RE: AskSteem: Are you going to make use of the downvote pool? Why or why not?
Here's the deal most of us don't see that world of abuse that apparently some of you do.
Not sure if that says something about our exploration patterns on Steem.
I often wonder why is it some people seem to think Steem is so rife with abuse and then others just wonder what the heck they're going on about?
Also most people don't have a big enough vote to worry about "loosing a vote" to a downvote. I can see how the rich vote may feel about that. But for most people it's not really an issue.
And then even so if our vote isn't large then what is it gonna do to a highly voted post? Nothing... except make us an enemy? (And of a person that either has influential friends or the person cares way too much and probably knows they're doing something controversial so they're very on edge and ready for a fight... and most of us came to steem to escape the drama and stress we had elsewhere)
Personally i see abuse sometimes and i think hey i should downvote, but...
A. oh wait it's a new user and that would suck for many obvious reasons.
B. Or I think they have 0stu on their post so why bother?
C. Or I think maybe I'm in the wrong for downvoting and I should think about this more. If no one else is downvoting then what is it that they know that I don't? It's true many people can rush to assumptions and yet be wrong. I hope people think about it and accept that they can be wrong.
I tend to start with warnings. I don't follow people who have issues. I don't pay all that much attention to trending because it's not all that great of content to begin with. I don't have a large enough vote to do anything on trending besides make some enemies.
I tell you where i see crap posts that i would love to downvote... #steemmonsters or #spt hashtags. But i represent a company for the game and that would not be good for me to downvote there as a 3rd party company that is meant to support the whole ecosystem. However some of those crap posts on steemmonsters are people who feel 100% that their posts are valid and not just junk screenshots and repetitive non sense. Or someone doing a give away of a stupid 2 cent card. But they think hey people like it so they upvote their post to 10 stu which is funny to me... because again it's a 2 cent card.
But is that just my personal issue?
I'm not saying downvoting shouldn't happen... I just thought I'd write about some of our reservations.
Most of us are just not going to find clear cut examples of reasons to downvote. And if it's not clear cut... then downvoting might have the chance of making us look like the idiots.
Alone it won't do much, but if 100 dolphins use their 1 out of 2.5 free downvotes on that post there's no way the bid bot abuser is going to attempt to retaliate everyone, he can retaliate 1-2-3 people and how hard will it be for the others involved in the downvoting to counter the damage? This HF will only succeed if we all band together and downvote things that truly don't deserve the rewards they've gotten or bought their trending spot for.
No one is downvoting nowadays, there's barely any going cause most are just concerned with growing in stake through curation rewards so of course you don't see downvotes often today. That will hopefully change with the HF and normalize them a lot more though.
Of course warnings are nice "hey, do you really think you needed to buy votes from 5 different bid bots for this content?" and if they continue being the zaku or cbhartist who apparently can't get enough of the attention or are just using bid bots to somehow profit (who knows what's going on behind the scenes) then you'd move onto warning #2 which is a downvote and who knows maybe that'll create a chain reaction of other downvotes and the author will understand that in order to deserve that #2 trending spot they'll have to either try with better writing or content again.
The weird part today is that even if someone were to bid bot something super illegal/bad without every bid bot owner being made aware and removing the votes we wouldn't even have the power as a whole fucking community to downvote it. That's how much stake is locked up in bid bots.
Funny you mention steemmonsters cause I mentioned that zaku who promotes his SM tournaments before I read your comment all the way through.
I have nothing against people not using their downvotes or being the first to downvote something out of fear of retaliation, but they have to understand that them using their daily downvotes on legitimate content that deserves them to make trending and the use of bid bots better, the more they are going to be rewarded back from the rewardspool and long term as well for keeping this place clean. I am hopeful that many will become more active with their downvotes especially if they see many others on certain posts already - not trying to encourage ganging up on certain users but if it's done on actual shit posts then where's the harm in that.
I do expect there to come forward downvote guilds where you can let them use your downvotes with steemauto or the wise protocol and there may be some random retaliation going on as well but hopefully there will be some counter retaliation guilds coming up too. I know I'd delegate to something like that when I am in the position to, at least.
Sorry to get back to your comment so late, a lot of comments in here that caught me by surprise and had to find the time to reply.