I am not a fan of the flag.
The item people sometimes call a down vote.
It is up in the upper right corner of the post and is barely visible. It is shaped like a flag and it is nowhere near the voting area.
I feel people are bringing mental baggage from other sites and feel they should down vote posts as well as up vote them.
I actually have thought of what I hope are compelling reasons you should NOT.
Scenario/Example: The Busker
Let's say I am a busker and I'm standing on a street corner playing my guitar and singing
People walk by and they hear me, reach into their pockets or wallets and throw some money into my guitar case
That is pretty normal.
This is the scenario we have with an up vote. If you don't like it you just don't vote.
Flagging a post actually takes money away from the person. That is like you walking by me busking and deciding that a chord I just played was flat, so you reach into my case an pull out $10 and walk off and light it on fire. The money is now tainted, no one gets it, it is not in the economy anymore.
If you happen to be a particularly powerful in the neighborhood where I busk you might walk by and have the power to set my entire guitar case on fire.
The hours I spent putting something together snuffed out by you on a whim. The other people that liked it, their desires for how their money was spent. That does not matter. All that matters is you had your way. Perhaps they played blues, or Reggae and you only like Classical guitarists. Perhaps they once said something you didn't like so now out of spite you always destroy them whenever you see them.
Can you not see how this is aggressive?
As to solutions how to fix this:
- Remove the flag - it is kind of needed to deal with spam, plagiarism, and offensive posts that do not let people opt in.
- Only allow certain people to use the flag (aka moderators) I believe this has a great potential for abuse and if many of you have spent time on reddit you will know what I mean.
- Persuasion This is the approach I have been trying to use. I am trying to make people realize that someone doing well here does not take money out of your pocket. It potentially does the opposite because now there is another with more power that might vote on your posts. It needs to even out and is in beta. I try to educate them to the fact the FLAG is obviously not designed to be used for DOWN VOTE. Otherwise, it would look like a down arrow and be near the voting.
This place has a lot of possibility and is really quite excellent. If you feel yourself reaching for the flag to click on it, ask yourself some simple things.
- Is it plagiarizing someone else and have you verified that is the case?
- Is it spam that keeps getting posted over and over, and this means the same thing? It does not mean the same story topic. People should be able to write about how the sky is blue as much as they want as long as they do it different each time.
- Is it graphic or offensive and forcing you to see it without giving a warning and allowing you to opt in>?
If it is not one of those things then you shouldn't be clicking it. All that remains is you being aggressive and forcing your will on others and stealing other people's money they wanted to give to the busker.
I'm still trying...
I know others are as well...
EDIT: @hoopatang had a good idea
What if we added a down vote button that shows the negative opinions, but does not remove the money people wished to contribute? Then the FLAG could remain as a way to report abuse. Down voting would not be stealing other people's money they chose to supply with a vote.
Good post, @hoopatang did have a good idea indeed I think. Here is an example of flagging causing major problems:
"malekalmsaddi troll abuse and flawed steemit system"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@david-michael/malekalmsaddi-troll-abuse-and-flawed-steemit-system
As I think you can see in this conversation, persuasion is an utterly futile option in the real world.
Persuasion is not a futile option when it is a meeting of those with equal potential.
In a closed artificial system where some people have power beyond that attainable by anyone else then it certainly can become futile.
You're right, that was a wild generalization, I will explain myself more fully. What I'm really trying to say is that there are people out there who see the world very differently and in fact have a completely different set of ethical standards. We can persuade some by simply making arguments about the ethical rights and wrongs, but when we come up against people with such a completely different worldview (that is missing the golden rule), then it will most probably be futile to argue with words. Arguing with Steem Power on the other hand, that could be a different matter - if we can manage to persuade some whales to take an interest in the situation.
Having looked at quite a few posts like yours, including some recent ones, and noticed that the same conversation was going on 2 years ago, then I suppose it may not be realistic to try to get the system changed (although I see it still says beta in the title)? I am under the impression that the creators of the system expected that the community would eventually find ways to moderate bad behaviour, but I immediately came across flagging wars going on in the posts I was interested in. The situation must be improved or the platform will get a bad reputation externally IMHO.
I don't see the platform's reputation changing much UNTIL something comes out to replace it such as perhaps an EOS backed platform. I am keeping my eyes open.
I'm not so sure on the reputation point. It's all very well for people who just want to come here to share fun holiday pictures and so on, or discuss technical things, but if you want to engage in serious debate (as I do) it's a bit of a different situation. Many of the refugees from FB and Twit come here hoping for a place where they can freely speak their mind.
I've seen quite a few instances where people try the platform, hit these kinds of problems and then stop posting. hoopatang and david michael (who's post I shared above) are just two instances of this. They are going to go elsewhere and talk about it, I feel pretty sure of that.
The last post that hoopatang commented on was this one (2 years ago):
When Concerning Steemit, I've Come To Realize ... I'm Too Old For This
Quote:
I suppose at least your posts will still remain on the blockchain even if they are flagged, but you may not be able to earn any income from writing about anything controversial and your posts may never reach the trending page, unless you can find some sponsors rich in Steem Power. It's still interesting me though, I will stick with it for a time at least and see how I get on.
This has been the case since steemit began. The thing is there still is nowhere like steemit. Until there is they can go somewhere else, but it won't be the same. Myself and others have said the same things for years and we've even seen people leave that wish they would have stuck it out. I do think once there is a decent competitor that people will likely gravitate towards it, but at this point that hasn't really been the case.
Hey wait! The money doesn't get lit on fire! It just goes to other posters. The same amount of money is given out every day, no matter what. If it doesn't go to @dollarvigilante because @berniesanders didn't want him to have any more caviar, then it goes to other people instead.
Flagging people doesn't burn the money, it simply redistributes it.
EDIT: I ramble... so I may reach a point at the end. :)
Yes it does. It is not distributed that way. Your vote did not take money from anyone. So when someone takes it away by cancelling it with a flag the money from your vote goes nowhere. It never was. The money you are talking about happens naturally without any actions. As far as I know when people vote they are not sucking out of the pool that is given to other people. If they don't vote they get the amount that comes to all holders of steem power, but as far as I know that has nothing to do with voting. I'd have to read the white paper a third time to make sure. :) I don't think it redistributes it. Though if you are correct that'd be an important distinction to know. As then they wouldn't be stealing the money that people gave to the busker and burning it, they'd be stealing the money and giving it to other people. It is still wrong, but it is still in the economy if that is true.
EDIT 2: and to clarify "why it is still wrong". It is my money, my vote. I don't really care where someone else thinks I should spend my money. Is it mine, or is it not?
I am correct. :) Here's @theoretical on the subject, in particular see his second bullet point: https://steemit.com/steemit/@theoretical/how-much-steem-power-makes-an-upvote-worth-usd1-00
When you vote for a post, you're redistributing rewards from other people to the one that you're voting for (you dirty commie!).
EDIT:(forgot to say thank you for the explanation)
We hit the nesting limit. When I vote it says I gave them $0.01 (usually). I don't care how it got there I am giving them that. It may change if the value of steem changes, but that was my vote.
I'd be fine for a mechanism that impacted position on the trending page without actually taking what I choose to give someone away. It says $0.01 so that must be already factored into the 10% some way.
Taking what I choose to award someone else amounts to theft. The person taking it may not feel that way, but isn't that often the case?
Those taking often justify their actions such that they convince themselves (and try to others) that they did no wrong. This appeal to authority is extremely common.
This is in BETA and I think this sets a very BAD image for steemit. The anti-censorship thing is a great selling point. Flagging posts that you disagree with which steals money, and dings reputations is not really anti-censorship. Especially since steem power can make some people able to massively slam others.
Sure some people doing it may have so much power that they feel they are untouchable. That doesn't make it right, and that may not always be the case.
I am a huge ADVOCATE for steem and steemit. I love this place. That is why I am suddenly so passionately angry about this.
You're welcome. Careful with that "I don't care how the $0.01 got there, I put it there" thing - when you up-vote you are literally taking rewards from everybody and giving it to the article you're voting for. Up-voting is precisely the inverse of down-voting. When you up-vote, you're saying "hey author, you deserve this money more than all those other authors, so I'll give some of their rewards to you!" Rewards are zero-sum, you're always taking as much as you're giving regardless of whether you're voting up or down.
I'm not sure why it matters so much to me that you see it the way I see it; I'm not actually trying to argue that down voting is fine. I personally never downvote unless there's a great reason to, so it's not about that. Anyway, carry on - I won't interfere with your crusade against down voting. :)
Hehe... So IF NO ONE voted on anything... we'd all be rewarded the value that is going to votes distributed evenly to people according to their steem power?
So you are saying that distribution of steem power that supposedly is sent out is diluted by votes. The votes redirect the potential steem power that everyone would get?
EXAMPLE: Find someone with say 20,000 or more steem power. Look at their wallet. Hit F5 or whatever you do to refresh your browser. You'll see their steem power increase between every refresh.
Are you saying that VOTING takes from that power that is being given and instead of giving it to people based upon their steem power it redirects to your vote?
I don't actually know what would happen if there were literally no votes for anything. But if that's the case, I'm guessing we have bigger things to worry about. :)
No, not quite. Here's how it works: Every 3 seconds, they print out a bunch of new Steem. 90% of that goes as SP to holders of SP as "interest" or "holding rewards" or what have you.
10% of the new SP goes to author and curation rewards. 10%. Not more, not less. This number does not depend on voting! All voting does is decides who gets the 10%.
If you vote for an article, you're saying "hey guys, this is a neat article. Let's take some of the rewards that are currently allocated to everybody else and give it to this article instead."
If you flag/downvote an article, you're saying "hey guys, let's take some of the rewards that are currently allocated to this article and give them to everybody else instead."
Still nesting limit... I have another blog going related to this because some other posts I was seeing were disturbing me.
One of the people that responded to it wrote:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@onceuponatime/flagging-etiquette-and-practice
My other blog is:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dwinblood/should-i-up-vote-this-guy-ranting-no-i-might-face-retaliation
It seems there was discussion on how the FLAG should be used before most of us were here, and the consensus appears to be pretty much what I thought it should be. Yet that is not easy to communicate just like knowing what someone wrote before you is hard to know so when you get flagged for it it is getting flagged for not knowing.
This isn't just about money.
How about people who want to downvote just pretend they downvoted. It has the same result with far less code. ;)
Good idea
I liked your comment maybe you'd like one of my posts... [https://steemit.com/@joelinux]
LOL - there is that. It doesn't seem to work though. So we need to give them something shiny to click.
Hopefully a community without spite can be created. It has to start somewhere, and here is as good a place as any. Good points
This is something that I mentioned on a reply early this morning: that as an internet forum user, I've been trained to see the flag as a way to report abuse.
But here, people are just using it to signal their dislike with a post or author, and it ends up negating what others have done.
If the devs could add a "downvote" feature, much like YouTube's dislike button, that would allow people to voice their dislike/discontent with the post or the author without erasing what others have done to reward that author.
Then the flag could be properly used to report abuse such as plagiarism, spam, etc. (which should rightfully have their rewards taken away).
That is a good idea. Have negative votes but don't take away money. Reserve flag for taking away money due to some form of abuse.
edited my post... added your suggestion, gave you props. :) Thanks... it is a good idea. I'm a small fry though so my post may not be seen. :)
I think it's being misused in some cases, but I think it's a good feature overall. It's worthwhile to have a way to hide spam and untagged NSFW content from the casual users.
I agree it has uses. Yet I think it is being abused. I think it is very needed to hide spam, NSFW not tagged NSFW, and plagiarism....
but it is being used aggressively for other purposes. This is still in beta. We need to find some possible solutions if we can come up with them.
A down vote is simply just a down vote, it is not an attack on you, it is not stealing from you. It is just an opinion and opinions matter here. I personally see no issue with the Flag. I will use it where I want and I do not think I abuse it. I tend to keep it for the really offensive stuff, or stuff that is just total BS, lies, or clearly trolling for responses. If it is CRAP, it gets the flag. Please don't over think that action. It's just a vote.
I might add that I MUTE people a great deal and far more easily than flagging. So let me ask you... Would you rather be muted or flagged? At least you have a chance to reach my feed again if you are flagged. Isn't that the whole idea behind a flag? A warning before muting.
This would be true IF it didn't ding your personal reputation, and it did not take the money from you other people have provided. One flag from a whale (high steem power) can send your reputation plummeting, and it could take all of the money that 100 other people thought you should have. That makes it an attack. When you have new people coming in and getting excited and they don't do anything wrong and are doing great and suddenly they are NOT doing great for no reason other than opinion, that is going to be a problem.
This has not happened to me. I've been watching it happen to others. Since it is in beta it is something we should dialog about and improve if possible. I've seen quite a lot of flagged posts that have nothing wrong with them. Also apparently this was discussed months ago before most of us were here and they actually intended that FLAG as a report this post type action. Thus, why it is a FLAG icon and not a down vote ARROW, and why it is nowhere near the rest of voting.
What do you think about my question involving the muting action and using flagging as a predecessor to muting? Wouldn't you want to see a few flags by someone before you were permanently banned from their feeds by means of muting? Isn't muting the real way to get penalized here and furthermore, if we are really discussing this... Should the number of Mutes count towards your reputation?
I have not seen any official guidance about how to use the flag so I figured any reason you deem acceptable is reason enough to use the flag. I have searched for it only to find rhetoric on feelings one way or the other...
I can still debate that this is not stealing or an attack on you by simply flagging your post. That money was never yours and just because someone thought you deserved that money, doesn't actually mean you did deserve it. In the end it is the combined consensus that matters and that is what decides on how much you actually get paid. We all accepted that upon agreeing to sign up and post here. That is very different than someone breaking into your account and stealing your coin. You did not sign up for that or agree to that in any way.
Calling it an attack doesn't feel right either. There was no physical harm to you in any way nor was any implied. It was just a vote, just an opinion. Everyone has one, don't they deserve to be able to express it?
As to muting. I haven't actually muted anyone. At the moment I'm not sure I'd ever need to. It'd likely be only if it was someone seriously trolling me. That hasn't been a problem here yet. Though as it grows in popularity it likely will happen at some point. At that point I'd test out the mute. That is a preference thing. I don't necessarily think it should count towards anything.
If you talk about Cars and I am not interested an mute you. Should it impact your reputation because I have no interest in cars?
If you don't like something, don't vote for it. Pretty simple. Then the value and votes will only be those of people that were interested.
People like a lot of different things. Should I go around flagging everything I am not interested in? That'd end up being a lot of flagging.
Yet other people ARE interested in those things. Should I be able to cancel their interest simply because it is not something I like? I can just as easily ignore the things I don't like. That is what I typically do in life. I don't try to make others to conform to the things I like.
The problem is. The flag does not appear to be intended as a down vote. It does sound like it started out that way, and then more than a month ago they had discussions about this and decided it would be better for flagging posts that are detrimental to the site in some way. Not opinion, or bias based. The fact it is NO WHERE near the up vote button, and it is not a down vote arrow like you would expect, and that it is so far removed (enough so I didn't know it existed for 4 days) and shaped like a FLAG should be a clear indicator of what the intention was. Many people bring up other sites (not you) as examples of down voting. On those sites none of the UIs have a down vote shaped like a flag. Many of them do have an icon shaped like a flag to report an abusive post. So the fact it is done elsewhere, if people can go to that then they should also be familiar with what that iconography represents.
As to Attack. An attack does not have to be physical. If a person perceives an aggressive action taken against them such that it inspires fight or flight type reactions it is likely an attack. There are already cases of people using retaliatory flagging. This is not a good thing. If you suddenly fear that posting something people disagree with is going to slam your reputation and your potential earnings you are reacting to a feeling that an environment might be aggressive towards your view. Why does it have to be? If you agree with something, like it, or WHATEVER reasons you choose to up vote something that is your choice.
In reality if you look at this site. There is no down vote. It is called that because, initially there was a down vote and they decided to move it, and change it to a flag. The iconography, logic of placement, etc all support this. Plus, hearsay I was given by someone who was involved in earlier debates. He has 100,000 + steem power so I don't know that it qualifies him as a whale. He did write the following:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@onceuponatime/flagging-etiquette-and-practice
COMMENT FOR OTHER READERS: @kidsysco and I are actually friends outside of steemit. I told him about steemit. What you are witnessing here is two friends having a civil debate. We respect each other and we talk about all kinds of things. Generally we do it on a slack server, but now we are tackling this one here.
OK then... You are starting to convince me. But I would hate to cripple the curation system. I think people's opinion here matters and a flag is a way for readers to communicate their opinion to me. I think it could be a useful metric to gauge your audience. Perhaps more work here is needed, I might support a 1-10 voting system along with a flagging system that requires a valid reason. Good post Deva! U da man! You know that! lol
We hit the nesting limit...
I'd be fine with them putting a down vote arrow that shows negative votes and having that reduce visibility on the trending page. I'd leave the flag there are we need a way to get spam, plagiarism, and obviously abusive stuff to be not visible (unless you look at the block chain). There is a need for a reporting mechanism and I think the flag could work for that.
I simply believe it is a case where mixed messages are being sent.
So people on either side are justified in arguing because it is not a clear message. If it is intended to be a down vote then make it a down arrow and put it in the voting area. If it is intended to be a report bad posts, then change the text to reflect this.
I don't believe it would impact curation at all if there were no down vote at all. How many people like this? That should be a strong indicator. It shouldn't be about me voting down every Barbie Doll post because I have no interest in Barbies. Doing so silences the interest of other people. How many people up vote something is a clear indicator there is interest. SO WHAT if it is not your interest.
If it continues as it is I see it leading to wars... people noting who is down voting things, and retaliatory down voting their things and anything they post. People who down vote any topic they disagree with regardless of quality of content. It could get ugly pretty fast.
We are seeing a little bit of that already.
that would be against the idea of a decentralized platform.
I generally agree with you, but recently I've been thinking about it. As the number of publishers grow, I've mainly see an increase in "low-quality" posts. It's getting more difficult to find good content as it gets drowned in, well, cow shit. In fact, we can safely say that there are negative external effects to posting low-quality content, and as with any distorted market, the way to restore things is to internalize those externalities. That is in my opinion the only reason for a tax. Right now, it might actually be a good idea to impose a tax on posting. That is, the creation of blog posts should costs some steem power. In that case, it only makes sense to create quality posts, reducing mainly low-quality posts, and making it easier to have exposure with good quality posts.
It would need to be accompanied with a change in the voting algorithm that is more fair and improves chances for minnows. If it works, there is less need for a flag as spam should reduce. In the end, the people on the streets enjoy better music and guitarists should not be afraid that their case gets burned.
In terms of your guitar example, if every street artists needs to pay a dollar up front to be on the streets, we don't see guitarists that do not expect to earn that dollar back. However, those guitarists that do enter the street, should have equal chances to earn their dollar back. If that works, we don't need to burn all the crappy guitar cases.
I think it is more than this is a new place. Everyone that joins goes through needing to relearn some things. So you see a lot of people trying just copying youtube videos they like... I did this too. Posting a few images, etc. You kind of need to find your feet. And then we have people going through this process joining that are already famous so they kind of arrive onsite equipped with a megaphone while the rest of us just start with our voice. So their learning experiences are VERY obvious, yet they are going through the same stuff we are. I think a lot of that is where the crappy posts come from.
I think that is also very true!
the burned steem power could flow back to the community in some form of a base income that does not depend on the amount of steem power that you have.