RE: @freezepeach: The Flag Abuse Neutralizer
Indeed, a balance needs be struck between fairness and reality.
I have personally had my Reputation nearly destroyed for calling out what I perceived as fraud being committed by one user (and his network of wannabe crypto-gangsters). Though this action was brought about by my own doing and choices (calling one "out" before reading and understanding the "White Papers"), I can't help but relate it to what happens in the streets - away from the keyboard.
Let's say I produce a magazine or music cd, and there are those who do not like it. They simply do not have to purchase or listen to/read it (showing their disapproval, essentially a downvote/flag). Sure, they have options to take me to civil court (which costs them money to initiate), the option to picket the stores in protest which sell my product, etc. etc. etc. They have these and many more options to use in attempts to hide, devalue, or stop my product. Yet NONE of them have a direct affect on the value of said product simply based on the power of the opposition's opinion. There must be a direct attempt to counter my efforts with support either coming to them from the community or not. Never in the history of the economy's "supply and demand" model has the value of anything ever been negated or destroyed by the voiced opinion of one person.
Those who like and support the magazine/cd would normally purchase the product (showing their approval, essentially an upvote). Each individual is charged the same, no matter their own personal gross or net value. Bob does not have to pay $1 because he has only $200 in his wallet while Tom doesn't have to pay $10 because he has $2,000 in his possession....
I would propose a more realistic approach to the whole thing. Perhaps the flag option should not even be allowed in the case of posts (if you don't like it, don't upvote it). And if it remains an option to flag posts, perhaps it could be on a one to one basis (why should one Whale be allowed to crush the opinions of a few to dozens and even hundreds or thousands of Red Fish?). If 20+ Red Fish upvote someone's posts, why should one Whale be allowed to negate all the value and opinions of 20+ others?
Personally I would like to see the whole system redesigned as to not favor a Financial Oligarchy. I understand that those who invest more should have more influence and exposure here.... yet giving them so much power to crush those just starting here? Well, that's not to much different from allowing a certain North Korean leader to bomb any poor country he sees fit simply because he's been "investing in rockets for well over a year now, has been in politics since his birth, and because he's so much more wealthy than the countries he's bombing".
Just because one is rich/wealthy does not make their opinion any more valuable than that of the person who has not one penny. What about persons of wealth who got there either by having it handed to them (inheritance) or by stepping on and destroying as many people as they could during their climb to the top? Their opinions should not be any more valuable than the rest.
It's one thing to upvote in varying value amounts (donations basically, it's up to the individual just as in life itself - no one says you have to give or how much, it's purely a personal decision). It's a complete other thing to take value away (confiscate the donations of others; theft, which is illegal in life) - and to base the confiscated value on the wealth of the individual flagging is thee most ridiculously devised form of Class Warfare that I have ever seen in an online community.
Sad, truly sad.
I really like this response. I've long held the contention that "one dollar contributed to government, one vote" would result in a much fairer system. Sure, a Google could pay a whole bunch of extra taxes and get some legislation changed -- but then they'd face competition the next year (and future ones) from other search engines/spy organizations, who could also contribute to the bloodsucking government (I'm not sure my position is clear, here... :) ).
Of course, that was in my more naive days when I believed that old phrase, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" wouldn't result in a negative outcome!
Anyway, I had a post "moderated to oblivion" simply because I included an affiliate link (and I think perhaps BitConnect might be a scam now, but it's too late, I'm already involved) and I noticed that I was able to remove the "oblivion" after I had funded my Steemit account. So there's one way to go about it, but, I understand that not everybody has the available funding. So a community solution seems the right approach.
I like differentiating between "number of votes" and "weight of votes". I'm certain that there's a "middle ground" algorithm.
Thank You, I completely get where you are coming from (Don't let Uncle Sam watch the kids, and don't bend down when he's around ;) ).
You exemplified a point I tried to make in one of my earlier posts on the topic (in relation to being flagged).... Sure, I could have sunk some money into my account and "bought back" my Reputation, And yet this, to me, sure seems to only support the Oligarchy set-up being run here. Sort of defeates ANY purpose of content being the deciding factor of success or failure (rather than who can afford the success and who is doomed to wallow in the mud).
There are a lot of good points in this dialogue between you two. I especially like the magazine/cd analogy, as it does a good job of illustrating the dynamics of the features here.
These are the kinds of conversations we need to make a better future for the community. Thanks a lot for the great input.
Thank You.
It seems so hopeless at times, being a Red Fish just trying to stay afloat here. Especially when it seems the Value-Of-One's-Network has far more influence than the actual Quality-Of-One's-Content. When Whales can post "spam" (Like a YouTube music video with no commentary or just a copy/paste of the yt video's description) and have their Whale Network upvoting the crap out of it for big profits while a Red Fish post of personal pics or videos and personal experiences, etc. goes by unnoticed (and sometimes flagged by these same Whales).
How do we get back to Quality-of-Content being the deciding factor of whether one is successful or a failure? How do we stop such abuses and injustices of these highly valuable Networks of accounts/users of abuse/collusion?
As it stands, it's a moot point. The "solution" to have every Red Fish flag every spam or inappropriate post would leave little to no upvoting power for promoting others, and would surely trigger retaliation flags from those more powerful accounts of collusion. And add in the powerful self-upvoting abuse being used by these same collusion accounts.... it always comes back to a trickle-up economy in my mind (thus, the Financial Oligarchy label).
IDK, time will tell.