Thank You, Justice Was Done: But!

in #steemit7 years ago

Thank You, Justice Was Done: But... Time to Step Up!

As I was finishing my last post here, I was telling you that I would resume my regular posting today.
I did that because I felt I was venting out for noone to hear, and in NO WAY did I anticipate the following:

But, as that was the case, I feel that I need to address everyone who expressed their support to me, and reveal that this inspired me and showed me that the community in its whole still has a lot of strenght.

On the other hand, there are still a lot of things worrying me, and I'll address that in this post.

Finally, I can hear you when you say the outcome was better than at my original post... but there's something you're not considering.

Let us start there...

My Rant Got the Views, My Cards Got Sunk: How the difference affects the Community

Many of you focus on the bottom line only... that is where things start to be wrong.

We as a community must make sure the value rises and the trash goes down. People who are solely thinking about the bottom line are part of the problem.

Don't take, take, take and expect people who give to keep supporting you - eventually they'll wake up.

I'm saying this because my original post, the post that ADDED the VALUE, was the one sunk!

The post with my rant rose to the top thanks to the support of an extremelly commited individual AND the community who chose to support me because they saw it was an unfair flag.

That is fine, and I'm over the moon with the outcome.

I never even dreamed of having a post like that.

BUT!

Half of the rewards I got on this post on the first post would make more sense... does that make, well, sense?

What I mean is that we can't wait for stuff to happen and compensate people later, we must take our heads out of the sand and pressure when stuff like this happens.

It's our community and malicious flagging is damaging it.
Which leads me to the next point.

Flagging Mechanism and Adjustments: Ideas, Ideas... but!



Gyrosean's Link

Throughout the endless waves of comments which I read one by one and replied appropriately, I found some ideas.

  • Some ideas were really engineous;
  • Some ideas were really impossible to apply;
  • Others were stupid.

I found an idea that while it wouldn't prevent situations like this from occuring, they could help to pinpoint cases of malicious flagging.

That idea was on a comment chat with @gyrosean and @giddyupngo and I pasted it above.

On the other hand, I also heard that flagging is something being discussed for a long time, and a veteran even popped out with more insight.


Of course, thinking about @dwinblood's words and how he at a later date said that the idea was discarded because it would be easy to circumvent, we can easilly imagine the guy who flagged my post just typing "..." or something... heck even "abuse" and walk away happilly.

I've been thinking about flagging for the whole day and I reached a conclusion.

  • I can't think of a solution in a day!

There are people around here thinking about that for much longer, and ideas come and go... stuff like dual reward pools which I think is a great addition are pitched, worked upon and more... but the truth is, a solution is hard - that much I can see.

The Flag on My Post Backfired: Among Hardship, Hope Ensues

Something I also have to mention is the fact that the flag backfired so... maybe the system works?
Heck it isn't perfect, but it works.

  • BUT

And here's the "but" again. If @berniesanders wouldn't have paid for the votes and kickstarted it all - it wouldn't have worked.

This brings us a very POWERFUL lesson:

  • The Community Works if it DOESN'T Stick its Head in the Sand.

In order for the community to work and to be able to regulate itself, the people who make it need to be invested, they need to participate and they need to use their "citizenship card".

They cannot be idle and wait for other people to deal with the problems, they must know when injustices happen and try to find a way to solve them.

Want to know how it only worked because a user didn't stick his head in the sand? Read this comment by my friend @underground:

So... now you see how only an ACT made the system work? Granted this was a big act, there are many cases in which smaller acts work just as well, because I doubt malicious flags are always this big.

But people turn their face away to even the smallest of them.

I'm a newbie, I didn't see many situations where my flag could be of use, but I contacted my fair share of people to try to show them they were wrong already.

Most of them didn't take their flags away of course, but one of them admitted he was mistaken and did it.

Apparently, he thought the content a blogger posted was copied just because @cheetah upvoted it (it was just the blogger transfering his content from elsewhere).

So, bottom line, think before you ignore.

In this community, we all have our stakes and the outcome of the community affects us all.

Ending this Chapter with a Thank You Note:

Ok, so now I have to thank everyone for their support. I am going to start posting my everyday content tomorrow but I don't want to close this Chapter without addressing everyone who took a bit of their time to share their kind words of support with me.
Overall, I want to thank @bernie-sanders for going to his own pockets in order to correct a wrong that was done to me and for having the guts to do it when nothign was guaranteed and without knowing me at all.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who supported my idea to make the MTG Cards and I want to tell you that I already started studying some more Steemians to add to the collection - However, I'm not rushing them so they may take a little bit to see the light of day, maybe a week or two.

For everyone that started following me because of this insane rollercoaster, I welcome you to my blog and want to express my gratitude for your help in building my little corner of the internet.

I focus on helping newbies and I promote Steemit, so if you guys ever have any doubts, you know where to find me - I usually reply to every single comment unless I miss it, if you think that was the case, tag me on it later.

Thank you again.
Chapter Closed for now.

Cheers!

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@spiritualmax, I'm not sure if you have heard of us but we are building a community of good flaggers to go after abuse. It's called @steemflagrewards, a people and Python powered project.

Here's the last post. Let me know if you have any feedback. It's a work in progress.

https://steemit.com/steemflagrewards/@steemflagrewards/steem-flag-rewards-new-steem-discord-bot-pull-downvote-data-on-any-post-9ab5bee3ff2b1

Wow, that's an awesome effort. As a programmer myself I can see how much effort was put into that. I hope you have success and use it for the right purposes. ;)

Thanks! Yes, I've had to do my fair share of tinkering to get some things working. We have a way to go.

We could sure use others with programming / scripting mindset on Discord. I've been doing a LOT of learning as I go.

Yes, it is my heartfelt desire, for this project to continue to be used for the good of the community. I think a lot of us have grown very frustrated with how so much rewards make it to the scammers hands while hardworking users are getting the short end of the stick. We hope to change that. One flag at a time.

I would like to help with programming, or at least do some programming myself. I was thinking of making a few Steemit bots but I'm not really well-versed in Steemit's API dynamics. Do you have a chat where I can ask you some questions when I'm developing it? I'd really appreciate some input and I could provide some help if it's required sometime.

Hi - I've never been a victim of flagging but am aware of it... it's good to see something being done, happy to contribute..... I think a collective-manual solution to this is the way forwards given that it's so easy to see who the abusers are.... I checked out the original post which started this all off, traced the down voter, it's just appalling the amount of quality posts they've down voted recently, and for what, a few extra 0.01% of the reward pool?

Of course I notice we don't mention names here! Part of the problem of course.

I think just like we have @steemflagrewards for good flags. It would be helpful if we had automated mechanisms for countering bad flags as well.

The problem is that most people would likely not upvote a post that has a significant negative rshares value. I think an alternative approach is instead of trying to cancel out the downvotes on the existing post is to instead have the content reposted and counter votes be used to bring the second posts to a positive value.

So, let's say a post is wrongfully flagged to oblivion. We just have them repost and upvote the repost. The downvoter could continue to downvotes the reposts but if the counter upvotes have more power I am certain they will eventually give up. This is me just thinking out loud but would be cool to see someone run with the idea

TBH I can't quite get my head around the concept of re-posting a downvoted post.... I've thought it through and hoped I could come up with something constructive to say, but I'm struggling... doesn't it just depend on the original 'bad flagger' sort of giving up?

And I'm taking it this also depends on some sort of collective anti-flag curation pools/ trails, with massive VP to reward the re-posted originally-flagged post, which I think is a good idea.

Yes, you got it. It would likely depend on both those things. When the flagger realizes the community does not support them such as in the case of a vindictive or hate flag. This will likely have a sway on subsequent actions.

Some people are bullheaded so may not work for them but think it could be helpful but it would especially need the second criteria you mentioned (massive collective VP).

It's the kind of thing I'd happily delegate a few SP to, we could sell it like an 'insurance policy'..... 100K users each delegating a few SP, that'd do it!

This needs to be a thing.

Congrats on the success of your last post, sucks it had to be on your rant and not your cards.

Hahahahaha, that's the luck he got. But I'm sure that he felt rewarded by the support that we as a community gave him. I just wish he'd keep the success that he got on the previous post for the next ones. :PPP At least with his rep going up and his voting power as well, he's got a nice boost going for him for new followers to feel encouraged.

Well worded and thought through all around, especially the point about this being a problem (or series of problems) that no one viewpoint or idea is gonna fix in a day. For me the biggest challenge has always been the idea that the humans on steemit will curate and fix the problem. But similar to healthcare, prevention is always the best option if possible. And to that end, the answers we should seek are those that attempt to prevent the abuse in the first place (or at least minimize harm) rather than reaction-oriented solutions. If this just turns into a bot war, then we will have failed.

Also, just impressed that you went through all the comments in such depth. #dedication for real though.

Thanks man, glad to see you around again.
Yes I always try to answer every single comment, readers and the audience are after all what keeps me going.
I totally agree with the point made.
Cheers!

I am new to this site, and enjoying half the content
(the other half is plagiarism or drama) ...I like the good half :-) and am optimistic.

The point is I found you because the rebuttal post got so much publicity. I like your content, so maybe it is working out in the end.

However, I am sure there are some changes that can be made. Maybe the simple act of leaving a reason would have a positive impact, but I am skeptical. I think in the end it is going to be a balance of community reaction like you are seeing now. In other words the down-vote intent backfired.

I am still figuring this system out, and I see a lot of issues that I am sure most are aware of, so I will leave it here. I enjoyed the post and encourage you to keep on steeming! --3D

Hello 3D
Glad to have you along for the journey, welcome to my tiny space of the internet.
I will no doubt keep on steeming everyday.
Cheers and I'll see you around!

I think of making a post
Maybe a sort of a fiction but which focuses on what we the steemians face on a single flag
The flag that kills our work
Am following you all the way

Make me the Hero :P
Hehehe
Cheers

Totally agree with the underlined words👍✌

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After all, the strength of steem depends on not letting speculation overpower production, preventing opportunism from freeing wealth from preexisting wealth, and from using any means to attain ends. Rather, it is important to encourage genuine value production, which in steem is tantamount to creating, discovering, and rewarding good content, viewing profit as a deferred consequence rather than an immediate goal. People like @spiritualmax do this and these are the people who feed hope... Keep the good work!

Thanks for the words of support.
That's what I think as well.
I will keep on Steeming!
Cheers

Your story wanted to weaken me yesterday joining this community @spiritualmax, and today's chapter was a relief.
@bernie-sanders wouldn't know the courage he have given to steemians and the challenge to do good, actually am impressed today...the upvotes stuff still confuses me with the flag...lol, i dont want to flag a post by mistake even, so can someone show me? even @spiritualmax

The flags are on the top-right of each comment and post man.
They are the little banner symbol.
Cheers