Steemit Flag Wars: You don't have to flag anyone if you don't want to. Help the Steem community to survive by using your power to HEAL.
It's War time
A few minutes ago a came across this post from @spiritualmax, and even though is an interesting post about what not to do on Steemit, the second part of it got is what got me thinking.
The war is real, and while some take the frontlines and throw punches around, most of the people here on the Steemit Community decided to stay on the side lines, waiting to see what happens.
Between these people, there is minnows (who are afraid to say anything and get a heavy flag from any of the sides), there is dolphins (who don't want to risk all the hard earned money/work/popularity by getting involved), and there is orcas/whales (some who dont think that flags are the solution, but also don't do anything to help the end of the war).
There is all sizes and shapes.
(image source: https://www.ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2016-01-12/werklund-researcher-gives-public-talk-weight-bias)
In war, there is casualties
But as in every war, those who suffer more are the one that don't have much power (minnows and dolphins).
@spiritualmax himself was a victim of the collateral damage, when he made this fun post that got lot of attention (was around $200 value at the time i read), and then got a huge flag because he just metioned people involved on the ongoing war.
No attack to any side from him, only a fun project to create Magic the Gathering cards based on "famous" Stemmit Users.
The good part of this history is that he got lots of big votes from big whales on his next post, recovering some of the damage that he suffered.
The war will end eventually, with one side triumphant over the other, and the people with power will still keep their power, while the small guys will either be dead (left steemit for good), or crippled (low reputation, and low motivation to keep going)
You don't need to shoot a gun to help those who suffer the most in a war
Lots of whales don't want to get involved into the war (No matter wich side they think is right, and that is not the point here), and i understand the reasoning of not using aggression to fight aggression.
So here is my shoutout to all the whales that don't want to be part of it:
Help the little guys. They are the one suffering.
Everyone on this platform should be allowed to say whatever they want about one side or another, be it a serious position or just an stupid joke.
If the big community with very low power don't stick around, guess what will happen? Only a very small amount of people will use the Steem blockchain, and no one outside of it will care enough to invest in Steem.
All those accumulated tokens you have will be worth nothing, if people start to leave. No one will want to buy your Steem when you try to sell it on the future.
So, here is ma call to @aggroed, @themarkymark, @acidyo, @elear, @transisto, @ned, @dan, @sweetsssj, @nanzo-scoop, @exyle, @adsactly, @davidpakman, @good-karma, @velimir, @kingscrown, @flauwy, @howo, @papa-pepper, @stellabelle, @teamsteem, @jerrybanfield, @paulag, @taskmaster4450, @mammasitta, @therealwolf, @yabapmatt, @cryptoctopus, @anomadsoul, and any other whale out there, that don't want to use the right to flag.
Be the Red Cross, Be a Medicine Sans Frontier, Be a healing factor on this equation.
Give upvotes to the small people that suffered collateral damage from the war.
(image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_medic)
At least help heal the damage, and allow that people caught on the crossfire to have a chance to stick around, and show that they can learn more about the community, and do good things around here.
Let the Peace reign in the end...
It truly makes me sad the lack of support that the community has given, especially big actors that have done nothing and seem complicit in the very action involved.
A few weeks ago, I was 55, was flagged down to 53. Climbed back up to 55 and then was flagged down to 37.
While I do not care all that much, it annoys me to see a lack of conversation being done by those that carry a lot of weight. Witnesses and whales alike.
Hell, we have seen more talk and work from @dan than probably all of the top 20 witnesses combined. @dan at least flagged the person to show his disapproval of what was going on.
Any peep from the guys up top? Nothing.
@TheMarkyMark has been the only one to give a damn. Beyond Bernie.
Personal opinion? There is a fear of losing the vote weight of 1.3M SP. To me, that shows that they are no better than the current greedy politicians that get paid by lobbyists to vote for the betterment of their wallet, and not the people.
Speak Up.
I am only slightly Salty if you can't tell.
Up vote a bit for visibility.
Well said!
What exactly was said?
Do you want me to repeat the post? Because the whole post was good. But especially the call to the in green tagged "whales" to help the "soldiers" here on steemit that suffer and suffered from the collateral damage because of all this flagging and downvoting that is going on.
lol...don't start!....lol...
Peace.
Flags are great to keep the spam posts out. If people shit post and get rewarded, they'll keep shit posting. Eventually they'll give up and go away. I don't agree with what happened in your example and it sucks that they didn't get a payout for their post because it was a quality post but if you attack someone, especially someone with a lot of power, they will mess you up. Just think of some of these whales as kim jong il.
hey @phgnomo - very good post, straight to the topic. I think a lot of users out here just keep silence as they fear to get between the frontlines... I saw it right in the beginning when Tuck of @SPL criticised what was going on around here and for this very posts got all his other posts which were founding the Steemit Poker League( @SPL) got flagged down. THat in fact almost killed the complete communiy with an instance... I don´t think that this really is what this platform should be alike... and this exaple showed pretty much that even smallest critism of a neutral person will not be tollerated.
I believe something has to be done, however I can totally understand most the minnows having fear getting involved in here.
Lots of users i know have opinions, on both sides, but they just dont say anything, because they dont have any power.
I saw good people getting flags on both sides.
The thing about flags is that everyone may use them as they want, and there is no problem with that.
The problem begins when people start to get flagged because of their opinions. This is the same effect as someone with a huge power in the "real world" use this power to control everyone.
People should use their flags as they wanted, but we need some balance on the system, or else everything will fall appart, and all those STEEM will be worth less than a Bitconnect Coin.
That´s what I´m saying ... if one cannot stand up onto his/her opinion no more because of fear of those kind of users then the entire community here at STEEMIT is at risk & a lot of new people who just joined in will most likely not stay here for long...
If one opinion mustn´t be outspoken no more we are here already on the way to a monopolistic structure/ dictatorship.
Indeed. But Steemit is a decentralized platform. There is no one taking care of what is just or unjust. This is up to the community.
But the problem start when a part of the community that have enough power to do anything just stay on the sideline caring only about their own money.
The flags have its reason to exist, and they are useful, but they may also be used in a bad way, and some people see them as aggression.
Don't want to use them? fine, no problem, but at least try to care about the community in another way.
That is the beatiful part of Steemit: Its pretty hard to achieve a full dictator status, because of the power distribution, but if part of the community don't stand on the way of someone trying to do it, i may start to become easy to do so.
I suppose most of the minnows don't know because this has grown too large.
However, it's humans acting here. Not a perfect society. Just my two cents.
I saw that there is a lot of collateral damage in this war with anyone who commented one of h’s posts getting flagged. I did not try to understand who is right or wrong - the blog in question was a perfectly normal one about crypto currency. It deserved a big upvote, and there were hundreds of comments. It was distressing to see so many - nearly all, of the comments flagged, for no reason.
I decided not to vote or comment. That’s like parachuting into the middle of a battlefield. I don’t know what kind of weapons or power the attacker has, but I felt it better to stay out of the way. Does that make me a coward? Yes - but an alive coward.
I am very sorry for all who decided to leave steemit due to being caught in the cross-fire.
I wonder if arbitration could help?
Arbitration would only help if both parties wanted to negotiate a peace term (wich in this case happened, but it started all over again).
Think about it as the the resistance movement that appeared during WWII. They didnt had much military power, but they had support from the great armies.
Most of the time, people without much power will only "fight back" any opression if they have some kind of support. Or else, their first priority is to preserve their lives.
I'm one of the 'little guys' (and a Red Cross volunteer in real life btw). I wouldn't have discussed the idea with the cards that openly if I had had it at all. Could have been guessed that not everybody would take it easy. The post seems to have got about 200 Steem Dollars to be paid out though. That's probably more than I will ever receive here. Thus it's not that much 'David against Goliath'-like as it may seem. The author of the MTG cards post is not a little child who needs guidance.
Besides, I'm not responsible for anybody other's income, or am I?
Nobody needs to stick to this platform if he doesn't like to.
The MTG post was used as an example of how much a community support may help others, since after the fact, lots of big players jumped in to defend him.
He may not be the smallest user around, but what about the really small users that posted an honest well funded opinion about anything related to the flag war (no matter wich side he was in)?
I saw the beggining of it, and people defending both sides got flagged hard only because they expressed their opinion on the matter.
It is not about guiding anyone. It is about reducing the damage on the community as a whole.
If you don't have a community, the steem tokens wont be worth anything. And i bet that is something no one that uses the platform want to see it happening.
And no, you are not responsible for anybody income, but may choose to be responsible for the welfare of the whole community.
Actually, those who hold more STEEM should be the most interested on keeping this platform in good health.
STEEM is a inflationary coin, with means that if no one use it, the supply will increase over time, wich means it will have less value. The only way too keep STEEM prices high is to keep people interested in using it.
In the end, everyone loses if more people exit steem than the amount of people entering it.
I just read the comment by @swissclive. Maybe I didn't know enough at first. I'm just to fond of myself when I scent a chance to express new views on a topic. So maybe everything below this line is pure bullshit or no valuable contribution ...
If the bigger users are up to destroy their playground because their money is safe anyway ... shrug
Social media is about business these days. Not about letting everyone speak on every topic in epic width or something that comes close to it.
Second, it's a kind of infrastructure. Infrastructure may change. High emission cars may be blocked from cities. A tree which has enlighted the sight on a railway route may fall onto it and block it. Who's suffering then? Not the managers or founders. Can they go and saw the tree into pieces themselves? No, they will use money to pay someone for that service or rely on public government to fix it. Who will be blamed for the delay? The people who didn't remove the tree in time. (Those are mostly volunteers leaving their office, at least in Germany.)
In fact, it's always the minnows who suffer. Humans don't act differently just because it's online. Au contraire, they are more and more rude, each of us gets more rude and impatient, even in real life.
We have some broken governments all over the world. What does stating "they should" help? Nothing at all. There's too many people having different views on how things should have done (for example: with refugees) and in the end nothing is done at all because the arguing parties are not able to come to compromise because of the damage any decision causes.
What I understand is: those flags might have been used to make people stop arguing. There was no other powerful way to address them all at once. As a means of communication this site has some heavy disadvantages. You cannot send private messages and you cannot pin entries or give comments a higher rating so that those are more prominent to the viewer.
If you want to establish a new neighbourhood you can restrict the houses to be built to a certain kind or form or you can permit everyone to find an architecture at his own wish. Which is better for the community? I have seen both in my former hometown.
I don't think it helps a community to give everyone the chance to express himself to the fullest. Sad but true.
You do have some valid points, and i agree that a minimal structure in any kind off society is needed to avoid full chaos and extinction.
But when we are living into the playground we should just shut our mouth and let him do whatever he wants? I don't think so.
There will always be people holding more power than others on every kind of community (be it money, military, influence, etc), but what matters in the end is what is done with that power.
In the end, no one can force anyone to do anything. But, the minimum that must be done by us is to try to offer possible solutions, and hope that the one those with power listen to what we are saying.
As long as it is not something that incite hate, evil or anything similar, yes, every voice must be allowed to be heard. Not matter if its something smart or stupid.
People may only do fully concious decisions if they are able to acess all information on the subject.
Thank you. (I'm too tired of the day to write more but there's not much more to say either.)
@swelker101 you see? that's what I was talking about
For me to be more beautiful ...
You just kill it all, nothing matters most in a team than encouraging your team members both the good and the bad all make up a team, were all are here sticking together for a reason, the whales, minnows etc, you can't be this without being that #justmyopinion# WE CAN DO IT TOGETHER