People using their their steempower to downvote (flag) content almost always do so to improve the platform as a whole. It's usually to suppress abusive behavior or to demote content to the benefit of better content.
Unfortunately there is actually a lot of downvoting that takes place for abusive reasons too.
The downvote implementation is one of the worst aspects of the steem ecosystem.
period.
Is there a hard outline of the rules and ethics of using the flagging system? I know there is that small “recommendations” that show up when you flag of what it should be for. Looking under FAQ I am surprised its simply as “users are allowed to downvote for any reason that they want. There are many users in the community who recommend only using the downvote on posts that are abusive. . .”
I now understand why it’s such a hot topic and an issue. It seems like a hard task to even try and find a happy medium when the guide lines are so loosely written. No wonder so many feel they have been abused by the down voting system.
Users are 'allowed' to do whatever the blockchain allows.
As I fear the reply from you would be. Blockchains don’t have ethics or morals. It is simply a slave to the highest bidder; therefore, no change needs to be made in down voting power. If someone wants something bad enough they just need make sure they are the highest bidder.
This leaves me with more questions than answers. I simply don’t understand the ethics or morals of the biggest account holders here. Interesting enough very view if any at all do. Since some of these people are unknown and don't choose to share that with us.
Well, it isn't as bad as it sounds (IMO). From what I've seen, the majority of the stakeholders (large and small) do have the best interests of the platform in mind. There are a lot of disagreements over what is 'best', but I do think most people's hearts are in the right place.
I agree. This platform would have been a wasteland long before now if otherwise.
Well said.
I just can’t think of a happy medium. If there was some kind of way to automate the process of verify that a flag was used in a legitimately manner and then refunded some of the power used back to the user maybe. That sounds like a very complex issue of trying solving. Even the bots that deal with plagiarism are not getting it correct enough to trust it.
No matter what kind of changes are made or not made with regard to flagging, we need assigned moderators who have the power to undo any flag not adhering to clearly set guidelines. We've always needed that, imo, but how to implement moderation where a lot of sp isn't needed (mod accounts with little or no sp) is perhaps impossible.
That is very true indeed! Thanks for bringing that up :)
Boom, I said similar in my comments before I saw the comments, good on ya Timmer.
Honestly.
Thanks for saying this. People listen to you.
And I'm think that part of HF19 was just to stop this kind of abuse.
You being an excellent witness, could you answer a question on this subject?
Would it be possible to set up steemit to automate a possible 6th flag be generated when a post is flagged? Then a few things could happen.
1. People could go to the tag "flag" and look at all the people who are flagged.
2. A process could be setup to a. let the populace vote on the abuse or b. hold the purse until reviewed somehow
This would avoid flag wars on the particular post. It would separate and make it easier to review posts that are flagged also.
Could you also tweak steemit to keep reputations/rewards intact until review/7 days is complete?
Thanks for all you do as a witness and valued Steemit member.
While it is technically possible, it would be a major change. It would be better for someone in the community to develop a UI that shows all the flagged posts. I don't know if it is there already, but steemdb ( developed by @jesta ) may already have something along those lines.
Thanks for your fast response.
Improve the platform - yeah right - LOL
Censorship is really not that great...
Which ?
There are lots of cases of retaliation, or 'disagreement on rewards'. The latter isn't really abuse, but it causes a lot of unhappiness among users. Making flagging more powerful would make that worse.
There needs to be a balance. I'm not saying that the current 1:1 between upvoted and downvotes is 100% for certain the right one, but since it is the current implementation the burden is on you (since you are proposing the change) to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the current system is not balanced correctly.. There does still seem to be a good argument in preserving the status quo.