So 6% of the overall reward pool was "redirected" (for lack of a better term) by two self-appointed pools of Steem Power for various reasons.
And how much of that 6% would have been directed to people who were producing good content if none of those down votes had been given and, instead, they had been redistributed as upvotes to quality content?
Note that the above is without judgment of the methodologies executed by either group. However we know that some down voting has occurred, possibly from both camps, based on purely personal reasons and not altruism toward the platform. Net positive benefit to all of us thus must be somewhat less than 6%, right?
Essentially I'm trying to get at the question of effectiveness, here. Is this the most useful exercise of that really vast reservoir of SP? How much does that $74,490 actually affect the people in the bottom half of the population active on the platform?
Is it at all meaningful?
The overall feeling that I get is that a lot of this is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I glanced down the list of Titles that have been most voted down doesn't really give me a great feeling. Some of those are clear and obvious spurious spam entries, sure. Some of the stuff at the very top of the list – I have some questions. I also have some reservations.
I approach this problem as someone who looks at it as a game. And as someone who likes good game design, I have to ask if – given my particular definition of "winning", which is not simply trying to have the biggest numbers but to read the most interesting content available – any of this is actually working?
6% of the monthly inflationary payout got dumped back into the top of the bin to sift back down via distribution.
What does that actually mean to me, as a member of the platform? And has that activity actually resulted in significantly less abuse of the platform from any perspective I could see?
I think these are fairly important questions.
Agreed. Here's an upvote so this comment may get some much needed engagement.
What do you mean by "self-appointed pools"?
To paraphrase Monty Python, "I didn't vote for them."
Pretty much every administration task on Steemit is done by a group of self-appointed vigilantes, by necessity, because there doesn't seem to be any sort of administrative guidance or engagement by a core group of people who have actually been intended to pursue that goal.
There's no official group to contact in case you find what you might think of as abuse on the platform. In fact, you're positively encouraged to find a group of like thinking individuals – or forge them, Golem-like, from raw money – and run around enforcing whatever set of standards you imagine should be the case.
If those standards just so happened to be different from another group who happens to have stumbled on the same very obvious response to anarchy then the gangs throw down and rumble right there in the middle of the street.
No matter who happens to be caught in the crossfire or what actual collateral damage it does.
As organizations, all we really care about is the fact that they have massive pools of SP which they weaponize against their chosen targets – some of which are deserving by my personal measure, and some of which it would be a stretch to suggest deserved any kind of down flagging.
Both sides tend to favor scorched-earth tactics. Some of the members of both sides bear personal grudges and work to make good on them whenever possible.
But, and all cases, because the only really important thing about them from a mechanical point of view is that they represent massive accumulations of system-specific fiscal power and that their membership is purely self-created, they fulfill every requirement to be referred to as "self-appointed pools."
Right, except you're missing an important word such as "regulatory", i.e. "self-appointed regulatory pools". So that's what I was wondering.
Your dramatization seems legit. With no system-level way to perceive justice we're left to form these mobs. I once formed one, though I wouldn't have accepted the description "mob" because we acted calmly (well, I did) and had our own standards that we stuck by, we did use the "force" of flagging to fight abuse. What we thought of as abuse. And I've held a couple of grudges. I don't act on them but if I'm honest there are few accounts I now think very badly of.
But we all know this story. We don't know where the story goes though, except for on and on like this until SMTs and communities shelter us from each other, supposedly save us.
EDIT: btw, is that Monty Python quote from The Life of Brian by any chance? 🙃
I try to avoid the word "regulatory" whenever I can, purely because it gives me the same response as other people have to the word "moist." It's inherently kind of disgusting. Also the whole purpose of these organizations of people is to attempt to regulate the behavior of others on the platform – with very scant evidence of actual effect.
Wanting to see some of that evidence is part of why I'm involved in this thread. I want to know. Is this really what it is going to take to maintain a relatively clean street for the rest of us to do business and socialize on? Are we going to have to recapitulate the ontology of local governance from scratch, plagued by robber barons and warlords while we go about our day-to-day?
We know where the story goes. If anything, the last 25,000 years of human history have shown us the possible points of exit from the state of being. At least with human history, we had the advantage of geographic distribution to help protect and shelter individual communities who experiment with different types of conflict management within the society, allowing some to flourish and some to die.
Like you, I'm hoping that SMTs and Communities can replace some of that geographic distribution, making it harder for self-appointed vigilante superhero teams to run around and impose their personal standards of not only "this is bad for the platform" but "I think your community is rewarding you too much for giving them something they want," both of which are writing in the same boat right now.
Geographic distance did not suffice to save every community or way of approaching and doing things. We know how this is going to turn out, eventually. The best that we can hope for, I think, is to limit the damage that the bad elements can do while simultaneously giving smaller groups the option of whether they want to adopt the methods of the others or invite them in to have an outpost or outreach in that community.
I hope. If we get to make it that far.
In the meantime, it would be nice to have some metrics to judge whether or not the activity that's currently happening is actually useful and effective.
6%. Is 6% of a monthly distribution really worth all of the blood and treasure being expended to wage these brushfire wars? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't – but I think we need to ask.
I know what you mean, but "self-appointed pool" is missing some necessary context without it, or an equivalent word.
I do wonder why such a thing as SMT oracles couldn't be applied more generally. I think everyone is hoping that the flagging (as an issue) gets solved indirectly by some other thing.
I happen to support some of those teams, but self-appointed they are, as is the style here. The real thing that communities will give is some kind of moderation. This is a step towards local governance and would be a kind of "geographical" distance. I think we'll make it that far. But the point is some moderation instead of none.
Well, it's much less dramatic than that. I think it's worth it surely, on the path to Figuring It Out™️. That's worth doing. The original designers didn't go that far.
Also, "I didn't vote for you."
Ah 😂