Bernie is NOT the Problem, The Flagging System Is!
Loyalty ..
Our loyalty must lay with STEEM/STEEMIT ultimately - if you have the success of the platform in mind, primarily, over all else, then you are a brother/sister of mine. We need to find utilitarian solutions that provide for the best experience, the maximum success, and the greatest facilitation of individual expression as is possible in any medium - the misfortunes of individuals must be considered of course, in order to find such solutions, but fighting fires in order to reverse the fortunes of individuals being harmed by one individual, could be a very grand waste of time.
4 Options As Far as I Can See ..
1) Get Rid of Flagging / Downvoting Entirely
As many have pointed out in very interesting discussions on Discord Steemspeakthere are destructive/disruptive behaviors that need to be "policed" - individual's flagging abusively, spammers, plagiarizers, tag abusers, and those who are systematically draining the rewards pool with coordinated upvoting of posts that lack objective merit.
We need some means to modify such behavior, so some means of making less visible, reducing rewards gained, and/or nullifying the actions of said individuals, must remain in place.
2) Delegated Stake Flagging Negation or Collective Flagging
I believe this is a very slippery slope .. delegated stake WILL be used by individuals with sockpuppet/robot armies, to rob the rewards pool, or individuals organized into gangs for this purpose, not only will other individuals and groups have to battle these folks, they will also have to deal with the Bad Actor Whales, of which again .. there will be many more in the future.
3) Equally Weighted Downvotes
Yes yes .. INSERT Sybil Attack Vector Warning HERE! The benefits of this are obvious (more democratic, more consensus required .. always a good thing, so on and so forth) .. but the downsides are also obvious (Scary Sybil, and not easy to gain consensus required to have the necessary impact). So .. anyway, I'll just leave that one hanging there.
4) Remove Delegation and Make "Whales" a New Investor Class Steemian
I have posted about this before .. it was not very well fleshed out. :) But anyway, big players, or gangs of individuals adding up to a big player, are ultimately the problem, both in upvoting and downvoting - this has been proven by "The Experiment" .. a brilliant and highly effective effort!
We should consider a new class of account (Investor Class), for those above a certain level of STEEMPower, to be able to gain simply by holding that stake, as Witnesses gain by performing their function. This class of account would no longer be able to curate top-level posts, and would not be able to flag/downvote them either. They can however post "refuse payout" top level posts and comments, but the benefits to them, simply for holding STEEMPower, would be a decent amount of interest paid on their holdings.
I am unsure if this is possible, I am unsure if there would be an ability to pay such interest, I am unsure if it would be abused terribly ... but for certain, the current system is not perfected, so all avenues should be explored. This could serve a function akin to Dash Masternodes, where individuals are required to lock up substantial amounts of the currency in order to qualify - I do realize they also serve a real purpose, namely keeping the chain healthy, perhaps such a thing could be devised and required, for this new class of Steemian.
UPWARD & OUTWARD!Thanks for taking time to give me a read!
- @kurtbeil
- @kurtbeil
I wrote some suggestions about the flagging/downvoting issues here in the comments:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatageek/open-discussion-how-do-we-get-rid-of-flags-but-stop-spam
cheers @baah ..will read
It takes an individual to pull the trigger. Just because the flag is there, doesn't mean that's the problem.
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Apr 06. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $0.29 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Apr 06 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Opt in/out of users votes/flags completely. Trust me it's the best idea.
It would take too much energy out of the system... I picture a slow and very painful grinding to a halt.
It is easy to understand, and on first thought feels like the voluntaryist thing to do, but imagine how fast the Network of Animosities would form. Large numbers of people refusing to interact with ever larger numbers ..its much more complex than choosing a PvP server or nonPvP.. ;)