I still believe that negative voting is a critical component of an anarchist society and is inherently fair.
@dantheman I suppose the real question for me is -
Is Steemit your own personal anarchist society or is it meant to be more inclusive than that?
I like this community but I don't identify myself as an anarchist and I suspect that you will alienate people if you start going further down that path.
I applaud you for discussing these matters with the community but I think you need to listen very carefully when they tell you that they are not comfortable with something.
I personally don't like the concept of negative voting on a platform like this. I think it is too easy to abuse and just does not feel right to me.
The example I have used before is that of an artist selling a painting at auction.
If it sells for $100K at auction and all the money goes to the artist, then negative voting is like other people who don't like the piece being able to extract money from the artist afterwards.
To me it is more similar to robbing someone of something they already have.
Yes perception may be considered reality in some sense and morality is highly subjective but many of the parameters of these things are created by the community.
From the perception of the serial killer, murdering people and torturing them may be entirely fair and moral.
Most communities would consider it the exact opposite.
Perhaps for important matters of function, governance etc it might be useful to have some sort of polling system built into Steemit?
As it is now it is not particularly anarchistic in some ways. If it is intended to be that then it largely depends upon what type of Anarchist you are. If you are an Anarcho-Capitalist it is not quite that because, you don't really care about people who don't like your product in a market, you care about how many people DO like it and thus are potential trade partners. You may care about people that didn't like it in the sense that you may be able to refine your product and get MORE trade partners. Yet you will not let people that do not like it dictate the price other people decide to give you.
So it is not really an anarchistic society at the moment. It is ALMOST.
EDIT: I am an Anarcho-Capitalist. So take what I say with a grain of salt as it is definitely going to be influenced by that.
If it does not feel right to you, don't use it. But why do you want other people to be deprived of this option?
Because you think it will be abused? Maybe it will, maybe not. We can't be sure unless we try. If we don't try some people will be unhappy - we know this for sure. On the other hand, if we try - it might fail but there is also a chance that it will work just fine and everybody will be satisfied.
It already is being abused.
Which only proves my point: there is already a simple way to do the damage you are so afraid of.
What I propose is this: let's offer people a way to do less damage, so that they don't have to do more damage to reach their goal.
I'm not trying to be a smart-ass here: I really don't understand your logic. The damage is already easily doable and some people are doing this. So if we can't effectively prevent the damage taking place, why don't you want to offer a way to make the damage less painful for the author?
Not sure what you're getting at since if I had my way we'd have no DOWNVOTE and the FLAG would pop up three choices for which it could be used. Plagiarism, Spam, or Abuse, and possibly a way to specify FALSE FLAG. If it is a false flag perhaps it could alert the witnesses and they'd have the ability to remove it, and ding the reputation of the person doing the FALSE FLAG.
So I believe it could be virtually eliminated.
There is such a system. Stakeholders elect witnesses who decide what software to run, which in turn implements the rules of the system. We are somewhat limited by the software license which prohibits using modifications not authorized by Steemit Inc. In effect this means witnesses can refuse to adopt new versions created by Steemit Inc (retaining the previous rules), but can't adopt any different version (unless, possibly, if completely reimplemented).
In practice Steemit Inc. owns an absolute majority of the stake which means it can replace the witnesses as long as that remains the case.
I was thinking of a system that polls all the users. Witnesses already have a huge amount of power in the system given their huge earnings.
How do the earnings convey power when in order to receive the earnings one must be voted in by stakeholders? The power lies with the voters. None of the witnesses has enough SP to get there or stay there without votes from many others, and certainly not from witness earnings alone.
I understand what you are saying but that does not negate the fact that as a witness one can have a huge amount of STEEM/SP which gives you a much more powerful voice than the average person on Steemit but you are correct they are elected.
I am one of the people that actively elects people to be witnesses. I don't have much SP but I feel it is my duty to at least vote for people whom I perceive to be doing a good job even some who I disagree with sometimes:)
What I was taking about is giving everyone a say in major issues - not every issue but major things like for example the 30 day limit on payouts/upvotes. This could be tied into the wallet and linked to SP to reduce the Sybil issue.
It wouldn't be a perfect solution but it might give people at least a feeling that they have a say in what goes on.
@thecryptofiend, I agree with your idea of polling. I'm not sure it should be binding or you run into issues with what to do when participation is low (which it almost always is in these systems).
If only 3% of the SP votes at all, do you ignore the vote, or let 1.5% of SP make an important decision for everyone, or do you fail to make important decisions at all because the participation is too low? Voter's can also make contradictory decisions, especially with low participation (different subsets vote on different issues). Then what?
But the opportunity for stakeholders to at least express a view in a secure way is a good idea, and witnesses who acted against the unambiguously expressed interests of a significant portion of the stakeholders would do so at their peril.