Hello @learnthis, thank you for waiting. Please listen carefully. @haejin may in fact be as skilled as his followers claim. I've stated elsewhere on the blockchain that I indeed was a fan of his, and found him on Youtube. I've also read about him on Reddit and 4chan. However, even if his accuracy was 97 or 98% I stand by what I said.
I am flagging all of his posts to declare that I disagree on his rewards.
I would also like to let you know that I haven't flagged a single follower, nor anyone else involved, because my problem is not with them.
I don't vote my self, nor use bots. I don't run a service.
Outside of Steemit, I have a job, and go to school. I can afford to pay my bills even if someone bigger than me flags my account to nothing. I'm still on Steemit because I want to be here.
@haejin and myself write very different topics, tags, and categories, and to be honest I didn't even learn about this until the other day, because my payouts weren't going down, in fact- They were going up.
When I read about what happened, I felt horrible because I thought that my rewards were too big.
You may be asking yourself what the problem is. We both win.
No.
I feel immense sadness learning that because he is taking a disproportionate size of the reward pool, many people around me are suffering. People I care about, and people I haven't even met yet. It hurts me so much, that I don't even want to accept my rewards.
I don't have anything to gain, but I also have nothing to lose, this is why I'm writing here.
Does he deserve to make money? Of course he does. I wish @haejin all the money and happiness in the world.
However,
No one deserves anything if their actions consciously harm others.
I think that @haejin is a nice guy. I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling. If he can work together with everyone to help resolve this issue,
I think he deserves a second chance.
Love,
@shello
Hi @shello, I appreciate your candid reply. The dilemma you present about the reward pool is certainly a problem that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, I must disagree that flagging is an appropriate remedy and alternatively suggest that Steemit's protocol should be updated to facilitate more equitable distribution from the reward pool. Moreover, users ought to be free in publishing whatever content they please, without fear of reprisal, so long as that content is legal and doesn't violate Steemit's TOS.
Having personally benefited from Haejin's blog, I definitely hold a bias in his favor. Nevertheless, I'm willing to dialogue in hopes that this antagonism might reach an amiable solution. If the discord principally stems from concerns about reward pool payouts, that is where we must jointly focus our attention. There appear to be a few plausible solutions, whether or not the political/economic willpower is there, I know not. These possible solutions to the reward pool dilemma are as follows:
I) Reduction in the weight of votes for larger more dominant accounts such as @Haejin @kingscrown @adsactly
II) Category partitioning, tieration, or division in possible rewards. Certain categories such "cryptocurrency" or "fun" have a maximum share of the reward pool, arbitrary number say 10%.
III) Voluntarily agreed to limitations on a per post basis. Users can agree to have a maximum reward potential on a particular topic such as $1.00 for a "fluffy bunnies .gif", or say $100.00 on a "technical analysis" like those by Haejin.
IV) Consensus rewards. Rewards are distributed on a scale of Levels 1 through 5, these levels are voted on by community members and are democratic in nature, thus no whale account can swing the ballot.
These are but a few of many potential solutions to the issue here.
Please bear in mind people, that this is also about something far greater than Steemit rewards, this is about the overall vitality of cryptographic technology. We are being hammered from every angle by governments, hackers, and scams, the last thing we need is more internal division. Let's work this out with maturity and decency so we can prove to the world that this technology is not only viable, it is progress embodied.
Looking forward to hearing your ideas and comments @shello, as well as anyone else who reads this post.
Sincerely,
Learn This
Hello again @learnthis,
Much like yourself I have profited some off of @haejin's calls as well, and I don't only know of him here, which is some of the reasons I was hesitant on expressing my stance. "It's not like he's wrong" in that sense. I can see from your point of view as someone genuinely interested in crypto, he is a great asset to have- But for the Steemit Eco-system to continute and grow, this is detrimental. I agree that I have nothing personal against him, and this is about rewards pool distribution. From where I am standing, the only way that I can express my disagreements is through flagging.
When someone receives a flag, it does create a defensive atmosphere naturally, but I feel that it is crucial to show the author that something "is not right" here. I have received a some a few months back, but they were in retaliation to comment begging spam, and had no real meaning other than reacting. If I ever got one on my blog, I would take a step back and try to figure out why this took place.
Everyone who has experience flagging knows to explain why, to help the offending user understand that the behavior is not acceptable in one way or another, help improve their future experiences with others, deter and prevent it in the future. Unlike Youtube, and Facebook, the flags on Steemit are not simply to indicate that we "dislike" something, they are there to warn other readers to proceed with caution. Instead of being removed, there should be more education about flagging introduced to the existing community as well as new members.
I also agree that everyone has a right to express themselves and not fear being censored.
Since abuse will never reach 0%, I can see how difficult regularly adjusting the distribution would be, although this is something that definitely should be looked into as well. It is ultimately up to Steemit Inc, should there be a reward change, or hard-limits, but I feel doing so defeats the entire purpose of what is being achieved in decentralization.
Of all your suggestions, there is only one I can truly see working out for the benefit of the Steemit community as a whole. The others hold a discrimination towards a specific niche, or topic, and I see this being unfair. I like the idea of consensus rewards. I already know that if this went into effect, there would be far more bot accounts, and fake users. My suggestion to combat this is to have a minimum stake requirement/reputation level to participate. Low enough that a majority can participate, but high enough that it could not be easily manipulated. If rewards get rescaled, this consensus vote from many could reward a small reward pool bonus to the author. That would be cool to see.
Steemit as a whole will not work out if we cannot learn to work things out ourselves. We want to be able to enjoy our freedom and fully express ourselves, but changing how rewards work may be an indicator that we are not mature enough to move forward as a single entity.
The goal I think is to have a system that could be taken advantage of, but one that no one would want to c:
Love,
@shello