As some of you might be aware, hardfork21 on the near horizon and it promises to shake the Steem ecosystem up a bit and while I hope it will deploy smoothly, will likely create a hell of a lot of DramaSteem outbursts because, HF21 is bringing sexy downvoting back into fashion.

The Economic improvement proposal is a three pronged fork of 50/50 curation, a convergent curve and 2.5 free downvotes and hopefully together, something will happen. Anything is better than nothing but the worst case scenario is, not much happens at all. While there are various levels of disagreement to these factors, what we can all agree on is that we aren't in the perfect position now, therefore we need to act and develop.

Today, I got flagged.

And I want to see more of this.

I don't know this person, however this is someone who is looking after their community and their investment. What he flagged me for is that he felt my content wasn't suitable to earn STEM because it wasn't technology based enough for his liking. I disagree with his appraisal (or I wouldn't have tagged it technology) however, I strongly agree with his action.

The front ends need people to step up and pay attention to what content is being put there and whether it is suitable if it is a niche topic frontend. This isn't about quality of post, it is about theme of post, however people who want their favorite steem-engine frontends to do well need to be aware of what is going on so as not to dilute the content experience, or give content rewards to those who do not, like this kind of activity:

over a year and a half ago I wrote a series of posts about creating Helsing a high stake community supported account that would be controlled anonymously to destroy the earning potential of obvious reward abuse, you know the type - 10 posts with a screenshot graph a day and the highest REP on the platform - kinda accounts. At the time, the account was making in excess of 4000 dollars a day. Today? It is making 220 dollars a day which is ~900 STEEM.

Will the community gather once there is the economic incentive to do so?

What I am glad about is that on PAL and LEO at least, they have the @nopal4u and @noleo4u accounts doing similarly. What I think would be great on the frontends is if they select "executioners", anonymous people who are charged with roaming the waters and taking care of business as they see fit. It is possible that there could be several executioners curating with the same account.

My original idea was for Steem of course because at that point, there was only Steem however, it would of course be a problem because, no one could agree. The difference with the frontends is that they are "owned communities" that don't have to live by the same amount of decentralization as Steem as, they are Steem decentralized.

The whole idea of communities is to give both the power and burden to those who operate them to police them and make them the kind of places that people who enjoy the theme of the frontend appreciate and value. Those who invest into these communities are likely hoping for success of their investment, so should be doing the same.

If policing doesn't take place, the same behavior we have seen on Steem will decimate the frontends in short order as they are very easy to build, meaning that if the real user base stops enjoying their experience, they can not only leave, but create their own and on the new version, keep it clean.

While we all keep talking about investing and earning, one of the aspects that people avoid is the protection of investments and earnings as no one wants to be the one who does the dirty work, face the abuse or make mistakes that harm people. So instead, everyone suffers at the hands of abusers.

The massive benefit on the interfaces is that for example, the flag I took from @zorg67 was aimed to remove STEM, not STEEM. @nopal4u and @noleo4u are the same as they have no Steem Power meaning that all they remove are the potential earnings of the native coin. This means that flags for mis-categorization should start coming thick and fast and be accepted as that. Of course, for those who don't separate their tokens, they could smash someone across multiple interfaces- but that is at the risk of the contributor.

Regardless of what approach gets taken, in time it has to be understood that as a community of owners, it is up to us to make sure we keep our houses clean and that means accepting that there is housework to do. The taboo around downvoting needs to be broken and instead it should be seen as a healthy part of community discourse.

Remember, the rewards aren't yours until they are in your wallet.

It really is a pity that so many people think that it is okay to abuse the reward pools with spam and scam, plagiarism and whatever kinds of poor behavior and shit they can dish up to get a little more. But, just like serial killers, rapists, thieves, paedophiles, racists and assholes of all kinds - they are always going to exist. However, since it is possible to be an asshole on Steem, the only way to change behavior is to punish it as doing nothing gives earning incentive to it.

This is your investment potential and just like there should be some wisdom and sense applied to downvoting, there should be some applied to how one thinks a successful future will look. I am quite confident that most people's idea of utopia is filled with rapists and serial killers roaming free unchecked, and the people who scam the most having the most resources.

You want freedom from authority, stop relying on them to clean your mess.

This is your investment - isn't it?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]