Does anyone actually reading and voting on this believe this post is worth over $2500? Keep in mind, most of that value was added by Dan himself and his co-worker @val-a. Curious to hear what you all think? Does this deserve to be downvoted?
Does anyone actually reading and voting on this believe this post is worth over $2500? Keep in mind, most of that value was added by Dan himself and his co-worker @val-a. Curious to hear what you all think? Does this deserve to be downvoted?
No but more importantly the entire series (including the people-rank posts) isn't worth $12000 and most certainly does not add $12000 of value to the Steem ecosystem.
As I have said many times, founders posting platform updates (and let's be clear, Dan writing about his plans to redesign the Steem voting system is a platform update, whether he disguises it as political philosophy and claimed not to have been writing about Steem or not) getting high rewards is exploitative and impairs the ability of Steem to reward other users by depleting the reward pool.
At this point, most of the damage has already been done and this one post is just the icing on the cake. I am undecided whether or not I will be downvoting it closer to payout.
Oh, and those of you claiming that the post shouldn't be downvoted regardless of its value because it isn't plagiarism or spam clearly did not get much value from the post.
By downvote do you mean flag?
Yes. That's the only way to down-vote currently.
"downvote" a flag should be used for much more serious things on a platform advocating against censorship, although it is not censorship, it can quickly restrict users from seeing or wanting to engage with such content
That was my point. If they call it a downvote they shouldn't make it look like a little flag. We've all been on the Internet for a while now, a bit too late to retrain everyone on what a flag means.
While platform announcements / discussions should not be rewarded, there's value to their visibility. This series is certainly not worth $12,000, but it's important for the users of the platform to know what a co-founder is thinking about.
The simplest solution would be an "Announcement" tab where all voting is disabled. Another possible solution could be a way for low value posts to trend based on their importance rather than SBD generated. Reddit has the "controversial" algorithm which makes posts which have a strong mix between upvotes and downvotes. I suppose that makes sense - if something is so polarizing it's probably worth checking out. Similarly, perhaps an equal number of whales could come in and downvote these announcements, yet they would be visible on the trending page.
I agree and we have discussed precisely these issues for months. A feature to disable rewards on a post was added two months ago but is not being used.
There are many ways one can conceive of announcements and communications from the developers being made available to users without direct monetary rewards. Somehow virtually every other startup business and software project manages to do this and indeed I dare say that none would consider a founder drawing on a promotional fund to do so (for example entering these blog posts in a writing contest sponsored by the company for its users) to be appropriate.
Possibly. If you are an investor looking closely at the system, or if you happen to be interested in the theory and philosophy of voting systems, they you might find this series interesting and vaguely relevant. But merely as a 'user' of the system, you are probably a blogger putting up your recipes, photographs, makeup videos, art, restaurant reviews, opinions about the direction of the economy, etc. in the hopes that you get support from your followers and may or may not get rewards. In that case, you probably neither find a lot of value here nor are likely to even read or understand most of it. (Several people have explicitly commented on voting despite not reading it and others clearly, from the content of their remarks, have not read and understood it.)
There is a place for everything. High in trending with rewards draining the pool day after day is not it.
Interesting - so the feature to disable rewards already exists.
You are right - this series in particular will not interest most people on Steemit. Those who are involved closely would be following Dan anyway, the post need not trend at all.
However, broad announcements do need to be visible. Major new features, significant changes in reward algorithms, etc. Those are relevant to everyone using the platform.
@smooth That's definitely a good point and is even separate from the problem with people being able to self-upvote.
I think the question you are really asking is:
I think it is clear you do not think so and I would be in agreement - it could be seen as another form of kickback and be used as ammunition by the "Steemit is a scam" crowd of people.
Obviously if @dantheman wants to post articles as a blogger on here there is nothing stopping him (nor is there anything wrong with that) but it might also make sense if official announcements are made on a separate channel to disentangle the two.
That would also remove any conflict of interest and keep his views separate from those of Steemit as a company. It might not seem important now but it will be in the future when this is a much bigger company and has the eyes of the world and the media upon it.
I'm actually really glad we are having these discussions. We may not agree on everything but we all care about the future of Steemit and by working together we can ensure that it has the best possible chance to succeed.
I mostly agree and I have never downvoted his 'blogger' posts, though it isn't impossible in theory that those too could be abusively and excessively voted especially if he and his co-workers and friends are voting for them.
However, a lot of times the 'blogging' veers into areas that are inextricably tied up with his official duties as the Steem lead developer. If he is blogging about divorce that is one thing, but blogging about blockchains and voting systems is another very different thing. The latter, especially, should not put him in a position of personally enriching himself by using his position to compete for rewards with the very users the system is trying to attract.
Perhaps he should create a normal "blogger" account without all the steempower? It would allow him to have the same level of "voice" as other bloggers without the payout distortion.
@smooth That's why I think the self upvoting should be removed and the official announcements and personal accounts should be entirely separate for Dan.
Then there will be no confusion and no possibility of "self-enrichement" as you call it (which is a better term than kickbacks lol).
So both problems would be solved and it is a pretty easy solution.
@thecryptofiend it seems to me like all that would accomplish is allowing site admins like dan and others to upvote their personal posts with their "official" accounts and their official posts with their personal accounts.
@dantheman, for example, isn't even dans biggest account, voting power wise. And i suspect that nearly every big whale has a similarly large proxy account.
I agree with@thecryptofiend, down voting should be removed to avoid an unfair advantage to large players voting for themselves and inflating unnecessarily steem dollars. There is no information value in seeing someone's upvoting it's own posts, in my view.
Well said. Platform announcements, solicitation for community feedback regarding the platform really should be reward free. Personal blogs I won't weigh in on... but you make a great point.
Sorry @smooth if I sent you a message about a woman that needs help. Just couldn't help it.
I must disagree. @dantheman is abiding by the protocol of the blockchain. You seem to want to create arbitrary political rules that aren't enforced by the blockchain. You are free to turn Steem into a political clusterfuck if you want. I certainly won't complain :D
What about all other posts in the meta category: posts about new features in the GUI, new third party tools, explanations how bots work, presentations on Steem statistics etc? If you think the devs should not be allowed to earn anything from "posting platform updates", then, if we want to stay consistent, all other similar posts by other people should also be treated in a similar way.
I find @dan's posts quite useful. Most of them are not pure announcements - they give me a valuable insight about @dan's motivations, explain the whole context, and explain what problems he identified and why he had to reject alternative solutions. If they were pure announcements, then yes, they don't deserve much payout. But these are not just "platform updates".
So, you think a few short posts about how voting philosophy is informing evolving designs for the Steem platform are a good use of $12000 from the reward pool, as opposed to, say, rewarding 120 good-but-currently-unrewarded posts $100 each? You are entitled to that view, but I respectfully disagree.
We must admit that almost all financial rewards here in Steem are disconnected from the "real world" value. Yes, $12000 is well overpriced if we compare it to the outside world prices, but so are many other posts and comments, including mine.
I think it will be very difficult to draw a line between platform update announcements and educational blog posts describing somebody's thought process. For me, @dan's posts fall more or less half way between those two extremes.
@berniesanders - Interesting question but I think most people in the community are in consensus over the fact that flagging a post because you think it is overvalued is wrong. Value is by it's very nature subjective.
Whilst I respect all you have done for the community - I believe it is up to the market to decide what the value of a post is by voting for it. If the flag was still a downvote then it might be acceptable.
The downvote option no longer exists though and was changed to a flag for that very reason.
You flag posts that plagiarise, rip off or are otherwise abusive (not because you disagree with them or you don't value them).
However you do bring up an important point though. Whales up-voting their posts are in effect giving themselves a huge payout which attracts many other voters hoping for curation rewards and a piece of the pie. Even if the rewards aren't that large it doesn't matter.
Most people haven't read the white paper or other material relating to how voting works and they never will. They see a large amount of money and a whale's name and they automatically vote on it hoping for a piece of the pie.
Not only that but I'm sure you aren't the only one who feels that there is a certain dubious morality to that concept - it's like paying yourself kickbacks. Whilst a minnow giving a self vote is a tiny drop in the ocean, a whale doing that can pay themselves more money in one go that an average minnow would make from a thousand posts.
In view of this, perhaps self-upvoing should be removed altogether. It won't completely solve these problems but it will show us the truer value of the post to the community.
I think that would be a better solution all-round but that's just my opinion. I would be interested to hear what the rest of the community think.
I strongly support the idea of removing self upvoting. I've never really understood why that's allowed in the first place, seems like there would be a lot of temptation to abuse it for anyone whose vote is worth a decent amount. Even though my vote is not worth hardly anything, I would still feel a bit guilty voting for myself.
I agree with you but it's impossible to enforce, as you can have two accounts and use one to post and the other to upvote the first.
That's true, but for the second account's vote to mean anything you'll need to invest time and money building up the voting power of that account. If you have 10 alt accounts that combined only give you $0.01 of votes, then why bother?
I support not being able to vote on myself.
@cryptocurrency1 Why are you spamming your link in this discussion?
Well said:
I've been saying this same thing. Code is law and the code most people who use Steemit.com are exposed to is the Steemit.com interface. Not only is it a flag, it was deliberately changed from a downvote to a flag. That implies intent and from a teleology philosophical argument, the "flag" means it should be for abuse only, not a downvote for subjective reasons.
Having said all that, Dan makes some good arguments here and if more "downvoting" is needed to keep things in balance, can I ask, why was it changed to a flag? If the whales keep talking about it like a downvote, and they have the most to lose if this system goes belly up, and Dan is right that negative voting is needed, then why haven't they campaigned to change the interface back to a downvote?
An alternative option is to fork Steemit.com and provide an interface that does downvote and doesn't censor content in the same way a flag does by a high reputation, high Steem Power user on Steemit.com. That, to me, would make everyone happy. They could use the interface that fits with their personal views on flagging vs. downvoting.
Let's put aside the issue of "downvote" vs. "flag" for the moment. Even though I don't entirely agree with your statements, in part because I don't always use the steemit.com interface, I will grant that flagging implies abuse. The point is still that abuse is subjective and excessive upvoting (including but not limited to by the poster himself and another close associate whale) can very well be a form of abuse.
Historically, the reason for the change to the icon was to discourage downvoting just because you don't like a post. For example, if someone posts a song, some people like it, the reward is not excessive, but you happen not to like it, the intent is to discourage you from frivolously downvoting.
This is very different from downvoting based on seeing excessive rewards as a form of abuse. Let me be clear: I happen to like this post and found it interesting. I didn't flag/downvote it based on like/dislike (if given a like/dislike button that didn't affect rewards, I would click like), but based on my subjective view that excessively rewarding these posts constitutes a form of abuse.
@lukestokes
I can't speak for others but 100% of the time I post a comment when I downvote for any reason (and sometimes to state a reason when upvoting if I have a reason worth noting other than "I like it and want to see it rewarded"). Obviously we can't force everyone to do that, but I definitely encourage it.
Reading through the various posts I've seen here regarding etiquette, it's hard for me to put aside the "downvote" vs. "flag" issue because, to me, it's the crux of the confusion as more and more people describe what the flag is for (preventing abuse). I get that a minority of people use other interfaces for the Steem blockchain, but I think it's safe to argue most use Steemit.com which does make a distinction between a downvote and a flag.
I guess, for me, it's hard to agree with all abuse being subjective (I'm coming from Sam Harris' Moral Landscape perspective), because some things the community, as a strong majority, does come to agreement on, such as frivolously downvoting being a detrimental activity for the network.
I agree with you, excessive upvoting can be seen as a form of abuse, especially by the very small minority which currently have such a huge influence over total payouts. Currently the interface provides no simple mechanism for: "I like the post, but feel the payout is excessive, so I'm going to vote against it using my own influence to bring the payout down, thus leaving more payouts for others." If the flag had a "reason" option which included some text (it could even just auto-post a comment to that effect if we didn't want to change the blockchain structure for the new meta data about the flag), then I think it would solve so much confusion here. It would even still follow the "abuse prevention" intent a flag implies.
Self voting should be removed, but also what if vote value was related to how close two users are to eachother in reputation?
What if two large whales, that use the website every single day, don't have as much value towards one another and more power towards newer more unique users and posts, allowing things to balance out more.
That's a fantastic idea. I'm not sure how easily it could be implemented but some sort of weight to reduce the effect of nepotism makes sense.
It is impossible to have a game theory discussion with n00bs. I am getting exhausted repeating some points over and over and over again.
You can't remove the ability to upvote yourself, because you can't prevent people from creating and funding other accounts to vote from.
A lot of things can be gamed. That is not a reason to facilitate them. Sure people can make multiple accounts to upvote themselves but without significant SP it really doesn't matter very much.
The discussion was about whales self-upvoting their own posts. If a minnow creates multiple accounts to self upvote it won't have any noticeable effect unless they put significant SP into each one.
Due to the way powering down works it isn't really very feasible for a whale to split up their SP amongst lots of accounts unless they want to spend a long time doing it.
Again I will just waste my time if I try to communicate with n00bs about programming and game theory level logic.
The whale can create a new account and upvote that from his whale sized SP. That doesn't take a long time. He doesn't need to transfer the SP.
"Again I will just waste my time if I try to communicate with n00bs about programming and game theory level logic."
Yes you will be wasting your time. If what you say is possible then the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
It is also quite funny that you take the time to respond but can't be "bothered" to give an explanation. Not only is your tone highly insulting but I suspect you are incapable of actually explaining yourself.
I was following you but your attitude has shown me that was a mistake.
I see no such consensus. I see a very few vocal people saying that its against the rules to vote that way, even one thats gone so far as to make up a set of rules as to how others are allowed to vote completley out of the blue. but no actual written down rules that say so. Allowing someone to "vote" then setting rules as to how they are allowed to vote is base hypocrisy.
any of these vocal people have significant financial incentive for this position. And the main justification for this position is that some central authority decided to change the "downvote" button to a flag button.
If value is subjective, why allow only only the votes that agree with your subjective opinion?
Well maybe you should look around a little more then?
I do see it because I spend a lot of time on here and in the chat and I have come across very few people espousing your opinion except for the odd whale.
If a poll is done and shows otherwise then fair enough - I will admit to being wrong but until then I will choose to believe my own subjective experience over your subjective opinion.
Also it is no longer called downvoting it is called flagging now and it was changed for a reason i.e. to make it clear that it is not a downvote used to show your displeasure in a post.
If you have a problem with that take it up with @dantheman and the rest of the team. Despite what you say about voting having no rules it most definitely does and they are the ones that set them.
Encouraging flagging for posts that people think have earned "too much" just makes it too easy for envy to come into the situation. Do I need to repeat the crab story from the whitepaper?
its still called downvoting on the blockchain, which is what ill continue to call it. Changing the interface in an attempt to change peoples voting behavior (which is what was done) is dishonest. Its like fixing the ballot so people don't vote for someone you don't like.
Just the number of downvotes on some of the worst posts (which are also some of the highest paid) shows that the consensus you imagine is just that, a consensus you imagine. Let me guess, all these people downvoting don't count, because they're envious jealous crabs who are just looking to destroy the system.
You seem to think its envy and the crab in the bucket. I disagree. I think its a lot of people who don't want to see insipid ,low quality material get paid tens of thousands of dollars while 99 % of posts get nothing or near nothing. I can't say as I see that as an unreasonable position. An ad-hominem attack against the people taking it doesn't change that. I may have crabs, but i am not a crab. Just someone who doesnt want to see steem worth 75 cents by labor day.
I often vote via the CLI or API in which case I'm specifying my vote using a number between -100 and 100. There is no label or name attached to any of these values; the only meaning is the effect it has on the mathematical formulas that make up the protocol.
In other words, I agree with @sigmajin
it is only logical to remove upvote on one's post especially concerning rewards, or in this case considered as "kickback". only whales and the lesser gods will be able to benefit from this option.
"I believe it is up to the market to decide"
There is no market if posts can't be down voted, or 'shorted'... and users who down vote posts that the market decides are overvalued should be compensated for it.
I just feel better that @berniesanders is questioning the value of @dan's post AND I see even @dan has 6 flags on his own post. This shows me that I was not specifically being targetted and that anyone could be a potential target if certain people find their post is not of value. Dan's post also allows me to better understand what all is involved in the process. I upvoted this post because I found the content valuable and the corresponding conversations just as valuable. I even upvoted @berniesander's comment. :)
People flag sometimes because they are jealous a post is making a lot of money.
You were never specifically targeted, although I understand how a relative newcomer might not appreciate the entire context of Steemit voting and flagging and could be offended. This is something we should try to be more aware of in the future.
If anyone has a personal problem with someone, the chat room should allow them to hash it out. With this big a community, we are going to have different beliefs and each come from different backgrounds and upbringings. To some people $5 is a lot and to some they could light a cigar with that and barely notice.
But I do think that if you are going to flag/downvote you should give a reason why. I feel that people who downvote with no reason are hurting the platform just as much because they are not providing any context as to why they did what they did.
I respect @berniesanders for letting you know why he downvoted the post he did. As a newer user could he have given you a little slack? Absolutely, but he saw what was repetitive content as decided to put an end to that trend. I doubt you had any idea what was covered before, but it also made you learn quickly about making creative content and moving on.
That you two don't hold animosity towards one another is a great thing that many people aren't mature enough to do. If it were facebook and someone were to "dislike" your status update, you probably wouldn't go through all their updates and dislike them all (if that were a thing) yet that does happen here, because money is a big motivator for many.
We as a community are doing a pretty good job being considerate to others regardless of their opinions. I wouldn't have believed you if you would have told me there was a place without any real presence of trolls where people could self police and money would be rewarded based on content, I would have laughed. It just didn't seem possible. So I think it is on each of us to do our part and try to keep steemit on pace to get larger and more successful.
@dantheman and @berniesanders may not agree on the value this post contributes, but I like that they are willing to talk about it instead of getting into some sort of "whale war" where cliques form and people vote because they feel they should and not because they actually believe in what they are doing.
Hey Jeff, you are no fucking slouch. You show up on steemit and only a matter of days you give it the hypeshit treatment. I am glad you are here and actually delving into the intricacies. You are one of the top assets here and glad to see you take it with humility. BTW I am your friend Cory Barnes on FB.
Did you see my post? @dollarvigilante? Wanna buy my accounts?
No, it doesn't deserve to be flagged just you didn't like it or think it's making too much money.
I'm doing a happy dance. :)
My interpretation of the events last week were.. there was a 'scammer' who decided to come up with a post. It just so happened that was one of the posts you decided to share the wealth in the comments section @berniesanders.
Then @dantheman downvoted all your comments so the scammer wouldnt receive a payout.
In retaliation you downvoted @dollarvigilante as @dantheman was obviously a fan.
If my interpretation is right then you were both wrong, there are no 'evil whales'. Just misunderstandings. I'm probably wrong in my interpretation, I dont know the whole story. Please correct me if im wrong.
As for this post, It's one of the founders releasing some information. Maybe it is worth that much? I don't know, I've found alot of value in @dantheman s posts.
My downvote on that post had absolutely nothing to do with Dan or his voting. As I said in the comment that content has been posted a million times here on Steemit and IMO didn't deserve the payout it was set to receive, so I downvoted. Simple as that, nothing personal, just didn't think it was worth the reward or benefitting Steemit. @dollarvigilante is a great writer, just trying to hold him to some standards if he's going to receive such significant payouts.
Ok that's fair. Like I said I didn't know the whole story and was just speculating. I can see why you made your decision.
IMO, this really really has not been given enough attention. @berniesanders explained the downvote. To me, at least the explanation was pretty compelling.
The post that got downvotes was positively absurd. It was a guy who made all his money on steemit because of his well known name and because a group of whales decided to vote for him posting about how to write a successful post on steemit.
Now thats fine that hes well known. But you can't then go on to write a post about the "secrets to making a lot of money on steem" when your "secret" is that he youre famous. And to make matters worse, his "secret" was something that has been done to death as a post on steemit. Vauge, common sense posting guidelines that have been posted 100 times. ANd when they were posted before by authors on curation lists, they should have been downvoted all those times too.
ANd also, @berniesanders wasn't nearly strong enough to remove all payment himself. there were plenty of people who agreed that it was a shitty post.
i only have 4 postes in total .. just wondering what drove you to flag my testing post which has almost no payout
https://steemit.com/top-news/@bue/news-top
edit: I actually can't even take down my flag now anyway.
Maybe you should open your eyes and actually look and see WHO it was that provided the significant rewards to the post. It was not the many voters, it was Dan and one of his coworkers. So now, who is gaming the system? Thanks again for your clueless response.
Edit: Thanks for the vote, I'll downvote yours as well for making such an ignorant comment.
Edit: Well, that took you down to a 6 rating, maybe that's a little harsh. Too bad, some of your posts are actually decent.
I don't believe you should downvote / flag the post @berniesanders . I feel that flagging is for spamming and plagiarism. Not that you don't feel it is worth that much. I feel that people should either upvote or not vote and only flag if it is spam / plagiarism. The biggest problem with Steemit right now is that the Whales aren't actually voting and engaging on a large scale like us minnows who are pushing hard. If you look on CatchAWhale.com the entire first page of whales have voting power of usually 99% or 100%. I'm constantly engaging and voting and my voting power is usually between 60% and 80%. I'm not saying the curation reward should be increased but I have a feeling the whales are too busy or uninterested in spending the time engaging with the community like those who are new to the platform. This will cause the attrition level of good new content creators to be pretty extreme. I see it on YouTube all the time. People busting ass and then they quit because they can't be profitable. I'm not trying to sound like a Baby Back McBitch but if the whales don't vote and engage with the content creators then we are looking at a very long period of blogging for pocket change. It could cause Steemit to not reach escape velocity to get to Mars like I thought we were on all on board with.
@brianphobos You sir, have just hit the nail on the proverbial Bonce!
followed
@brianphobos Like I said before here...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/response-to-dantheman-notice-to-bot-spammers
There really are two classes of users, owners and larpers. But there is also a third class and that class are "mods" or moderators. We call them whales here, but let's call them what they are "mods".
As moderators, they have a duty of care to make sure that a post doesn't get too much money if it isn't representative of the wishes of the community as a whole. There is nothing wrong with a whale who downvotes a post for too much money when there is only so much to go around. As long as they state the reason. "I think this post is seriously overvalued".
This power really should be reserved for instances where a post is more than $1,000 though.
I would put money that all of these 'mods' are from the same demographic, I would also assume that none of us (users) have officially given these people our blessings to make decisions on our behalf. I understand that the site is centralised, but if there are 'mods' which I agree with you there are, then where can I vote to say that I don't want any posts downvoted because a guy who I've never met, who's social/political/family/financial views I may not agree with feels that it has earned too much money. Who is he/she to make decisions on my/our behalf? An early adopter? SO WHAT! What we have here my friend is awful governance. A lot of users here are from the blockchain/Bitcoin community/mindset, Where freedom of choice is abundant, and external control is limited. I can pretty much guarantee that when a platform arrives that stops 'other' people being able to cancel the money you've earned arrives, then we'll all jump ship, and Steem will sink just as quickly as it's risen.
@cryptosi I'm not defending it bu I am explaining it. The system here is one where if you don't like things, you vote with your wallet.
Same advice I gave to @thedollarvigilante is the same advice i give you now.
Fix it by buying steem. It's not that these guys are early adopters, it's that they are investors and using their say to drive things the way they want it to go.
If you had more steem than them, you could drive it the way you wanted to.
Also we're all from the same demographic :) Steem has an appeal for people who shun social media in general but can be bribed to join a social media network. That's not a huge amount of diversity. But there will always be a diversity of opinion.
So instead of "Free Market" voting, instead it is a Governing Board that determines and can control the value of all the posts? Not exactly how it was marketed.
@whatsup It's a matter of evolutionary phases. At this early stage, it was felt that the need for upfront funding in exchange for an immediate amount of control and prestige was a pretty good deal. Right now many of the whales are powering down. As they do this it drives the price of steem down and allows you to gain more power simply by purchasing steem from the open market, or buying and holding SBD until the price drops low enough that you can convert to steem and power it up.
It's an inherently unfair & unbalanced system (as recently described by dan), that will eventually evolve towards a system which is more fair and more balanced.
I disagree. Even though I upvoted for this post, downvoting should be a means of expressing disapproval not only to the post content but also to the post earnings.
I have to disagree with you @minitek Personally on YouTube i will very rarely give someone a thumbs down. If someone tricked me with click bait or something like that I will downvote them. If someone drop kicks a new born infant in their video I will flag them. I wouldn't just thumbs down them because I don't like their view point. I might leave a comment saying I disagree with them. I just think the thumbs down or downvote breeds trolls and haters. Then everyone is in a war down voting each other to get back at each other.
Ok, now I'm flagged by the trucker who is selling his accounts. His brakes went out and he is going down a mountain! There is no stopping him!
@brianphobos ask for it to be removed in chat. It is a False Flag!
but why should the way someone else uses their vote be controlled by your "feelings".
Please downvote this. There are far better posts that won't get a fraction of the $2700 it's currently set to receive. Plus, he's been churning out these voting posts non-stop and they're kind of pointless.
I had the same impression. I began reading dan's post only to be let down at the very end that he didn't propose a code change or chainfork to detail with the problem and then ask people what they thought of the proposed change.
I am especially happy that we are having discussions like this though. I voted you up, because I instantly got that "pointless" feeling... if we're not going to plan a fix.
BTW.. I really did think upvoting my own content was something I earned the right to do, and should do..
Apparently I'm learning that its wrong, eventhough the system allows it, and rather than fix it, we're going to have a never ending saga of posts to continue... That does seem pointless.
Yeah, it deserves to be downvoted, if you agree with the idea that people should be worried about counteracting other people's votes (or bots), instead of just enjoying curating content or coming up with ideas on how to make bots that are good for everyone.
Then you have your comment ... is it really worth over $11? I dunno. Maybe relative to the OP. But in general, probably not.
I think limitations such as voting power and having to worry about what other people are voting up kinda ruins things.
What if votes and pending payouts were hidden, encrypted, and only revealed at payout time? The game would change completely. Remove the voting power penalties, or at least reduce the penalty a lot, to allow people to vote freely, up or flag down.
Bots would gain nothing by autovoting except in cases where they autovote based on past earnings (i.e. have an author's list). Those author lists, across bots, will eventually be virtually identical and make the pie seem kinda small, until each bot is making so little it's eventually not worth it, so the number of bots doing certain kinds of autovoting will stabilize and their will be far less possible exploits.
What are the negatives of hiding the votes and pending payout amounts until after payout time?
There is a large growing group of us that believe payout time is the only time a post should reveal its value, even if it is only on the GUI. But encrypting it on the chain could work too!
If all posts are seen as equal in value (no value shown), they are more likely to receive proper curation.
While a post is going viral with popularity, I don't want to see if it is at $1.21 or $1,532 because I know a lot of less knowledgable curators are going to chase the $1,532 post, and ignore the $1.21 one simply by glancing at the current $ value as a sole indicator.
Allow the user to show the value or not. Should be an option.
So, here is the way I look at it. Dan is a celebrity in this community. Whether or not anyone believes his thoughts are better or worse than others, in this particular attention economy, the value derived from his post is tied to the attention he commands. And in this instance, it commanded over $2,500. Not worth a downvote, IMO, but maybe a ¯\ (ツ)/¯.
While it's hard for me to put an exact dollar value on this, I absolutely see the value it's adding with it's content and discussion (as well as with the previous posts on this topic.)
It's an important topic for the community to be chiming in on (even though it's hard to tell those who merely upvoted without reading, those who read it, and those contributing to the conversation.) Personally I don't have a problem seeing something like this have a high dollar value attached, so long as the information and discussion are adding value to the community (which I believe it does.)
On other sites, I never would have provided feedback, because I just didn't care. It was their platform with things being decided behind closed doors. I feel differently on steemit, feeling a part of a community, and even if my feedback isn't the final answer, I'm happy seeing the motivation of myself and others to contribute.
Money is nice, but it alone doesn't solve the underlying community issues and concerns, which I feel this post highlights very well.
Regardless, this is a great question to have posed @berniesanders!
@sykochica Nice to see you hear giving a level headed contribution to the discussion. So many replies it's hard to follow the conversation.
I agree. This post has value. It is worth talking about and therefore I voted it up. I haven't downvoted a lot because I havent seen a lot that deserves a down vote. I am sure I wll come across something. I have only been here a few days. I am a newbie on here and I don't know who @dantheman is. This post looked interesting and I am trying to gain insight. If I didn't think it provided any, I would have moved on.
@berniesanders
I commented but never upvoted this post, but I didn't downvote it either and here's why :
I have a feeling a lot of people upvoted simply because the post was made by @dantheman and has absolutely nothing to do with its content. Upvoting a post with high curation rewards because you'll get paid is an unfortunate side effect of the current reward system in place. Not to mention high value posts get thrown almost immediately to the top of the trending page and draw that much more of a crowd who also, upvote it as well.
Because the trending page is sorted in descending order of the total vote count, most people want a piece of the curation rewards which in turn makes a high value post that much more of a target for curation bounty hunters. Those voters then up the vote count and compound the problem even further by pushing the post that much higher up the trending page. This type of mob mentality when voting draws even more attention to a post regardless of content because people see all the votes, the SBD value, and they want in on the action like everyone else who voted before them.
This problem is compounded even further when you take into account the fear some people have of downvoting users with massive amounts of SP. An upvote means you'll not only get paid for curation but you'll also skirt the risk of upsetting a high SP member of Steemit. The downside however, is both money and fear are powerful motivators. I'm assuming that these motivations tend to be a major factor in determining how and when people vote, regardless of the content in question.
The system is very much a double edged sword that causes people (whether they're conscious of it or not) to run a risk/reward assessment before acting on a post, regardless of its content. Especially when the stakes are very high, and this post right here is a perfect example.
To answer your whole question, yes I did read the whole post and opted not to vote on it. I simply left a comment and moved on. I wanted to see what @dantheman had to say, but have little to no interest in being part of the curation reward hunters. That type of voting is simply bad for the future of the platform....
PS : The inability to remove one's own upvotes from one's own posts is currently being worked on and hopefully will be pushed with the next Hardfork. I simply have not had the time to get to it yet and the deadline is fast approaching... I only mentioned this because I keep accidentally upvoting my own posts and can't undo it because of a known bug that's being patched very soon.
I have been making this point for a few days now. Users are trying to preemptively vote on content that they think will trend, based on previous trending topics and authors, regardless of the content and quality. And who drives this kind of voting on these posts? The whales.
They're incentivizing herd mentality and reward seeking - not finding and rewarding actual valuable content and contributors. (And I fully understand subjective value, but we're talking about reward-based behavior without any associated risk. Value is pretty much a non-factor here - only finding the trendy categories and authors that the whales are likely to upvote is what seems to influence voting right now.)
And there doesn't appear to be a large volume of people wanting to change this...because they're still hoping for their own big pay days to begin - or to continue.
Totally agree!
Honestly, when I joined, I didn't read the white paper or even any color paper..and I made some mistakes and didn't fully get it...was never a Reddit user so the idea of voting or flagging was fairly new to me.
So I don't want to argue how much a post deserves, this list for me, was extremely helpful and valuable. Well put together, easy for me to quickly grasp. So yeah, the whole "is that really worth that much money" thing people get into I find distasteful. Either you come to create good shit and begin sharing what you do with others and have fun doing it, or, well, what other reason would there be that's truly a sustainable reason for anyone to stick around?
I think people who do their big "I'm leaving" post, are mostly fed up with their own conceptions they created surrounding this site. Steemit is a tool, the same way that any social media site is a tool. IMO it's a tool where I can share my art and expand my audience, and where I can bring my current audience to also help build the social movement here. It's about having fun doing stuff you love and sharing that with others, building a following, and being rewarded for it in the process.
So anyway, I digress.
To me, the original post was really an aha moment and I'm grateful, well done 🤘
Just my opinions
This is really why we need some "stickied" posts, to have guides there for newcomers, so there is no need for new ones on a daily basis.
But at the same time we should maybe leave the "steemit update posts or discussions" out from Steemit and maybe talk about them on another forum. Now it feels like every small update or discussion about Steemit gets upvoted into oblivion just cause its from "whales", people voting just with profit in mind and following the herd.
Some of this can be taken to a Forum. Not just plug'n it I actually mean some of the discussion doesn't need to get paid. It needs to be discussed!
That's a good idea and a lot of newbies have been asking for some form of sticky posts. I'm sure the team will do this in some way.
I agree. I definitely think some sort of stickied posts would be good. I also think thatt here should be a way to sticky certain posts in categories (may not all) that the dialog can continue on.
Exactly. SteemIt discussions should be handled in chats, e-mails, or even on the Facebook page. I think this would at least free up more rewards for better original content and the authors who create it. So much time on "curating" is spent on these posts and too many rewards are - in my opinion - wasted on it. There are better posts to reward and put this much effort into. And yes, I realize the irony here.
I commented on it. And chose not to vote on it because I assumed it would take a larger-than-deserved piece of today's pie even without my penny. But since we don't have a downvote, and nothing in the post is flag-worthy, I feel like our hands are tied. They aren't -- you and some of us minnows could flag the post -- but that will just continue the argument without getting us closer to consensus.
Is any single post ever worth over $2500?
That's why we need a downvote option that is separate from flagging. With the current system, more visibility necessarily means higher payout. We should opt for a system in which more visibility implies a fairer payout.
Edit: Woah, I hadn't realized how controversial your post was until after I replied. It's like people are numb to paying thousands of dollars for a single post cause they don't see coming out of their pockets.
@berniesanders, since whales of a certain SP can now scale the size of their own reward to give somebody, the reason you use - that a post might be making too much money - seems completely irrational.
Here's Why.
Let's say as this post starts creeping up to the payout, it's $ value has reached over 10K. Let's pretend both you and another whale have the power to bring this reward all the way back to $0.00
(Not that you would)
Well the 2 of you decide individually that the post isn't worth 10K but you have different ideas of what it should be worth. This other whale, let's call him berniesanders2, decides that the post is closer in value to 5K. But you disagree. You believe it's worth only $500.
With your new scaling powers you can decide exactly how much reward the post gets. Except another whale could have the exact same overvaluation of his own opinion.
Whichever one of you votes second, is overruling the decision of the first
even though the decision didn't belong to either of you in the first place!
You only get to decide how much you contribute. Everybody collectively gets to decide how much it's worth!
We all hold a stake @berniesanders. Our tiny minnow votes count too.
I don't think it matters what I think. It wasn't my vote to give. They can give however, much they believe they should. My opinion, but when someone starts subjectively deciding who is worthy and who is not, how long until their gaze falls upon me or someone else.
EDIT: I also cannot tell you how to vote your vote @berniesanders. Sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I do not, but ultimately it is your vote and not mine and I do not advocate forcing you to adhere to my desires.
Generally if I read something to the end, I upvote it. If I dont get to the end then I don't upvote it. I thought this was an interesting post. But it seems to me that the main problem with the Steemit platform is the 'Whales', That's the unfair power, that's what needs to be removed, however that will never be even mentioned because guess what, the people who created the platform DO NOT have the personal integrity to remove themselves from the whale class, because they are making too much money from it. Satoshi never moves Bitcoin. If you want a platform based on merit and not money, then you need to lead the way. Else you wont even be of the correct mindset to see the glaringly obvious problem with your own platform. Steem is a great experiment and I'm loving watching it develop. My suggestion, there needs to be a crowd decided level of power that all accounts trend to over time. And without stunningly successful posts, NO account should bypass this level, purely by virtue of having steem power, so when a post is in the top 5% of posts then you should get a boost to your power that lasts a few days and powers down, similar to how Voting power goes up. Steems successor will implement this, just as Bitcoin's successor will implement governance.
With all due respect to you both, I feel like stepping in between two whales is a great way to get crushed.
My best post on here only made $20, the last thing I need is to be turned into a -6 rep zombie.
I've said it before here that if you want to make steemit more equitable, cap the whales rewards and distribute it downwards.
At a certain point, a whale has to realise that he really doesn't need a lot more cash. At current market prices, I don't think any of you guys have to work again.
However, it seems a bit silly for me to tell someone else what to do with their website and their concept.
My only appeal is to the concept that a more equitable reward system is an investment in the longevity of STEEM and steemit.com, not killing the Golden Goose so to speak.
The problem with any of these discussions however, is that it is extremely hard to remain unbiased when your own livelihood is at stake.
I am loath to recommend or do anything that would lower my payouts, to whales, especially devs to spend time and money changing the system to lower their own payouts is a little unrealistic.
However, given that this is an open-source project, is it not unreasonable to expect that a more democratic clone/alternative is being developed as we speak?
That's my input. Please don't kill the messenger.
Why should this be downvoted? Because @dantheman has the ability to drastically increase the value with his own upvote? If thats the only reason it should be flagged then the issue moves beyond the 'value' of this post and simply becomes 'should whales be able to profit hansomly from upvoting whatever random stuff they feel like posting?' A good question, but has a lot more to do with steemit's architecture rather than this post specifically.
Exactly see my reply to @berniesanders if you can find it! I suggest disabling self upvoting completely. That is a better way of dealing with that problem.
This post provides a lot of interesting thoughs but asks more questions than it gives answers.
Imho, $2,500 is way overrated.
But people will still vote, because of one aspect that @dantheman did mention: the gambling on posts.
If you see a post from a "usual suspect", in the 30min-1hour limit, it is a good "investment" to vote.
Not because the content is good, but because you are sure that others will vote.
For the record, I upvoted this post without reading it this morning.
Now i read it... and I read your comment too. That's the silver lining.
Again imho, "Upvote gambling" is part of the game, but it is for me the real cause of behaviors mentionned above.
@sebastien (just back from France !)
No, it does not worth over $2500 in my (unreputed) opinion. But then again, is there really any post on Steemit that is worth over $2500?
Even if I wanted to, I could not reduce the worth of this article.
Maybe there could be a different "home" feed, instead of trending, with some sort of google page rank algorithm, as @dantheman had previously touched on. This home feed would not display a vote option or the pending money-earned, until you click the link to view the post. This way, important and popular posts could be front and center, without needing to be the top earning post, and without affecting the site's current voting economics. Meanwhile, the trending (monetarily) feed could still be in the pull down, as is.
Just a thought to combat over-voting instead of leaving influential curators in the position to consider planting a flag to restore order, in a sense.
Well I think Dan's opinion is both important an interesting and upvotes will get it to the front page where it easily visible for the entire community. Is it wort 2.5k? I think not. In fact I don't think it's more valuable than a lot of 0.02$ posts that I've seen. However this is currently how the system works. Should you downvote to cancel the reward? That's up to you. Personally I believe in upvoting the right content, and not in downvoting to take someones money away. If Dan himself thinks the post is not work 2.5k he could do something himself about it I guess.
There are 400 votes in... is it worth 2.6K$ NO...It does need to be discussed. Also I have to question why ,said person, (please i'm only suggesting, asking a question) knowing this post would trend regardless of his SP? why not give the post enough to trend and let it bee? I can't see the slider of SP so don't know if it is active on steemit yet...
One suggestion to the curation of a "bad" whale after an downvote. Why not after an "also large" fish/fishes down vote say in effect of 50% of post value(pre flagging). Overturn the curation reward proportionally to the lesser voters(minnow) that simply wanted voiced there opinion on said post... or all together, only pay out to users/ account below some SP level? This should ensure we do not see post's with excessive SBD or the biggest fish simply does not get any curation reward.(The slider of SP would be handy). We could also say that this "function" is only in effect on posts above a certain value of Steem( not per say SBD).... What do you think?
What is interesting, is I think this is a large portion of what this thread/conversation is about. Most people are probably upvoting simply because they expect it to pay out a lot, so they are jumping on the bandwagon to get high curation rewards. @dantheman himself seems to indicate that downvoting to reduce the payout is an acceptable thing in the current paradigm.
The real challenge is deciding what value each contribution has to the community. It is obviously subjective, and while some people might argue that this post does deserve $2,500, a lot of other people would disagree. As someone with significantly higher SP, the system is giving your subjective value judgement a lot more weight than say my subjective value judgement.
I think you should decide if you think the payout of a particular post is high/low in your opinion, and upvote/downvote based on that.
if there was a downvote button I would not use the flag button.
I don't consider this post spam.
I don't like it.
About the value no comment
Yep.
Flag = prevent abuse
Downvote = communicate your dislike and adjust the payout accordingly
Ever since the flag was introduced in the interface and the reputation was directly impacted by a flag, the concept of a "downvote" no longer has meaning in the Steemit.com interface. I get how the blockchain has different views on this, but we don't yet have an alternative to steemit.com that supports the blockchain view of "downvotes."
Yess @berniesanders
Before the great fight of the whales start, please rescue us Bernie. Wonder what I refer to? Have a look at my latest story. Are you evil or good? We need to know!
The value is also in the platform it's written on
I will add my personal opinion as I didn't really answer your question @berniesanders. Personally I found this post very informative, and well written. I certainly find it more valuable than posts that often make considerably more than this. So if I compare it to other things on the trending page then I'd say yes it is worth it.
@berniesanders yes, it's worth over $2500.
On the other hand, this post doesn't even deserve neither $2000 nor the attention of some whales.
But thanks to Jeff, now everybody can just hire and pay an assassin to kill people (no matter their work background and the big picture to get rid of government). Which bring me to the next question: @dollarvigilante I am going to write an essay about "celeb assassination". Interesting enough?
What will be next , a Steem market for political assassination?
And Bernie, instead of getting on feud with Dan, there are bigger issues to focus on.
Do I think the post is worth over $2500, no I do not think it is worth that much. Do I agree with the overall message that downvotes are an essential part of keeping fairness at play on steemit, yes I do. I think downvotes should only be applied to posts which are being spammed (either posted more than once, or tagged entirely inappropriately), or are plagiarized content.
I think your question stems from a separate issue which is upvoting based on whale chasing. I do not know if this is an issue which is solvable by downvotes, though I can see the logic behind it.
I have mixed feelings. It's a great article, and presents a way of looking at downvoting that I hadn't considered before, to keep profits on any one piece of work from becoming unreasonable. But $2500 does seem excessive.
I think the main issue is that downvoting has a negative connotation in most people's minds. When I see a flagged piece, my gut reaction is "hmm, is this person trouble? What did they do to break the rules?". Which is totally unfair to the author if the flag was merely used by a whale to keep profits in check. And that particular use case might not be obvious unless the whale leaves a clear comment explaining the reasoning behind it.
I think the easiest solution would be to make it impossible to upvote your own posts and comments. Let other people be the judge of how much value your work brings to the community!
I have no idea how much it's worth, but it's better than most other crap on steem.
Let's all be entirely honest here. Has any post so far on this platform deserved thousands of dollars because hundreds of people have voted for it? That's the real problem here. We're talking about relatively tiny numbers of people reading and "voting" on content.
There are about 60,000 users today - with quite a large chunk of these being inactive and bots. we've seen payouts on posts over $15,000 on many occasions. Does anyone else not find this absurd, especially considering what the content commonly is?
Someone introducing themselves with a personal bio?
Somebody saying something as pointless as "Wow! Steemit is cool! What do you guys think we can do with this platform?"
Another person giving some sort of tech update or suggestions for future SteemIt updates?
What real value is added by these posts? Are they really deserving of thousands of dollars per post? I understand that authors can bring value and can add valuable content, but posting about SteemIt on SteemIt to a small SteemIt audience who then votes based on rewards that they get from SteemIt seems to be something along the lines of jerking stuff in a circle, doesn't it?
I watched a post the other day that simply had some photos of coffee and listed different brewing methods. No real explanations or tips on the different types. Not much writing at all. They seemed to just be generic free-use photos. But, people like coffee, so upvoted it was. It ended up with somewhere around $2000, I believe. For unoriginal photos and unoriginal, uninformative content. What value does that bring to SteemIt? And guess who voted on that one, @berniesanders?
It's not that certain posts or authors are getting absurd payouts - it's that the payouts in general can be so absurdly high, especially with so few users on the platform and no way to control it, other than a whale flagging.
Whales have entirely too much power on both sides and you guys continually upvote your own posts and comments and then upvote each other - often on strictly Steem-related content, like this post by @dantheman. Meanwhile, really great writers and quality content contributors have to resort to vote-begging and bribes just to make a few pennies and get any attention whatsoever. As it stands, this platform is everything that it shouldn't be. But where are the whales who actually want to correct it, instead of simply vote themselves and their own buddies large sums of money while complaining about the others who do so?
Or am I just way off base here and not actually seeing what I continually see?
Damn, who's getting bribed for votes and how do I get in on this action? I kid, I kid...
P.S. - I like coffee.
Coffee is a serious matter. No kidding allowed :D
On a less flippant note, heavy corruption is a type of "economy", too. It is very apparent in certain countries as I have seen while working on projects there.
If bribery works, I would expect it to become a standard aspect of the Steem(it) economy.
The post paid out a lot of money, no doubt, but I wouldn't think of flagging it. I highly value getting regular updates from @dantheman.
Aren't you doing virtually the same thing by upvoting your comment to the tune of $200? Have you forgotten that you are a whale?
Pretty slick sitting on it for a while hoping nobody noticed you upvoted yourself for a nice profit after calling out @dantheman. Just an observation. No judgement here. Apparently you both agree that it's okay to upvote yourself if its allowed. I am fine with that. I am also very interested in the ideas that Dan is presenting here. We do need to be careful however to not destroy all the incentives for being on the platform in the first place.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@venuspcs/6-steemit-accounts-for-sale-i-quit-steemit
That is what I think! @berniesanders
If you are going to leave, just do it. Don't throw a hissy fit.
Why did you flag @brianphobos ?
Probably same reason he flagged me, for being anti-flag.
That's not what flags are for lol. You can go in the chat and ask for it to be removed. Just realised it's a FALSE FLAG - the new name for inappropriate flagging. The governments would love that.
not worried about. It didn't ding me hard I don't think though my reputation was improving. Yes, I know that is not what the flags are for. He just had a melt down and the flags started A flyin'
EDIT: Good case example of why I don't like the flags as they are at the moment.