I think the word "flagging" doesn't help, that implies that the post has been "flagged" to some higher power because it's offensive or something. I know it's not the crux of the matter here, but maybe this needs to be changed so that it's more of an upvote/downvote system. I wasn't really aware that flagging was effectively just a downvote until all this kicked off, so there might be others who think or have thought the same.
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Yes, it was originally a downvote. I have no idea why it was changed, but it was clearly a very bad idea.
When I joined Steemit pretty much all the guidance on flagging/downvote was it should only be used for abuse - plagurism, harassment, illegal content etc. Over and over people said "Don't downvote because you don't like something".
This post here is essentially saying "Anything goes, there is no such thing as a bad downvote". I mean it literally says "people have the right to upvote and downvote as they please".
See that? It says people have the right to upvote as they please! So when a downvoter justifies that downvote because the post got too much upvote love that seems at best ironic and at worst illogical. I mean it is logically consistent that both parties are free to do whatever they want under these rules of engagement, but to use "too much reward for the views" is basically throwing shade on how other people voted and makes no sense. Then it's just a up/down vote battle between two whales.
IMO the OP shouldn't really be involved here. To me her protests sound like someone who had a or some wealthy benefactors here who appreciated her content and now some showed up and is saying, "No! Your benefactors are not free to shower love on you that way, you will be punished and those rewards given away to others!". Wouldn't it be better for random whales who have a disagreement on rewards to duke it out offline without downvotes? It remains to be seen how she (and others) would react if their rich benefactors just stopped voting for them - I would hope and guess, in a lot less pissed-off way. They might even approach former benefactors and say "Hey, I see you don't vote for my content any more. Why is that and perhaps I could write something else or deliver it in a different way?". That's the difference between a carrot and a stick!
Or maybe her benefactors would not change their voting pattern at all - just like real life benefactors of the arts they promote what they please and the court of public opinion be damned.
I've looked at other systems and I see many that deliberately avoid up/down vote drama by just removing the downvote. By renaming downvote to "Flag" that seems to be what Steemit is endorsing. At that point this becomes an argument about what abuse is. I've seen arguments that this is abuse of the rewards pool - but by previous arguments people are free to vote as they please.
Surely if we want rules about what is appropriate use of the rewards pool why not just put them into the system? Something like weighting some part of the rewards pool payout to pageviews? Or just not ordering posts by reward but purely by recommendations, pageviews, and upvotes and downvotes on a one-per-user basis. Otherwise some random whale with more money might just show up, drop a few hundred million into STEEM and decide (for example) "Nope, I'm just going to downvote all your popular posts and promote only fantasy stories about unicorns and rainbows so screw y'all!". Then what? You know nothing upsets a whale more than a Kraken showing up that makes them look like minnows...
People can upvote and downvote as they please. That's the point. Person A can upvote a post, Person B can downvote that post. It's the resulting consensus that determines the final payout. No is being stopped from upvoting or downvoting. It's about consensus.
That I was agreeing on. The FAQ is clear that downvoting can be for whatever, but the labeling of "Downvote" as "Flag" is highly misleading and sets all the wrong kinds of expectations not least that there is some real centralized abuse moderation system (I'm not saying we want that, just that people, especially noobs who haven't studied the FAQ thoroughly are misled that way). It's almost as if the Steemit UI designers wanted to highly discourage downvoting, isn't it?
To reiterate my point of contention - to downvote because you don't like how something was upvoted on is logically consistent within the system of "vote however you want" but is effectively a vote against the system itself. It is saying the personal thinks system of vote however you want is broken and that this person is going to have to police every single post that breaks their personal beliefs about what is a good upvote or not. What a waste!
As you point out consensus will win the day and the author is still getting some rewards. Perhaps eventually
transistowill get bored of downvoting those posts. Or perhaps that user will power-down and leave the platform which I believetransistoand others will deem a win for the platform (I think that is what is happening).Assuming no one wants to codify "rewards should be relative to page views" which
transistouses as his justification for downvote, then IMO the real problem here is that we have one or a few whales treating "Flag" as a traditional downvote in the Reddit sense and most minnows and many others who are not. If the one big downvote had been replaced by a dozen or downvotes by small fish then the OP might not have felt so picked on. They might not have felt like this was one capricious user throwing around their whale weight and more a vote of no confidence by the hive mind of Steemit.I personally think the reward system is broken, but I don't see that working around it by having one or few whales arbitrarily downvoting particular users all the time to be a great way to do it. That's not really consensus, it's just authoritarianism brute force.
Short of a systematic fix I believe a better way is to find and reward good content and use nudges to change the behavior of those that upvote content deemed not in the best interests of Steemit. If you really are going to systematically downvote someone's posts then maybe a better way is to use a bot that does it in an egalitarian way, cites all the metrics and votes for the post you have a problem with. That will a) make it a lot less personal, b) make it fairer, c) cause less fighting.
That's the reason why at work my company uses a completely automated system to enforce software coding conventions. We form a consensus on the rules, and don't fight over individual infractions. Newcomers who don't like the rules may bitch and moan for a bit but they have to obey the same rules as everyone else. They have a channel to lobby for changes and have a say in future changes to the rules - by consensus. I've not yet seen anyone stop work or leave because they don't like the coding standard are enforced. What we never do is have some particular person(s) appointing themselves to be "cop" and enforcing the rules. I've seen how that causes no end of strife with personal disputes, plus inconsistent and uneven enforcement, just as we see here which only serves to make things even worse.
Insightful..
What are your thoughts on @steemcleaners?
From my own experience it mostly works but needs to be smarter. They need an automated way to prove ownership of content or an account on a third party site to stop its nagging and eventual flagging. I've seen cases where people were as desperate as Michelle to stop being bugged and had concrete evidence that they were who they said they are. Something clearly wrong there.
I think all bots should have owners with proof of brain that can be challenged. I think all bots should issue warnings before taking punitive action. I think all bots should have something at stake so they can be reigned in.
I don't know how you enforce these things but those are my thoughts. How about you? Are you a cleaner fan?
Me? the only time i approach Steemcleaner is out of frustration, you know.. those days when you see the same damn account shitposting for the straight 50th times. So it does have it's uses.
But yeah i understand your point of view, its a bot after all, not an AI. so sometimes it follows the set of rules so closely that all subjectivity is lost and innocent people do get in the crossfire.
It's something that just needs ironing out i guess.
My opinion is that if everyone has the awareness to properly use the downvote button under the correct circumstances, Steemit would have been a way better place.
There's just seems to have this air of stigma towards the red flag. Which i dont think is fair. There is nothing wrong with expressing disagreement of rewards or better yet, calling out reprehensible acts. Do note that when i say "disagreement of rewards" its entirely subjective to what the voter thinks as worthy, same as upvotes.
I do think the downvote bots we see now are not the "final" version and they do serve a greater purpose towards encouraging people to better police spam and unethical gaming of the rewards pool. Ideally in future we don't need it at all.