The goal of curangel has always been a broader distribution of rewards on HIVE.
The main way we're achieving this is, of course, scouting the chain for undervoted content and giving it a small boost. This side of the venture has always been a great success. The reactions to our compilation posts show just how many people are happy about the small recognition we give them, and we're proud to be a strong force for motivation for newcomers, minnows, and all those that don't network with big stakeholders too well for whichever reasons.
The other side of the coin have been downvotes until now. To align those with the stated goal, there were guidelines when downvotes can be submitted. The guiding principle behind this has always been Occam's Razor.
What would happen if everybody...
...mainly self-voted?
...only voted their friends?
...created multiple accounts to churn out as many posts as possible?
...(auto)voted for always the same authors?
...sold votes?
...bought voting power?
I think you get the gist.
The dream when we started out was to change culture around downvotes. They shouldn't be seen as something negative or personal, but as natural as upvotes.
That obviously didn't work. People do get hurt by downvotes, and explaining that it's not necessarily their own fault doesn't change the emotions behind it. Also, keeping watch for abuse screws with the mind and one starts to judge things more harshly over time. This happened to me, other curangel curators, and I think I see it with Hivewatchers too.
Finally, after having many talks to many different people over the last days, I decided to shut down curangel downvotes for now. I want to have a positive influence here, not collect enemies and constantly discuss about how much of the pool someone deserves.
This will allow me to focus on creating useful tools and infrastructure again, which is way more fun for everybody!
Apologies to everyone who got hurt, let me reassure you again that it wasn't personal.
And a huge thank you to the curators who spent years doing the job nobody else wants to do without receiving any form of reimbursement.
Moving forward with positive vibes only,
@pharesim in the name of @curangel
Saying downvotes weren't personal never stopped them from feeling personal. It's the wrong answer to the autovoting problem. Downvotes should be reserved for people who plagiarize, spam, use bid bots, and otherwise attempt to manipulate the reward pool for themselves. Content creators who never asked for autovotes should never be treated as collateral damage. It's the downvoting pattern of Curangel that led me to stop delegating my HP. It'll take some time before I feel confident enough in this change of policy to reconsider supporting it again.
I do agree from the emotional standpoint.
Not reacting to whale voting patterns can, and in reality does, lead to them dominating and deciding over what goes on trending, and makes people post in communities which aren't topical and thus pretty much useless for everyone. Which is a big problem, reported by several people I tried to onboard.
But it has to be the wish of the community of course to stop certain behaviours. We have been fighting windmills since quite a while, and didn't really change anything.
I would like to see curation projects and guilds pooling voting trails or delegated whales doing more to support specific communities, new users, etc.
I still support Curie a bit, more to Leo and Stickup Curator, and a lot behind DIYhub and Ecency. If there were a project aimed toward curating good comments, I'd definitely like to support that. We need more quality engagement and less empty filler amsquerading as such.
People can use downvotes however they want due to the freedom of Hive. There are some bullies around, but most people never downvote. I'm not sure they are as big of an issue as some make out, but those affected will feel hard done by.
I don't delegate to big curation projects for various reasons. I think they wield too much power, but when it comes to downvotes then they may be a better source to reduce reprisals against individuals.
I got DVed by them for none of the reasons they listed above. I am kinda tired of big projects going on a DV tirade and then play victim when called out...
I do remember that, it was a small downvote on one post of yours that received a small reward only. I talked to the curator who issued that downvote right away, and fully agree with it being out of scope.
There were a handful other cases like that since curangel's inception nearly 5 years ago. Everyone involved is human, and mistakes happen. Nobody's playing a victim here, victim of what anyways?
Apologies for the statement about playing a victim. I guess I just have a sour taste in my mouth as it took some people offering to step in for that to be resolved eventually. I also can't get over the feeling that many who didn't have similar people just had to live with those downvotes and maybe even left since downvoting from cureangel, OCD, Curie, and some other entities just puts a stigma on users.
Either way, I am just going to end the comment by emphasising my apology for the victim-playing comment.
A good decision.
Downvotes are always personal and need strong justification.
Its a well known phenomena in economics that losing money you thought you had is far more painful than not getting the money in the first place. The "its just adjusting the reward pool" argument, while true, ignores human psychology.
Community based downvotes (where you are using delegated HP) should only be used in extreme circumstances to counter obvious abuse for which 99% of Hiveans would agree.
Hivewatchers have lost the plot and chased away many good content producers with their overly aggressive definitions of abuse, lack of transparency, failure to take reasonable criticism onboard and general Star Chamber approach to justice.
I disagree with most of that, except the psychology aspect, which ultimately led to this decision.
With us gone, hivewatchers is the only one left preventing rampant abuse like in the old days. Everyone seems to have gotten really complacent, few remember what was going on before our efforts. But we'll see where it goes.
An inherent misapprehension has caused DV misuse to do great harm to Hive, because the opposite of an upvote is not a downvote, but no vote. The opposite of curating content is not curating it. A downvote is comparable to a tax, a punitive tax that facilitates censorship of objectionable content, such as spam, scams, and plagiarism, but due to it's misapprehension as the opposite of an upvote has caused ~1m users that tried the platform since 2017 to abandon it when they were afflicted with censorial taxation through opinion flagging, still regularly practiced by HW with predictable results.
Strictly limiting downvotes to preventing such abuses as you point out in the OP would not be controversial, but that has proved impossible against a variety of cunning justifications of downvotes that have been employed for pecuniary, political, and personal reasons by disingenuous stakeholders less interested in Hive's success than their own aggrandizement and interests. I just recently learned of ongoing vote selling openly onchain by guruasia which I doubt could exist without collusion with HW and similar entities. Plutocracies will never avoid control by the most acquisitive, and thus least ethical, stakeholders, and this renders Hive incapable of overcoming immense pools of capital other than by being an unattractive investment, that necessarily requires it's governance to prevent growth and appreciation to discourage capture, as Steem proved.
Larry Fink (and thousands of others) could snap up every Hive token with pocket lint, and Hive will not overcome that vulnerability as long as raw stake controls governance. However, for substantial Hive stakeholders such conquest ruining the Hive platform is a golden parachute, a consolation prize for ending their profiteering via curation rewards.
Until Hive effects a governance mechanism that prevents raw stake from controlling it's code, we can expect Hive to continue to hemorrhage users in order to discourage it's capture, at least until it's ability to facilitate free speech necessitates nominal expenditures by malevolent stakeholders to eliminate that irritant, which becomes more likely daily as such losses are increasingly absorbed by commercial entities to censor and indoctrinate their markets. Given the financial incentives to the extant stakeholders to maintain their ROI, why would they ever even consider such a thing, when the most likely result if they do nothing is they get to retire wealthy?
I regard this 'cease fire' as encouraging, and hope it portends better application of mechanisms to benefit Hive's users improved understanding will facilitate going forward.
Thanks!
Alright! Now this attitude I can get behind. If you see plagiarism or advocating violence I hope you'll keep that sword handy.
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You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 1/2 possible people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
We might take requests, but we won't scout for abuse actively any more.
Thanks for this, I'm glad we could reach a balance point. I and many others appreciate your intentions here.
This year is going to be a major part of the Hive story, I'd love to see us all (voluntarily) work together to overcome the hurdles and present an image to the wider world of being something close to a web 3 utopia 😄 .. Or at least a more harmonious space than we have seen historically (including Steem).
Downvoting has its place, but as others have pointed out (and as I pointed out all along) - it is well known that the fear of loss is far more potent a motivator of behaviour than is the excitement of gaining something... So we shoot ourselves in the foot by being heavy handed.
There are a few ways that spamming/abuses can be handled that we haven't tried, but they all rely on technology/code that isn't live yet. General smart contracts and also Blocktrades' Peer Verity open up a world of new powers... that we need to learn to use with balance!
super positive decision, I think by now that downvotes create more harm than good overall and don't align well with crypto culture which is all about freedom and decentralization. I think one alternative to downvotes would be community notes similar to twitter/x to warn other users about plagiarism. Illegal content is ultimately filtered/blocked at the front-end level in my opinion. Front-ends get DMCAs etc and are forced to filter content. Downvotes are not enough to filter illegal content anyway.
ps. we had the discussion at a meetup also, I tried to summarize both pros and cons of downvotes here: https://peakd.com/hive-199963/@vikisecrets/vienna-hive-meetup-content-moderation-on-hive-pros-and-cons-of-downvotes-next-meetup-sept-28th-2023
A community note type mechanism could definitely be effective as it's a proven approach to addressing the problem
Downvotes definitely have a place in Hive and I've always said they need to be accepted as normal. There are cases of abuse that are not going to be fixed by asking nicely. We just need to be wary of driving people away who could be put on a better path. Moderation needs to be fair. If people feel too hassled over minor matters they will just leave.
I have lived many years, and have come to the same decision about my life. Policing is necessary. People need to be corrected when they behave in ways that hurt the community. (I think that should be the standard--does the behavior hurt the community). But it's just not the way I want to spend my days on earth. It simply doesn't feel good. Surely we need some sort of corrective to bad behavior, and it's good that there are people willing to do that hard work. Just not me. I get it. Anyway, with a name like Curangel, how can you carry a cudgel 😇?
Meh. No more shit gets to sprout on hive x)
Curangle have a good stake to help out where when is normal users try, it can be hard to make a different x(
Hope not. Or maybe the community realizes that it's everyone's responsibilty :)
I think thats wishful thinking :p
People don't want the "heat" when it comes to dv's and people in low-income countries don't give a fuck, they just need to make some $$$ since everything helps and if it can be done in an easy manner. Why not?
Agree, great to here :))
Well said.
I personally would not want down votes to go away as I do think there can be a use for them, but it sure is tricky. Now, blacklisting is another topic and I wonder if that should be removed.
Anyway, thanks for being a positive influence on our beloved Hive.
Thanks for the supportive words.
HW needs the blacklist to be effective against botnets. I do feel like it's a bit too easy to end up on it though.
☝️ this tbh 💯
still think downvoting should be continued, though
If we can find a way to do it with more community involvement I'd be willing to work something out, but the way we did it so far led to me being seen as a censor or bully and consequently losing funding for my other projects. I'm interested in working for hive again, and politics require compromises.
Let's see what happens. HW is still around luckily.
Thank you for always having good intentions Phareism and team
Your support of me is the largest support I get! Thank you so much.
Downvoting, however much good it does in some cases, does much harm in others. Several of the Hive accounts that I valued very highly have left because of capricious downvoting and inappropriate chastisement.
Thank you for discontinuing that practice. It is violent in nature.
Organized groups are taking 10 times of what we could downvote out of the reward pool. Of course people will cry violence when their money cow doesn't work any more. The rewards are limited though, and these people are the reason why your, and other small accounts', support is so small.
It's sad to see how even users who provide real valuable content that is directly affected by the bad behaviours in its valuation follow the narrative of the entitled.
I'm kind of interested which accounts you miss, and what happened to them that made them give up completely. Are you on Discord?
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Thank you for discussing this with me!
I understand the use of downvoting to stop the rewards pools being drained, but, unfortunately, many a small account has had their valuable posts downvoted to zero because someone with a large upvote disagrees with their content, or with their affiliation to some other account, or that some other large account has upvoted their post. I am also disturbed by what appears to be auto-downvotes - one whale downvotes, and a slew of other downvotes come in immediately afterwards. This has only happened to me once, and it was very traumatic. I would have left but for the support I got from other large accounts that came to my defense. I felt like I was a pawn in a war of the gods, a mere rat on the platform.
There must be some way to stop the pool draining without doing collateral damage to small accounts that are doing good, honest, work.
I don't understand that statement. Valuable users ... follow the narrative of the entitled?
Are you able to send me an invite to discord? I am on a new computer and can't access discord from here yet. I'd love to talk more about this.
Of course! This is the official hive discord, my username is pharesim there too. Happy to exchange thoughts!
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I've never liked the word downvote as it sounds like you are taking value away from a post, something that has already been earned. I have always looked at the up and down votes as a way to reach consensus on the value of the post with polls open for one week and then the final tally is done. I think the mechanism is quite ingenious but unfortunately, it isn't working that way. Maybe because of a feeling of entitlement or that the mechanism is not advertised correctly. I don't have the answer but I think if there was a way to show that positive and negative votes were part of the game it may help sell things better. Possibly allowing the post to be adjusted either up or down based on a voter's stake in an anonymous way could be something looked into. As I said I don't have the answer but I will finish by saying that words matter and downvoting sounds quite negative and something I rarely use except when I see obvious shenanigans.
It has to do with perception due to the word for sure. But I am convinced that the bigger part is people hustling, and getting upset about others interfering with their strategy, and then running emotional campaigns.
I haven't issued downvotes for curangel for years now, but of course I was the one who had to deal with all the complaints - and whose name was drawn through the mud by the affected users. I haven't received a single complaint about a vote that was issued against the guidelines in that time. But you just have to read through the comments here to see how parts of the community perceived curangel's actions as harmful.
Before curangel, nobody used downvotes because of personal retaliation. We took that out of the equation by drawing all the attention. They first tried downvoting curangel compilations, which was expected. Then they started slandering my personal reputation. I didn't care first, but in the end it was successful because there was no way I could get funding for my other projects and keep this up at the same time.
Tough one this, as I hear what you are doing but people do take it personally! I mean we give up trying to work out what has value on Hive as it does not seem to match up with what we think, so each to their own as they say!
Love this picture and the thought behind this decision. "Hunting" abusers so quickly leads into a downward spiral, once learned this while looking out for ecency abusers and had to stop it for my inner peace.
And where else if not within ourselves can peace get a chance to rise ❤️
i think if the downvotes accompanied with the warning first in the comment, maybe it will be better, because not all people knowing what the mistake and maybe the author does not know why offended people. And if the mistake can be fix then it is great since we all need support each other right? if not, yeah it cannot be helped then.
but this is just my opinion. Sometimes when i am making content i am thinking too if my content will offend one of the people that having high HP or not, and sometimes i delete my draft and not making it anymore because i am afraid it will make someone offended. Since i cannot make anyone happy and accept my opinion.
But, thanks for curangel team that support many hiver that have the extraordinary content, it helping them to growing their assets in hive.
A piece of good news.
To all the curators, you work very hard and I hope what you do is very good for everyone in building the community at hive.
Hopefully everything will be easier for you in everything ❤️
Great post about giving a chance of making things, hopefully, more acceptable for the "others", even though that in the base of up-voting or down-voting shouldn't be considered personal, but has I already was in the "list" of the HW, I know the sad and "feeling" about getting.
Let's hope that Hive continues to grow day by day with everyone's help and contribution
Glad to have you building here!
Thank you! Glad to build again!
Probably for the best, downvotes are likely to be relegated to fighting blatant abuse of rewards, (farming etc and any proper illegal things like id theft and all that) and even that is getting problematic..
It's too contentious as is to downvote to adjust rewards or do so subjectively.
Exactly. Define farming...and then try to explain to the one farmer out of many why he's the one being downvoted now...
It's tedious.
I like it. :)
My delegation has been constant for a while now anyway... never any complaints! Keep up the great work. 👍
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This is good news.
But sanctioning with a downvote those who do things wrong is, for me, something that allows to correct bad habits.
Reading this post I have detected one of them, which is the automatic voting to certain accounts.
Best regards
I have been here for four months and in the start I was against downvotes. But seeing the structure of the hive and how things work here, this really cleared many things and I never considered downvotes a bad thing. Because there are culprits always trying to abuse hive and finding their own profits without caring about what happens to other people.
I think downvotes are also as essential as upvotes to keep things balanced
Nice said,
receiving a downvote of course its heart, but if we normalize it on our system in Hive it is a helpful kind of tool evaluator or an indicator that your content is not quality content that you need to improve and level up your story so everyone likes it and don't see it as a trash blog. Downvote difinitely can give you a lesson.
Finding the right balance always difficult, not everyone arrives with good intentions. Thanks for explanation!
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Finally someone with a bit of sense and willingness to correct some things in downvotes. Congratulations @pharesim
Excellent information. virtual greeting
It always inspire user like me to do better. A little support has alwsys worked to keep sustaining on the platform.....
I often see downvotes on the platform creating groupism and people start their own war of words...making the place bit messy. We had seen it earlier with haejin cases...it is alwsys good to see a favourable atmosphere to work around.
$WINE
I liked the "Steemit turned Hive"-blockchain a bit more before downvotes were introduced.
People need good vibes, downvotes don't have them.😉
Good decision!
Bless Up
....I was just talking about this today with someone else, the hive community is all "laughter and happy family"
until you point your finger at someone who is doing something wrongand that someone instead of correcting it what they do is attack you back .... that's hive, i don't agree that hive is decentralized. and that has to do with how votes work.youtube removed downvotes because they "hurt the feelings of the creators"
youtube removed downvotes when their crappy rewind videos were shit and people were showing it with downvotes.downvotes always have to exist, there are always people who will agree or disagree with what you do.
then there are those who bully others with downvotes.... wich is NOT okay. should be a way to block abusers, like any other social, and or report someone. instead of paying crazy amounts of money to randoms to bring more ppl to hive it should be invested in making a better place to be/post/create.
i think hive needs a Rework on how it works, and with so much money circulating i don't know how they haven't hired anyone yet to make the improvements that are CLEARLY needed.
hive is not the same as it was years ago, now I only see how every day x person posts anything so that every day a specific curator votes his content... only and exclusively to that person, when in previous years I could see how this curator DIVERSIFIED his votes...
it seems as if the rest of the creators were painted on a wall and did not exist, nobody reads the posts? nobody really diversifies their votes nowadays? very few people do it.
even if you are a creator you have to make a 50,000 word post about why the heck you did x illustration, to be "valuable" even if you show a step by step/ video whatever.
not your fault curangel, is just downvotes dont work as it should, for certain things you guys want to fight, the votes and downvotes or dislikes whatever, need as i said a rework, and how hive works in general. curators are not curators if they only vote for one single, or just few ppl. thats not okay.
there are so many things that are not okay with hive, and all this is becoming an toxic positivism place.
You make great points! And I have to laugh at the recognition of YouTube's REAL motivations 😂
Great decision @pharesim - much appreciated and a good signal by one important whale here at least.
Good decision.