Downvotes, not flags.
Steem is set up to allow anyone with STEEM Power to influence a pending payout. Pending payout amounts are not cumulative and can fluctuate until the time of the actual payout.
Complaining is one thing, proposing a solution to a perceived problem is more productive though. Do you have some idea of what a solution to your downvote complaints would look like?
The fact that most users interact with the SteemIt UI seems to escape... ;) I don't disagree, but trying to rename something when the UI looks like this...
It's a good point, and the Steemit UI needs to be brought back to reality. I think if Steem users were educated on what a "flag" actually is, then this overdue pull request to the Steemit code might have a higher chance of being approved.
Reducing concentration of upvotes/flagging power... That's the solution.
Exactly!
I've received downvotes I've disagree with in the past but not on the scale @krnel has. The most interesting thing I've read on the subject is this post which was resteemed by @dantheman.
https://steemit.com/steem/@bitcoindoom/why-down-votes-and-flags-are-an-unavoidable-consequence-of-game-theory
Those who have more risk more. When large stake holders downvote their downvote are remarked and make huge waves in the community even when nobody dares to address them. Those downvoters risk losing support if the community doesn't agree with their downvotes. This is all detailed in the post. I don't know if downvotes are truly a necessity. It's something to keep in mind though.
Excerpt
That's what's being done most likely in the next hard fork. So complaining, knowing about that change, doesn't do much.
That change is welcomed but it wouldn't be enough to counteract a single flagging whale bully. Better than nothing of course, linear curve for rewards is asked since long time from what I know.
And how do you change how it works without compromising the value of SP, and therefore the market value of STEEM, on which the economics of Steem stand upon?
Allowing the community to vote against a player who is behaving badly regardless of how much SP they have is a simple solution. The votes could have different levels of consequences depending on how many people vote against them and the level of the vote. One other option that I really like is requiring them to have a certain level of reputation and posts before they have any significant power towards upvotes or downvotes. A person with a rep under 70 would not have very much influence when they flag or downvote someone. Checks and balances need to be in place so the community can help to correct those that are detrimental to the prosperity of steemit as a community and the value of the tokens.
You have put quite a bit more thought into this than I have and you have some very valid points. I never really thought as much about the bandwidth and storage but see how that could be a major problem now. I think your solution makes sense and at the least the community should discuss these sort of things. I guess the other option is just wait and see if these problems continue to cause issues and the devs can just fix leaks as they go. I have a feeling it will be dealt with eventually, but at what cost?
I can't answer you cause I am not economist nor programmer. I am a guy using websites, reading and writing. So if a whale flag a guy (manually or with bots) it's a problem, cause a single whale can compromise the all post / user. Can we agree on this?
The value of SP was huge interest (not now, only in the beginning) it's giving rewards, but I would not say it's flagging people because you don't like what they write or you take revenge for godonlyknows.
Perhaps something like what Dan proposed, an easy way to use our steem to block the voting power of those who abuse their voting power, they have the means and knowlegde to use bots, the average user can't use bots, so it's orders of magnitute harder to repair the damage that a suposedly"bad bot" can do. We need a tool to easy counter bad actors. But wait, when Dan proposed this, "some" whales oposed it! go figure...
and btw most of downvotes/flags have nothing to do with "pending payout" in most cases this is used as an excuse, even in posts that don't have "pending payouts"
Actually for what downvote in create? I see a lot of great whales get downvotes @pfunk
Flags are wrong. Remove it from Steemit.
If you are referring to downvotes, they are a necessary part of reward distribution.
:) This is what most users see, I actually agree with you for the most part, but ignoring the UI... And demanding people call it something different doesn't change the situation.