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RE: "whale" you help me understand? 😏

in Loving HIVE ❤2 years ago

I've had some concerns with this activity and have talked to @themarkymark about it, but other than giving my advice there's not much I can do. The way I see it, xeldal and enki have a history of voting for really bad posts by accounts that don't deserve them often (imo), I haven't had a problem with those receiving downvotes. It seems that this war between these accounts has caused them to try and negate each others votes to affect their returns, one being more successful than the other at it. It may have eventually pushed xeldal to stop voting up the usual suspects that I had no issue personally with getting downvotes to spread them over other accounts and that's when it has started to become a problem imo. I've advised marky a few times to limit it to authors who actually don't bring any value to the ecosystem as else it may do more harm than good, in one or many ways he's already won the "war" as he's forcing xeldal to use his votes on other accounts that are way more deserving, so not sure why he can't take a win there and leave it be. Furthermore if it's just about negating the votes, then maybe wait with the downvotes until the post is older, think 4-6 days age, if no one else voted it other than the account he has an issue with, then xeldal is the only one being punished along with the author, but downvoting this early and quick, as your example with @deraa, it also pushes others to not upvote it if they care about their curation returns. That's because anyone voting on it now shares the penalty of the downvote with other upvoters which turns it into a double "negative action" towards the author.

If I was in his shoes, I'd be more careful with who I'd downvote and who I'd let have the xeldal&enki vote, trying to lower their APR this excessively isn't worth the damage it brings to regular authors who aren't doing anything wrong. It's not worth it in my opinion to risk losing on authors who may go inactive or leave the platform over this, even if it's not really "taking anything from them", we all know that's how it feels receiving downvotes and seeing a post go back down close to 0 while at the same time discouraging others from curating it. Xeldal's APR is at 1.73% at the moment according to hivestats (default is around 8.5%) with over 200 votes coming in next week which would mean there must be a lot of authors affected I personally wish wouldn't be the case. I don't think it's worth chasing this activity longterm, especially having a lot of stake in the platform yourself it seems counterproductive, while it sucks that they downvote his posts due to disagreement of rewards which Marky's legitimate downvotes initially started out as, this isn't the answer imo. For all we know they could be spreading their votes at this point knowing Marky will downvote them to cause harm to the platform rather than trying to avoid his downvotes because that would be a lot easier to do if they cared about the APR (for instance just upvote posts on trending already similar to how rancho does it). I'm not sure what their motives are exactly, but I'd rather see downvotes used a bit less often and mostly in case they go back to the ways they used to operate rather than spraying them all over the place. Even if you don't care about the curation returns, this requires others to put in extra work to now look for xeldal's and marky's votes and curate the authors you feel didn't deserve a downvote which in turn would increase xeldal's apr but decrease your own.

There's a lot of other posts that could use more downvotes imo, but there's no real incentives to go out and chase them right now and I personally don't wanna help fund such activity as we've seen how that can quickly go wrong and be overdone if there's rewards to be made that way.

This comment got longer than expected, tl;dr:

If xeldal is voting on posts that aren't as shit as they used to be, leave it be, it's not worth the drama and negativity it brings to the platform, don't let his votes direct your downvotes but curate what should get downvoted. I know there's no incentives for doing that and a ton of backlash for downvoting to begin with, but that's just how the system works right now. I'd rather see this vote negation activity be limited to those with actual shitposts and for the community to band together and help counter the downvotes Marky receives on his posts than for this to continue the way it has been as it affects a lot more people negatively. If xeldal continues voting for "decent accounts" then it's fine if he receives higher curation APR, that's what we wanted to begin with I guess.

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For all we know they could be spreading their votes at this point knowing Marky will downvote them to cause harm to the platform

Not saying it's happening for sure but it could also be used as a form of manipulation. Behavioral patterns from the past often include getting people pissed off about downvotes, creating a rift, then the usuals show up and start talking about getting rid of downvotes, dismantling the reward pool, stripping away the base layer, forcing everyone to go their separate ways into layer 2 effectively dividing and disempowering the populace permanently, yadda yadda yadda. In other words harming the platform but disguising it as something the people want and need.

Everyone just needs to stay focused.

You called it. :D

Well, I certainly hope this isn't a situation where the affected accounts are just being used as pawns so someone else can be lured into looking like the villain, while the community gets duped into reacting. A reaction that then gets hijacked.

And yes, I can now see the gaslighting going full blast though which is not surprising.

Whatever. I see comments here teasing at a potential solution along with some serious issues emerging as more information comes to light.

I just hope to see this particular issue resolved. If it just turns into another months long politically charged smear campaign against Hive again backed by the usual suspects, I think I'll just head out to the lake for the summer rather than watching this place devolve into madness.

Really appreciate the fullness of this comment!! If I can ask you to reply again -

For @deraaa, what would your advice be? She's really my main concern. (and others like her)
For her to just stop writing for a while?

Seeing as for some reason, xeldal IS upvoting her - and she IS a quality writer.

She actually needs to write, because she's in school, and without going into more details.. she NEEDS to write.

Do you just suggest she starts a new account and writes that way? It's not like she can ask someone to stop upvoting her when it seems as though xeldal isn't really aware of where his votes go? So will probably not even notice the request?

And marky is downvoting so harshly that he's taking away even more than xeldal is giving. She's really in a fix here...

What's your advice to her (and others like her?)

I think he's downvoting both votes of xeldal and enki so not harsher afaik. I mean I wouldn't let it discourage her from writing, maybe there could be some kind of support groups created in the meantime where they send the affected users beneficiary rewards of their own posts or upvote comments, tip/donate etc until it blows over. Upvote her comments more for a while, there's probably many different ways it could be countered differently.

yeah - i just did upvote her comments - you can too if you like! LOL its here on the post!

and no - she said that she also got curation from Cinnamon Cup Coffee Community - and even that was taken away - beyond the xeldal vote

Her posts have been going down to almost nothing. so the downvote has been going beyond what xeldal is giving, as far as what @deraaa says

Oops, just realized I spelled the username wrong in the initial comment, but hmm, it's a sucky situation. Maybe some kind of special daily/weekly posts to highlight the posts of those affected by this issue could help? OCD could then assist with some curation with the rewards going to the affected authors and some to the person compiling it. Could start out with those you know and then maybe branch out to others that seem to be unfairly affected, this way we wouldn't increase the APR of the "bad whales". Just a top of my head bandaid fix possibly, lucky for us Hive is quite flexible and there's usually a solution for almost everything. Let me know if you interested.

hey... i appreciate you trying to come up with a solution :) i really do!

i'm gonna give her the post rewards (well, liquid I guess? ) from this post too - I didnt say it on the main post cuz its not anyone's business. hahaha and yes - they can read through the comment section but most don't bother. lol

I'd love for what you suggested to happen - my concern is that people who are "bad apples" would come knocking too - and then it becomes more of an issue than you can handle.

I'll keep thinking about it though - and bring it up to a few people like - well, I'll tag them here.. @snook @deraaa @wesphilbin @samsmith1971 @shadowspub @bluefinstudios @kenechuckwu97 @kemmyb - and maybe we can put our heads together and come up with something that makes sense too!

Again - THANK YOU for just being willing to talk and bring some direction to where to go from here.

I know it doesn't get fixed - but maybe we at least offer some temporary help while the cloud passes!

@dreemsteem...


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Gosh... I am not really a "call" guy lol. I have not been able to attend PYPT for some time either; life, health, "grandkids" lol... Free time is always a commodity, as you know. As is quiet to be able to hear lol. But for sure... hit me up in DM or whatnot. I don't really have that much in terms of finances... but I have fingers!! Also... appreciate your input @acidyo ✌️.

You didnt tag me but I'm throwing my hat in the ring. Just give a shout and I'm there for whatever I can do.

Absolutely! I'll DM you but set up a call and let's talk it through with a few people!

yeah - i'm up for it! I'll see who is around for a chat tomorrow maybe???

maybe like 8am EST hehehe