Thankfully there seems to be more downvoting happening and I am hoping by the end of the year abusers will be too scared to even try their silly games. Wish we had more downvotes though and is an incentive to power up and get stronger.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when the abuser comes back and finds this. I am sure there will be some choice words and a list of expletives.
I am finding myself looking and hunting out abuse more and more. It is time challenging, but also very rewarding. I find it quite satisfactory and relaxing removing rewards from someone who knows exactly what they are doing wrong. It is a game of cat and mouse and is easy to find with a little hunting. We are fortunate to have a certain @abh12345 in the sportstalk community and nothing gets past him.
Most of the people on Steem today are the serious hard case nuts who believe in Steem. You have to be as the price fell through it's backside and is one fiftieth of where it once was. I know a majority of the people on here wouldn't think of selling Steem at it's current price unless they really had to. This is rather unfortunate for the abusers as they are getting pulverized in certain tribes. Loads are still getting away with highway robberies, but they will have their day very soon.
An abuser doesn't care though as they just see this as a quick buck and send it straight to the exchanges. Unfortunately the tribes have allowed easy access to our Steem vault and are just diluting it out the back door. One user today sent just on 150 000 sports tokens to the market which on current value is 225 Steem. That won't be powered up, but going direct to an outside exchange for cash. As I have said I have no problem with this, but a shit poster and abuser I do. They don't deserve 1 Steem let alone hundreds.
I know in Sportstalk the community has stepped up their game and there are now 9 referees highlighting the bad actors which makes it a lot easier for everyone to downvote. I have been impressed with how the discord has been set up to highlight the abusive accounts and is very well organised. There is a good percentage of the accounts down voting now which is a sign of things to come as it gathers momentum. The tribes all need to do this if they are to be successful.
The fight against abuse is great fun. The other day we stopped a bid botter cranking out one automated post with stock images and utter gibberish after another. When we were done he'd cuss at us like a drunken French sailor. Needless to say, the idiot would revenge flag us for days on end. Then he ran out of steam (possibly STEEM, too) and left the platform. :)
Equally fun is the discovery of worthy authors creating vastly superior content that what has been occupying Trending for the longest time. There is a revolution going on.
I agree this is loads of fun. Finding the quality stuff is hard as we are more focused on looking for the bad. That will change though as we get rid of all the crap.
I recently ran into @paulmp one of whose images was published in National Geographic. He's an Australian professional photographer. The post with the NG photo earned less than a dollar. At the same time, we had crap like the cruise video immediately after HF 21 bid botted to Trending. A testament of the total failure of PoB on Steem prior to HF 21. Now @paulmp's posts make decent money. He's been to Trending twice.
I also like the posts naming names and putting it out there. Then the tribe can decide and as you say, its great to see more people joining in to out and downvote the piss takers.
I think that recent concerted efforts have helped a lot here so keeping on top of things is a priority and things can only get better for everyone.
The abusers will only get smaller in value as their rewards disappear and the next phase is to check on users upvoting those idiots. It wont take long as some strong messages are being sent with all the rewards being wiped clean. Have just nailed two abusers and they will have nothing this week when I am finished.
It's been clear for a while that if the tribes don't take a hard line on abuse they will rot from the inside out and fail. It's good to have many large accounts on side and willing to use their downvotes in tandem with the referees. Cheers!
i can help you on the steem side of things for sports abusers if it makes sense to do
I hope other curating dapps are starting to wake up a d stop curating and promoting shit automatically. Things must get back to normal and normal is rewarding good content, not shit.
Unfortunately tribes were released before free downvotes which gave savvy abusers more avenues for assault and abuse. It also forced tribes to get organized a lot more quickly which is good for their reputation.
I haven't seen what the other tribes are up to so it is good to hear they are more organised now. This will attract more investors into the tribes if they see the community caring as more staking will take place.
Is there any trails for the ref accounts yet or is it a waste if time if a ref downvotes then will the tokens be at zero ?? Trying to find the best way possible to help the refs in their job
This is an interesting concept I haven't really thought down much.
The way the referee system works is that it takes downvote input from the 9 @referee# accounts and then downvotes a post after it's 4 days old until its payout date (upvotes stop counting after 4 days) if 4 @referees all agree. The way it determines downvote application is based on what the referees each vote their % to be. If they all vote 100% then it will take 100% of the reward from a post but if they vote an average of 65% then @referee will only try to remove 65% of the rewards. No referees hold any SPORTS so no single voice is the voice of the moderation team.
With users trailing a @referee# who's voice they trust they could effectively outsource their downvoting to someone who's habits they trust. In the end it's still not @referee# with power only that another user has decided to follow their role. This would also assist @referee as it would have to use a lower amount of downvote power to remove rewards if a post met consensus as the trail would presumably vote before @referee checked consensus to vote. I think I like it @blanchy.sports!
From my understanding it has to have a certain number of ref votes before rewards are removed. If you see something you don't think is right just hit it and stick it in the replay room. 2.5 downvotes a day gives you the power to remove 15 000 tokens a day or so which is more than 20 Steem.
Thanks for the fine efforts. I'm pretty sure once my delegation will be back I have more than enough Stake to make their posts zero visibility.
I'm looking forward for a more cleaner and healthy platform. Cheers.
It was essential and I am happy to see its happening with the help of community power and kudos to all brave sports whales of this community. The abusers must be taught a hard lesson to an extent where their plan to exploit must be responded with hard priced lesson. I urge every sports whale to downvote the abusers, if anything will come to my notice I will inform you. Thanks.
What surprises me most is how some people take sports to the market and sell it off at ridiculous rates
In the past few weeks when the reward pool was still very high, I used to see some people selling as much as 500k to 1m sports at ridiculous rate and I always wonder how they managed to earn those outrageous amount of sports
Right now, things are changing and it's now becoming so hard to see someone selling outrageous sports on the market and this is due to the ongoing way against those earning sports through shady means
In the nearest future, abusers will have nothing to sell
unfortunately abuser are born where there are opportunities to earn a few coins thinking of being smart. we really hope that in the coming weeks they will be discouraged from continuing to be smart.
I am starting to understand more and more just how common it is for people to repost an article and not add any personal commentary or anything to it. That is abuse in the greatest form. Then they do it five to six times per day and that is just unacceptable.