Vote Negation
@dantheman had previously suggested an idea for an alternative to flags which encompass vote negation to reduce rewards, but there are various unknown reasons to not implement it as he closed the issue with:
"Hello everyone. We have been debating this issue and I have concluded that a better approach is needed. More details on why and what alternatives exist will be forthcoming."
Here is the issue on github: Add ability to Negate / Oppose another Voter.
I don't think those details were put in that issue, as I didn't see them. Maybe they are elsewhere? I would like to learn more about the issues raised.
It seems most contentions were the fear that Steemit, Inc. would abuse this. I don't see this as founded. There is also the suggestion that this is the same as flagging and wouldn't change anything.
Flag Review Council
Dan had also suggested a flagging review council in another comment interaction I had with him at some point (I don't recall which post it was on, sorry). This council would be voted on like witnesses, or might also require certain criteria such as reputation, number of posts, comments, etc. to determine who is the best suited for evaluation of flags when they are reported.
There could be a review process established, with entries for each flag review that a member submits that determine the overall consensus if a flag was justified or not. Then the flag either stays or gets lifted.
If neither of this then... I still see a need for defined criteria, standards or rules for how "overrewarding" works in a consistent manner, not just flagging based on certain types of content a flagger doesn't like, certain whales who upvote, certain authors, certain view counts, etc.
A general understanding of what a post/content can provide for Steemit and how it promotes it's success might help to set upper limits for everything?
Issues, Alternatives?
Feedback, criticism, alternatives, etc. requested.
Thank you.
Dan Dicks ( @pressfortruth ) just gave Steemit a great review in his Anarchapulco but sited whales being able to remove rewards as a form of censorship..
Answering your request for criticism:
I commented another post of yours. You flagged my comment.
I repeat:
Your proposal is nothing but requesting a government.
Ironic; Since you got pretty massive payouts for posts about how useless governments were.
I assume this new council should be based on criteria, that would favor you as a member.
For your contributions, you received payouts and now own a (quite large) stake of your own. You can use it to vote for witnesses, vote for posts and take part in evaluating content.
In this evaluation process there is a need for downvotes, too.
I could drag this point out, like you have done for page after page, when you made your posts about how taxation is theft, governments are evil and the state is unjust; I got your point after your first two posts and I'm sure you got my point after the first paragraph above.
It's amusing to me, how these idealistic values of yours crumbled the very moment you weren't in favor of this system anymore, now that you are 'established'.
Walk the middle path and acknowledge that humans are inconsistent creatures ;)
I would suggest a coin toss to be the decider. Way faster and less BS. Nobody's dying from guillotines and bullets here
What?!
https://steemit.com/injustice/@krnel/what-happens-when-no-one-cares-about-wrong-doings-in-a-community-nothing-exactly#@felixxx/re-krnel-what-happens-when-no-one-cares-about-wrong-doings-in-a-community-nothing-exactly-20170225t171349583z
I guess I deserved a flag for trolling there. ( seriously )
It already got upvoted back to visibility and beyond.
Not trolling IMO, but fairly calling him out on his hypocrisy.
For an objective view I looked at Google's perspective AI and it said that your comment was
So no, hardly worthy of a flag by someone who has by now spammed almost 10 posts complaining about being flagged.
I flagged his main post so it may have been as a revenge.
It still irritates me, that he gets 10$+ payouts for this, while others struggle for a dollar.
Revenge flagging against your subjective downvote is far worse than anything he is ranting about. Again calling out his hypocrisy is fair.
I agree with your objections to the council idea. See my more or less anyone can vote type solution 🙂
I flagged your comment, because you were just trolling. You don't seem to understand the meaning of words you use. Government vs. community. You have little conception of the difference. You call the witnesses a government as well since they approve or disapprove of things, just like a flag council would be able to review flags that get reported for abuse when one person thinks they can police everything according to their made up rules. One person who goes around and flags poorly, vs. a council that can review and revoke flags when they are REPORTED, REPORTED. The council does nothing until a flag is reported for review. Yes, that;s so much control and abuse like is currently going on with a few powerful accounts... Wow. Bravo on more stupidity. You started off the OP on this issue by saying:
Keep showing how ignorant you are and making up more bullshit. Kudos.
Flagged for Insulting / Trolling
I support it 100% - @krnel, @dan, @dantheman, @ned - Get it done, get it done fast!
And i really like the flag review councel idea !! 👍
I totally agree ! 👍👌
How about something really crazy like leaving people alone and letting ideas get voted on according to their own merit. If you see something you don't like or doesn't interest you, keep scrolling. If people's posts don't get votes because they're generally not interesting (or offensive) they don't get votes. Of course it would mean getting rid of bots (something else I favor).
Upvoted, followed for the "leaving people alone" part, but killing the poor little bots seems a little gas chamberish for my blood. The robots are here. you cannot fight the future. If we don't embrace this technology that makes it easier for investors to mine with their stake, then Golos eats our lunch.
Story of my life...seems like I've spent my whole life fighting the future.
I'm not a fan of creating a council unless it is something that develops organically from within the community.
Get rid of the witnesses too... lol
LOL... too much for some... I don't tend to flag unless it on my posts, my "property", my "business", and even then I usually leave trolls alone rather than feed them, except today someone who decided they wanted to flag me because $5 is overrewarded on a post they don't even understand and then wanted to flag all my others posts as well about this issue, saying I'm the only person they ever flagged. Well I flagged them back for that crap.
I was the person @krnel flagged. I don't think I qualify as a troll either, thank you very much.
It's pretty ironic that you asked me a question and censored my responses. But I am not surprised considering I flagged you in the first place. The difference between you and I are that I really do not care if you flag any of my content, and in fact welcome you to. I will not flag this post since you are trying to have a conversation about how to improve the system overall. I disagree with introducing more bureaucracy into the mix by having a flag council, however.
As I mentioned before, the root of this problem is that the dollar amount associated with a post is an estimate until the payout occurs. That value is always in flux, as stake is allocated and removed, flags are applied, etc. Showing someone a high amount with the false expectation that it will stay that high is creating cognitive dissonance, and making people feel bad. I think having the estimated payout amount be shown so prominently in the UI may be psychologically unhealthy. I propose a visual indicator of some UI component that shows the relative value of one post vs. other posts instead.
Most definitely. Just look at the mess it has caused in the past week.
I've been on here since Nov and I don't remember flagging anybody. I'm not saying I wouldn't, but I haven't yet.
+1 on getting more reasons behind why vote negation wouldn't work.
Councils take time and would be voluntary like witnessing. There is an incentive to witness, what would it be for a council?
My alternative to a council, is an unweighted "down vote the down vote" mechanism, i.e. all votes equal and not proportional to SP. If over a certain number, say 200, the downvote is cancelled. This number (200) could be proportional to the number of users registered, i.e. scales as the platform (hopefully) expands. Now, there would be no reward for this and thus no incentive beyond the satisfaction of fairness.
In essence it would have to be something either outside the system (like the judiciary is supposed to be, or a second house of government is supposed to keep the other in check) or modify the core theory of steem. That's why I thought of unweighed votes, it's outside the voting "game" really.
I like it a lot. What about bots just piling on 200?
It could be tied to reputation instead then. You can get rep without increasing your SP hugely, but you have to have participated a lot to get, say 65.
As far as the blockchain is concerned there is no difference between someone manually voting and a bot voting. However a bot cannot get a high rep on its own (yet, and though there is some gaming of this, it is only effective to a point).
Someone can run a bot on their account which they also use "normally" (I do). So even if they do this, they would have to have raised their rep the good old way, and thus qualify for participation in this feature. To restate, there's no direct gain for this, so it might not be of interest to people interested purely in their own rewards. I'd like to see a counter argument to the idea that having no reward for "down voting a down vote" insulates it in some way from abuse, even as devils advocate! 😈
A lot of people don't really like the rep but I haven't seen a robust takedown of it. I can see this idea getting critiqued on that point but if anyone does, please point out how rep is not good for this. As it's a feature, probably permanent and could be improved, it's wise to use as much of what's there as possible. Less change = more stable in terms of code.
Edit: I think it should still be one unweighted vote per user. So instead of rep having a proportional effect, anyone with a rep above a certain threshold would be able to down vote the down vote. I think 55 might be reasonable?
Good. I think this may have been suggested before in general for voting and flagging, but since this takes away the power from the stake holders, they rejected it. Using it for a negation of flags, is interesting, but stakeholders might still object.
The stake holders want to have their stake mean something, which is understandable, but given the imbalance this creates in what is supposed to be a "social network" for social media, the limited people who have the power creates issues.
So 200 people with certain rep? What if there are only 20 or 30 people? I think the high rep limits how effective this might be to implement on a per post basis, especially with no communication functionality to make people aware of flag issues to negate.
The number 200 is not important, I pulled it out of the air. It could be fixed at some different value or proportional to something.
If you like this solution, it doesn't matter if some of the stakeholders rejected something like it in the past, it's time to bring it back up and see if it flies.
This is a limit on abuse, something most people can get behind (I guess). It doesn't take away too much power, it's a limit on very unpopular use of a feature which is inherently negative but which is required in general for broad fairness. I think a case can be made.
So do you think this is a good one? What next steps should we take? Obviously posting about it and getting support is the first way but let's formulate it clearly.
Yes, it's good! I said good :)
Make a post on your solution ;)
Thread depth reached
I was making these suggestions for you to use! I might make a post but it's on you. 😬
LOL it's on me! Hehe. Well it's your idea, I will resteem, but you should get credit for it. You're the originator of the idea who can best explain it. What about that?
Thread depth reached 2
It's a good point. It would be cool if there was a way to co-author posts without having a third, shared and mostly redundant account for it. Might be another idea, I'm full of them 😉
Thread depth reached 3
I didn't suggest this but had another idea, check it out
Yea good point 😑 Let me stew on that a while. First thought is that this is exactly what SP weighting is useful for. But there has to be something. Will think. 🤔
Good solutions come up... but the problem comes back to bots. I will get into addressing the bot issue that I was supposed to 2 months ago... The bot factor plays into why many simpler solutions can't be implemented to bring about better functionality.
Awesome post! And i really like the flag review councel idea !! For sure all of it sounds great , and something definitly needs to be done about this , too many peolle are leaving because of it and all the turmoil its causeing here on steemit ! Thanks !👍👌
Get rid of flags or separate them from downvotes, whichever is easier to get support for and implement. That ought to be first priority in my opinion.
A "council" as much as it could be constructed in a good way, is also something that can be misused. Just as with witnesses then, the question comes up: Who should vote and how should that individuals vote be counted?
And who would want to do this for free? What incentives would have to be provided to ensure a rational application of "the law"?
I agree that this is badly needed, but wouldn't be even close to the issue it is today had large stakeholders not been overempowered on the platform.
How to change this? Again, step #1 Separate flags from regular downvotes, #2 if we are to have a "council" it must be democratic in nature or at least the members have to work to make it more democratic than Steemit overall is as of right now. That way we can start to inch ourselves in the right direction.
Yup, the issues since I got here have seemed to revolve around the stake imbalance of power that is applied across the platform in many ways.
The council, is an idea. People upvote the members, add 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... criteria... who knows. Was an idea that some people think is horrible "government control" that I will control ... LOL.
Well I used to curate 24h of content I wanted to support ... for nothing. People who want to help the community will do it for free. How many flag reports would seriously happen each day? I don't think very much if this issue can be addressed and pressure applied from the community to get these bully whales to stop. Then it would be a few flags here and there. Not much work to do honestly... and the payout is going to 7 days, much more time to review.
Separating downvotes from flags would add more definition for specific purpose, I'm always for more accurate definitions :)
Thanks for the feedback.
A lot of good written there, I just wanna point to what my concern over the incentives for council members actually was
Likewise, politicians will be politicians for "free". But you still might end up with politicians that make money on the voters much in the same manner as Facebook makes money from its user base, by selling their voters/users consent/attention to highest bidders. (Same way as a certain policy in the U.S. might be promoted to "keep bad banks out by regulating the market" or to "make healthcare affordable", when in fact that is only how they advertize to the voters, something that a specific company or a ring of establishment companies wants the government to implement)
Anyways, not that I have any solution to that issue or that I at all know it would happen, but that's the risk I was saying exist. Slim as it might be/seem.
Yup it's possible that people will try to buy favor.
Also two other posts I resteemed today:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@personz/a-practical-proposal-to-combat-abusive-flagging
https://steemit.com/steemit/@winstonwolfe/proposal-for-flagging-system-no-drama-here-please-only-discussions-of-agreeable-solutions
If anyone wants to increase outreach: Similar posts as these would be linkable in the Activism channels on Steemit.chat
https://steemit.chat/channel/Activism_in_practice or
https://steemit.chat/channel/Activism_theory_or_polemics
I believe in maximum freedom and options. We should be ABLE to do ANYTHING, but of course we must be willing to accept the consequences of our behavior. Whales must be able to resist killer krill (sybil) attacks.
There are no consequences for certain behavior on Steemit until it gets recognizes as a problem. And then it's still up to a community to pressure change. This takes time. In real life you can do anything indeed, but not without consequences. In the VR internet world, our ability to respond is greatly limited compared to the real world.
Absolutely, this is a feature, not a bug making the blockchain resistant to attack and sudden change without community consensus. This is what the whales are fighting now. The momentum of what I've been calling "The STEEM Effect" which is what you have when you get famous and followed by bots. This is the reason why going viral on STEEM is going to be soon seen as waaaaaaaay better than going viral on Facebook or Twitter. Be glad that you have earned this effect. The STEEM whales are only trying to protect the value of their STEEM. Their greed causes them to protect this blockchain from issuing too much STEEM.
Human greed destroys many communities but protects STEEM. Smart contract communities are all about creating the perfect balance of incentives.
"There are no consequences for certain behavior on Steemit until it gets recognizes as a problem"
Dissatisfied users, no trust in the "whales", dull content etc is not recognised as a problem? Lol, they'll probably realize what they have done once steem value starts falling dramatically as users start leaving in mass. Considering completely getting paid out takes ~2 years, they'd lose a lot if the whole thing crashed
Yes, there is another solution. You accept that people (and their bots) will express their views on whether or not your posts should be rewarded and you grow up and take it as exactly that, an expression of views that contributes to a stakeholder consensus on whether and how much rewards you receive.
I will be flagging this post if it still has significant rewards as it is yet another repetitive whine from one of the largest earners on the site about not getting an even larger share of the reward pool. Such repetitive posts, which are, at best, spam and, at worst, an attempt to milk bot voting, do not bring value.
I would have to agree that it is repetitive. When are we gonna see the people complaining actually putting some of the money they made to work? I bet there are some people that would be both willing and able to develope alternative systems if they were given a monetary incentive.
Now, don't get me wrong here. I complain too, but I'd like to think I'm not simply whining, and my own situation isn't so glamorous after all. If I had the money though, I'd be willing to invest at least a little something to come up with some solutions to make things better for myself and everyone else.
i totally agree
As a very newbie, it seems that people see the amount of dollars ttheir post may earn, if this is flagged they get less and are upset. If the possible payout was not displayed nobody would know whether they were recieving less than they hoped, and nobody could say they were getting to much.
I don;t think you understand the issue. It's about selective targeting and inconsistent application of flagging certain things but not others that get more rewards... LOL. https://steemit.com/flagging/@krnel/bad-whales-flagging-content-with-false-irrational-and-hypocritical-excuses
Speaking as a clueless newbie, I just don't see why folks get their knickers in knots over something as trivial as a down vote. Gab.ai offers an up arrow and a down arrow, and there's zero kveching about down votes. Perhaps the problem is that the dev's used a flag instead of a simple down-vote arrow. Much ado about nothing from where I sit.
Down voting is a thing, it keeps the interwebz real.
Flagging is a thing, it keeps the interwebz kid safe.
Can we get that distinction made in the UI?
What about creating a bot (A) ruled by two bot, a bot (B) that take decisions based on votes number and one (C) based on votes weight ?
When an issue occurs, users talk about the issue in forms of comments of a post posted by A concerning the issue suggested. Post describe the issue and comments solution. Then the bot A ruled by B and C "choose" the solution.
A witness or multiples witness must be elected to respect the decision made by A because the bot can not apply all solution type.
Maybe a feedback button with some options we establish before. And it should have an impact on reputation. On the long term, this would be useful
Resteemed.
The vote-negation idea was much more violent than the existing flagging/downvote, IMO. It allowed any high SP holder to very easily eliminate all voting ability of small SP holders they didn't like. It was essentially a way to very quietly eliminate their voting ability. Do you find that better than simple downvoting? Not to mention, it's something that can be done now with a bot, if you wanted to take the time to write it, and don't mind everyone seeing what you're doing everytime your bot downvotes to counter the other voter...This was a very bad idea, that came out of one of Dan's more ticked off moments.
Thanks for the additional information. I was looking for some more details as to how it worked, as the GitHub issues was not too explicit how it would play out. Do you happen to have specific links to information that I could go learn more from? I would like to verify that this is what could happen and that it's worse so it can be ruled out. Thanks!
I don't know of anything beyond the github issue at this point. There were some discussions in other forums (slack, etc) as well, but I don't think slack was keeping history beyond a certain point in time. Anyways, IIRC, there was a pretty thorough discussion by posters for and against the proposal in the comments section of the github issue. But in practice, I think the idea was simple: you could allocate a portion of your SP to nullify an equivalent portion of someone else's SP: every time they voted/downvoted that portion would silently be canceled by using some of your voting power. So if you allocated as much SP as that user had, you could effectively render their votes/downvotes worthless (except to temporarily drain your voting power). I believe the idea was to be able to "quiet" perceived trolls.
Very interesting, I would dedicate 100% of my SP to negate your votes. It seems like you are completely out of control as it pertains to upvoting garbage.
https://steemit.com/photography/@wakstim/oen-siren-in-aceh-language
lol
you and transisto must be best buds or something...lol
Keeping your word I suppose...
dan has flagged me personally for pointing out stuff he says in old posts.
I even provided links as proof to his words but he just flagged the comment trying to hide it.
He is not willing to make any changes that take some of his power away.
Check out who upvoted me in this post (dan did):
https://steemit.com/steem/@inertia/creating-demand-for-steem-power-vote-negation
It's on the exact same subject as this, or an earlier version of the idea anyway. So, how does that affect your theory?
So because he upvoted that post he hasent flagged me or others? I do not see the connection. Do you remember his early posts about how we should all bully people and kick the out of "scoicety" so the only thing left are people that think just like him so he can do anything he wants and not have any negative consquences in life?
the flagging issue is not new at all. nothing has been done about it, it just keeps getting swept under the rug.
The problem is mentality of some of the whales.
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/683778713044656131
You really do have a screw loose or something.
everyone does.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@skeptic/dan-is-flagging-me-proving-my-point
4moths ago the first steemit break I took.
This was way after the group that doxed rf4ken and killed my rep the first time for speaking out how it was wrong for them to dox someone.