RE: The Steemit Civil War
Indeed, if all the whales acted in concert in a manner perceived as destructive....like 'inappropriate' flagging, then we'd have a hell of a problem. The point is the only way you can push back against a 'rogue' whale is to have other whales, or everyone else counteract the 'rogue.' The issue we have is that there is a wide interpretation for how to use flags. Yes there is a cultural guidance that is forming but why does someone with the influence Bernie has have to observe the interpretation of others? In fact, to him, he probably thinks he's using the flag appropriately anyway. So we come full circle, push back within the rules....easily done, though a bit of an overhead...and stop worrying, arguing or agonising about it. The view from outside steemit is made much more foggy with all the post and comment time the back and forth gets...rather than clearly explaining the rules and the contingencies available. I hope that makes sense! Sounded good in my head anyway ;)
I think I got what your saying.. lol. I pointed out in the video a downvote he made not only to a post but also, @dantheman.
Now considering the fact that I don't have the power or money to make a difference in this situation... I felt it was necessary to point out and speak up for others who have fell victim or are too nervous to stand up to trigger happy power players by making this video and reminding the community.
there is no cultural guidence. All the other whales downvote material they think is overvalued or overexposed. Smooth has done it (and said so explicitly) ned has done it (remember mr yoda) dan has done it and so have most of the other small whales. Like you said, this is because there is no one who can make them follow the informal "rules".
There are two ways to look at a downvote:
As a flag, that is only to be used in a specific set of circumstnaces.
As a vote that you can use however you see fit.
The thing is, that if our "cultural norm" says we use downvotes as #1, whales absolutely can, and absolutely will ignore the informal rule just as they do right now. So the only way we can have a universal rule that applies to everyone(at least within the way the current system works) is to use votes as votes, the way they are on the blockchain.
The real issue here is that a bunch of not very good, very overpaid writers got together, complained that they didnt want to get downvoted, so the downvote got turned to a flag and got a warning in the UI.
When that didn't work, the the same group of writers threatened to retaliate against anyone who used the downvote in a way they didnt approve of, so people stopped using it.
Thats not a "community standard" thats trying to force people to vote the way you want. Changing the way the vote looks in the UI to discourage people from voting a certain way is no different from ballot tampering.
And steemit as a whole loses out because of it.
In reply to @sigmajin - with respect, I'm not talking about a cultural norm forming out of the actions of whales, I'm talking about the one forming around how the majority of Steemians would like the flags to be used. For some individuals that may shift around a bit as time goes by because the flags can be deployed whenever someone wants to deploy them.
I don't know anything about your assertions regarding writers.I thought the downvote was changed to a flag in the hope that people would not engage for negative reasons. Is there any need to let someone know you don't like their post? The flags have been used to control rewards, to punish posts or comments, to discourage material, to show dislike, to indicate plagiarism etc That's a pretty broad brush open to broad interpretation.