Voting the ups, the downs, the smiles, the frowns...

in #steem8 years ago (edited)

@mrwang wrote a post that lead to me writing a post about the down vote (flag) and getting some good feedback. Today @bitcoindoom wrote a response that was well thought out and had a lot of good thought behind it. @dantheman asked me if I would write a followup based upon that post, and the comments and see if my position had changed on the down vote situation.

I was completely willing to write this response. I simply wanted to think about it for awhile before I did so.

In many ways the post did in fact make me consider things in a new perspective. The basic premise is that Game Theory dictates that there needs to be an opposing force to any action or gaming the system and abusing it is inevitable.

Source: giphy.com

The post actually provides very concise and compelling explanations for this. I even think it makes a lot of good points and has a high probability of being true.

If it is true then the fact of the matter would be we need a down vote for more than simply plagiarism, spam, and abuse. I am not 100% sold on this, but I am leaning this way. I'll explain my remaining misgivings towards the end of this post. For now I'd like to focus on the problem. You see there is a perceivable problem. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation so it is possible this problem should not be aimed at the down vote.

My perception of the problem


We have those with steem power that will down vote posts because they believe the post offers nothing of value to steemit, has already been said before, is too highly rewarded, or is something they don't like.

This is not rampant. It is happening though. This can actually drive people away and make some people choose not to use the steemit platform. People making such a choice may not even be the person being flagged. They simply see what looks like a hostile environment. I will note that the people that have expressed this to me do not use reddit for a similar reason.

I believe all of us want steem and steemit to grow.


Source: giphy.com

To do this we ideally should be about inclusiveness. We should welcome people who are interested in a vast array of topics. We should not take it upon ourselves what may or may not have value to other people and down vote such things we deem not worthy. We should express our interest by up voting and supporting the things we like. If maximizing curation is your goal then predicting what will be popular and being one of the early people to up vote it is the key. This has nothing to do with down voting.

The real problem here is not the down voting itself, but the hostile impression, the feeling of attack, and the real obvious loss of potential income if the person that flagged you is powerful.

There is no known way at the moment to programmatically devise an algorithm or system that can protect from all negatives, insure the positives, and be immune to gaming.

If we were to have up votes only then we could have powerful people up voting everything their friends or family wrote to high values regardless of quality, and those friends and family would accumulate power rapidly, and they would join in and do the same. Soon you'd have the power consolidate into a smaller area than it already is.

Right now powerful people can down vote such activities when they are identified.

In my posts I typically advocated for leaving a flag in for abuse, spam, and plagiarism. You cannot battle these things without identifying them. Yet there are other forms of gaming. We need a way to combat them, and we would also be naive if we assumed we know all the methods of gaming this or any system. This means we cannot really create a flag that demands you choose a reason, and be sure we got all of those reasons.

Ideally I'd like to see a flag/down vote that required typing in a REASON for the flag before it is applied. If we had a way to potentially indicate something was a false flag then there should be a way to challenge that flag and if it indeed was false result in cancelling it and potentially a reputation ding.

I don't think most people have problems with flags other than those that are purely subjective and opinion. If there is proof of abuse, spam, plagiarism, or gaming the system I don't believe most people would find fault.

So if we need a down vote. Changing that perception should be the goal. Can we do that by requiring a bit more input accompany a down vote? Can we do that by making attacking/subjective/opinion based down votes potentially be a reputation ding?

Future


The important thing I think we need to keep in mind is our community seems to be largely intelligent and reasonable people. Yet, we are advocating for growth and inclusion. If we are having problems now, what happens when we have swaths of those that see everything as requiring to be politically correct? What happens when a wealthy person buys a bunch of steem power and then just goes crazy down voting like mad?

We are talking about perceived problems in a pretty impressive community. What does that imply when the masses join us here? I'd think the problems would become much bigger.

Thus, if we can find ways to address them now that would indeed be a good thing.

On the flip side if people join in large masses and actually STAY here and use the platform we will likely all be happy regardless.

For me it is about attracting people here, and making it an easy thing for them to decide to stay and participate.

Now that sliver of doubt...


I said I was leaning towards agreeing we need a down vote. I thus, framed most of my post towards trying to point out what the actual problem might be in such a case and simply brainstormed on possible things we could TRY/TEST to combat it.

Source: The Daily Bell

However, I still have one hold out... It is not certain, it is simply a nagging little idea that is bouncing around in the deep recesses of my mind that I haven't either completely identified, or completely squashed.

Game Theory indicates there needs to be an opposing action to stop the gaming. This does not mean that such an opposing action must come in the form of the down vote. That nagging idea is the idea that there may be a different opposing action we could use. I have no clue what that would be, as this is simply a little voice I can barely hear off somewhere in the dungeons of my mind. It may be simply an echo and eventually stop, or perhaps it'll get louder and I'll have a better idea what I am trying to tell myself. ;)


Steem On!




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Thanks. I responded in kind. Thanks for taking the time to put some thought into it and I am glad you wrote it as your own post. That much effort and thought that is really the best way I think to do it here at the moment.

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I have people that helped me and or we started at the same time here on Steemit and I look for their post, I have favorites! Whales have helped me and vote on my posts, I'm grateful, I work hard on my art. But a lot of times I'm afraid to speak my mind and scare off the whales and I get that feeling of not wanting to post anymore and have to work my way through whatever is going on in my head. I don't have a name for it.

What I really like is sharing my art and that's what I try and focus on and not get caught up in the politics or generating steem, it's a creativity killer for me.

i don't think there is an answer to the wealthy taking more than they give back, eventually it will kill the platform. You can see this behavior and cycle throughout human history.

I just had another thought! We need whale hunters...hahaha...maybe I shouldn't of said that 😳

Mostly the best thing to do is post what you love, and if rewards happen great. Yet I treat it like fishing, sometimes I land a good haul, and other times I do not.

That's how it feels, but the experience here has made me think about so many things that are happening in the greater world. It's been a very odd emotional experience here for me. I'm sure a lot has to do with making money and being popular, things I've avoided for most of my life regarding my art!

Game Theory indicates there needs to be an opposing action to stop the gaming. This does not mean that such an opposing action must come in the form of the down vote. That nagging idea is the idea that there may be a different opposing action we could use. I have no clue what that would be, as this is simply a little voice I can barely hear off somewhere in the dungeons of my mind.

I was not persuaded by the @bitcoindoom post. The claim that game theory suggests a tit-for-tat strategy (or generous tit for tat) is true in the 2-player prisoner's dilemma, but I'm not convinced that it applies here. That's sort-of like saying that game theory requires negative prices for the free market to work properly.

I think maybe the opposing action that you're looking for might be competition from other authors?

Although I do (reluctantly) admit that there are some cases where flagging is necessary and appropriate, I don't think that value-adjustment is one of those cases.

  • That doesn't belong here at all = flag
  • I didn't particularly like that or I think that article is over-valued = vote for something else (or better... lots of something elses)

I understand from the crab-bucket example in the whitepaper that downvote was designed to be a value-adjustment mechanism, but 6 months of experience here tells me that it's simply not perceived that way, and in most cases it seems to cause more harm than it mitigates.

At a minimum, if they're going to stay with the design despite the way it is perceived by the platform's users, they need to rename it to something with a more neutral connotation: increase-reward/decrease-reward or bid-up/bid-down or whatever someone can come up with to ease the sting a little bit.

Great post, it is interesting all the points you bring up. I do see a big problem when you bring up the point of the flag system being gamed by unmature rich people once the masses join.

Steemit could possibly incorporate a cost to use the flag. Like a drop in .02% of steempower or something like that. It could even be an investment that would only be reimbursed once it turn out to be justified. This would prevent the system from being abused by opinion and corruption a bit more, especially from whales; Since anyone with money can join any time!

Yeah, I am uncertain of an ultimate solution. I'd be willing to participate in any experiments if Dan, Ned, and the crew decide to go that route.

Yeah me too. I completely understand both sides to the argument. Yeah me too, I been really enjoying the steemit ride so far ^_^

Hate it when you see the answer but you don't understand it just yet...

and it's your own freaking answer... mindblowing.. happens to me, all the time

Yep, especially when it is challenging ideas and skirting stuff there is no historical precedence to compare it to.

Loved this piece. Thank you for sharing!
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