@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.