Thar She Blows! 🐋 Developing the Flag-A-Whale Bad Whale Watch List
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRwaVZFS62vcgsirYEudHDzSwnohFAMFHqWY8DznrMTLy/flagawhale.png)
What metrics make for a bad whale? By establishing a community consensus, can we work to define patterns that would distinguish a good whale from a bad and the countless shades between the two. I think we can.
What are a few examples of metrics we could use and which of these can be automated?
- Self-voting and collusive voting ratio.
The former is easy to acquire programmatically. The latter will require a bit more sophistication. One idea is to analyze incoming upvotes for static weight values from the same individual. For example, account A loves posting memes and account b is observed to autovote 100% regardless of the content. Typically, this is a good indication of a collusive voting agreement and will be used to determine the BWI(bad whale index) of the user.
- Frequency of "revenge flagging".
We don't care how much you hate so and so. Revenge is not a function of flags nor should they be used in that manner. If we flag appropriately, we are flagging so that posts reflect more closely what would be a reasonable value assessment of the content. A bad whale often uses revenge flagging to stifle criticism and I believe we can agree this is an undesireable behaviour. If the flagging can be observed as following this pattern, the users BWI will reflect.
- Typical abuse
We have observed at least one whale engaging in comment spam. Incidents of the traditional flavors of abuse should also be used to determine the BWI. One example is whales commenting on a post, self-voting their comment that compliments the post but does not upvote the post. That is scumbag behaviour and an easy way to make the asshole list.
What do you think about the metrics above?
Please, let us know your thoughts. Do you have any additional metrics in mind? Perhaps, ideas for methods in obtaining them. Let us know.
We are not sure how we will necessarily weigh all the metrics but the first step will be to acquire them and the method will need to be developed.
In other news...
In case you didn't know, we have entered a tentative cease fire in the @haejin flag wars with the agreement being cessation of flags and that @haejin would start to spread out his VP. We were glad to hear this and had made a comment announcing our intention to suspend flag and tank operations but have reassessed that decision.
We have decided that course is less than ideal as those that have already sacrificed voting power and incurred flags are not properly rewarded for their efforts which I believe had helped us reach a point of a compromise. With that being said, we will continue to finish the series we had started but make it clear that we are not tracking subsequent flags for rewards since the cease fire. This way, those that have contributed will be compensated.
With that being said, there are a couple of unfinished tasks on my list that we will work towards completion and they are as follows:
Run distribution on the $0.5 ish SBD from the first @flagtarget series. This will be supplemented with 2 SBD from our flag reserves to go to low SP accounts as suggested by @transisto.
Complete the flag tank ranks.
Develop the Bad Whale report and provide the data as value to the community to build up our flag reserves in this time of peace. We do not know when the next campaign will begin but we have been presented a good opportunity to regroup. Liquid rewards on this post will go towards the flag fund.
Considering the level of damage that hjin and rrelaxo have caused, a few nice words from them is nowhere close to making things okay.
@mikefromtheuk is just the latest in a series of people who have been attacked by these accounts.
To let them just walk away after all the reward pool funds they have extracted and all the rewards people have sacrificed to try and make things right would leave a very bad taste
After spending months trying to recover from -5 reputation due to their malicious flagging, I am not going to be so easily swayed and turn away
Concur. I was bit uneasy about this "peace" as well.
I try my best to follow the will of the community and I am certain that there a few that are not satisfied with the outcome as it stands presently.
Our goal is to see significant change on Haejin/Racho's voting patterns. If we do not see said change, we'll make a case to resume the campaigns.
Thanks for the comment, @kabir88. Good to see you back at rep 47!
I'm left with a damaged account that I have to painstakingly get back to visible status.
Really wish I could make more sense out of them flag wars. Looks like you got hit quite hard, but so did he.
Yeah, I poked a bear and learned a hard lesson.
I think you misunderstand what @fulltimegeek's peace was. He fought for our ability to be able to speak out against reward pool abuse/disagree with rewards without being flagged into oblivion for it.
By all means keep speaking out/flagging!
Thanks for the clarification. I already have my next post about Haejin taking form :)
Just wrote this post inspired by your post above. I truly feel impact on the genuinety of the curation process should be the prime badness metric.
I had this question in my mind for a while, but no one to ask:
After you upvoted me here:
https://steemit.com/googleplus/@atempt/re-krischik-re-atempt-re-mattockfs-google-plus-going-belly-up-soon-could-steem-smt-provide-for-a-life-raft-for-g-users-and-a-boost-to-steem-20181010t181333176z
, both of your accounts' expected curation rewards seem to not change by a single 0.001 SP after the two smaller accounts un-voted.
I missed to capture the screen from before they undid it, but it is still quite visible, since your first account that voted should have curation rewards that exceed 25% of its vote value, and since STEEM (and hence SP) is currently below both USD and below SBD, it is even more visible that even your first account to vote gets less than 25% of its vote value.
Or is it the blockchain explorer's fault still and will be corrected once rewards are claimed?
On a side note, that is one hostile feeling discord server. Blocked from reading #welcome channel. Great way to make ppl feel, well, welcome. Then a DM from a bot who has return messages blocked.
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