AskSteem: Are you going to make use of the downvote pool? Why or why not?
What many, me included, are seeing as something we desperately need on our chain to mitigate abuse and misused bids seems to be something others are completely not interested in using and feel like we don't need it and it just brings "negativity" onto the chain. So I thought I'd make a post asking people's opinions on it and briefly give my thoughts on the matter.
For the longest time there have been accounts who may or may not have bought stake or come in control of a lot of it and used this chain like a proof of stake chain where the content was just a placeholder and the care of it to be any good or to interact and use the chain as it has been intended went quickly out the window. Sure many attempted to downvote these users but the cost of it became quite big over time and especially compared to others only focusing on curation or selling their votes and growing through that. It was pretty much a lose-lose in many ways.
In my opinion there are a lot of authors and posts that deserve these downvotes, I see a lot of "guilds" that constantly reward the same users over long periods of time, autovotes that do the same thing, votetrading that does the same thing and all of it lead to low quality content. I see a lot of users saying that they will not use the downvote pool because they don't "believe in it" or that they don't want to face the consequences of retaliation. Is this really what we want Steem to be though? A safe space of vote-trading let's continue growing forever until the next bull run where we dump most of our stake and see to it that our distribution is crap compared to what it could've been if we hadn't just relied on not caring about it ourselves and letting others do it? It seems there are a lot of people here who just keep passing the "work" to others and riding on their efforts while they themselves continuously just keep passively earning and earning + dumping.
I'm personally looking forward to break up a lot of these cliques and safe spaces as the more I make use of the downvote pool the more rewards everyone else will earn. Of course I will be mostly focusing on the real abusers at first but I have a feeling a lot of that will quickly be removed and we'll be moving up the ladder and make earning Steem through post rewards at least require some effort than a selfie with a sentence. I'm mostly planning on retiring from posting or just post to burn some of their free downvote pool if they feel like retaliating but I have a feeling there will be a lot of accounts retaliating the retaliation too or at least countering it. I am hopeful that we've learned what just remaining passive has brought to our chain and that we'll act a lot more upon what we objectively consider needs to get downvoted a tad to be downvoted and not just pass on the work onto others while attempting to keep our hands clean. It's going to be an interesting experiment and I'm sure it will cause a lot of fuss and a few new enemies all over the board but hey, this is decentralization and the rewards aren't yours until you've received your payout. It's time those wanting to remain authors actually care about their posts, their commenters and other people on the platform than just jerking eachother's upvote buttons off constantly.
What are your thoughts on the 25% downvote pool?
I spoke to a fairly large stakeholder recently who doesn't believe in downvoting and wonder if they could be swayed if rewards were removed from their content.
Also, grumpycat appeared earlier today, but has no vested stake, yet.
We have been long overdue a change, time will tell how this particular one pans out.
Any plans to use the mighty OCDB stake to remove pending rewards from the undeserved?
I will probably not, because I don't like flagging/downvoting at all.
If I am not mistaken I have only used the downvote button like once or twice ever on steemit.
Even if I see something bad, I usually ignore it, rather than downvote it, because usually the stuff I would give a downvote to, already has some serious downvotes, and I feel like my small vote wouldn't really change anything either way, so I just choose to keep my VP to reward other users who behave well on the site.
After the fork you will have 2.5 'free' downvotes which wont affect your VP.
Yeah, but also one thing I don't want is to get into a fight with someone.
Because some people when they get flagged, they start flagging back big time.
I'd just rather not :)
I understand, and no-one can be forced of course. It sounds like you have joined in on really poor content before, and I think this will result in less chance of retaliation and is a reasonable option for some.
I obviously won't because it's not a habit I've cultivated so it Seems queer to me and another reason is that I want to leave the task to people who are assigned to looking out for unworthy contents to downvotes really. So here's the reason I won't
Everyone should feel they are partly assigned to looking after our network.
Definitely but I've been a victim of flag, that shit is scary being just a a tiny dolphin is making me skeptical of downvote, but I hope it works differently
So theres this person that i think gets too many rewards and makes Steem look like a joke to the outside world. Ive shown this persons content to a few friends of mine when Steem was higher in price and the content payed out much more and they facepalmed. Laughed out loud.
But that person is loved by the community, is consistent and active.
The content itself, a part of it, is godawful and its bad for the outward perception.
Should i take care of our network and downvote?
Is this a hypothetical or not, ill leave to the imagination, but the point is that whatever you do you will get backlash which will lead to drama, hate, marginalization, retaliation... etc.
So its pointless.
Either we centralize downvote power or it all basically stays the same but you gave the "usual suspects" free ammo.
If you feel the content is over-rewarded, that's your choice to make.
I'm sure I could find worse, see @raindrop for example. I'm getting a little tired of defending Mark - he is an easy target due to his activity/visibility but others are taking the absolute piss right now, and it's been like that for coming up to 2 years.
I'd be surprised if Steemit inc centralise downvoting like palnet/steemleo, I do like what's going on there.
Looking forward to it. Right now i have reservations in flagging as it simply makes sense for people to vote the way they currently are. ie self voting
Until it is clear that there is profit in voting on cool shit and auto voting might not always be the best way, i will mostly leave it alone.
2.5 'free' ones from your account will be quite influential and I hope that you get stuck in to be honest :)
It's an easy one for me. Make it financially viable for me to vote for you, give me free down votes to help the overall economy, and i will play - it's in my nature:)
It's really the goal of the EIP. Free flags and a doubling of the rewards for a vote on someones content. Hopefully it'll be right up your alley :)
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I will. To participate in a community like this requires balance on both sides of the scale. If everyone did their job and even kept a half eye on the largest abusers, the place changes dramatically.
I will continue to lease SP and start downvoting not only abuse, but also selfies with a sentence and highly overpaid content.
I hope bidbotted posts will be brought down to 1$ max, but I am quite sure that it will take months before bidbotted posts start getting regular attacks by the downvoters.
I wish Stinc would put an automated label on all bitbotted posts and a search function for that too.... that would help
I notice you do not speak of the fact that you got to where you are, SP and Rep, partly through leasing SP from MinnowBooster - how does that differ from buying votes through a bot? As a matter of fact, looking at your wallet, all I could see is those kinds of rewards, very little honestly earned through your posts and your own SP
Throwing stones at others when you live in a glass house is not very smart of you. ohhh...should I have flagged your comment? Aren't you lucky I hate flagging?
LOL. I honestly don't know why I am going to answer you about your ignorant troll post, but I will.
Buying huge upvotes on shitposts seriously hurts the platform and the reputation of steem, because all outsiders will see is the trending page filled with garbage.
Please tell me why leasing SP (while not selfupvoting 10 times a day) is harmful to the platform in any way? Am I upvoting shitposts for 100+$? No! Am I only upvoting myself 10 times a day? No!
Rep is not worth anything on this platform and will be reworked in the coming months anyway according to comments by STINC employees...
Maybe you hate flagging, but I don't.
I also will not comment on the rest of your reply, but, I am curious:
I have not seen any mention of this. If they are about to remove or alter the way it presently exists, then I feel both pleased and sad - sad because I have made delegations to help newcomers so as to raise them to over 50 rep (plus enough SP for them to make at least one or two posts a day), thinking I was helping them.
Oh well...ce la vie
I am not a downvoter. It is an option that has the tendency to be used based on personal grudges or automation instead of proper content reviewal. I've seen blogs being flagged for bitbot abuse that just gained a high reward and never used bitbots. I'd love to see a certified downvote crew democratically assigned that can downvote and just leave it to that. No more cowboys please...
Even with 2.5 'free' ones coded in due to the issues of the past 2 years? Come on, live a little :P
Giving a 'free' pass to just use a feature doesn't turn it better or an improvement to any platform. If there is a need to give anything would be more sp to new users that come to the platform and want to engage with all the energy they have but sometimes they can't because their bar is drain and can't contribute as much.
I really think @r00sj3 is right downvoting will only increase even more personal grudges and will not promote a better experience or a more curated content. That should be always done by elected people that can do that work properly with a strong sense of judgment, tolerance and above all respect for every part involved in it.
The 15 SP gift was costly, and the abuse taking place due to it had to be stopped. I have seen 10s of initiatives to fuel new accounts and don't think that is the reason they didn't stay - @paulag might have something on retention before and after the change - it has always been very poor.
@r00sj3 could well be right, no-one knows for sure. What is pretty clear though is that we have many openly taking their rent home with poor content knowing that in time, others will just follow their lead.
I do like what palnet and steemleo are doing with a centralised account, and as a reasonably good Steem actor, I've long wanted Steemit Inc to take a more active role in policing the network. Some will disagree, and some will disagree that steemcleaners (fueled by 2m SP via Ned) are always right with their downvotes.
We need a change, I'm hopeful this is a positive one.
not having a FREE downvote was never ever the reservation for downvoting for 99.99% of us. They fixed a problem that most people never had. Sure the rich folk were worried.
What was the reservation? Potential retaliation?
We lost our good actors to poor economics. I'm hopeful of an improvement but that's all it is at present.
I wrote my post in a new thread.
Since you brought this up, let me share my view: Overall, we lose good actors based on demotivation... which is caused by not gaining any traction on posts that they spend a lot of effort on.
I believe that as long as it's hard to find good quality (under-rewarded) posts, the whole system will just keep making the rich richer.
Why? The majority of the users are very aware that if they upvote an invisible content creator, their "ROI" will not be that high. You see this in effect when a user is added to a whale's autovote, a lot of extra auto-votes are coming in soon in the following posts. Everyone wants to profit from the whale's big vote as a curator.
The solution? Make it easier for the tiny players to be discovered. It should be possible that even if you only have 50 followers, you get 200+ upvotes (and not just because @curie found you). If tiny players can structurally gain good rewards when they have something awesome to share, curation will indeed turn into "finding good quality first". Right now curation is mostly just "predict who will earn well".
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Steempeak team actually gets it. This whole thing is a complete misdiagnosis. It probably won't do a ton of harm, but if people are thinking all the sudden "regular users" are just going to start downvoting people like crazy, you just don't get it.
I agree with this and it’s something that has always frustrated me, and why I’ve worked with Curie and then eventually made my own curation group.. as we lose such great creators as they go unnoticed. To me upvotes are great, but engagement is a big part too.
Curation currently for most has nothing to do with quality and just voting what gets you a return.. I find that sad.
I am curious about your opinion on how these frustrations of authors who spend so much time on content to then be ignored are also caused by seeing such minimal quality content rewarded so well?
I guess I have this hope that if the rewards were actually balance with using downvotes to not only fight abuse but counter the over rewarded, this would help the overall thoughts on rewards? My hope would be these creators would no longer see a poorly taken selfie with a sentence at $20+ and therefore the frustration they feel would be decreased a bit?
Just curious your thoughts on it.
I also agree with a group handling it with clear guidelines so it’s more consistent and not just some sort of grudge etc.
Potential? :-)
There are some whales I would love to flag. Maybe I will start doing that soon ... and maybe, at the same time, that will be the end of my STEEM 'career'. :)
At least then I can keep earning by playing Steem Monsters, haha.
Yeah, we all know that any action you take, downvote, upvote, comment, whatever a whale decides to take offense at... could wreck you if you're a plankton. Downvoting does me, as a plankton, zero good.
Completely agree. This is the only way it would work to any level of efficiency.
^ This. Users downvoting each other for community moderation is not a realistic path forward, especially if this all scales the way we want. There will be some clear cut examples where it's warranted, ie plagiarism, or literally a one word post like "bloop" that then receives lots of bidbot votes. But a selfie is not abuse. A selfie is what a ton of the internet shares and enjoys. Downvote cowboys(I'm stealing this 🤣), especially those with a large stake, I think, will do more harm than good.
I support something along the lines of an anti-curation trail like @r00sj3 mentioned. I would follow that to do my part, but I won't be cruising around looking for an opportunity to be a hater while people are trying to have fun using the platform.
This sounds like a very unique case. Also the grudges and making it personal part, why is it these special cases get brought up instead of the bigger elephants in the room that have been leeching out rewards from the pool and value from our chain in forever?
Yeah a nonbiased downvoting guild would be preferred and that each individual stakeholder downvotes nonbiased as well, similar to how curation should be they should not be votetrading with downvotes either on the same people constantly.
You have to look at it from a personal perspective. In this case from a smallish player: me. The indirect effect on your wallet by the leeching is longer term and feels less impactful. A personal grudge towards you based on whatever vague reason is hard to control and can instantly kill your steem career. People see downvotes, may assume something is up. I am very scared to somehow get involved in any flagwar-situations.
The leeching is a problem too, for sure. But maybe the medicine to cure the long term illness will kill the patient this month...
The downvote pool is really an interesting one. However, I am really not optimistic about achieving results with it because most of the abusers are high stakeholders meaning that it will take a fellow high stakeholder to make any significant effect on their payouts. Also, everyone is being very careful to step on toes and protect their reputations. I think I'm a bit indifferent to be honest but I am ready to police the community I belong, with that I don't need to worry much about retaliation.
It would be great if downvotes are targeted the overpaid reward farmers.
If free downvotes from larger stakeholders were to be traded for unnecessary flag wars that could be a problem. Since it's free, it might be traded with money.
I think the real 'downvoting' is already being done without any need for another button. Whenever people don't upvote that automatically dictates if something was liked or not. If something is not appreciated it will not have many votes and consequentially will not grow. I don't think there is any need to downgrade even more with a downvote button. For me is much more important to have a flag button to report something on the platform if it's wrong or doesn't follow the rules.
No platform should give that level of power/responsibility to any user with the downvote button. It would be much more productive if every channel elected some moderators and they could then do that 'filter' work of downvoting if needed. Without having any grudges or hatred throw that person or their comments and just use that if they didn't follow the rules or disrespect someone.
Nope, will not use it any more then i use it now. My actions are only in a small part driven by profit.
Im not a brain dead profit seeking zombie. If i was id pick something other then a predominantly Social media blockchain.
Free or not free, i will not use them simply because downvotes lead to drama, are a tool for abuse, for provocation, for revenge, for censorship on front ends.
Flags are useless and the only way they can work to any efficient degree is if the community comes to some kind of consensus over the "on chain flagging authority" and they get the control over the downvote pool. Thats the only way to fight abuse. Otherwise, flagging is all but useless, outside the projects led by enthusiasts that try to do as much as they can but ultimately cant really do much.
I am trying to understand why this post now. Why not before the decision was made? Or did the opinion of the majority not really matter?
I will not be taking part in the flagging game. I have flagged, but rarely and only if I see something very bad (a scam which can hurt others) - and if the poster shows me I am wrong, I instantly unflag.
I refuse to stand as judge over posts that do not meet my criteria, as I've seen that others do enjoy them. Also, I have seen flags by those like trashit, which were made because of political reasons (someone who mentioned he watches Alex Jones) or the post is anti-vaccine. The wording of the flag-comments on trashit are vicious or, at best, real nasty. He programmed his flag-bot in this way because he has been delegated over 25,000 SP and feels powerful, but I have not seen any good posts by this fairly new 'trash' account.
This is supposed to improve our platform?
The way I see it, we have a few choices, under the new regime. We all go ahead full steam and flag everyone we do not like, or else, we look at ways to stop others from flagging us.
Tying this in to the curating changes (taking from authors, not the 25% as it is-was, but 50% and, as was said in one of the posts by those in power, maybe at next HF we can go to 80% for curators and 20% for authors, because, as was said, authors are not important to steemit, only the curators are), I do not find cause to feel optimistic about the future of this platform.
I also would like to know how we can protect ourselves if we are targetted by some nasty people, can we, for instance set our setting to Deny Payments? Would that prevent flagging, or could they still flag so as to affect our Rep (this is I was told by someone else). Is it true?
As for the curating. I refuse to write stories, spend hours on them and then have a few of those who upvote me take the lions share. It is NOT as if the curators are using their own money and therefore deserve a big thank you. They are using common funds without cost to them, but because they think a post will do well and earn them money, we must increase the rewards to them? BS.
I know that of those who upvote me, most do so as a way of rewarding me for the post, or by some as a way of thanking me for supporting them when they first started on steemit. Those are the kind of reasons that evoke good feelings and help generate friendships, which makes the platform a nice place to be. Your way, I think, will bring about the opposite.
A sort of PS here: It also means I am going to have to withdraw almost all my witness voting, as most of them support the changes of this HF, even if only because they feel obliged to.
Which leads me to the question: Of the members with a Rep of 70 or above - how many of them have never upvoted their own posts, or those of another, so that they get upvoted by that person in return? How many have ever purchased a vote or promised, 'follow and upvote me and I will follow and upvote you'? But now, that they have high reps and strong SP, they want to ensure we cannot do the same as them? Why? Are we really meant to bvelieve they are being altruistic and acting for our own good? (sorry, but I am not that much of a 'snowflake').
I am considering denying payments for my story posts, only allowing them if I make a news or political post. I am certain that by my doing so, I will be contributing to the platforms by my stories, while not funding leeches (those who are not satisfied by the current 25%). I can get rewarded on some of the alternatives which have sprung up recently.
Higher curation rewards would make bidbots less profitable. People will probably self-voting less often.
I'm sorry, but though your intentions may be good, you are either young or know very little about human nature. Actually, you know it will not work out the way you say, which is exactly why every post I've seen about this HF and Flagging, they always talk about flagging those who self-vote.
You think you can create by force an Utopia, but no dictator has ever managed it and they will not manage it here either. People will be idealists for a while, but they get tired of it and revert to their natural natures.
Which is why I have been trying to convince everyone that this is wrong and that it will kill Steemit.
The only good thing that might come out of this is that maybe someone who has the knowhow is watching and seeing how Steemit went wrong, they'll devise a healthy and practical platform.
The sublinear reward curve is about to exponentially crush all votes under the almost linear cutoff.
The little votes are about to count for even less.
Only flagging abuse not currently getting flagged will change that.
If they repeat the whale experiment, this might not be sooo bad.
? There were plenty of discussions before such as the post by @vandeberg when he took a deep dive into the downvote pool. This comment is coming off as passive aggressive already off the gates and "you guys only care about yourself and not about the smaller users/majority" so not sure I want to bother reading the rest.
Please refer to my other reply just made...
why would you make it personal? How is that the only example you could think of when there's literally tons of shit posts on trending with 99.99% stake from bid bots behind their votes in an economy where the majority of stake is locked up in bid bots enriching the owners and delegators and yet everyone is crying about 50/50 being so bad cause it just makes the rich richer and ignoring the fact that even if it helps get some of that stake off of bid bots and back to curation or curation projects it will have done it's part and most authors will be better off because of it. On top of that we will have the downvote pool to make sure that whatever stake remains on the bid bots is used on things deserving the promotion and those misusing it will get their rewards removed fast and the returns the bid bots provide for delegators will be reduced thus driving delegators to further delegate to curation projects that return higher curation rewards because they go out of their way to find good posts possibly from new users.
If ya'll can't seem to see that all these changes, working together with one another, will be good for the platform and their authors, combined with using downvotes appropriately to downvote abuse such as the example above so that those rewards go back to the deserving users that don't get downvotes and if you're not alone doing the downvoting on an account but many follow you it will not give the downvoted account a reason to go out and retaliate on all the accounts, if they are a big user in power of doing that then it will get noticed and other bigger accounts will step up and counter their damage because there will still be way more voting power than free downvoting power.
Anyway, I still went ahead and read your comment but please try and be more openminded to the changes, things can't get much worse around here lately and these changes will surely not make them worse, they may not be perfect but we can only improve from there on out.
I admit you have not convinced me - not because I want to be difficult, but because all I see is a number of assumptions about the effect of these changes. Of course they have to be assumptions, since there is no previous history of such a situation on another platform, but I do not see a practical approach being adopted. For instance, make changes one at a time, so that you can clearly see when one of them is causing more harm than good.
I am trying to help someone in Venezuela. They have a low SP (even with my delegation) so they only earn something when I help - and a few others do so. I can see them being worse off now, for who is going to care about them? This last week the child got sick and was taken to hospital. The hospital did not have the medicines needed, so the mother had to rush off to try and buy some from a private clinic. They are already struggling to buy food, so this expense has knocked them sideways. When a post was made about it...of course Steemians rushed to help (I am being sarcastic). I will send some today, but it is not enough.
There are various groups helping Venezuelans, but they cannot help everyone; it is necessary that small but capable of helping people like me also choose to help one or two. My vote is 1c - so if I cannot send them something by buying votes, I cannot help - and I love the posts and effort being made so as to feel they deserve my support.
Keep in mind, if I buy them (or anyone else) a 5Steem voting package, I am using my money, which already belongs to me - yet you want to have the right to steal it (from my point of view it does remain theft, since I paid for it). That is one thing nobody seems to mention. You see someone gets a 10 or 100 Steem upvote from upvote bots, but that is not what was earned; most of it, maybe 90% is money taken out of earned money and by taking it, you are stealing money that does not belong to Steemit. Once the money is in my wallet, it is supposed to be mine, so I am being damaging, though you are right, Steemit does benefit from having my money stolen and put back in the pool.
Oh well, it was a bit of a rant but by replying I have assumed you wanted a debate and to know why I am not happy with what I see being proposed (and put into effect). Yes, it is what I fear, all these good intentions rely on theories by idealists without pragmatic attitudes or experience. We want it to work, so it will work.
Anyway, why get upset with me? I'm a small fish compared to you and whatever I decide,my influence is not likely to be felt....is it?
Not upset, you say this:
yet seem to have a lot less experience and understanding of the platform than most on this post. Again not trying to offend you but you're making assumptions and bringing forth examples that only happen a minority of the time.
Why do you think people would use their downvotes to downvote genuine posts that have "earned" rewards compared to having bought them from bots. "earned" cause nothing is earned until payout is through, upvoting and downvoting is only a tool to allocate the rewardspool towards accounts. Then yes you go on a rant talking about your altruistic endeavors, and even though I believe I've been rather altruistic myself even though I'm not in the best position either and currently powering down at these low prices, I do have to ask if you understand how the markets work. You realize for every Steem that gets sold there has to be a buyer, for most rewards you allocate to users that end up selling that Steem there has to be a counter investment back into the platform in one way or another. It can't just be "they are here and they are active, let's help them survive", what are other platforms or cryptocurrencies doing for people in need? Why is it that I only hear about a $60 dash donation and how dash is making big waves in venezuela on the internet but nothing ever comes out of Steem? Where is the marketing and the investment back to continue keeping this platform and relationship with Steem healthy so that it won't just dry up and bring everyone under considering how many people are relying on it. Well I haven't seen much of it, many like to complain about rewards yet have not remained invested. Many like to complain about changes yet only think about them from their own, often times shortsighted viewpoint.
There is this weird entitlement when it comes to Steem and at the same time the thought process of "someone else will take care of it". For every post that gets spammed in my DM's daily instead of using the share functions to share it onto other social media platforms and bringing in new users we would probably be doing a lot better. Yet most people just think about themselves and their short term gain. I'm not pointing this at the people you mentioned cause I understand their situation is dire but not many other Steemians are doing much to help the platform that introduced them to crypto, possibly changed their lives or if anything let them earn some rewards instead of making rewards out of them like most centralized platforms do. It's almost like no one deserves it to begin with, or at least that's what it has been feeling like lately.
So that was a counter rant to your rant, from someone who stayed powered up for most of my 3 years, powered up around 20k sp above $2 and is instantly being pointed at for powering down by other community leaders and rumors start to spread if i'm leaving steem for good without bothering to ask what's up or what I'm doing. That's Steemians for ya. You might be right that not much will change with the HF changes, as it seems in this thread most will not downvote, i.e. risk their cozy post rewards to downvote bid bot abuse that's just been taking their rewards while enriching owners and delegators for the longest time. Band together and see to it that deserving posts get the rewards and help the little guys get some rewards with the new curve. It might be that the negatives to the downvote pool will outweigh the positives, who knows, maybe that's just who we are and I guess then we will all deserve eachother at the bottom of the coinmarketcap ranks. One thing is for certain though that keeping these same rules going with the leeching of accounts such as haejin who has been using his buddy's account to self-vote garbage placeholder content that gives no benefits to Steem or kingscrown who doesn't bother taking longer than 5 minutes to write a post but invests all the time to get as much rewards as possible from anyone that gives in to his dms while votetrading with a delegation with as little skin in the game as possible or other votetrading groups that think we are going to get anywhere if we don't curate the way it was meant to and make that competitive instead of this safe proof of stake piece of shit that this blockchain has become with the same faces on trending every day and the same shit every day while everyone just thinks of their own ass no matter if it will cost everyone this opportunity to make something great off of Steem.
Anyway, not in the best mood so a lot of what I may have said might be emotionally driven, but at the end of the day who cares, it's not like there are many readers around today anyway and I haven't been one for caring that something will be "permanently on the blockchain" in previous rants either. I like to say my opinion and that's kind of how I'm feeling lately, if the new changes won't help us in any way then I don't really know, I'll probably still continue my attempts at distribution with ocd&ocdb, etc but part of me will be dead inside.
I did not mean to depress you. Of course I can see much that is positive about steemit, it is why I am still here, but when those who have the programming abilities seem to make the decisions without talking it over first (I know not many see it this way, but a very large percentage of Steemians are also heavily invested in Steemit, if not in SP, then in time as they struggle to make it a better platform for others), I get the feeling that we count for nothing (especially thanks to people like haejin). He was my first case of seeing the abuse of downvoting (flagging). A Nigerian had the clever idea of making a post on how to grow enough food to feed your family on a tiny piece of land - because so many are starving in Africa, without reason.
haejin flagged him until his rep went to zero. When I asked why, what was bad about his post (?), haejin replied, 'because I felt like it' and some of his hanger-ons threatened me, demanding I stop complaining. During that day, he damaged another ten or more for, again, no reason. I contacted Patrice for help and was told haejin is too big to fight. So, if HF21 knocks his socks off, I'll stop moaning (at least, I'll try to).
...and now you want to tell me I should keep my rose-tinted glasses on and believe in the better nature of Man guiding our members?
Have you checked the nasty comments 'trashit' makes as he /it flags comments? I get the feeling that behind that bot is an evil or at least, nasty man. There are more like him, so, to be okay with flagging for free, I would need to know there is an impartial group who will examine and correct such abuses where required.
Anyway... relax with some good music and tomorrow is another day...closer to the day you tell us about your new project. I love it when I see people taking the initiative to create....or take a risk to give birth to what was only an idea.
My best wishes for success.
Now that I know who you are (OCD) it brought back some memories,. When I first joined and posted my stories, I was given some nice comments and upvotes from OCD. I wondered about whether I should do something, maybe there being something to join or in some other way contribute, but I found it too confusing and after asking a question or two and not getting any help, I guess I forgot about OCD (as they also forgot about me, I guess).
I have been presented this argument a number of times and I think I understand when it comes to upvotes coming from the pool. Let me personalise it, as it is easier to write:
Say I make a post, but know that because most of my supporters are now elsewhere, I'm not going to get more than 10 to 20 cents. I look in my wallet and having over 10Steem, I send to SmartMarket 10Steem, in the hope of earning anything between 0.50 to 1 Steem. So, I invest my $10 for anything between 4.5 to 6 days and get a return.
Then along comes someone who says, "The upvote rewards do not belong to you and I think you are making too much, so I am downvoting you down to a reward of 0.50c
Can you see that I am actually having $9.50 of MY money being taken from me? If they went after whatever PROFIT or ROI I'm hoping to make, the argument that the rewards are not mine would make sense.
It is clearly stated, many times, that once the 7 days are up and the money is transferred to my wallet, the money is mine and nobody is allowed to take it from me.
This is what I am looking to find an explanation for. Why am I wrong to feel this way?
You aren't, the whole ecosystem is wrong to force many to buy "profitable" votes in the first place instead of having stakeholders curate or at least passively delegate to curation projects looking for what is worthy of curating and supporting. That's what I'm hoping the HF will fix, even though n^2 was too high and I realize with the new curve many minnows will see their own voting power diminish further I hope that the initiatives to curation will increase. The sad part is that some are in the position with their "services" to profit by even giving you profitable votes, this is something I addressed with @ocdb by making it fully non-profit for us maintainers and is the reason why it grew so big in SP and we're gonna try to do our best to keep it non-profit and fair to people after HF21 and hopefully with some more flagging power behind crappy bids they will slowly lose some of their delegation and more power will go back into curation instead. I'm not one to hate on for profit projects as long as they bring some value to our platform, but coding a bid bot, which 90% are just copies of @postpromoter and making anywhere between 5-15% off of every bid + some times also taking the curation rewards is in the end just taking rewards from everyone since we all share the same pool. It's annoying that people fail to see that that biggest threat to Steem have always been bid bots as they've centralized the stake to sell it for "attention" and sometimes profitable votes while mostly just enriching the owners and delegators and costing us distribution, active and good authors and less stake for curation. With the new HF we can hopefully at least have smarter bidders that will promote actually good posts knowing not many will find a reason to downvote that, as I'm sure not many downvote your posts either since you don't overbid nor promote crappy content.
That's what I am hoping to change and even if the outcome is not gonna be great and will open ways for a lot more abuse it literally can not get worse than what we've been dealing and ending up with in the last few years, imo.
Let's see how it goes, I'll be trying my best to use my downvotes as efficiently as possible and I've already come to terms with never earning any post rewards anymore due to retaliation, if anything it'll waste some more of their downvote power.
Okay...I'll stop making waves and keep my fingers crossed as I hope it all works out as you want it to.
If you do not mind...I did not know who to ask and you seem to be knowledgeable enough to maybe give me an answer (I hope you do not feel it is presumptive of me)
I worked out that each post was costing me about 23b RC. I worked out what I'll need for 4 posts and delegated (sorry, this is on my 2nd account, which I did not create to make money, but for posting my story in bigger chunks for readers who enjoy reading my story - I find that limiting my posts to 2 to 2.5 pages does not give the reader enough for them to get caught up in the story (I read, in real life about 2 or 3 books per week, so I tend to empathise with my fellow-readers, whether they feel that way or not).
A month later, I am struggling to make posts and I see it now requires about 31.1b RC per post.
I've been wondering why the RC required changed and all I could think of is that as the value of Steem changes, so does the number of RC required to cover the costs. Am I right?
I don't believe RC changes with the price, it's more about the usage and witnesses can adjust that if necessary in the future. One theory is that @misterdelegation delegated to @steem recently so they can claim more accounts as they were running out due to demand so them and everyone else claiming accounts is probably the reason to the cost increasing.
Thank you, appreciated.
Ok, then you guys should start downvoting users with +100000 SP,
I for sure don't do that as the most other lower users as well.
You should start downvoting these big fishes who selfvote selfies with 100% and being part a huge voting circles.
With the the change to 50:50 many bots will stop their service and just start upvoting thousands of posts every day.
HF21 + downvote pool will make things only more worse.
I personally downvote or what's even better, report spam, theft and abuse to steemcleaners.
Downvote is a punishment, it takes money away in real time from posts, the 7 days expected payout in relation with downvotes is just nonsense.
It's about the up or down of the steem price during these 7 days.
Just don't upvote posts you don't like is enough, creating bots should not be allowed aswell as auto and selfupvote.
You guys should better put all your energy in marketing to attract new users and investors.
That's the most important thing!
Have a nice day
Tom
Posted using Partiko Android
I am an opponent of downvoter !!!
If you do not agree with the opinion of another whale, then these are your problems and keep them with you)))) I think so. Unless of course this does not apply to plagiarism! I for what would be downvoter only those users who are not honest with Steemit!
What are your thoughts on accounts like @haejin that bring no real value to our blockchain, has no interaction and possibly no views either. All he does is take part of the reward pool for himself without proving anything of value to anyone on or outside of steem and taking part of your and everyone else's rewards.
I would address the haejin problem myself by ignoring it.... in that, whatever haejin staked himself... he's basically just a speculator when he self-votes... it's the reward he gets for staking his money. If he posts garbage content, then no on else will upvote his material and he'll simply be treading water in the long run because the constant creation of Steem is built in inflation and he'll just keep breaking even on his stake if he continues to self-vote. Thus, he doesn't do any real harm... because only his subscribers actually have to see his posts (so it's not spamming me for instance). If some weird people actually find value in his stuff, well, that's fine, let them upvote and he gets paid just a little bit on top of his gigantic stake... drop in a bucket.
The problem happens when some other whale comes in and decides to create some drama by unleashing a bot army on any one who even has an opinion that differs slightly... such a whale using the excuse of "fighting bad actors" to justify actually being a bad actor. This supposed do-gooder whale has driven more people off steemit through his downvoting and account crushing actions than Haejin ever did by stupid market analysis posts that I never bothered to read or was ever troubled by... so what if he self-voted... the whole game is based on inflation so he's not actually making any money from self-votes. In fact, anyone who self-votes... should be justified in doing so to the maximum level they desire... since they "earned" that right.
I'm a nobody plankton (or whatever) and I don't have ANY spam in my feed because I don't follow spammers. So I have trouble seeing how downvoting spammers or plagiarists.. or whatever, does any good at all?
I feel like upvoting is the only valuable thing that happens on this chain. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it looks to me after a little bit of time around this block.
I have seen repeatedly as users who only publish 2 lines of text or a simple image have votes of 10 or more $, this is an injustice because there are others who mount a professional publication and only get to raise 0.02 $, this is in reference to what you indicate. There is preference and closed votes.
I can’t say it’s going to get me seeking out bad content to downvote, but I probably will be inclined to downvote more. Having the specific SP pool for it makes it clear that we’re meant to do it as part of how the platform works. I have rarely encountered content I wanted to downvote. Plagiarism, trolling, spamming links. I still think I will do those categories and not just stuff I think is lame.
Posted using Partiko iOS
I have no problems with down voting people. I've never thought of post rewards as being rewards until they are in your wallet. If people are dumb enough to pay for bids on garbage they deserve what's coming. If you want to get steem the price is whatever it costs on the exchanges, the bids come with risk that people don't find it disagreeable. I'm not saying to down vote people because you disagree with them, and low quality is subjective, but if we allow people to get away with it, steem suffers....want to make fun of the platform and discredit it, find all the junk with bids over 200 dollars.
I'll even follow your downvotes with a trail if I like your style. I look forward to seeing your good work in action.
Posted using Partiko Android
Here's the deal most of us don't see that world of abuse that apparently some of you do.
Not sure if that says something about our exploration patterns on Steem.
I often wonder why is it some people seem to think Steem is so rife with abuse and then others just wonder what the heck they're going on about?
Also most people don't have a big enough vote to worry about "loosing a vote" to a downvote. I can see how the rich vote may feel about that. But for most people it's not really an issue.
And then even so if our vote isn't large then what is it gonna do to a highly voted post? Nothing... except make us an enemy? (And of a person that either has influential friends or the person cares way too much and probably knows they're doing something controversial so they're very on edge and ready for a fight... and most of us came to steem to escape the drama and stress we had elsewhere)
Personally i see abuse sometimes and i think hey i should downvote, but...
A. oh wait it's a new user and that would suck for many obvious reasons.
B. Or I think they have 0stu on their post so why bother?
C. Or I think maybe I'm in the wrong for downvoting and I should think about this more. If no one else is downvoting then what is it that they know that I don't? It's true many people can rush to assumptions and yet be wrong. I hope people think about it and accept that they can be wrong.
I tend to start with warnings. I don't follow people who have issues. I don't pay all that much attention to trending because it's not all that great of content to begin with. I don't have a large enough vote to do anything on trending besides make some enemies.
I tell you where i see crap posts that i would love to downvote... #steemmonsters or #spt hashtags. But i represent a company for the game and that would not be good for me to downvote there as a 3rd party company that is meant to support the whole ecosystem. However some of those crap posts on steemmonsters are people who feel 100% that their posts are valid and not just junk screenshots and repetitive non sense. Or someone doing a give away of a stupid 2 cent card. But they think hey people like it so they upvote their post to 10 stu which is funny to me... because again it's a 2 cent card.
But is that just my personal issue?
I'm not saying downvoting shouldn't happen... I just thought I'd write about some of our reservations.
Most of us are just not going to find clear cut examples of reasons to downvote. And if it's not clear cut... then downvoting might have the chance of making us look like the idiots.
Alone it won't do much, but if 100 dolphins use their 1 out of 2.5 free downvotes on that post there's no way the bid bot abuser is going to attempt to retaliate everyone, he can retaliate 1-2-3 people and how hard will it be for the others involved in the downvoting to counter the damage? This HF will only succeed if we all band together and downvote things that truly don't deserve the rewards they've gotten or bought their trending spot for.
No one is downvoting nowadays, there's barely any going cause most are just concerned with growing in stake through curation rewards so of course you don't see downvotes often today. That will hopefully change with the HF and normalize them a lot more though.
Of course warnings are nice "hey, do you really think you needed to buy votes from 5 different bid bots for this content?" and if they continue being the zaku or cbhartist who apparently can't get enough of the attention or are just using bid bots to somehow profit (who knows what's going on behind the scenes) then you'd move onto warning #2 which is a downvote and who knows maybe that'll create a chain reaction of other downvotes and the author will understand that in order to deserve that #2 trending spot they'll have to either try with better writing or content again.
The weird part today is that even if someone were to bid bot something super illegal/bad without every bid bot owner being made aware and removing the votes we wouldn't even have the power as a whole fucking community to downvote it. That's how much stake is locked up in bid bots.
Funny you mention steemmonsters cause I mentioned that zaku who promotes his SM tournaments before I read your comment all the way through.
I have nothing against people not using their downvotes or being the first to downvote something out of fear of retaliation, but they have to understand that them using their daily downvotes on legitimate content that deserves them to make trending and the use of bid bots better, the more they are going to be rewarded back from the rewardspool and long term as well for keeping this place clean. I am hopeful that many will become more active with their downvotes especially if they see many others on certain posts already - not trying to encourage ganging up on certain users but if it's done on actual shit posts then where's the harm in that.
I do expect there to come forward downvote guilds where you can let them use your downvotes with steemauto or the wise protocol and there may be some random retaliation going on as well but hopefully there will be some counter retaliation guilds coming up too. I know I'd delegate to something like that when I am in the position to, at least.
Sorry to get back to your comment so late, a lot of comments in here that caught me by surprise and had to find the time to reply.
Probably not. no time. already not enough time to upvote enough
Down voting should be removed , most of the people of people agree with u still u can get zero payout because of one down vote from whale. 🐋
Posted using Partiko Android
Why in the hell did Cheetah downvote your reply here @junaidabbaspk? Wow!
See? This is the kind of thing that makes me realize Steem is in serious trouble.
I will most likely use them to flag comments containing spam and phishing like I usually do.
I won't downvote anyone even if they are misusing reward pool, simply because I do not want to be attacked as a revenge by people. Its like - Do good have good theory.
Downvote is no good in my opinion, it just create boundaries between one another then they make it personal. Then when the gap between users is too far away, then another great platform and community to fall.
I see downvoting (AKA flagging) as a valuable part of Steem, but I would not generally use it just because I disagree with the content of a post. I use it as I think it was intended in the white paper to deal with those who abuse the concept of Steem to enrich themselves whilst adding nothing to the value of the platform. I can give plenty of examples of accounts that do this. There is a particular one I have been dealing with in collaboration with the cool people at Steemflagrewards who just posts ripped off content and junk comments whilst buying big votes. He persists in doing this despite losing most of his reward profit.
I feel a lot of the responsibility for this situation lies with the vote sellers. Some do operate blacklists and show some responsibility, but others refuse to do this and there are few consequences for them.
There are those who have enough SP for themselves or as part of a 'guild' who also just take. Flagging them does risk retaliation. I have been flagged back plenty of times, but I tend to go for those who are not interested in powering up and so they do little damage.
Adding this downvote pool may not make much difference to how I operate as I am prepared to take the hit of losing some voting power. However Steemflagrewards has compensated me for what curation I would have lost. They have switched to a token now.
It is up to us all how Steem continues. If you do not want to downvote directly then you can delegate to those who will. You may not profit from it, but you can help make the Steem economy function better. We want rewards going to good content and not just those who 'play their games'.
I was looking forward to it, as I think we desperately need some balance.
I truly think we need an organized group though, so there are clear guidelines, which I think will help normalize downvotes. My hope is that we actually focus on reward disagreement too, as there is so much wanking here it makes my eyes hurt 🙂
I have been trying to explain the true intention and use of downvotes -
With all that being said, it will take some time to normalize them.. as just this week I was criticized quite harshly for using my downvotes on over rewarded content of well liked authors. Apparently the choice to do so makes me a toxic person on the platform who adds no value 🤷🏻♀️
So yeah, we have a long way to go. For now I’m just working on smiling and nodding .. we will see what the future brings I guess.
Id say thats true if it wasnt for the frontend censorship aspect. Since that is not the case downvotes are not the opposite of votes. Once front ends remove the ability to suppress speech with downvotes then they will be the opposite but until then downvotes will remain a tool for abuse.
Everything has good intentions and then can go on to be abused, and yes I believe this has not been beneficial overall. I think a fix in the UI is the best way to handle it, as well as letting authors have more control over their own blogs.
All these things are now possible with hivemind and actively being discussed. Maybe we will see some changes happening in the future to better improve the user experience.
@justineh couldn't agree more. I have expressed my frustration as well regarding the entire user experience in order to produce great content in here. Instead of implementing features that don't bring any good or even duplicates something that already exists (since there are flags to report extreme cases and it works).
The platform should be focused on enriching creators lives and promote their quality work by building a great interface to craft great posts and content. Make improvements on the editor for example in order to allow users to have a better and more customizable way to personalize their posts to give them even more value.
That should be the main focus to bring more users to the platform and improve the experience for the ones that are already here.
I'll downvote flat out abuse ONLY. If someone wants to post a selfie, and there are others that want to reward them for that, I don't care. If someone wants to post a one sentence post, and there are people(not a bidbot) that for whatever reason like it enough to upvote it, I don't care.
If someone steals someones art/video/music/creation and tries to pass it off as their own, I'll downvote that. If someone just upvotes themselves 10 times a day without providing any content, I'll downvote that.
All that said, here's my prediction.
HF21 will happen and the people that are the most zealous about downvoting will come out of the gates guns blazing. It will have an effect on the largest abusers because that's where a lot of the focus will be. Some of those large abusers will find another path, and some will try to win a war of attrition(ie how long will they downvote me before they just get tired of it.) Then there will be the "Downvote Cowboys"(glad I have a name for this now) This will be all the regular users(active users) who will decide to be the platform police squad. Their ideas of what is good and bad will be wildly variable, and inconsistent and it will cause a bunch of drama that won't solve anything, and nobody will be having any fun, cowboys included. After a time, since it's not fun, or interesting, or financially valuable in any visible way, people will stop doing it, and we'll all just move on turning the page on this chapter in Steem history.
Well for what's it is worth, my opinion of what is good and what is bad is exactly the same as yours. Maybe we can be in the same squad.
I'm down, now we just need a secret handshake :p
I think one of the cool new features that Steem Engine provides will be an oasis from all this. If it gets really bad people might just ignore the Steem rewards and focus on the Scot projects. Pal and Leo already have these changes and there hasn't been a change in typical user behavior(of course it's still early), but what I love, even though it's controversial is the mute feature, which basically means, that content or behavior that 99.999999% of all of us would agree is
unacceptable, can just be shut down before it gains a major foothold like it has at the base layer.
For everything else, live and let live.
We are in the user acquisition phase of our development. People are adding value just by being here, and hopefully having enough fun to invite their friends. If they're greeted by a bunch of wannabe cops telling them what they can and can't do, how to post, what's acceptable, blah, blah, blah, they're just going to leave, and we don't want that.
Again, if it's clear cut abuse,(no content self upvote spam, or plagiarism/theft)by all means, let's downvote that to zero, but downvoting someones honest content, because you don't like it, doesn't add value to the platform, it takes it away.
I've dropped a few warnings and flags in the oasis, almost exclusively for using wrong tags. I don't want to see actifit on steemleo.
On a post I gave a warning, leocurator flagged the post for the same reason. I don't think there as obvious tag abuse on steem/palnet, and spam/plagarisiam/100% selfie maximisers are more the issue.
Agree fully with this being the user acquisition phase, people are adding value by just being here - most of them.
This would be awesome.
Will most likely use all of my downvoting pool. But I'll probably trail someone to downvote for me. Don't have the time to curate so I won't have time to negative curate as well.
I'd rather delegate my downvotes if I'm being honest. I've been part of a flag trail for a while and it got me pictures of poop on a very personal/sensitive post that I now hate to share because everyone reading that post will then get literal shit on his screen afterwards. Also, this person then found me on Discord sending me a dick pic. It wasn't really fun and this wasn't even a big account or whatever.
This is just one example of how I felt I didn't want to do it as long as I'm a content creator as people can really screw with your content if they want to retaliate. Maybe if I'd have large stake and didn't have to post anymore because I could make Steem through other means... Yes, I'd downvote more.
I'm probably going to use my downvotes but I'll be sure to be 'smart' about them and not be cowboy, just follow community initiatives to bring rewards of a certain abuser down, stuff like that. We need to balance the scale in the reward pool, and/but it's going to take a while to get sentiment on downvotes normalized. I say normalized because I believe they have been skewed towards 'he hates me this is unfair!' for a long long time.
TL;DR: I'm going to use my downvotes but I'm not going to be a hero about it as long as I create content and care for the blog/image I'm building.
I really wish downvote delegation made it into the proposal. Most users are not prepared to spend the time, risk, and focus on abuse fighting.
Being able to delegate it to a qualified group would help a lot.
Yes, I agree with all of that. We could probably get a lot of people to delegate ‘Flag Power’ with some effort, but only a small percentage to actually flag themselves.
Posted using Partiko iOS
That's not what "safe space" means.
Aside from that, I fully agree that downvoting should be encouraged. It should be like curation is now. Unfortunately, being someone who barely has time to upload a selfie and a sentence, I don't see myself downvoting much unless I accidentally land on the trending page and see complete garbage.
That said, I do sometimes upload posts that are just that - blog posts. Look at my neat harvest of peppers. And honestly? Seeing high quality original content get less payout than my (very lovely) garden because I have a few orcas on my tail sometimes feels lousy.
I have been tempted to flag a number of unworthy posts in trending for a while now. I’d rather give those votes to more worthy authors instead.
With a downvote pool people will be able to hide better in numbers. Sounds kind of cowardly but it’s true. Sure everyone will have the same ability as well. I would not be shocked if my hatters come out of hiding and zero me out.
At least abusers if they are getting flagged by the masses won’t have the ability to fully retaliate without draining themselves and putting more effort into dealing with that then the posts they create.
The biggest issue I see is curation guilds/major projects not wanting to get their trails involved in down voting. So downvotes could become quite powerful with less people using that voting pool. Add in downvote selling and now revenge is easy to carry out.
I just hope this platform doses not turn into one massive witch hunt after another with its new downvote pool powers. Where the 1% zero out the other 99% as a way to make more money themselves and to force people to pay for “protection.”
My point of view concerning flags is still the same like what I wrote some time ago in My STEEM Vision.:
Maybe the 'downvote pool' would work if there was an account with much delegated SP (for example from Steemit, Inc.) to support 'whale victims'. :)
IF it recreates the whale experiment, and negates the sublinear curve, I'm all in.
I won't be holding my breath.
It can only make things worse, if it fails to fix them.
I think we'll see the downpour equivalent of flame wars. The current system requires resources to downvote that could be used elsewhere. Now, abusive downvoters will have an independent pool of resources. They will be able to downvote more content at greater values. A temptation to retaliate will be created that wIll result in the destruction of value and reallocation of time from content creation to downvoting.
Posted using Partiko Android
I rarely use flags now and am unlikely to use them any more in the future. When I have used them in the past it was because I felt there was definitely a need as the user was being abusive in some manner.
I never cared if that meant using my own VP to accomplish the rebuke to the user in question or not. If there was a need then it should be done.
I can't help feeling that those who think that a free flag or two should make a difference to their behaviour are rather selfish and entitled that they wouldn't have been willing to sacrifice their VP some to protect the system.
Content creators who have spoken up against giving up rewards to give more to those who autovote or simply race to vote first without regard for the actual quality of the content have been repeatedly labelled as selfish and entitled.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm giving some thought to taking a page from @dreemsteem's method and using @tipu more after the HF so that when I appreciate content the reward goes to the creator. IF that makes me selfish and entitled.. so be it.
How would this even be possible when there's more stake locked up in bid bots than what is there to be used for curation?
well that is not going to change after HF21 ... people going to people and those bidbots will continue to make their delegators profit.
Upvoted!
I think we do need a downvote pool, however I hope we don't abuse it either.
Personally, I don't see me using it very often, but maybe I will using judgement to stop people from continually spamming and plagiarising.
I'm not a fan of downvotes in social media, whether it's here or youtube or anywhere else - because I think they are inherently anti-social - and hence counterproductive. However, I have used them very rarely. I don't envision changing that practice after HF21.
@dan once said that an upvote for one post is the same as a downvote for all others, so I prefer to do my "downvoting" by assigning rewards to others.
IMO, a positive value voting scheme that accurately appraises posts would be far superior - perhaps something modeled after a 2nd-price auction with reward curve modifications to penalize stake-splitting.
I know the consensus here is that downvotes are necessary, but I am not persuaded. To the best of my knowledge, we're all working from intuition because no one has ever done the analysis to identify the range of possibilities and determine if the benefits outweigh the costs.