In my past two articles I have tackled the complex theory of voting and how it applies to discovering the will of the people and ultimately the “authority” of government. There has been quite a bit of vocal resistance to my proposed idea of negating someone else’s vote. I would like to take a moment to discuss the nature of this resistance.
Negative Voting would create a Culture of Hate
When you vote for a different candidate than your friend it isn’t taken personally, but if you opt to negate your friends vote instead it suddenly becomes very personal. This is probably true. Even though the reality is that your friend is canceling your vote anyway, people irrationally feel like something has been taken from them.
The truth is that something has been taken from them: the illusion that their vote matters. The illusion that their opinion isn’t being canceled out by some anonymous stranger on the other side of the country. Now it is being canceled by someone with a name.
The result is misplaced anger being directed at the person who chooses to cancel you out. No one ever stops to consider that the individual who canceled you out has just as much right to be angry at you for voting to support policies that would harm them. Their vote has already been canceled by you!
We currently live in a culture where people can numb themselves to the consequences of their vote. They never have to face the victim. You want free health care? Great! You just got nullified by the person who was going to have to pay for it.
The existing culture of voting is like piloting a UAV and bombing people you have never met in a distant land. Mean while those people in a distant land are attempting to bomb you with their own UAVs. Neither side has met one another, but both are willing to hurt each other for their own benefit.
There is bound to be less death and destruction in a society where people get to put a name and face on the individual who is countering their attempts at abuse of power. Instead people will migrate their own public opinions toward things that don't infringe on the rights of others. As soon as your vote or opinion violates someone else's right, you better believe it will get nullified by them. Only those who support solutions that do not violate someone else's human right will have a chance to avoid nullification. This will certainly create a culture of peace and understanding, not one of hate.
A Stable Environment
Once you have identified someone whom you want to counter, there is little reason to change your opinion unless you find someone even worse who hasn’t already been countered. This means that over time there would be relatively little “politics” to discuss because everyone who is in violent disagreement with others has all ready been nullified.
This means that your friends and family and almost everyone you know has probably been nullified and will be nullified by someone their entire life. Politics, elections, and voting would not be a topic of general discussion.
If you want your “right to vote back”, then all you need to do is convince the person nullifying you that there is someone even worse who isn’t currently nullified. Once the two of you reach consensus then one of you can get your ability to cast a positive vote back (the other one will nullify the greater evil).
Votes for Sale
The next point of concern is that if there is a public database of voters and who they are canceling (necessary to determine who can cast a positive vote), that people could pay others to cast negative votes.
The right to vote includes the freedom to vote for any reason. Denying someone the right to vote because you don’t like their reason is tyrannical. Everyone votes for selfish reasons. It is like denying a woman the right to sell sexual services. Her body, her vote.
The truth is that is is cheaper to buy votes with propaganda than with direct offers of payment. Anyone willing to buy or sell their vote would probably get canceled out by someone against that practice. At the end of the day buying and selling of voters is a free market solution to resolving political differences in a voluntary manner.
No Right to Abuse Vote
This is an interesting paradox because who gets to decide what is and isn’t abuse? Shall we vote on it? Is a vote to declare something abuse also abuse? This is a hypocritical position that assumes some universal standard of right and wrong. If such a standard existed then there would be no need to vote in the first place.
Conclusion
People are irrational yet believe they are perfectly sane. They will take personal offense any time anyone attempts to expose the disconnect between reality and their own delusions. This isn’t a reason to abandon a system of negative voting, but rather a reason to implement it. Anything that forces people to come face to face with reality and stop hiding their violent tendencies behind an anonymous voting box will lead to a more civil society.
I'm no bot. Why you downvoted my post? I have reputation 51, but now -3. What did I do? Sorry, please, return reputation!
I removed the downvotes I could, your pattern of posting meaningless replies like "nice post" over and over looked like a bot. Please make each comment original.
That's harsh.
Not just the fact that you downvoted them with no proof, but you called his replies "meaningless" when they were simply trying to contribute something.
A lot of people here don't have command of the English language as well as you Dan and they just want to voice their approval or disapproval as simply as they can.
Your voting history is frankly, horrible.
I've watched you upvoted obvious plagiarism, downvote obvious real people who verified themselves, downvote public domain articles, downvote comments you felt were earning too much (the same thing berniesanders is getting heat for doing) and downvote things you said you didn't agree with (in this case I'm referring to my marketing post for Steem) thereby taking away people's ability to earn from others because your vote outweighed hundreds of others upvotes. You were the only downvote and I couldn't earn a dime. Then you later went around upvoting people posting even worse images than a girl in a bikini top. It makes no sense.
I'm fully aware you have the right to vote however you see fit, but at some point you need to realize that your voting power and the way you vote haphazardly at times seriously affects others in more ways than one. You financially cripple their ability to earn even if many others disagree with your stance and you make the person feel that their opinions are not welcome, because you are are not only one of the largest whales, but a Founder of the platform. And now you can seriously hurt someone's reputation. Who knows how many bots shadow-vote (is that the proper term?) your account.
I sincerely hope that you start taking a harder look at how you vote in the future, because your voting history up to this point is just downright shameful for someone in the position you are in. So much so that I joked last month that you should proxy your vote to others who have the time to do more research before voting.
Well this is great and healthy @tuck-fheman. You've proved both yourself and @dantheman right. He said that negative voting should be clear, direct and transparent. You've called him out on what you see as a bad voting record. You've been rewarded over $1000 (at time of writing).
This is a perfect example of good, constructive healthy debate.
Wow, I would never expect such and honest criticism of whale by another whale. I think that I may be getting my hope back about the future of this community!!!
Nice one @tuck-fheman !
tucks not really a whale. i mean, i don't know the formal definition, but i doubt his vote is worth more than a couple bucks.
@sigmajin I don't know exact definitions. There seem to be many different definitions around (amounts).
For me anyone, who has got more than 15k Steem Power is a whale (Doplhin is past 1500 SP). Tuck has got almost 66k Steem Power. That's worth 320 BTC !!!!
I don't think that I have ever, personally, known someone who has had that amount of cash (if converted from btc)
I was going to follow dan then i read this and it cancelled out my wanting to follow him then i scrolled back up and realised dan is a smart guy and it cancelled out my wanting to follow you.
dan is a smart guy. but theres two parts to that. Being smart and being a guy. A guy whos trying to launch at least (it looks like) 2 startups and has a bunch of responsibilities, in addition to combing through the site.
With no wisdom of crowds to act as a check on his vote (because most of the "crowd" has an insignificant amount of voting power compared to him) and mitigate his mistakes (which are, as tuck notes, numerous and often absurd) everyone suffers.
Good call!
This is me right now after reading your comment.
;)
They both seem smart to be. People make mistakes and we can call each other out on them without completely discrediting them.
Get'em tiger!
Wow.
Yes it is very sad that even in the world of cryptocurrency, greed is the motivation. I feel that there is enough bitcoin and steem dollars to share and everyone eat. As far as positive/negative voting, as we see, money gets the winning vote. I feel that it doesn't matter who votes for who, in our society, whoever has the most money wins unfortunately. Buying votes has been done for years by candidates, and I just don't see it changing now.
I think this deserves a reply from dantheman..;)
LOL
Kudos!
But I hope this doesn't start a Dan-bashing trend
A couple shitty people downvoting a comment, from a new member that hasn't even been here 2 months yet, isn't really fair is it!? The politics here suck! It doesn't matter if you typing original content with positive meaning, you will still get Negative votes! If this keeps happening how are we going to get new people to adopt the steemit platform!?
Perhaps a thumbs up button would help with reducing "clutter" of this sort?
Users are used to thumbs up and thumbs down for voicing their opinions on something. It's quick, easy and familiar to us already. Currently if you want to show your support for a post, you have two options.
If you upvote you give a reward and reduce your voting power. An upvote is too strong and does too much extraneous stuff if you are simply wanting to give someone a pat on the back. A vote is precious and not to be given away freely. A simple thumbs up button is all that is needed to show some level of approval for what the poster has done. An upvote can be reserved for when the voter feels the post is worth a reward and the voting penalty to themselves.
It seems like a win-win for all involved. The voter can feel like they are showing support, the poster can feel like they are being heard and rewarded. It's not money, but just like in real life, even getting acknowledged for a job well done goes a long way.
And one by-product is that the comments section will be free of some amount of "fluff" comments such as "Good job" and the like.
Whenever I bring up this idea in Steemit.chat I get enthusiastic responses. It seems like something that must have already been considered, so I'm curious if there is some hidden pitfall that mucks the current system up?
Cheers
the funny part, is actually you want to support a post but you don't want to give any money because you are afraid to... get less ? (you understand that if everybody does like you, you might not get anything either... ) so between "less" and "nothing", I advise you to chose wisely.
I initially wrote a very long response, that I might turn in to a post, so I'll give you the TL;DR instead.
Yes, we get less reward when we don't vote judiciously and discerningly. Use my suggested thumbs up/like whenever you wish. Use the upvote when you feel it is worth doing so.
There is a pool of rewards for the day that we share when we reward users posts. It's like deciding how much everyone gets paid at the end of the day based on what everyone has done and that pie is fixed (more or less). The money isn't coming from your pocket it comes from the pools pocket and depending on how everyone feels about contributions for the day, everyone gets varying percentages of that pie. You don't get it when someone votes, you get it once everyone is done voting and the percentages are finally decided. Yes, it's a bit more complicated than that, but hopefully that gets the point across.
When most users vote for the top trending 10k post and inflate it, they are getting practically nothing in curation. If they were to instead use that vote on a much earlier post before it gets voted up by whales they will get a much higher curation reward. So my suggestion is actually between "nothing" and "potentially something".
Cheers
Your upvote is your thumbs up. It costs you nothing.
As far as I understand it, that isn't the case.
It costs everyone something. The pool is a shared reward. So giving to one user reduces what all other users get from the pool. Obviously it's extremely small in the case of one user, but when hundreds of users are piling on the top trending posts they are reducing potential rewards for everyone else.
My vote is reduced in strength the more I use it. So that is another cost.
I could have spent my time finding posts that are new and still have potential to give a curation reward as opposed to an old post that I'm piling on.
If I were to use my upvotes on content and comments, in the way I think we all should, I would have practically no voting power left. There are many users that don't get any recognition because people are concerned about using their upvotes on something that will not give them any reward and will only end up hurting their voting power. Many minnows would love to see more recognition considering they are getting very little in rewards. Not everyone here has dreams of getting rich quick by blogging or will quit their day job etc. We want to have a great environment to see interesting content without the typical trolling and with the potential for being able to make some extra money if people like what we say and do. Therefore giving us the option of a simple pat on the back to more users would go a long way in improving the culture of the community here.
Your upvote is more like your employer paying you, and a thumbs up is more like your employer saying you did a good job today, keep it up. And just like your employer giving you a pat on the back, it isn't as valuable as your wage, but its cost to benefit ratio is very low. It would be easy to add, users on both sides of the interaction would appreciate it and it would have extraneous benefits of reducing clutter in the comment section as users could just click thumbs up instead of posting "Nice post".
What's not to like?
I read your articles on the subject of where the money comes from, by the way. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Cheers
Dude!
Your vote is worth less than mine!
I don't think you need to worry about its distribution. And this is a seriously unhealthy way for the steemit community to view the value of their contribution.
The whole point of curation rewards is to encourage you to USE your vote (apart from arbritrarily), not to hold it back as if it's valuable for you to do so. I wonder if @dantheman can verify this for us as I'm disappointed to see that you have support for a 'thumbs up' idea that would discourage people from using their upvote instead of encouraging them.
The whole point is to DISTRIBUTE the rewards, which is why some whales even allow their votes to be diluted by going over 100 votes per day. It isn't easy to go over 100 votes per day without actually hiring curators to help with this so you should NOT be worrying about this!
If we all became conservative with our votes then people would be less engaged, the platform would lose interest and therefore steem would lose value. This is why you should not view your vote in this way.
Your upvote is your thumbs-up
or your voice of approval!
Must you yell?
I've responded to your other comment:
And you can read my response there, if you care to. It addresses your response here as well.
There is confusion among most users about how the system of rewards and their distribution works. In fact, it appears that the only users that have a firm grasp are some very early adopters (maybe) and of course dan, similarly knowledgable users and the witnesses.
What happens when you upvote and leave a comment? Good/Bad? Doesn't matter or more valuable??
For the network, a lot more valuable. Many people read the comment section for additional dicussions and clarifications, so leaving a constructive or critical comment will enrich the content and other users.
It's also a good way to get your feet wet and get some initial author rewards as a new blogger :)
The comment section does nothing as far as Steem rewards for anyone concerned.
Interesting point. I think that it would be good to force everyone who votes (up or down) to add min 100 letter comment with every vote in separate section (or same as comments section).That would force everyone to give coherent reason for their vote and force them to actually read the post. Bots and spam should still be blocked.
I understood more of this will not happen again, thank you
This dude @macartem reply made him $242. He's fucking fine!
Its not about one-off solutions (he now makes $242). Its about finding the correct structural solutions and guidelines. How about the next case?
before we downvote somebody we should get in contact with him ask him to change. Only if he is not interested in change, or makes really serious offends we should downvote him.
Especially whales have a big responsibility before they donwvote somebody, because one vote can decrease the reputation that drastically that all future posts become invisible. And nothing is more frustrating then to have no change of not being heard.
The hardest thing for me is to see quick comments like "awesome job" and "amazing analysis" and NOT thinking they are a bot.
I try not to downvote them but sometimes I do because it truly is pretty meaningless. This is especially true if 75% of one's posts are 5 words or less. I personally prefer to not post at all if it is something short...unless it is something witty in the context of the situation that implies a level of cognition and reasoning only a human can accomplish. ;)
However to get back to the point, I can understand getting upset about being downvoted...but please realize at the same time it is difficult to not want to flag those comments because you see so many of them when your vote is worth over a buck.
There really needs to be a better way or repairing rep.
Getting rewarded 250 as an apology is insulting to the users spending hours and hours trying to make the Steemit system better through their original content and thoughtful commentary. This sort of reparations is out of line with the initial grievance.
I assume my comment is not new, but just wanted to get it out there since I've yet to hear it voiced. And I'm here a lot so that means something!
with all due respect, the fact that this reply and the one under it by @tuck-ftheman get a total of more than $1,400 payout - especially for @macartem as this payout exceeds maybe 100 times his/her overall payout of all posts ever. This fact itself says it all about the voting problem right now. if you somehow get involved in engaging with the whales, it may pay off much more than you diligently working your ass off all kinds of good posts, not to mention if you are in the center of disagreement among whales - it might be worth more than 1000 posts by 100 people! I sincerely hope my comment doesn't affect @macartem 's 'luck' - it is good for redistribution. so, lost a password or something and come forward to complain about it - you might just get lucky!
with that being said, I still love steemit and respect most whales who makes this happened. it is just the voting that is somehow sick at the moment and hopefully the new solution will improve this greatly.
Ridiculous. I hope I was able to help a bit.
Nice work Dan.
Great work Mr. Bernie I made a good choose in my book:). Seems as you understand all people here and when I mean people I mean whales, dolphins and minnows. You are the linguist of us all and understand us.... To understand what I'm saying check out my book chapter one. I love it. Maybe you can add some input as who the bad guys and good guys can be in my book. Don't want to afford any one. Peace out.
All I can do is smile. This made me smile. Thank you. (being serious... I am smiling)
There yah go, have a level up ;) 37>38, you'll be back in no time! You actually only need 5 billion rep until your next level. Sounds like a lot... but its not.
Yup thanks to your app I can see my next level like if I'm playing an RPG game. Love it
For clarification:
At no point did @dantheman mention steem or steemit in his post. He is talking about voting in general.
I and others have taken liberty and expanded it to discussions about steem and steemit, but that is not what his original post was about.
It was more like a larger view essay similar to those you'd expect @larkenrose to be writing.
So if you want to debate/discuss the steem/steemit perspective join me and others in doing so, but do realize he was actually talking about this on a macroscopic level and not specifically about the platform we are all addicted to here.
A really interesting post. This quote I've highlighted above is, for me, the key failing of our current political system. It sets up all sorts of bad incentives for politicians, and voters, to pass the costs of bad decision making onto other people, or to defer difficult decisions altogether, thereby passing the cost on to another generation.
And, when this way of doing politics is threatened, people freak out. We've seen this in the Presidential election with Donald Trump's 'build a wall' rhetoric. It doesn't matter that Obama deported more Mexicans than any other President - what matters is that building a wall makes the state exercising its power to deport people and break up families visible, and voters now have to think about what they are responsible for. I think most people would prefer to just carry on not thinking about it.
That quote reminded me of the drone strike policies in the U.S. It becomes a video game for these drone technicians and disconnects them from the fact they are killing the victim. Killing someone is a lot easier if you do it from 4,000 miles away and only see their face through a computer monitor.
That is a powerful and true line you quoted. People think electing a representative does not make them responsible. They also urge people to pass more laws so people don't have to be responsible.
Speaking of voting:
A. People shouldn't be allowed to Up-vote their own content, especially whales who can instantly push that content to the top of the /trending page in the category (tags) they posted it in.....AHEM! (Yes I am guilty of it myself so I am not a hypocrite)
B. Any system where a post gets 100 up-votes and is still under $5 Payout is inherently flawed, IMHO. Just look at my Post History and you will understand why I say that. If there are that many people who like the content it should be paid a reasonable and fare rate. Which brings me to my next point.
C. The current structure of Steemit and especially the Voting system means that no matter how good or desired your content is, if you do not get Whale votes you do not make jack diddly squat for your efforts. I have over 50 Blog Posts with less than a $5 payout, most of them with a metric butt ton of votes. This leads to the next comment...
D. Because of (C) there is a growing subculture in the Steemit Forums and Chat of Vote Swapping, Begging for Votes and so forth. Which sadly still leaves most posts not getting paid anything or very little....even the ones that are Quality Original Content and deserve to be rewarded.
E. All of the above have led to an environment where you have to suck up to Whales and convince them to "Feature" your article under their account to get any recognition. Which means they keep 100% of the Steem Power and you get 100% of the Steem Dollars. Now this, on the surface, seems well and good and beneficial to everyone but the problem lies in the fact that it actually does very little to help the "Featured Author" and leaves them still a Minnow no matter how many times they get "Featured" while the whale (who often features numerous writers) gets even bigger and fatter off of someone else's work.
*** Point is that while steemit.com is an amazing place that gets 90%+ of my freetime now the current voting/rewards system is going to be the downfall of steemit. As more and more whales get fatter and richer the minnows that are here are going to continue to grow disheartened and eventually leave. Additionally, any new members that arrive, with the hopes of making money on steemit are going to rapidly realize they don't stand a chance and move on as well. Without a constant influx of new users who contribute (and get a fair reward) new content steemit will not survive and will ultimately go the way of Digg/Slashdot in a few short years....if not sooner! ***
@dan @dantheman @ned I hope you guys see this comment.
Also check out this Suggestions post I just finished (revised edition)
@venuspcs you and I started on steemit around the same time. I believe we both started with steem power of 10.
I have made 1326 posts (most comments, replies, etc) and I now have 625 steem power and I've been here almost a month. I consider that a pretty good return. I haven't landed the massive posts, that pay big payouts. That is not solely why I am here.
You (whom I have been following since before following worked) have posted 558 posts on your @venuspcs account and yes you get a lot more votes than I do. I am actually fine with that. I up vote a lot of your stuff. You have been on the trending page at least once, if not several times, and you've had multiple posts break $1000. I think I cleared $300 on a post once. Sure the majority of your posts don't make much. ALL of them make something. I have posts that I worked hard on that made $0.00, and I have many well below $1. I am not complaining about that. I am making something in a field of endeavor where previously I made nothing (reddit, forums, etc). So your description is not entirely accurate based upon the numbers.
Though I will continue to follow your work as I enjoy quite a bit of your stuff.
Ultimately how much someone else is making on their post is not my concern. It is the fact that I do have the opportunity to make something. A vote worth $0.00 means something to me. A vote worth $0.01 means something to me. A vote worth $100.00 certainly excites me and makes me happy. Yet that is not what it is about.
If you look at how much you've made in a month with your now 4700 steem power, you asked us the other day if you should quit trucking. If you continue to do that well, you probably safely could, yet that is still your decision.
I post a lot... that doesn't mean people view the quality of my posts as being worthy of votes and money. I am long winded and opinionated. So are you, but your posts are a hell of a lot more amusing and entertaining than mine. :) So I think you deserve more money than me. That is my opinion. Guess what? It is working you've gone from 10 steem power to 4700 steem power in the same time I've gone from 10 to 625. Most of my earnings have been reinvested into steem power. I didn't really dig to see if that is also the case with you.
I am pretty satisfied with the system except for the negative perception that a big flag/down vote can have on the perceived earnings of a person simply because someone disagreed. I KNOW that the vast amount of the population will not understand that and it will be viewed as an attack. I'd like to see the steem platform grow, and I'd like to see it crush reddit, youtube, etc and tons of other steem blockchain apps, sites, etc born. It is a revolutionary moment. Yet perception DOES matter, so whether we think that people should be able to negate something and take perceived money away is acceptable or not DOES NOT change the perception of the masses. We have some opportunities. Do we leave it as it is and LIVE with that fact and take it as a mind changing, educational opportunity and just prepare for the "shit storm" (sorry was fitting) that will happen as more and more of the typical people join"? Or do we do something to make it work yet head off some of those perceptions? It is kind of a catch-22. If we educate people it will be harsh but would likely in the long term lead to a better world, if we "fix" it to promote PR better we grow the platform much faster yet we miss out on an educational mind awakening opportunity.
If the desire is to grow the platform fast then I'd say fix the issue with perception around funds. If the desire is to long term make the world better and we are willing to wade through the flak and take a bit longer getting there then you could leave it as it is.
I do not advocate redistribution, or nerfing the reason to accumulate steem power. Getting better payout is a big reason to increase steem power. Increasing steem power locks the funds into the system and makes then much slower to get at (reduces liquidity) but also protects the system from being killed by people suddenly pulling all of their funds. It makes it far more difficult for people to game the currency.
Thanks for the "NOVEL OF CONFIDENCE" you wrote.....in a comment....If your posts were as long and succinct as that comment you would be well ahead of me in SP by now.....oh and yes I reinvested most of what I made on Steemit into SP which is part of the reason why I am having trouble making up my mind if I can afford to quit driving a truck.
Thanks for the clarification. I truly appreciate it... and yes we were at the nesting limit, so quote and reply was all that remained.
I have a problem with being long winded. I also try to give people i comment to the benefit of getting the best reply to them I can think of at the time. Often that takes a bit of work. I respect you enough and consider you one of my friends on this place, so I felt you worthy of the best response I could come up with.
And yeah... it was friggin' long. You have your alternate accounts. I have mine in the form of @chaospoet and partially why I only speak in poem with that account is because it keeps me from rambling and typing these books to people. In the age of TL;DR I am very aware that most people likely skip totally past anything I write.
Apparently except for @dantheman you upvoted your initial response to my comment.....you got it dude!
(
You know what is funny. My blogs that do the best is when I am controversial. If it BLEEDS it LEADS. Perhaps that is partially why you do way better. You are way better at controversy than I am. :) not intended as an insult Thus, why I once commented on one of your posts that it was genius.
And that is the reason I word my response (above) the way I did....again sorry I wasn't trying to be a douche.....it just comes naturally!
My posts are longer. I am not belittling you, and even though I like you that does not mean I will not call "foul" if I see something that is not accurate. I've watched you rise and been pretty happy. I write this long and succinct all over the place, including my blogs. Thanks for the belittling though. I don't think it helps your case. :(
I wasn't belittling you, I was making light of the loooooong comment. I am, however, sorry if I gave you that impression.
Perhaps you'll like three replies rather than a long one. If you've been reinvesting then I'd wait until you know you'll have enough that if you powered down, or if you lived on just SBD rewards you'd be okay. Plus, since it is in beta we don't know what will happen. If they for example change the platform as you suggested in terms of payout you might suddenly actually be making less than you are now. So making an important life decision around this platform while it is in beta is pretty risky. :)
Ya think? LOL! :)
Hello,
Great post. Just let me add one thing. As of today or yesterday, there is a button for whales to scale down or up their vote. so i think this is a great feature, as whales can now vote on stuff, they didn't vote on in the past, as they didn't want to give a guy 200$, even they agreed. so but maybe the whale thinks, yes 20$ for that comment of post is OK for me.
and look at your comment i just up-voted it by 40cents. and its at 28.29$ that's pretty impressive !
I just send you 5 SBD, as i think your comments and your posts deserve more attention, but i could only up-vote you by 40 cents.
I like that at steemit, everybody is trying to help each others, and its not a 4chan or 2chan stye bashing of other users. so that was the reason i am giving out Steem$ to other authors, who didn't have the luck yet to have some bigger payouts.
love the sliding scale. a bit like goal nets and wheeled luggage,
it could have been baked in, instead of an upgrade.
never met such good blogging anywhere else as steemitn!
Yeah that is pretty cool. I am totally for people being able to decide how much of their potential they wish to commit.
Also thanks for sending me a tip. It is appreciated. I care about the community. I have not been negatively impacted by the system personally yet, but I do worry about some of the potential negative PR signals that are being sent. This is why I am so vocal.
In my opinion the money doesn't matter so much as that if you have something to say that is worth hearing, because people vote, more people get to see it, comment on it, and maybe even clarify errors you have made in it. The money side of it I think is auxillary, an incentive, certainly, but if it boils down to a popularity contest solely then it's a waste of time.
You are correct. Yet that is your opinion; one which I share. Yet we would like this thing to take off like wild fire and the number one complaints you will see revolve in one way or another around money. "They are paying that much for that crap!" "I had X dollars and someone flagged me and I only have Y", to even people doing quite well complaining that most of their posts are under $5 when I am fine with many of mine being zero and most under $1. :) PERCEPTIONS do matter if we want mainstream adoption. I have not personally been hit by the flag taking money issue. I've seen it happen quite a few times though and that is with pretty smart people on here at the moment. What happens when more and more of the status quo get on here. It literally will be a shit storm unless we deal with it before then while we are in beta and we all are the test subjects.
People who whine about what other people get are not usually very creative or productive people anyway. Or at least they are missing the point of the addition of money into this system, which is really about making people think more about how they throw their votes about, and creating an opportunity cost to mitigate moral hazard, which includes sheepish behaviour, spamming, plagiarizing, etc. 'put your money where your mouth is' in my opinion sums up the key thing about Steemit. Clicks are cheap. But when they cost you money, you think a bit more about it. The same thing should apply to flagging as well. It should definitely cost to flag, quite a lot.
Nice reference to catch-22, an amazing book. I am guess we each can each start shipping fruits and vegetables around...
Hehe... glad you liked it. It is so much shorter than "Between a rock and a hard place", or "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't". : ) It is similar to a shortened URL version of the concept. ;)
The feeling and vibe the book created can be conveyed as well. If you enjoyed Catch-22 you should read some Kurt Vonnegut his books are amazing.
Some quick comments:
A) Whales may simply opt to post with a different handle and upvote with their whale only. Many whales are already split among a few accounts.
B/C) IMO, vote count shouldn't even be displayed as it can easily be gamed with sybils. I can give something hundreds of upvotes just with my mining accounts.
I agree with D/E, though, they are problems!
If vote count shouldn't be displayed why display Steem Dollar payout to the public?
To vote or not to vote. It is "out of the frying pan into the fire".
This I've witnessed before.
I've only been here a week, but I have noticed exactly the same problems. And I've seen what you're predicting play out on other sites that were similar to this, where authors were rewarded for content. I cannot tell you how quickly things can go sour and how quality content creators will abandon a platform at the drop of a hat once they recognize the game. Yes - right now, this platform is turning into a game for everyone...minnows to whales.
This is indeed a sad situation. I have even engaged in the chats for hours to try to drive some people to my posts with very little luck. I spent several hours writing original content accompanied by original photos for a two-part story. After almost a full day of trying to get any attention for them - because I believe that they are good quality - I ended up with about $0.50 for two posts. There were whales in the chats - but I couldn't even get a response there, let alone on either post. I even asked for just feedback, screw the votes...still nothing.
When good writers are begging to be seen and posts that are just a collection of commercial-use photos with a few sparse words thrown in are getting $1000+ each, there's something wrong with the voting - or more accurately, with the "whale" voting. Good writers shouldn't have to repeatedly beg to be seen, especially when whales are there and are ignoring them.
They already do leave. It's just not noticed because of how many more people sign up...and will inevitably follow suit. Active users were around 6,000 for the past week. How many user accounts are there? Over 60,000? People are signing up and either doing nothing or have already left. If the whales/bots keep skewing the trending content and ignoring actual quality original content, and those quality contributors continue having to beg for attention, this site is going to be left with Buzzfeed-type clickbait with no substance and various "celebrity" cliques, who will eventually abandon the platform anyway once the rewards dry up.
As a famous little presidential candidate once said (and this is paraphrased) - you'll just hear a giant sucking sound. That'll be everyone leaving who once cared about this platform's success but were drowned out by people only concerned with playing the rewards game for quick cash.
The whales have the largest share of responsibility for ensuring long-term viability of the platform and curating quality content, but from where I'm sitting, they're not currently living up to it. There are dolphins trying to help, but they seem to be getting continually undermined by the voting habits of the whales. The large power-downs might help, but it may not happen soon enough, especially while the whales still participate in their feedback loop of upvoting schemes (including their own posts/comments).
I decided to stop posting for a while when i realized no matter how good is my content, bots are up voting other authors. If you are not in the up vote list you get nothing. Efforts don't get well rewarded. Only networking. And i don't like it.
Too much focus is on the dollar payout when what it's really about is the reputation, the Steem Power, the followers. People getting voted down for earning too much Steem Dollars on a particular post? What is it really about? It's about reputation and Steem Power which is long term commit to Steemit as a platform.
When you get a lot of votes from minnows what matters is whether or not these votes translate into followers. Over time the power of their votes could rise and you might not have to rely on votes from whales to get a decent sized payout in Steem Dollars. But on the same token, Steem Power is what you want to track to see whether it's being transferred from whales to everyone else.
There might be temporary marketing value in having dollar payouts on public display but I think we should have a debate on the merits of that UX feature.
How would the dynamics of negativity change if every downvote required an input field for justification. Even if someone made their justification something stupid or simplistic, it places their reputation on the line, transparently onto the blockchain.
Hatred will exist, regardless of platform. The only danger I can see is in 'incentivizing hateful behavior'.
While I respect the arguments in favor of some sort of 'downvote reward structure', I agree with @dantheman's assessment that it could incentivize hateful behavior.
I used this picture in the other post as well, but I want people to see it:
It's been fascinating to see how emotional people get about downvotes on Steemit. I've seen several people have in their head what a "fair" downvote looks like and if the downvote isn't up to their standards of what fair is, they overreact (see the comments to this post as an example).
People aren't nearly as emotional about upvotes, though as you suggest the "right to vote" applies to both upvotes and downvotes. Love this aspect of Steemit and hope to see more ideas like this exercised in the future.
Does Steemit.com's interface represent a downvote or a flag? My understanding based on the steemitabuse-classic chat channel is the flag is for combating negative activities like incorrectly tagged NSFW material, abuse, plagiarism, and identity theft. If the interface represented it as a downvote and if it didn't also (potentially) cause comments to be completely hidden (again, a mechanism for hiding abusive content), then I would agree with you and treat a downvote as just the opposite of an upvote. I understand the backend code and the cli_wallet make no distinction, but we are using the code of this website which does make a distinction and changes the interface according to reputation. If you read through the example in question, it appeared to me the person was trying to hide their misuse of tags by downvoting and hiding the comment of the person who called out their activity. When confronted, they continued to justify their actions instead of owning their mistake. Reputation is important to any community and negatively impacting other's reputation score with no rational justification, to me, is not okay and will not create a healthy community.
And this may be the source of the confusion. There used to be a downvote in the UX and people were okay with it when it looked like it was a downvote. Now it looks like its an anti-abuse flag but people (whales) are using it as a downvote.
So which philosophy should we be following?
Yeah, I do think the old downvote is a big source of the confusion. Most everyone uses the Steemit.com interface, so I see that code as "the law" which matters. The deliberate change in the interface indicates a purposeful change in the meaning of the action. The downvote was prior to the reputation system, prior to all of someone's blog posts being greyed out by default if someone revenge flagged them (which happened today, but was thankfully reversed after some direct dialogue).
I may be overreacting (as claimed above). Maybe the community is fine with others flagging in response to things they don't like, or because they got caught doing something wrong, or because they feel like showing their opinions in a way which decreases someone else's payout and reputation score. I personally think that approach will lead to a downward spiral of negativity. I much prefer an upward, positive approach where everyone lifts everyone else.
So tempted to downvote this for ironic reasons.
On a more serious note, are you concerned about people stalking other people that have wronged them (at least in there eyes) and continuously downvoting them?
I could see this happening if say I downvoted someone, and they thought offence to it.
This happened to me. I downvoted someone's comments who was overtly spamming on other people's posts, and he went to my blog and down-voted my posts =/
Happened to me earlier today.
I did what I can to help, but yeah. It's sad to see. Retaliatory flagging hurts real world reputation, but, unfortunately, doesn't hurt reputation here. I flagged a number of the offender's comments (explaining my reasoning as I did) and upvoted yours, but even though my reputation is high, I'm no a whale so my vote didn't really change anyone else's reputation. The offender will probably continue their retaliatory flagging unless a whale steps in.
@lukestokes I truly appreciate what you did -- you and @patrice. Good people.
Well his idea of delegating yourself to always NEGATE a certain person until you see someone you think you should NEGATE more is kind of advocating this. :(
There are no elections, only selections. The elite sponsor the preferred candidate.
Voting machines are rigged, and people are divided and sent to fight with one another, while the same powers rule over us perpetually.
Exactly but people only want to see what they want to see they need to feel they have some control. It's pretty pathetic actually.
The only solution is free speech. Steemit can do wonders, just like how existing social media spins elections, Steemit can add transparency.
This line says everything:
This one is excellent too:
It describes election campaigns to the point. Correct me If I am wrong but .. aren't people actually paying for the campaigns through taxes? Seek!
Quoting from the conclusion: "People are irrational yet believe they are perfectly sane. They will take personal offense any time anyone attempts to expose the disconnect between reality and their own delusions."
I'm sure everybody has a negative reaction to receiving a flag on a post or comment, myself included. My first thought is always "What did I do?" that has to be interpreted in the sense that I've either done something wrong or am being maliciously acted upon.
While it won't fix the full issue, just by having an explanation of the flagging (or even negating a vote) can calm a lot of the emotional response and ideally gain some concept of the other persons point of view. Especially in presidential politics, I see so many assume that counter (and negating) voters are instantly viewed as being malicious, leading to highly emotional reactions (which can only be calmed before having a logical discourse.) I've seen many posts around that would require a flagger to choose a category, or maybe even require a typed response of a minumun number of characters. I see importance in making the person flagging think and verbalize what their line of reasoning. One this makes abuse or revenge flagging much more obvious, as well as potentially minimize the 'negative emotional' reactions people feel when seeing said flag.
I've never been a fan of us/them splits whether is US politics or even on this site. If we truly care about the future of a country/world or even this site, there are always shared fundamental goals that tie us together. The perception of malice incite poor reactions (in my opinion) and calm logical discourse (even when there is disagreement) is a major part of the fix. We're all in the same boat together.
What about when someone creates more than one profile in an attempt to have more than one vote? Eventually, I see no reason why, if the person is decent at creating content which generates SBD, someone could create accounts that would build power over time. As you said in your previous post that when 2 voters vote together, their votes together are worth more than their sum total. So when someone creates 5 or 10 accounts, builds up their power, they can wield those accounts as one cumulative supervote.
In fact, don't we see this with many whale votes?
Even worse is when people you thought were friendly towards you vote negatively against you and also take money out of your pocket by doing so. ;)
With the reputation system now here, I think the time has come to scrap downvoting to remove rewards.
500 minnows and dolphins can decide they want to reward a post only for one whale to wipe out their decision.
We should allow users (including whales) to 'flag' content as "abuse" and hit the posters reputation only.
Previous voters have the option to unvote a post, if they feel the reason the content is being flagged is warranted.
@dantheman's analogy with electoral voting is flawed. In electoral voting you nullify votes by voting for someone else. On this platform, the same can be done. If I don't like post x, I can effectively negate it (monetarily) by voting for posts y & z. There is no right (in an electoral system) to vote for y & z and rip up a vote or two for x.
Downvoting gives too much power to the haves over the have nots IMO.
Yep. I stressed that point a few months back when it hit me hard on more than one occasion. ;)
Imagine if we had a Presidential election where the majority wanted one candidate to win but a few people with a lot of money just overruled them and sabotaged the whole thing ... oh wait ... never mind.
Minority rights. And there is no smaller minority than the individual ;).
#descriptionsonthespot need some support:)
LOL... loved the "never mind"...
Hey Tuck F. Heman.... LOL
This is what I think also, and even, this very post above pretty much explains why. And reputation scores, in my opinon, should not be 'objective numbers' but rather based on the opinions of the people you follow and how you vote for them. This makes the numbers look different depending on who you are, because, let's face it, there can be a very serious problem of Sybil attacks and these can be mitigated by network proximity algorithms.
Too many users are still voting for spammers/fakers/plagiarizers. There needs to be a way to take rewards away from them. If there is not, we will get a lot more of them.
This is how an election works. I know people who are voting forTrump and I'm voting for Clinton. But those Trump voters are not voting for Trump because they are trying to negate my vote, they are voting for Trump because they took a bad fall and now they believe he'll make a better president than she will. If I downvote your steemit post, and my downvote was made because I think the post is a piece of shit, and then someone else upvotes your post because they think its great, the two of us both exersized our right to vote.
Also in this democrassy people talk politics all the time. People exchange opinions and get into arguments about who would be better. I can't count the number of conversations I've had about this election and the last one. I have no way to know if those conversations changed the minds of others, or which conversations made me change my mind on specific policies, influencing how I vote for state and national officials.
There are not enough anarchists voting for the purposes of nullification to make this an election issue.
I'm sorry. You've confused my dig at Dan & Ned for an actual comment. ;)
@tuck-fheman I fiend for national politics, the politics of steemit are not yet of interest to me.
Are you trying to say democrazy? ;) Anarchists likely wouldn't vote for Clinton or Trump IF they voted. They'd likely vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein depending upon which leaning (Capitalists or Communist) they have within the Anarchists ideologies. Though they are still individuals so they may rightly write in whomever they choose. "Bum on the street corner get's my vote!"
EDIT: Or vote for Vermin Supreme (check him out on youtube if you don't know of him... real guy... really funny) He'll give you a FREE pony.
anarchists do not acknowledge the legitimacy of government, and do not therefore vote at all.
voting is statism. like taking mass is religion.
Yep. But me ignoring the guy punching me is not going to stop him from punching me.
They also believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, which does not mean they do not believe in self defense.
I do not agree with the system, and I do not actually see VOTING as going to solve anything at this point. Yet not everyone sees things this way. What is going on around me does not change simply because my belief system does not agree with them. I don't expect prayer to solve anything, and I don't expect me not voting to solve anything either, though in most cases (except small local) my vote likely would have zero impact anyway.
I don't plan to die, or let my family die if I can avoid it. Choose battles, and all that jazz.
I do discuss with people and they are not likely to give up everything they believe, nor am I. Yet learning new things one step at a time is possible.
exactly @talyvale voting is statism a mass hallucination of something not there :)
Oh @talyvale... I forgot by the time you responded... see the line where I said Anarchists wouldn't vote for Clinton or Trump IF they voted. The IF was intentionally capitalized because I know technically an Anarchist doesn't vote. I should have put more emphasis on that. By the time you replied I'd responded to so many other things I forgot I did that. :)
True True :)
The amount of money in your pockets is on public display and this is very unique in itself which can have unpredictable consequences as an experiment. Steemit is an experiment and the Dollar Payout being public is an experimental feature. So far do you think Public Dollar Payout is a UX feature which is beneficial?
"Pockets" (our Steemit Wallet) and the amount shown in them is far different from our literal pockets and is subject to dramatic change prior to those funds appearing in our literal pockets. As one of my non-crypto friends said when he saw my Wallet page, "nice statistics".
It's not "real money" yet in a sense for many people. How many hundreds of thousands of "statistics" have of some of us lost in the past month? ;)
Personally I would prefer not to have balances displayed. But someone who wanted to know could always view balances on the blockchain and that's only a bookmark away at steemd.com; unless you know something I don't know, which is likely considering I don't know a lot.
Maybe not take down the monetary value but Just a down mark so others can decide if its still good content.
It is bad that peaple sell their votes.
I think its a lot of scam in vote counting and a scam all the vote proces.
Politicans allways scam their voters also.
we need to go for middle way dudes, follow minded people 8]
Ultimately, a vote Is a right to choose something, or someone. The problem lies when you (meaning anyone) personally vote on something that may go against the will or agenda of the ones around you. Yes voting Is a choice, but those choices have very real consequences. Is your vote for personal reasons? Is it for political reasons? Is it just to appease the masses? Only Internally, can YOU answer that question. And how do you know when you've made the right decision? When you can lay your head down at night without worry-
I'm kind of weird. I don't see a need for negative votes. I see a need for flagging inappropriate/abusive content.
Yet I personally cannot comprehend a legit reason to even have a negative vote.
If I like something. I like knowing that 2 other people also like it. I could care less how many people don't like it.
funny you should say that!
been in the back of my mind from the top.
Will we see a similar scenario for the upcoming presidential election??
Funny how people are force collectivized into this nonsense called "the will of the people". Since when does might make right? Should the Christian coalition be able to force their morality on atheists? Muslim voters their will on Jews? Whoever has the numbers is magically morally superior? I'm either lost or just totally disagree.
Great article on the current voting tendencies. Honestly, this Clinton vs Trump voting season is getting a bit ridiculous to say the least. Both USA and Canada need more choice in the political spectrum, meaning more parties not just more candidates for the 2 or 3 largest parties. Independent platform candidates should have more weight and coverage if we are to build a truly democratic society.
I see what you did there @dantheman, a complex but simple analogy of the politics of steemit and the whole downvote/flagging operation, without the finger pointing and name calling. Well done and well stated.
Time to move on to the next brush fire LOL.
How can a person vote against more people, if he believes that those people are doing something wrong or they are voting bad. A small fish against a lot of fishies and whales together.
Well written, it remains to competently implement
I like your hashtag #popthevote :)
It seems that few are immune to playing the victimization or entitlement card, it's just a matter of degrees. And somehow the two often wed into a cognitively dissonant justification for actions that turn producers into tyrants and non-producers into their victims. It would seem that where the majority rule, this will not change. However, when there is reward or loss-of based on voting, accountability runs higher.
Much Latin ... Here's some Latin as a background on these words.
The people (populus) is a much different concept than you seem to think.
Nobody said that a man is rational - yet that doesn't make him irrational
For a good debate it would be essential to establish some definitions first.
I feel like Winston, questioning #newspeak
I don't even know where to start.
I'm not enjoying this :D
Steemit voting system is changing to democracy system.
No it isn't.
He never mentioned steemit or steem. He just spoke about voting. (He wrote about some ideas for steemit that are very much not about voting a couple of days ago)
Thomas Jefferson once said that pampers and politicians have two things in common. They both cry a lot and they both stink. To have that kind of foresight is unreal!
Funny, I've heard this comment attributed to Ben Franklin and Mark Twain... just today. Who is the real originator of this quote?
Carefully read your posts about voting. Our family had great unforgettable experience about voting during the last "election" of our President when our voices were taken away, were substituted and sold as on a cheap market. Many of our friends were public official observers at the elections and were frankly outraged about what was happening during the vote counting. They were removed from the election areas sometimes even by force, not to let them an opportunity to do their job. I wanted to do one big post on this subject in future and of course I will, but when I saw your post I couldn’t pass by without sharing. A man with a backpack on his shoulder, trying to hit his wife from the police, it's me. This happened on St. Isaac's Square in the heart of St. Petersburg during a peaceful demonstration against the election results March 4, 2012.
I am not here to beg but if you please my friend show your support to the steem whitepaper translators https://steemit.com/steemit/@skapaneas/steem-whitepaper-greek-translation
I think upvoting your own content should be taken away. Why? Because in my eyes it keeps the same people on top with their posts. Yes, they did well in the past by making a great post but does that mean the new post is that good? I am no saint, I always click the box as well because otherwise I get hardly any votes at all. ( Not that it matter to me, I will keep posting) But it would be great to see more and different kind of people on the HOT and Trending list.
To be honest, I am very scared when it comes to down voting! I don't like that option at all. Not because I think I write such bad things but it can totally wipe you out. If and when you post something and a whale downvotes your post you can say good bye to your reputation.
For now, I will just vote for the things I really like. I am not giving my votes to a post just because it's on top.
I think this vote is automatic, because I posted a small article today and it only got 1 vote, mine, and I didn't vote for it.
I'm on record (you can look back if you wish), as saying that those with the most gold and most to gain or lose should have the most power and that this is a private enterprise. So things like censoring speech through downvotes, etc., does not apply.
That being said, Whales, Inc., I kindly ask you hear my opinion. It is in the best interest of this platform to use the downvote hammer judicially. Using it because you don't agree with the content (original of course), humor, politics, have a personality conflict with a user, etc is very, very bad. What somebody may find NSFW another may find benign, what somebody may find humorous another may find offensive, so on and so forth. Once the governors (Whales, Inc.) start becoming the Judges, Juries and Executioners of appropriate content things may fall apart for some users. This has been seen at Reddit and other places when they setup committees, etc to make sure "inappropriate content" or users does not stain their platform.
Negative voting is creating culture of hate, can be observed everywhere.
It is good that someone actually took this subject and explored. Thank you :)
Hey Dan,
Great article really cleared up a lot for me. I noticed you showed some interest in my earlier articles but lately I haven't been doing so well. I'd appreciate it if you checked out this article and just gave me some feedback.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@timd/5yma7h
Thanks :)
I love the idea of knowing who the negative voters are. In life, there are consequences to our actions - why not our Steemit life too? But here's my thought, and I hope you take it into consideration, @dantheman - if you want to have a stable environment, then it's not going to be a program or algorithm that you can create - it's going to have to be people You may have to consider real people (perhaps even on a payroll) who are community moderators. These people are the ones who put out the fires, do the research on the genus of the problem, and ultimately make a decision about vote power or even membership to the site. Just my thoughts.
The problem I see is that people vote (or hate) personalities. The truth is that the election process has little to do with policies. Who is expressing them and how those ideas are marketed matters even more than the content itself. In this context, a negative vote would probably be directed to someone (and not something) who people do not like. You would probably get pretty horrible policies just because the guy promoting them seems to be a good chap.
I believe however that the rationale behind negative voting is sensible. But, on the other hand, it'd be just a minor patch for a perverse system.
Steemit and politics make the head i dizziness
You tell about tool. You gave people this tool. You are teaching people use tool. As a result everyone will use tool, but only how they realize it itself)
Additionaly
It is trouble of service, it means that system is not perfect. And you try solve trouble through people (looks like captcha system). I think that we need fix reasons, not results.
The solution to this problem is simple, and fair, no up votes aloud from the whales and no down vote aloud, simple.
"No Right to Abuse Vote
This is an interesting paradox because who gets to decide what is and isn’t abuse? Shall we vote on it? Is a vote to declare something abuse also abuse? This is a hypocritical position that assumes some universal standard of right and wrong. If such a standard existed then there would be no need to vote in the first place."
I dont think you are asking the right question... What should be asked is why are people willy-nilly downvoting folks for work done and those folks are LOSING money because of it?
Also with this logic, you also have to say "who gets to decide who gets paid and who does not?"
Think about it for a minute. I write something and think it is the best thing ever written...another guy looks at it and thinks I am crazy for writing it. He downvotes me, knowing that I will not only lose reputation but compensation as well.
I put hard work into this and deserve to be compensated. Should my compensation be a bad reputation, and a loss in wages? I was just today reading a comment where a person begged another person to stop downvoting him because he was losing money and getting a bad rep. The guy replied, leave me alone and I will leave you alone. Are you kidding me?! What would be the point in posting if I know that someone, who just does not like me, is causing me to lose money? What rational person is going to stay somewhere they are not being fairly treated, or compensated?
I am not the only one who believes that the voting function is being abused beyond belief.
There is a universal standard of right and wrong. But in our politically correct society, we can not understand it. It is wrong to abuse someone. And this goes for abuse of the downvote. Sure, if we dont like something, we are free to show it with a downvote, but if that vote is going to take the form of a decrease in wages, then that is abuse. I may not like what Joe-Shmo says, but should his wages be cut because of it?
It is a theft of time and wages and that my friends, is abuse.
Dan, I have concerns with your final conclusion. I am not certain if Steemit is the appropriate platform for mass education (getting subscribers to face the issue, understand it, and accept it) on this issue. Ultimately Perception tends to win the day (no matter how incorrect) , and the bigger the population the more entrenched that "perception" is. If the objective is for the smoothest path to success for the platform, I don't think that going against this perceptual titlewave will be the best way to get us there. I must admit, my understanding of what was intended regarding voting on this platform was in fact faulty, however I still maintain that avoiding down voting, if possible, would be the best path to consensus and social cohesion. I will not write more here, but will copy a response from an
earlier discussion involving voting and the flagging issue. you my find of interest.
=========================================
Hi, good comments. I also think that the dialog box is a good, or maybe even an essential component to the flagging system. It is essential because flagging is providing negative feed back. This is always touchy as misunderstandings can lead to upset between the two parties and thought of an unfair playing field. It is first essential (and sorely lacking currently) to have a clear set of rules, )a constitution if you will ) that all agree to play by. We all know that spam and plagiarism is against the social consensus. We need to expand on that list of social expectations and pin it visibly on the site. This rule book should be the bases of all flagging action noted on @bendjmiller222 's dialog box. In doing this we get clear documented expectations and clear documented violation. This way, very efficiently, one can check the " accepted rules", against the "rules" their being accused of breaking.
Regarding using flagging for down-voting, I have an idea for possibly a better way for reaching consensus that I hope will be considered.
Lately there has been a lot of down voting of top paying posts, who have no visible violation of rules of social consensus (that I can see anyway). I've seen a lot of comments about this. People are assuming the cause to be jealousy, dis-like etc. I must admin many times I am left with simular notions. Whether that be true or not, "perception is reality" as they say. I would submit the idea that negative feedback in a broad mass-communication social network is not a good thing. Negative feed back opens the social group up to the potential of a whole host of emotional driven actions that usually end up being harmful. So, Instead of ( + / - vote ) to reach consensus I would propose ( + / 0 vote ) .
"Up Vote / No Vote" - These would be the two binaries between which consensus would be achieved. Doing this we remove the emotionally charged issue of negative voting. Think of it as simular to how the Steemit system gets around the negative stigma of asking members to pay upfront for operational costs by actually acquiring its resources through inflation. The end result is the same, but the phycological negative barrier is neutralized,. In the case of counter voting (down voting) it leaves the flagging system alone to deal strictly with rule breakers and transfers the responsibility to the "up vote" algorithm
So then, how to we deal with blog awards being to high if this is in fact an issue? I am not a mathematician, but it seems the general up-vote weighing calculated by the program would need to come down. So, build the counter weight into the up vote algorithm to hide it, just like Steemit's ability to obtain resources is hidden in to the inflation.
That said, it could very well be that the voting algorithm is working just fine now, and what we are seeing in the large awards is simply the free market at work.
Thanks. Enjoyed reading your ideas.
Interesting thoughts. How does one implement it?
I'm just here to shamefacedly promote a new post about anarchy! Everybody here loves anarchy!
For a discussion on the commons in an anarchist society, check out my new discussion on the commons in an anarchist society.
@dantheman
When Ben Franklin was asked at the conclusion of the constitutional convention in 1787, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?", Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."
Pointedly, he did not say, "A DEMOCRACY, if you can keep it," the question being what the difference is between the two. The answer is that a democracy is simply majority (mob) rule, whereas a republic (via the Bill of Rights in our case) renders certain rights sacrosanct and thus not subject to the vote — e.g., freedom of association, freedom of speech, self-defense (the right to bear arms), privacy (security of one's property from search and seizure), etc. — leaving relatively little subject to the vote and thus relatively little for the federal government to actually DO.
Limited government, in other words.
Thus is it clear, living as we do under the thumb of a now CENTRAL government that knows no bounds and accordingly seeks control over virtually every facet of our lives, that the republic our forebears created, WASN'T KEPT.
Most egregiously, the central government has effectively stolen the money upon which a free society depends — http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-money-and-state — which is why the cryptocurrency revolution is so vital to the health and wellbeing of human society and why Steemit stands to be such a vital component of it.
To say that I am excited about Steemit is thus an understatement, and, as with a rapidly growing number of others, I will do all I can to assure its success.
@dantheman in my view down voting shouldn't be an option on site like this. It is only a tool for manipulation by more powerful members. If people don't like something they shouldn't read it and only number of positive votes, comments and views should count. If post is bad or of no interests nobody wil look at it anyway. This is how things work in life. Only in politics opponents will undermine each other. Do you want this platform to resemble politics. Do you think that members like @berniesanders who is down voting @dollarvigilante represents values of democratic community? I don't think so. Keep in mind that pool of money to be minded is inexhaustible. You can create as much money as possible if anyone wants to look at your content. People like @berniesanders should be simply not allowed to hold that much power because they don't belong to free world. They belong to corrupted world of banksters and corrupted world of politics. Don't transfer models of corruption from the world, which you are trying to replace because you will be replaced sooner than you think if you allow people to be divided. People should do what they like and if you don't like it find a place which will match your interests. And thank you @tuck-fheman for voicing your opinion. It is on the spot.
And who is to decide that @berniesanders "doesn't belong to the free world"? Some special committee?
I'm not a big fan of @berniesanders but I respect his right to do whatever he wants with his votes. What you propose the opposite of freedom - it's a total tyranny.
I don't think vote for sale (however promises during campaign are equivalent to buying people votes) is a big concern in the current system, but rather threat against people . That's why it is anonymous, so people can chose whomever they want without being threaten.
But again, as I said in a previous reply, the election is just part of a decision making, a way so people can express their concerns over the leader who will govern them, or some aspect of the laws to which they will abide. In my opinion this is more sharing the responsibility (and all which goes with that) on who gets elected and the way he will govern than anything else.
I personally don't think that negative voting would change anything except the math and the strategy to win an election.
@dantheman did you see Doug Casey's 5 reasons to not to vote from the 1980s?
I couldn't help but remember the 3rd reason: Nobody with any sense votes for any of these two. people mostly vote against the other guy. :)
Anyways, here's the video if you wanna watch it, it's just 3 minutes 40, I think you'll like it.
This is one rare thing that Casey is wrong about. (Voting for voluntaryist candidates is not immoral.) However, Casey qualifies his statements in other places that he would be satisfied with a proper, legitimate, "night watchman" type government. (While maintaining that he doesn't believe it's likely, given the current education levels of any electorate in the world.)
I believe voting is the process of expressing a choice and if a person vote on something that he never choose to, then there's probably a question to it.