a few days, and then I mute that individual. Do they still stay and plagiarize? most likely, but I am not going to go out of my way to play steem sheriff. (SS).
I would look at all the greyed out comments, yes some of them were troll comments from ticked off people, a lot of them were from people who left REALMEANINGFUL comments on post, but they were on the down vote stasi hit parade list. Abused by the so called abuse fighters. Bad behavior is bad behavior and normalizing bad behavior is wrong.
So how do we make it not be bad behavior normalization? we fix the down vote system, put a check mark next to the listed reasons for down voting, and then add an auto comment that is tied to the account of the person down voting, so that the recipient, and or community can agree or disagree by likewise down voting their down vote. Also this would make it a little bit more difficult on the bot runners that randomly down vote post for no reason other than troll type activity.
It's late for me and I did not take the time to read any other comments.
...why are down voted post and comments greyed out?
This is not a blockchain problem. You are describing problems/solutions with a particular condenser. When I used Busy, I frequently saw posts and comments that were hidden on Steemit.com. I think a better argument to make would be a configuration setting that disabled the greying out of posts/comments. @Steempeak has been very agile in adding features, and would probably add that if there was enough interest.
I down vote for one reason and one reason only and that is plagiarism.
As I said, you can downvote based on any criteria you want. What you can't do, is dictate to other sovereign voters what their own individual criteria is. Sure, a particular condenser could force a voter into categorical downvoting if they wanted to, but I don't think that would be widely supported. I would not support that.
Your arguments seem to be an appeal for centralized governance. That kind of defeats the purpose of a blockchain. Decentralized governance can be messy at times, there's no denying that.
Simply put, it's the reward pool, a collective resource that is not only collected by the community, but also controlled by it.
Yep! and never forget what's exactly the main activity that fills the collective rewards pool every day in our SteemconomyEchosystem. };)
Though, I'm now too old and not much into play that role of Active Management SJW 'Curators' stuff anymore. At least, not in the useless fashion style it's being expressed & executed lately in this place. I suspect there are already plenty of them here with more energy than me who still likes play that role to fight the good fight.
I guess, now I just kind of enjoy way more, let these reapers & rapists 'celebrities' kill themselves in slow motion by being left naked in the open and in evidence of their not life lasting maneuvers fueled by their ridiculous army of automated brainless & blind trails/guilds and crony autovoters.
Anyway, I have now some kinda Dejavu of have already told you this same thing before somewhere else with other similar but different words. :)
Over the long term, this is toxic behavior. After all, your blog/steem profile is like a business.
I guess, now I just kind of enjoy way more, let these reapers & rapists 'celebrities' kill themselves in slow motion by being left naked in the open and in evidence of their not life lasting maneuvers fueled by their ridiculous army of automated brainless & blind trails/guilds and crony autovoters.
Haha, well said! Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. I scanned your post and it looks like it's going to be good. I'll read it and comment when I get a chance.
I think you did a fantastic job explaining how the reward pool works, and the essential need for "equilibrium" as you termed it.
While you might not always agree with the reasoning behind a specific downvote, you can take comfort that the result of a downvote is the return of those potential rewards to the commons where they may be claimed again.
I've been pretty hesitant to fight abuse on the blockchain. It took me the better part of a year to fully understand the dynamics, and then an entire extra year to delve into attempting to fight abuse.
What I discovered in no time at all, is that there seem to be varying opinions with what I thought was clear cut abuse. For example, joining SFR, I reported a post, and then was criticized in regards to reporting, when the user was clearly abusing the system with bid bots.
The result of this lead me to stop fighting abuse. I've not downvoted a single time since, because I really thought that bid bot abuse was agreed to be a negative impact, akin to stealing from the reward pool.
I really hope people can start agreeing on things in this respect, because it's a deterrent, at least for me it is.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the economics here.
Thanks! I hear you man. You're never going to agree 100% with people. You can still find areas where you do agree and form alliances. Where I don't agree with people I still vote my conscience, and that has happened a fair amount.
Great article, that concludes the topic for me and I won't have to write anything about it any more :) thanks for writing it out so well!
Let me dive a bit into the political stuff about the socialism/communism definition, because you started and it's kind of a hobby of mine :D
First off, there are countless socialist schools. Their former main organ, the international, split up several times because everyone thinks he is right and the others are counterrevolutionaries.
According to Marxists, socialism is the phase of the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat". Communism means that socialism has advanced so much that the state disappears. Wikipedia
This is why communists today say that there has never been real communism, and by pure theoretical definitions they are right. They fail to see that every attempt to get there in the ways Marx described led to terror and suffering.
Libertarian socialism has lots of different branches itself and actually is a synonym for anarchism (except in the view of ancaps, a bit more on them later).
It all started with Proudhon's Mutualism (Property is theft. Property is freedom). Around the same time American small business owners developed a concept of left-market anarchism in opposition to the growing corporations which used the state to suppress their competition. That stayed a mostly American phenomenon though, in Europe the thinkers started to play with ideas which would base on abolition of wage labour and markets together with the state, mostly in favour of a distribution of goods not involving currency.
Based on Proudhon, Bakunin formulated anarcho-collectivism and Kropotkin anarcho-communism. The main difference between the two is that in collectivism people would get their share of goods depending on the work they submitted, thus involving some kind of currency at least in the beginning, while communism means that it's distributed completely freely according to needs (same as Marx:
"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs").
Both had big issues with Marx and basically foresaw that his ideas of a socialist dictatorship will lead to power structures which won't just disappear, but do everything necessary to stay in power and suppress everyone else.
Later in history, anarcho-syndicalism became very popular, which is the idea that trade unions and collectives can overthrow the state and capitalism, again building on the previous thinkers. Around the 1920s/1930s they were very successful in certain regions for a while (Ukraine, Spain before/during the Civil War - Orwell fought on their side and wrote the autobiographic Homage to Catalonia about his experiences), but in the end always brutally suppressed by Leninists/Stalinists, Capitalists and Fascists, often working together.
Their organizations still exist, but are very small in numbers. A famous proponent of their ideas today is Noah Chomsky.
There are countless further categories which can be taken more or less serious (A-feminism, green A, Christian A, A-pacifism, Egoist A, Primitive A, Insurrectionary A, Post-left A, Transhumanist A), as well as the "non-anarchisms" which also want to abolish the state, but keep certain power structures intact or even extend them and are not based on voluntarism, like National-A (National Autonomous Zones, natural hierarchies), A-fascism (similar to the previous, but less thought out and basically just a rant by a racist and misogynist kid against the Swedish state) and A-capitalism (money rules, greed is good).
Most info collected from Rationalwiki, because I'm really bad with remembering names and stuff and didn't want to leave anything out. It's generally a great site if you're interested in political theories, philosophies, religions and more.
Thanks, that was very informative! I only have a superficial understanding of most of these topics.
This is my first time commenting on your posts. Actually first time visiting your post. I am not much of a writer, but hopefully that's alright, we all have our roles to play.
When I discovered steem nearly 2 years back, my first impression was; well not everyone is a content creator! So how does this thing will work? After nearly 2 years I can't really call myself a noob anymore can I? However, my first observation remains valid.
In a social network that is build on a blockchain, which actually pays the users, the most important thing is governance. Yes, we all love our freedom, we all have our freedom but not at the expense of others. Just like in real life you can't shoot someone because you are free, you go to jail if you do that (hopefully!)
So, NO, you circle-voters, you know who you are. NO you do not have freedom to do CRIME. We will come after you and we will hunt you down. So, who gave us this job? Well we took it upon ourselves. You say you don't like it? Fine, go where ever you like to go, or feel free to stay. But there WILL BE GOVERNANCE.
I don't like to comment much, but often silence is taken as weakness. Also the stage never remains empty, so if I don't speak, someone else will, and that someone else can be a criminal, a manipulator, a person who doesn't think anything else other than personal gain.
I am fortunate that I do not need income from Steem. But my privilege is not my fault and not my weakness either. Let us focus on content, social interaction, innovation on this blockchain. Price will follow. If you are a spammer, deep down you know that you produce spam, and we don't want you here. Who decides what is spam you ask? Crowd decides, collective up-vote and down-vote decides what is spam. It least it should. That is the intent.
Thank you @joshman for this thought provoking article. Got me to write this long! :)
You're welcome, and thanks for the comments! For the record, your writing seems fine to me! You're right about governance. I think one of the fundamental issues is that people are not used to decentralized governance, which is messy. That's why we see so many appeals to Steemit Inc. for guidance regarding 'official STEEM rules'.
Nice work on this post @joshman. Of all the various posts I have read on our post HF
21/ 22 "Steem world," this one was the most clearly written. At least, that is my perspective."In here" myself for nearly 1-½ years, if we accept the basic premise of your argument re: downvoting is great, here is what I extracted that stands out to me about the "rest of the story" ...
... as perhaps something you may wish to write about in future posts. Why? I believe addressing the "hopefully" requires you (us) to address the other two features of our recent EIP changes. And how they "are working out" for us.
Wow, thanks! That's a glowing review if I've ever seen one. And I thought I was rambling!
Can you elaborate?
Sure @joshman. You've written about downvoting. That is 1 of the 3 EIP changes. What about the impact of the other 2?
While I read that these changes have been very positive, the number of Steemians with which I was regularly engaging has dropped. Many of them the "deserving under-rewarded content creators" to whom you were referring.
I have neither the time nor the data access to determine how widely the reward pool has been distributed, both pre- and post HF
21/ 22. Given how well thought out this post I was, I thought you might want to consider tackling writing about it.P.S. If interested in investing the time, here is a link to a post (look at some of the comments, as well) which I would cite as support for my statement about declining numbers ...
That's a good question about the actual distribution. I can say anecdotally, there are more eyeballs out there hunting for new content because of the financial incentive to do so. Seems like a data scientist would be able to measure reward flows over time. For example, the percentage of the pool that flows to certain rep or SP level users over a period of time, versus the flow of rewards being exchanged between high rep orcas and whales. Speaking for myself, I want to see less people with large wallets off in the corner exchanging votes, and more rewards going to smaller users. Unfortunately many of these people are so set in their ways, they cannot be reasoned with, so the only option is to send their rewards back to the pool through downvoting. This is of course controversial, as you can see from the downvoting of this particular post (all retaliation). Everything is of course on the blockchain, and you can see for yourself who out there is really trying to support the community versus enrich themselves. Steemworld and Steamocean both have tools to evaluate voting patterns.
Thank you for investing your time in this response @joshman. On this …
… we are in agreement. But …
… not sure I can agree with this, as in the “circles” in which I have always engaged the rewards seem to have dropped. In some “circles,” of course, this does not appear to be the case. Although, it leads to an impression the word “circles” has now taken on a different meaning …
It would sure be nice if there were a simple method, for anyone interested, to obtain global (blockchain wide …) “hard facts,” about the reward pool distribution. Then we would no longer just be speculating … I know @steemchiller is working on a “data mining” feature in SteemWorld. It will be very nice to see what that will be capable of providing, once available.
#sbi-skip
I didn't say there was enough eyeballs, I just meant there were more than before.
Some of those eyeballs are former bid bots and have serious steem power behind them. I have voted several posts from small blogs who later got a 'lottery vote' from one of these accounts. I am hoping that trend continues.
Very nice post! :) I enjoyed reading it
Funny that you say things like "But Socialism Is Bad Right?" or "But we were taught that socialism is the root of all evil!" while in germany it's the exact opposite.
We're all taught that our socialism is awesome and we need more and more and more even though we already pay 70% taxes :)
Thanks!
YOUR socialism is awesome, but I'm glad it's yours. Keep on trucking Germany... GULP
lol wut
That's my way of saying:
Deutschland ist großartig, aber Gott sei Dank bin ich Amerikaner! :-P
^^^^^^^
you americans also have ur problems. at least I didnt have to pay for my indoctrination (:
Touche'
xD
Hi @joshman, I think you are just about the only fair person i have seen, when it comes to flags.
I do admit to bristling a little while reading some of what you said. But its a great post. The bristling is only due to seeing so many people have their accounts trashed just for sport, which is why i call out abuse when i experience it and see it.
That may be a great role for you to play, intervening when people are being abused without justification.
I just lost close to 20 steem from a post the other day and it wasnt a case of plagiarism, bit bots, self voting and i was not even being disrespectful lol
that makes a change I guess
One thing that does disturb me is the increased visibility of a functional Chain of Command here.
Sorry man, I think the history is just too long. I tried.
I agree with some things you said, but in many cases, you jump to conclusions that I would not have, and in others you simply declare something to be true, and then use that "truth" to build your case.
"without the unsung heroes fighting abuse on this blockchain, the reward pool for honest authors and curators here would be complete shit, because the exploiters would take over"
If that is true (you say it as though it is), then that shows how fragile this blockchain's code really is. If it takes a secret team of "heroes" fighting bad guys and spammers behind the scenes, just to keep the place from falling to complete shit, is it really decentralized? Sounds to me like there's a small group of people deciding what's acceptable and what's not. A bit like vigilantes. Let me guess, most of these people have massive amounts of STEEM, in other words, are untouchable whales and insiders?
Like I said, you say many things I agree with. It's just the stuff that clearly comes from out of nowhere and you just say it like it's a foregone conclusion, like "The only way to fight this is..." That's dangerous talk. I hope you recognize that.
Lastly, if all that you say here is true, why is it not mentioned anywhere in the official descriptions of this site/chain? Not mentioned in the white paper, not mentioned in any rules, or guidelines, or anything official? Why are these unspoken but extremely important new rules, laws even, coming to us from random members of the community? If this is true, it needs to be codified and posted for all to see, not dragged out by vigilantes looking to justify their NewSteem behaviours.
Did you read the whitepaper? It makes it pretty clear how the voting is intended to work to distribute the reward pool, why downvotes are necessary in this concept, and what's considered abuse.
Of course I have, several times over the years, not that it was ever updated.
The issue is that "rules" are appearing in places they shouldn't, like this post, and the NewSteem vigilantes are all quick to back each other up and enforce these rules with their huge stakes... but I'm saying that if these truly are rules/laws, they MUST be written down somewhere official. Much of what is being said here in this post is NOT in the official source of rules/laws/guidelines for this blockchain. (Otherwise, this post would be spam, and definitely not worth $20+, if it's just restating what is already common knowledge!)
If these concepts really are laws of the land, let's write them down, and live under rule of law. Making up new rules as they (mainly unelected insiders and whales) go along is NOT acceptable to me and shouldn't be to anyone who values decentralization.
Not sure what you refer to. He's not talking about a secret team of vigilantes, but generally of people who use their downvotes against colluding groups and defective voters, who don't use their stake to evaluate content but to maximize their own rewards. That aligns completely with the whitepaper, which explains that downvotes are the only way to fight these behaviours.
It's obviously not common knowledge that the reward pool is not thought to provide a maximum apr to investors. I recently had a discussion where one of them told me that voting is a form of tipping.
If these people would have read and understood the whitepaper, and would act according to it, all of this wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately it is.
The governance of the reward pool is decentralized. You can disagree, but my opinion isn't spam. I have been supportive of you and your initiatives, but now you're just insulting me. I value dissenting opinions, but you are just behaving like a jackass now. Downvote it if you don't like the rewards. It has already been nuked by $20 in downvotes and low and behold, the calvary came. Why do you suppose that is?
And you wonder and whine about why your support and engagement here is like pissing up a tree. We're done.
Yes, that's the point. There's game theory at play here. That's called decentralized governance.
It's small because most people don't get involved with governance and fighting abuse.
Nobody is untouchable, ask haejin.
I am one stakeholder getting involved with governance stating my opinion, as is my right. You can disagree, and have your own opinion that's fine.
Here we again, another person appealing for centralized governance. Do I need to explain again that the governance is decentralized? People will disagree and express it with votes. If that is too messy for you, too bad, downvotes are a central feature of this blockchain.
If that were the sole case of then there why are down voted post and comments greyed out?
So why are post greyed out prior to the end of the timer? If it is only about payout, why the greying out of content?
The down vote system has been broken since inception, if down votes were only about the pay out, then your statements would be acceptable. But down votes are not only about pay-outs. They are about plagiarism and abuse, and a couple of other things that pop up when the down vote button is clicked.
Normalizing bad behavior is a bad idea, it has always been a bad idea, and always will be a bad idea to normalize bad behavior. I have seen the results prior to HF 21/22 of down vote abuse of individuals on steemit, and of various dApps.
I down vote for one reason and one reason only and that is plagiarism. After down voting the person, I leave a comment why I down voted, I give it a few days, and then I mute that individual. Do they still stay and plagiarize? most likely, but I am not going to go out of my way to play steem sheriff. (SS).
I would look at all the greyed out comments, yes some of them were troll comments from ticked off people, a lot of them were from people who left REAL MEANINGFUL comments on post, but they were on the down vote stasi hit parade list. Abused by the so called abuse fighters. Bad behavior is bad behavior and normalizing bad behavior is wrong.
So how do we make it not be bad behavior normalization? we fix the down vote system, put a check mark next to the listed reasons for down voting, and then add an auto comment that is tied to the account of the person down voting, so that the recipient, and or community can agree or disagree by likewise down voting their down vote. Also this would make it a little bit more difficult on the bot runners that randomly down vote post for no reason other than troll type activity.
It's late for me and I did not take the time to read any other comments.
This is not a blockchain problem. You are describing problems/solutions with a particular condenser. When I used Busy, I frequently saw posts and comments that were hidden on Steemit.com. I think a better argument to make would be a configuration setting that disabled the greying out of posts/comments. @Steempeak has been very agile in adding features, and would probably add that if there was enough interest.
As I said, you can downvote based on any criteria you want. What you can't do, is dictate to other sovereign voters what their own individual criteria is. Sure, a particular condenser could force a voter into categorical downvoting if they wanted to, but I don't think that would be widely supported. I would not support that.
Your arguments seem to be an appeal for centralized governance. That kind of defeats the purpose of a blockchain. Decentralized governance can be messy at times, there's no denying that.
Yep! and never forget what's exactly the main activity that fills the collective rewards pool every day in our Steemconomy Echosystem. };)
Though, I'm now too old and not much into play that role of Active Management SJW 'Curators' stuff anymore. At least, not in the useless fashion style it's being expressed & executed lately in this place. I suspect there are already plenty of them here with more energy than me who still likes play that role to fight the good fight.
I guess, now I just kind of enjoy way more, let these reapers & rapists 'celebrities' kill themselves in slow motion by being left naked in the open and in evidence of their not life lasting maneuvers fueled by their ridiculous army of automated brainless & blind trails/guilds and crony autovoters.
Anyway, I have now some kinda Dejavu of have already told you this same thing before somewhere else with other similar but different words. :)
Cheers!!
Haha, well said! Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. I scanned your post and it looks like it's going to be good. I'll read it and comment when I get a chance.
Oh! eagerly looking forward for your nutritious way to try rescue me from my scatterbrained habitual soliloquies. :)
Nicely written @joshman,
I think you did a fantastic job explaining how the reward pool works, and the essential need for "equilibrium" as you termed it.
I've been pretty hesitant to fight abuse on the blockchain. It took me the better part of a year to fully understand the dynamics, and then an entire extra year to delve into attempting to fight abuse.
What I discovered in no time at all, is that there seem to be varying opinions with what I thought was clear cut abuse. For example, joining SFR, I reported a post, and then was criticized in regards to reporting, when the user was clearly abusing the system with bid bots.
The result of this lead me to stop fighting abuse. I've not downvoted a single time since, because I really thought that bid bot abuse was agreed to be a negative impact, akin to stealing from the reward pool.
I really hope people can start agreeing on things in this respect, because it's a deterrent, at least for me it is.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the economics here.
Thanks! I hear you man. You're never going to agree 100% with people. You can still find areas where you do agree and form alliances. Where I don't agree with people I still vote my conscience, and that has happened a fair amount.