The Value of a Smoothie Recipe
I have nothing against blackberries, pears, or smoothies. In fact, I start most every day with a smoothie (today was a simple banana/cherry/yogurt/chia). But I did find it somewhat odd to come across a smoothie recipe that this community believes is worth $1200.
Then I noticed that some some very high steemworth individuals had indeed said that the smoothie recipe was particularly valuable. Some of whom have suggested as recently as yesterday that posts that are earning more than their worth should be flagged. I read the recipe again. Still sounded tasty, still didn't seem like it was worth $1200 (to me).
I have no intention of flagging the post -- to me, a 'flag' connotes wrong-ness and there is nothing wrong with the post itself.
Would I "downvote" the post if that were an option presented? Again, probably not. "Downvote", to me, connotes some sort of disagreement with the poster's argument, or flaw in critical thinking. I don't disagree with smoothies.
What our upvotes or flags or downvotes or whatever really come to is a determination as to how much of today's pie your content deserves. There's only one pie per day, so if I give you a big piece of pie I am also taking pie away from other pie-worthy content. And face it, almost everyone likes pie.
Replace upvotes and flags with "more pie" and "less pie" buttons. Problem solved.
I'd love to see the downvoting work as intended and am glad you brought it up in this way.
I've been noticing more and more smoothie recipes being posted and taking off and assume it is because people are hoping to cash in on the trend. It builds momentum by itself. I even had to refrain from upvoting one because I figured it was worth the curation rewards if it took off. It did and I immediately felt bitter in a way I didn't expect to.
While there's nothing to be done except to laugh it off, I find myself thinking that the opening page being the trending one might be causing a lot of unnecessary discontent and driving away potential investors and members.
On one hand, a lot of us are consciously choosing to upvote only original, quality content. A smoothie recipe makes a good example of content that can only rarely be called original, the same way no one today can claim to have invented bread. I'm not against recipes being on Steemit or upvoted, but it is a lot harder to convince my artist friends that this is the place to blog and that this community values original content when I risk looking like I am an idiot or simply being dishonest with them.
A working downvote would change what trends.
Hi! Check out @dantheman post from earlier today... Your comment emboldened me to say something!
Nice! I am hoping for a definitive and authoritative guide to voting, with a downvote that doesn't lower reptuation. As you say,
If I can be rewarded for accurately identifying posts that will be popular, I can be rewarded for identifying posts that have been, in many people's opinions, over-valued. It's actually a more valuable service.
When only upvoting exists, there is so much incentive to copy what is currently trending that it will produce arbitrary trends that have to be counter-acted by whales. I am reading some persuasive arguments against the downvote, but none of these has proposed a solution to balanced content curation, that I have seen.
In any case, thank you for drawing my attention to your comment and for making such a thought-provoking case in this article.
That could be a visual means of simplifying it. There is already the voting power slider which is in some ways similar but not everyone has it - I think it depends on your SP.
I'm not in that SP club, I think that's for larger SP holders at this time. PS nice that you tried to cheer up our depressed trucker yesterday.
Not sure it made any difference but I think he's back.
He's back and better than ever!
Do you use a slider when you vote?
No I don't have enough SP to be in that club.