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RE: Our Corrupt Sense of Fairness
We can have negative voting without abusing the flag. It's called voting for something else. People seem to forget that the available rewards during any voting period are fixed, and we're just voting on how those rewards get allocated. Which means your vote for one thing effective DOES negate a vote for something else. The difference is that by casting votes affirmatively for one thing rather than negatively against another, we'll avoid causing downvoting wars and an otherwise nasty and cutthroat culture here. @dan, I'm a big fan of yours, but I really hope you stop it with this vote-canceling nonsense. At least as it relates to Steemit.
I cannot agree with that. Voting for something else does not result in what I want to achieve with my Steem Power. I see a post which I consider overpaid and I want these funds to be distributed to anything but this post. This is a legitimate need and right now all I can do is this: suppress it and feel frustrated or fulfill it and abuse the flag. This does not look like good user experience.
It's my certainty that I need this feature versus your speculation that this feature will be abused and will cause negative consequences. In other words, it's something that undoubtedly exists (unless you question my ability to define my needs) versus something that might come into existence but we can't be sure (unless you have some special ability to predict human behavior with 100% accuracy).
Therefore in my view, the right thing to do is to introduce the feature (so that the existing need is fulfilled) and then find out if your fear materializes or not. If it does then we need to reconsider and possibly remove the feature. But doing nothing is the worst option: I'm deprived of something that I truly need just because of your speculation which might be false.
But how can you determine something is "overpaid" without relying on the consensus of all the other votes? I don't see how you can know something is or isn't overpaid without a market consensus and if you decide arbitrarily, without any justification, then you harm the user experience.
Where we differ is, I do not assume that I alone can or should determine the value of a post. I consider that if a lot of other people find value in it then even if I don't personally see why they value it so much, I do not have enough information to determine it's overpaid unless I know a lot about the person receiving the payment.
For example if a millionaire posts on here and gets lots of big rewards then the fact that we all know he is a millionaire, we could say he's being over paid because we know his net worth and that he doesn't really need the money. On the other hand, most of the people abusing the downvote are voting in a way which judges the author as much as the content, so they are saying with their vote "you are being paid too much and I don't like it8" but without any justification as to what "too much" is or why they don't like it. This could easily have the author think the voter is singling them out and does not like them personally.
Because other authors might post similar content and not be voted down, it will harm the user experience for that author but also for other authors who see they can be downvoted for no reason at all or for completely arbitrary reasons which very well might be personal. And thats the problem with it.
Yes, this is one (of a handful) of the big problems with the downvote. Nicely articulated!
OK, you've made your point quite well and I begin to understand your concerns: if an author has an audience it's quite inappropriate to come and shut down the show.
But the thing is we have the flag tool. So if I really want, I can come and intervene anyway. The status quo just makes the emotional tension bigger that it needs to be and prevents nothing. That's why I propose to give people a way to do what they can do and will do anyway but at least minimize the negative aspect associated with flagging.
From my post on incentivized downvotes and a possible implementation. So in response to:
I'll say that I agree, but you're also downvoting everything else on the platform. Also, the weight of that negative vote is nowhere near that of an upvote, so you create an imbalance that inflates the value of posts with higher visibility. Not a good thing.
Spot on. If you don't like something don't vote for it. Negative voting is just asking to be abused as an option.
This: