I think I understand more about this now. It's easy to see this commit as an abuse of power, but I don't think that's dan's intention.
Clarification of the commit
Flagging a post is currently the only way to counteract "bad" voting. When posts achieve an excessively high reward it gets downvoted because people think the reward is too high.
This has a couple of negative effects:
- It gives the message that the post is bad when in fact the downvoter just thinks the voting is bad;
- It affects the reputation of the poster even though the downvoter might not have a problem with that person.
The commit adds the possibility to downvote a vote instead of a post. Users that don't agree with how someone is voting will be able to negatively impact the voter (with whom they disagree with) without affecting the poster.
Logically speaking, this makes sense: make it clear what we're saying when we vote.
Possible motivation
You might be inclined to think that the motivation is to make the separation between downvoting posts and downvoting votes clearer. Whilst that might be true, the post negative voting and steem by @dan focuses a lot on whales and bots. Whilst I'm only speculating now, I think there's a lot more to this than meets the eye:
The abusive whale up voter is not only gaining profits, but denying others the opportunity to earn profits by forcing them to use down votes.
I think @dan is going after other whales. In particular, he's going after whales that use bots:
This type of behavior is when a whale creates a bot that simply up votes everything from reputable users regardless of quality. This kind of behavior can be countered by other whales only by pushing the author rewards toward 0.
I think @dan is trying to protect steem from whales that are abusing their power to earn high rewards by giving altruistic whales a better way to punish the abusive whales without affecting post authors.
I was wondering whether downvoting could be coupled with an additional multiple-option choice, like
"downvote for abuse / reputation impact",
"downvote for excessive payout - payout correction / no reputation impact"
"downvote for (some third option)"
Something like that plus a
Yep, something like that...
@alexgr this is kind of the type of thing I was trying to get to in that post. I think you two hit the nail on the head with your suggestions here. These types of changes are going to be needed if the platform is going to grow, could go bad, could go well, but if it's controlled properly I think it'll work out.
@alexgr
although I like this, who is going to moderate it? the problem still remains. people will follow the money no matter what. how about the power of the voter?
That looks even worse than the censorship bots. Who would be in charge of that monstrosity? Do they get to punish people that offend them? If not what stops them?
Are you gonna hire the Conde Nast censorship team to run it or go straight to Homeland Security for the wrongthink patrols?
This is the kind of SJW safe space crap that is ruining facebook and reddit. Grow some thicker skin and just ignore the people you don't agree with instead of trying to develop ways to label and censor them.
Would something different happen if a post were flagged for abuse instead of being flagged for excessive payout? If the result is the same, the distinction wouldn't serve a purpose. More importantly, your suggestion still puts the focus on flagging the post instead of the voter.
In my scenario, yes. The two downvotes would be programmed to have a different effect. One only affecting payout, the other affecting payout+reputation as well.
I don't know if it's technically feasible - just asking.
(And yes, the intention of the proposal I'm making is to keep flagging the post instead of nullifying the voter - because as Dan has noted in his series of articles, people take it personally (for irrational reasons) when they are aimed at). In theory it shouldn't make a difference, yet it does.
Thank you @bitcalm for that very enlightening comment.