Wow, that rant was epic!
I first want to say that @buildteam is not affiliated with steemit inc and is not responsible for the mess ;)
To the topic at hand: steemit has a problem. They have build this site as a way to access steem and they made it the de facto site for steem. Sure there is busy and there are other sites but they don't have the million dollar funding of steemit inc. And they don't have 30 people hired who can work on that stuff. And they don't have some of these people work on the core blockchain code. So steemit inc has a responsibility for maintaining a working site, regardless of them telling otherwise. They put themselves in that position by giving themselves that amount of power. And they have to own up to that.
The steem blockchain is really bad at fighting abuse. It has almost no limits and the creators explicitly said: The system is self-governing. So sadkitten, steemcleaners and other groups of people are like your imune system. Steem hopes that there are more benevolent actors than bad actors in the chain in terms of how much stake there is.
This causes all kinds of problems. Obviously. But no one seems to care as the current system works. Until it doesn't. And then the cry to flag this reward-pool-rape is big. That mean person somewhere did this thing I don't like and my stake is not high enough to ruin their day. Well get over it, this whole blockchain is a social experiment.
On a more serious note: I think you have good ideas. Please start writing them down and steering discussion. We need discussion to change things. And we need things to change for steem to improve. And many people will be offended by this rant ind will ignore it. So I will try to give you as much visibility as my stake in this experiment allows to change something. And keep swearing, I will now register @lickapussy and @fuckawhale, be right back…
So after I stopped laughing... I really love your comment. Informative, to the point and ending on a comical note. Well articulated to say the least.
Sorry for bringing @buildteam into the mix here. I think I knew they weren't involved. My point there was to show that the regular user has no idea who is really at the wheel here. (I did have steemteam right didnt I?)
@reggaemuffin, bro, your efforts on steemit are nothing short of impressive.
You hit exactly what I was trying to get at here with your comment. Regardless of time, people or financial constraints they have put themselves at the wheel of this ship and like it or not now have a responsibility to the community.
Your bit about sadkitten and cleaners I fully get. Much of what they do is really helping the community. However it is their own agenda and their own set of rules. Maybe we as a community need to be more involved in their process somehow.
Abuse is such a broad issue. There are so many ways it can happen and so many ways a person can define it. All of these many ways are also open to perception. Making it a touchy, controversial, unfortunate and necessary issue.
I believe I will continue to experiment with this newfound path to see where it leads as it did open up some new territory. I believe swearing simply conveys intensity and I'm not afraid to use it when necessary.
I'm not concerned in the least by those offended by my rant. I believe I made many solid points that would be tough to challenge with any validity anyway.
So, someone did register @lickapussy and @fuckawhale. Not sure if that was you or someone else but I will fully accept a 1% royalty on the names :)
Thanks for the support.
I did immediately register them ;) Not sure what to do with these names but I will know when duty calls :) Fuck a whale and he will come – best statement ever…
From working with steemcleaners and spaminator I learned that no one really wants to do that work. It is hard and unrewarding. And it requires a lot of skill. Everyone can help by calling out abuse, educating users and researching these big bot-nets and report them at the appropriate locations.
For example minnowbooster is currently unvoting abuse rings to really hurt these bot net owners financially. Is sucks, it costs money, produces tons of work and tons of talks about what is abuse and what is not.
In my opinion, the best thing to start helping is discussion. As with all things, if you don't like it, change it. And in steem if you want to change something, you start a discussion. You make a post and ask prominent people for their opinion. If you arguments are good, changes are good someone implements your change.
Same with abuse. If you start asking the question: What is abuse? Then you will have many people talking and hopefully reaching some form of consensus or at least a general agreement on what definitely constitutes abuse and what is definitely okay.
And then you slowly work from there. Find a case in the grey area and ask for opinions. Motivate people to speak up about their opinion. Discuss the pro and cons of that being abuse or not. And then as a community find some form of agreement.
The more we do this, the more we get the opinion of the community. And that is what matters. My own opinion means shit unless I own 50% of all steam. And those that own a lot of steem should be pretty clear in their opinion. Either participate in discussion or saying: I don't care, decide without me. And since steem does have a voting system, the hardest task as getting whales to actually care.
PS: royalties payed 10000% :)
Edit: no idea about steemteam as it is unused ^^
I think you have the right idea. Starting discussion. The reason I hadn't started earlier was because I had seen many old posts regarding some of these issues. I guess I was assuming that in the background somewhere they were being handled. Naive of me I suppose.
So it seems the platform needs focalizers then.
It seems in the abuse sector there is a lot of grey area. Finding topics should not be to hard.
I'll think of some ways I can present some of them knowing that posts just get lost poses an issue but I'll think of something.
Thanks for all the input man!