Thank You, Justice Was Done: But... Time to Step Up!
As I was finishing my last post here, I was telling you that I would resume my regular posting today.
I did that because I felt I was venting out for noone to hear, and in NO WAY did I anticipate the following:
But, as that was the case, I feel that I need to address everyone who expressed their support to me, and reveal that this inspired me and showed me that the community in its whole still has a lot of strenght.
On the other hand, there are still a lot of things worrying me, and I'll address that in this post.
Finally, I can hear you when you say the outcome was better than at my original post... but there's something you're not considering.
Let us start there...
My Rant Got the Views, My Cards Got Sunk: How the difference affects the Community
Many of you focus on the bottom line only... that is where things start to be wrong.
We as a community must make sure the value rises and the trash goes down. People who are solely thinking about the bottom line are part of the problem.
Don't take, take, take and expect people who give to keep supporting you - eventually they'll wake up.
I'm saying this because my original post, the post that ADDED the VALUE, was the one sunk!
The post with my rant rose to the top thanks to the support of an extremelly commited individual AND the community who chose to support me because they saw it was an unfair flag.
That is fine, and I'm over the moon with the outcome.
I never even dreamed of having a post like that.
BUT!
Half of the rewards I got on this post on the first post would make more sense... does that make, well, sense?
What I mean is that we can't wait for stuff to happen and compensate people later, we must take our heads out of the sand and pressure when stuff like this happens.
It's our community and malicious flagging is damaging it.
Which leads me to the next point.
Flagging Mechanism and Adjustments: Ideas, Ideas... but!
Throughout the endless waves of comments which I read one by one and replied appropriately, I found some ideas.
- Some ideas were really engineous;
- Some ideas were really impossible to apply;
- Others were stupid.
I found an idea that while it wouldn't prevent situations like this from occuring, they could help to pinpoint cases of malicious flagging.
That idea was on a comment chat with @gyrosean and @giddyupngo and I pasted it above.
On the other hand, I also heard that flagging is something being discussed for a long time, and a veteran even popped out with more insight.
Of course, thinking about @dwinblood's words and how he at a later date said that the idea was discarded because it would be easy to circumvent, we can easilly imagine the guy who flagged my post just typing "..." or something... heck even "abuse" and walk away happilly.
I've been thinking about flagging for the whole day and I reached a conclusion.
- I can't think of a solution in a day!
There are people around here thinking about that for much longer, and ideas come and go... stuff like dual reward pools which I think is a great addition are pitched, worked upon and more... but the truth is, a solution is hard - that much I can see.
The Flag on My Post Backfired: Among Hardship, Hope Ensues
Something I also have to mention is the fact that the flag backfired so... maybe the system works?
Heck it isn't perfect, but it works.
- BUT
And here's the "but" again. If @berniesanders wouldn't have paid for the votes and kickstarted it all - it wouldn't have worked.
This brings us a very POWERFUL lesson:
- The Community Works if it DOESN'T Stick its Head in the Sand.
In order for the community to work and to be able to regulate itself, the people who make it need to be invested, they need to participate and they need to use their "citizenship card".
They cannot be idle and wait for other people to deal with the problems, they must know when injustices happen and try to find a way to solve them.
Want to know how it only worked because a user didn't stick his head in the sand? Read this comment by my friend @underground:
So... now you see how only an ACT made the system work? Granted this was a big act, there are many cases in which smaller acts work just as well, because I doubt malicious flags are always this big.
But people turn their face away to even the smallest of them.
I'm a newbie, I didn't see many situations where my flag could be of use, but I contacted my fair share of people to try to show them they were wrong already.
Most of them didn't take their flags away of course, but one of them admitted he was mistaken and did it.
Apparently, he thought the content a blogger posted was copied just because @cheetah upvoted it (it was just the blogger transfering his content from elsewhere).
So, bottom line, think before you ignore.
In this community, we all have our stakes and the outcome of the community affects us all.
Ending this Chapter with a Thank You Note:
Ok, so now I have to thank everyone for their support. I am going to start posting my everyday content tomorrow but I don't want to close this Chapter without addressing everyone who took a bit of their time to share their kind words of support with me.
Overall, I want to thank @bernie-sanders for going to his own pockets in order to correct a wrong that was done to me and for having the guts to do it when nothign was guaranteed and without knowing me at all.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who supported my idea to make the MTG Cards and I want to tell you that I already started studying some more Steemians to add to the collection - However, I'm not rushing them so they may take a little bit to see the light of day, maybe a week or two.
For everyone that started following me because of this insane rollercoaster, I welcome you to my blog and want to express my gratitude for your help in building my little corner of the internet.
I focus on helping newbies and I promote Steemit, so if you guys ever have any doubts, you know where to find me - I usually reply to every single comment unless I miss it, if you think that was the case, tag me on it later.
Thank you again.
Chapter Closed for now.
Cheers!
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@spiritualmax, I'm not sure if you have heard of us but we are building a community of good flaggers to go after abuse. It's called @steemflagrewards, a people and Python powered project.
Here's the last post. Let me know if you have any feedback. It's a work in progress.
https://steemit.com/steemflagrewards/@steemflagrewards/steem-flag-rewards-new-steem-discord-bot-pull-downvote-data-on-any-post-9ab5bee3ff2b1
Wow, that's an awesome effort. As a programmer myself I can see how much effort was put into that. I hope you have success and use it for the right purposes. ;)
Thanks! Yes, I've had to do my fair share of tinkering to get some things working. We have a way to go.
We could sure use others with programming / scripting mindset on Discord. I've been doing a LOT of learning as I go.
Yes, it is my heartfelt desire, for this project to continue to be used for the good of the community. I think a lot of us have grown very frustrated with how so much rewards make it to the scammers hands while hardworking users are getting the short end of the stick. We hope to change that. One flag at a time.
I would like to help with programming, or at least do some programming myself. I was thinking of making a few Steemit bots but I'm not really well-versed in Steemit's API dynamics. Do you have a chat where I can ask you some questions when I'm developing it? I'd really appreciate some input and I could provide some help if it's required sometime.
Hi - I've never been a victim of flagging but am aware of it... it's good to see something being done, happy to contribute..... I think a collective-manual solution to this is the way forwards given that it's so easy to see who the abusers are.... I checked out the original post which started this all off, traced the down voter, it's just appalling the amount of quality posts they've down voted recently, and for what, a few extra 0.01% of the reward pool?
Of course I notice we don't mention names here! Part of the problem of course.
I think just like we have @steemflagrewards for good flags. It would be helpful if we had automated mechanisms for countering bad flags as well.
The problem is that most people would likely not upvote a post that has a significant negative rshares value. I think an alternative approach is instead of trying to cancel out the downvotes on the existing post is to instead have the content reposted and counter votes be used to bring the second posts to a positive value.
So, let's say a post is wrongfully flagged to oblivion. We just have them repost and upvote the repost. The downvoter could continue to downvotes the reposts but if the counter upvotes have more power I am certain they will eventually give up. This is me just thinking out loud but would be cool to see someone run with the idea
TBH I can't quite get my head around the concept of re-posting a downvoted post.... I've thought it through and hoped I could come up with something constructive to say, but I'm struggling... doesn't it just depend on the original 'bad flagger' sort of giving up?
And I'm taking it this also depends on some sort of collective anti-flag curation pools/ trails, with massive VP to reward the re-posted originally-flagged post, which I think is a good idea.
Yes, you got it. It would likely depend on both those things. When the flagger realizes the community does not support them such as in the case of a vindictive or hate flag. This will likely have a sway on subsequent actions.
Some people are bullheaded so may not work for them but think it could be helpful but it would especially need the second criteria you mentioned (massive collective VP).
It's the kind of thing I'd happily delegate a few SP to, we could sell it like an 'insurance policy'..... 100K users each delegating a few SP, that'd do it!
This needs to be a thing.
Congrats on the success of your last post, sucks it had to be on your rant and not your cards.
Hahahahaha, that's the luck he got. But I'm sure that he felt rewarded by the support that we as a community gave him. I just wish he'd keep the success that he got on the previous post for the next ones. :PPP At least with his rep going up and his voting power as well, he's got a nice boost going for him for new followers to feel encouraged.
Well worded and thought through all around, especially the point about this being a problem (or series of problems) that no one viewpoint or idea is gonna fix in a day. For me the biggest challenge has always been the idea that the humans on steemit will curate and fix the problem. But similar to healthcare, prevention is always the best option if possible. And to that end, the answers we should seek are those that attempt to prevent the abuse in the first place (or at least minimize harm) rather than reaction-oriented solutions. If this just turns into a bot war, then we will have failed.
Also, just impressed that you went through all the comments in such depth. #dedication for real though.
Thanks man, glad to see you around again.
Yes I always try to answer every single comment, readers and the audience are after all what keeps me going.
I totally agree with the point made.
Cheers!
I am new to this site, and enjoying half the content
(the other half is plagiarism or drama) ...I like the good half :-) and am optimistic.
The point is I found you because the rebuttal post got so much publicity. I like your content, so maybe it is working out in the end.
However, I am sure there are some changes that can be made. Maybe the simple act of leaving a reason would have a positive impact, but I am skeptical. I think in the end it is going to be a balance of community reaction like you are seeing now. In other words the down-vote intent backfired.
I am still figuring this system out, and I see a lot of issues that I am sure most are aware of, so I will leave it here. I enjoyed the post and encourage you to keep on steeming! --3D
Hello 3D
Glad to have you along for the journey, welcome to my tiny space of the internet.
I will no doubt keep on steeming everyday.
Cheers and I'll see you around!
I think of making a post
Maybe a sort of a fiction but which focuses on what we the steemians face on a single flag
The flag that kills our work
Am following you all the way
Make me the Hero :P
Hehehe
Cheers
Totally agree with the underlined words👍✌
After all, the strength of steem depends on not letting speculation overpower production, preventing opportunism from freeing wealth from preexisting wealth, and from using any means to attain ends. Rather, it is important to encourage genuine value production, which in steem is tantamount to creating, discovering, and rewarding good content, viewing profit as a deferred consequence rather than an immediate goal. People like @spiritualmax do this and these are the people who feed hope... Keep the good work!
Thanks for the words of support.
That's what I think as well.
I will keep on Steeming!
Cheers
Your story wanted to weaken me yesterday joining this community @spiritualmax, and today's chapter was a relief.
@bernie-sanders wouldn't know the courage he have given to steemians and the challenge to do good, actually am impressed today...the upvotes stuff still confuses me with the flag...lol, i dont want to flag a post by mistake even, so can someone show me? even @spiritualmax
The flags are on the top-right of each comment and post man.
They are the little banner symbol.
Cheers
Hey Max,
nice to see more and more Spiritual people on Steemit.
Welcome
I will soon be bring a lot more. I've got a group of 185k who might find this platform liberating. (Just have to figure it myself😉)
Yay, tell me if you do. I'd love to take a peek at this community.
Definitely will.
Hi @thehipsterguru I'm spiritual too! :) followed
Wohooo! Congratulations you have done it again, brother! :)
Wow, very well said
Thanks Ceci,
You are right, most of the community only thinks about final results and you do not have much community.
Thank you again for another great read! I too was thinking the same thing yesterday as I saw the post get lots of upvotes and revenue but thinking how frustrating it was at the same time. It is very unfortunate that posts are able to be flagged and the flagger has zero recourse if the actions were not justified. As with anything new and growing we will need to stick together to make the proper changes so that it does not continue to happen. Now for what I really wanted to ask you. Are you able to repost the original Card post somehow? I know it sounds like you put in a hell of lot of work on it and I would love the opportunity to check it out!! I am sure we all would! Cheers!
I'm sure it's still there. It was just hidden by the flags. Here it is. You just have to clic a button to show the post and another button down below to show the images that were hidden due to low ratings.
Gotcha lol Ok I see that now. Thank you for the information. I am still somewhat new to this Steemit space. Any help is much appreciated @cryptosharon. Now following! Thanks again :)
We're both cryptos :D And just hit me up for any doubt you have, really, and if you have Telegram, I'm @CryptoSharon there too. I know a lot about Markdown, HTML, programming, writing and being friendly. :) I don't make many tutorials, though. But I do write some rad stories and poetry, so you can stay for that. I hope you enjoy my posts.
Yeah us cryptos have to stick together ;) I really appreciate you! Thank you for the kindness. Please do the same and let me know if I can be of any assistance to you as well. I will most definitely frequent your page and upvote you!
Cheers!!
Your articles inspire me a lot. Thanks for ur effort @spiritualmax
Thank you for this post. I love it so much.
I imagine a few bumps down every road. Nice to see you recovered nicely.
Great
Point to ponder about is that community based support in the next post of the victim will not always work. Not always will someone like @berniesanders come to help. The resolution, whatever that is, needs to be institutionalised in the blockchain itself.
Follow for follow
Not a very good idea I think: to trade following :-)
Let's say you follow me and I don't follow you? :D I was going to say that I like my posts more than I like yours just to be playfully mean, but then I checked your profile just in case and I ended up liking your work. Hmmm, this is hard, but I think I'm going to press the follow button.
Anyway I like your resteems more than your original posts (?) I hope you resteem more stuff like that. :))
If enough people get together in a coordinated effort, we can counter any bogey man bully whale. A secret curation trail that people gather around which only strikes when enough SP is amassed. That could work.
Hmmmmm, but could such a whale really be kept secret? Everything is public in the blockchain.
Curation trails you don't know until the first votes happen. They are organized off chain.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. The movements under the table go unnoticed until the action takes place. Maybe this way we can break them, or they can break us. We never know who's dropping the nuke first.
These kind of problems would be greatly alleviated with a fairer distribution of wealth. Thankfully, we have some big fish who are decent enough and see how this kind of problem will hurt the platform as a whole, but it would be nice if we didn’t have to rely on support from the biggest members of our community to safeguard against this kind of abuse.
I don’t see a purpose in adding an extra downvote feature (aside from flagging) to encourage more downvoting towards those we may disagree with. Do we really want to use this mechanism to make it harder for those with unpopular opinions to share them? Flags/downvotes should simply be a mechanism for curbing unsavory and malicious activity or activity that takes advantage of the reward pool.
It would be nice if we could downvote downvotes, but once again it would require a different kind of algorithm where it wouldn’t take 100 minnows to combat a whale and it wouldn’t suck up our voting power.
Anyway, I’m happy the community DID come together and that you got your payout in the end.
The power distribution of steemit really does turn everyone into a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycophant
People are afraid to even critique anything. All I see is meaningless, hollow praise. How can we build up something better if everyone is afraid of pointing out obvious flaws? At most people are passive-aggressive, avoid actually talking with each other and just to each other, and just have proxy flag wars. That's about it, but that's different than my other contention that no one ever questions anything that's ever written, spoken, drawn, shot, memed, or anything here. The core quality of the content is just not good on steemit. At least. not the content that shares an overlap with other social media.
We cannot compete with other platforms if content or community does not draw the attention of the user. Dollar signs next to random numbers draw the attention of some, to be sure, but to actually keep people here they need to not feel like they're constantly walking on eggshells and never able to express their true selves. They need to feel that their voice and their vote have impact and gravity no matter their bank account size. They like democratic voting measures where one person's vote counts. The know that even though their platform of choice may be infested with bots and corporations trying to meddle or peddle, good, dank material and lasting truths always float up past the shilled shit. People need to feel like they're making good use of their media consumption time by actually consuming GOOD content.
The internet is a place where the competition is vast, the meme-makers are skilled, and information travels fast. It's a big, scary world out there. You might find out that the shit that flies here and passes for a hot post wouldn't see the light of day in places where people don't give a fuck how much money you have. Maybe my taste in humor is different but just for an example try to be really, really fucking honest with yourself when I ask this simple question. Which social media website would you voluntarily use to find the absolute funniest shit on the internet on the most consistent basis if your paycheck didn't depend on it. If the answer isn't steemit it's because we're doing something terribly fucking wrong.
A system that actually rewarded fucking kickass content creators and consumers of said content would see explosive growth the likes of which has rarely been seen in the literal history of the internet. You probably have enough fingers and toes to count all the social media websites that have really taken off.
The best shit has to be able to be seen and found easily. Real people hate fake bullshit. It's as simple as that. Real people hate it when shit is rigged and they can tell right away that something ain't right, that that's not what a frontpage should look like, those aren't the posts that should be trending, that oh dear god, god no is that literally the fifth time that same dead horse has been resuscitated and beaten to death yet again in one more cash-grab of the day why am I even bothering with this shit I'm going back to twitter/facebook/youtube/instagram/reddit/medium/google+/myspace/newdigg/anythingbutthisdumpsterfirewherequalityandhumorgoestodie.
And has anyone on steemit realized that people don't want to replicate that warm, fuzzy feeling they get when they're being watched over the shoulder by HR and managers at their soul-sucking dream-crushing corporate job when they're on a social media site browsing at home? Holy shit people, wake the hell up. There's a reason no one stays here for long.
Do you think that Steemit can evolve, without including censorship, toward a community that truly rewards great content creators and doesn't bring fear of angering a random whale?
It’s all about culture really...people are generally afraid of making others angry OR they’re pissed and enjoy making others angry. If enough of us with the intention of protecting freedom and encouraging peaceful discussion become big fish, I’d say we have a shot. But most of us grew up with petty parents, restrictive education and society full of paradox, so we have a lot of work to do.
I understand the frustration with seeing mediocre content getting such massive rewards, but I disagree that there isn’t lot of great content on here. It just doesn’t always get rewarded appropriately. Notariety seems to matter more than quality, and SOMETIMES notieriaty comes from good content. More often it comes from having a big fat upvote and friends with big fat upvotes who put you on autovote.
Still, I’m not craving the polarized arguments of other platforms. I think we can disagree respectfully, as I often do...or just ignore people who aren’t going to listen to what we have to say anyway.
I could easily reply to every post on anarchy-capitalism that I think anarcho-capitalism is a pretty stupid fucking oxymoron because those who have the most will become state like entities unless they are intent on creating a world with distributed power. I could say that any argument about human nature is null and void because anyone with such a certain one sided stance on human nature doesn’t know shit about human nature. Now I don’t say that on the billions of posts that seem to think govt. sucks but capitalism is the shit because I know peoples beliefs generally don’t change when you attack them or try to belittle them. I’m also willing to admit that I may have something to learn from ANYONE.
So if you are hungry for controversy. Go somewhere else dude, it’s not difficult to find. I have a ton of unpopular opinions and I speak them openly and enough people still like me cause I bring up these unpopular opinions mainly just to search for solutions peacefully. If people want to turn this place into a shithole, either from too much controversy or too much ass kissing, I’ll try to gather the community I’ve forged here and head off somewhere better, cash out my Steem and put it somewhere else. For now I still see lots of forward thinking, open minded and interesting people having productive conversations here to warrant putting lots of time into the platform, and it’s paying off. I mean only telling you this cause I was you a few months ago and now I’m kicking myself because that was three months wasted just focusing on the negative shit.
Hope you stick around and channel your dissatisfaction into something productive that you can feel good about, like I have.
congratulations to your achievement. Nice to see it.
You have the right combination of luck and resourcefulness on your side... I fear for the poor fool who tries to stop your success locomotive @spiritualmax. ;)
Hahahahaha, no one can stop him now. :D (I certainly hope...)
I wrote a little joke once when I was minnow. I used the f-word a lot, but that was part of the joke. I know what it's like to have your artform attacked. The freedom account attacked me with flags. Tried to send me a message? I didn't stop. Went on to make around 100k here. Hang in there. It was a blessing in disguise my friend. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
So, if you say fuck, an account named @freedom comes and flags you to death? What?
Did you have to call the beast? Here's more information.
Hahahahahaha, sorry. I forget that mentions can be followed on this site. I will read it. Thank you very much for the information :) I'm really lookin forward to learn my way around this site to improve my chances to survive.
welcome to the jungle =)
saw your post, i think its just hilarious
Quite a bit of excitement behind you. I have dug through all three posts and I am impressed how you returned with your head high after the flag. Well done. You have earned your trending number one. :)
Well, he has a lot of dedication and he's been here a long time. I'd find it strange instead for someone to simply disappear after just one case of downvote. Especially someone called @spiritualmax... But it's really great to have him around so I'm really glad that he can continue to do what he does best and keep making great quality content.
He is here for one month. I would call that very little time. ;)
Ohwell. I've been here for a couple of weeks and I'm very behind him so he's got a lot of experience backing him to be able to get to this point. I don't think I'd have his fortitude to keep his posts to such a quality standard even through the harsh obstacles. At least not yet.
congratulation sir @spiritualmax for this workk its not to eusy !!!!!!!
There's still almost a week left to cancel out the downvotes on this post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@spiritualmax/steemit-card-game-community-powered-laughs-who-s-your-favorite
I don't think that's as feasible as just upvoting his other posts, but it would be symbolically awesome.
Please upvote me
Post some great content and I will. :)
Awesome post @spiritualmax really good to see the community comes together and stands up in these situations. Will be looking closely into this flagging situation from now on. As a new user I would hate for hard work to be flagged and pushed down because of some petty grudge or something, seems entirely possible on this platform..... I guess the best option to protect ourselves now is to build up our own supportive community who can defend us or tell us where we might be going wrong...
Yup-yup. I also think that's the answer. The only solution against a massive attack as a minnow is to get an army behind you. I'm happy he's got that now. A tiny, somewhat reliable army that might have his back later on if the case repeats itself.
Sincerity through superficiality, something I always talk about. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, acts are sincere too.
How crazy. I wondered for a moment if you found a way to get RanchoRelaxo to downvote you, considering how you ended up with such a huge payout, and probably a ton of good will, but the work you did was good and that's crazy. Good stuff overall. You don't get screwed but actually helped. People get to see you more. I think you started here after i did and i'm only at half the followers you got. Good work max.
Hopefully there is some awareness and a positive outcome to all of this, then you can get back to designing magic cards :)
Nice work on the efforts you made
if a big whale upvote that post, could it be resurrected? i hate it the fact it takes one stupid guy to mess up the entire thing. Well, chapter is closed, and i didn't get to see that post😩 (busy week) I still hope to see that card
I've only been here since November and I've already said it myself more than once that more needs to be done and more people need to step up. I actually saw your post not too long after it got flagged, but I hadn't taken the time to check it out. I was observing bernie's account because let's face it, when it comes to certain...news...you want to check it out to be informed. While I was more interested in what was going on and not the resteem I still noticed. The first thing that came to mind was "Oh wow, there's a casualty of war right there".
We are a community and it is up to us. I am willing to step up, where do I go?
Steemit functions like a business, a decentralized one at that, so flags are important to reallocate rewards. I for one, don't realy like seeing a post I worked on lose reward payout because other people are abusing the rewards pool. If we as a community were to stop the plagiarists abusing upvote bots from making one penny alone our rewards wouldn't dwindle as much. When a big whale upvotes one user 20 times a day it literally reallocates rewards from all over the platform to one person. The same goes for all the every-day all-day trending posts. While many certainly deserve the rewards, flags are intended to not just stop plagiarists from profiting, but to keep certain posts from being ridiculously overpaid.
Not sure what you were at in pay before the flag but with the very creative work I see you've done with the MGT cards, I say you've gotten your worth and then some! I just hope that the unjustified flags cease, however; we must come together as a community and make a decision, or do something. If we don't do something, we are bringing false value to the platform. This is really bad for business. There are so many people taking advantage and cashing out every day.
I understand where you are coming from whole heartedly. Your post about the MGT cards still got buried. It should have been brought back to life. I think it was very clever and creative. I laughed. I also went ahead and gave it an upvote. Maybe it was very risky because of the mentions, but it should not have been flagged regardless. I think others should go upvote it too, if they haven't already. Even if to at least get it to a 10 SBD payout or something, and bring the post back to life. my 0.03 upvote didn't do much, but every little bit counts. I would have really proven a point if my upvote brought it to 0.01 in the positive, but that was hopeful thinking. To me it isn't about what you made here, it's the principle. Your post got buried when it shouldn't have.
Couldn't agree more.
As you seem to realise, you weren't saved by the community. You were saved by @berniesanders. I don't wanna piss on your chips but I think many of the other upvoters were riding on the tails of a 'potentially profitable' post. I've noticed, in my short time here, that anything a whale replies to or shows interest in, suddenly gets a lot of chancers throwing their pennies in the pot.
The moral of the story and the history of the human race is that powerful people have the power to rescue or destroy. Communities are comprised of individuals who do what they have to do in order to survive.
Anj x
That's a great relief, I'm happy that post had managed to compensated more than what you have loss in the other. I agree about the community gather around to support you in case something serious happen which it took alot courage to do so.