I am not choosing sides here. I wanted to point out something about #vyb. People are free to be a dick and have different opinions. They just no longer will be downvoted for it. Always feel free to counter with your words.
I will say I don't think he was trying to be a dick to you (I could be wrong). It looks like one of those cases where you may have misread the intent. I've been there and done that myself.
No need to choose sides. The being a dick part was putting words in my mouth and painting me as a villain the instant I walked in the door. If you think back to July you'll remember the talks between you, myself, several others.
In over five years here, not at one point have I ever been 100% happy with how downvotes are being used. I walk into the new tribe free of downvotes and I'm made out to be one of the reasons something like this needs to exist. I didn't misread something. It clearly says I feel a certain way about something, yet what was said isn't true.
Several others in what I'll call the anti-downvote crew lately have also been incredibly difficult to work with and have been throwing me under the bus then dragging me through the mud since before I even returned from a nearly four month hiatus. So my frustration has snowballed into a much larger issue. But frot and I go way back so it's not like I'm sitting here holding a grudge.
Probably worth mentioning as well. People are reading a Canuck and a Kiwi banter back and forth. It's not as serious as it sounds.
Yeah I don't remember all of the discussions on down votes I have had. I started doing that not long after steemit went live. I eventually realized I couldn't think of a solution that I couldn't also easily exploit and invalidate. Some of them I could also see introducing new problems.
I'll admit #VYB is the first experiment I've been excited to give a shot in a long time.
I used to get pretty involved in the down vote discussions. Now I only chime in when specifically mentioned, or in rare cases I can think of anything worth saying on the subject.
That doesn't happen that often anymore.
Well, yeah. The issue is far too complex and has simply devolved into 'good vs evil', which is something I don't have the patience for, most days. Irrational, unreasonable, unrealistic. One must either knock down the entire system to the point of calling it a complete failure, or say nothing at all.
But now Hive offers a platform free of downvotes. So people can simply make a choice and be happy with it. In theory that should boost morale around here and allow those in need of it plenty of time to focus directly on their craft.
Deep down though I think some folks will still hold on to what's been making them feel bitter, completely ignore what appears to be progress being made, and continue on bashing. For some, adjusting to change is not the easiest thing to do. The entire attention economy based around bashing the platform was basically destroyed in one fell swoop. No battle was won, no battle was lost. No winners, no losers. Rather than arguing now one can simply point to the options on the table and ask them to choose.
And of course if this is successful, more options will come, catering to those with special needs, as has been the case for several years now. The door is wide open. Hopefully the potential, this time around, is actually embraced, and not squandered. Hopefully this helps remove the blinders as well.