What the FLAG is going on?
Down-voting was intended to be part of the mechanism for correctly allocating the reward pool according to community consensus that forms during the process of curation. The main problem with down-votes were the weight of powerful accounts and the negative impact of down-voting on the psychology of the majority of Steemians.
So the down-vote was changed to a flag whilst many Steemians began discussions around the development of a culture of acceptable use. Generally, I think it's fair to say that most Steemians are in support of flags used to create a disincentive against abuse or plagiarism because without that, the cheats and abusers would run amok and destroy Steemit and Steem. The existence of the flag is therefore NOT the issue. The issue, like a firearm, is how this tool is used. There are several issues that arise from the way flags are presently used;
Rules governing the use of a flag - Well there aren't any rules other than those presently coded and at the moment you can flag whoever you like and the effects are determined by your Steem Power. (Given the psychology involved, even flags without power can cause enormous problem for the way Steemians feel about their fellows and about Steemit.) The 'rules' of flag use are open to interpretation and unfortunately, the consensus for reasonable use which the community has tried to implement goes straight out the window when there is a difference of opinion or it becomes expedient for some agenda or other. If you add in the voting power of a voting guild, a few dolphins or a whale and you have a great potential for misunderstanding and friction.
Concentrated power - It is entirely possible that many of Steemit's incredibly clever and complex mechanisms will only work properly at scale. They would certainly have a better chance of working if the power were more distributed and there were more accounts reading the material and curating. Each whale is interested in protecting her or his investment and they have different opinions on how best to do that. Reducing awards for certain content, increasing rewards for other content, undermining or supporting initiatives for one reason or another. All this behaviour is understandable but when the interests of the powerful become divergent, again their is the potential for great misunderstanding and friction.
Finite resource - The Steemit reward pool is finite and the environment is intentionally competitive with the intention of driving the production of quality posts. The reward pool must be finite....no-one wants hyperinflation. The rules that encourage competition also encourage innovation and enterprise that manifests in attempts to secure as large a feed from the reward pool as possible. There will be accounts that inevitably push the boundaries of what is broadly considered acceptable in order to secure such an income.
Imperfect reputation - With a perfect reputation indicator derived from known behaviour on the blockchain, supported by consensus of the majority of Steemians, it would be far easier for everyone to work out who to trust and what to believe. Reputation is affected by the down-vote which has broad subjective interpretation affecting it's application and Steem Power can be acquired and wielded without earning it. There is also the issue that it can take a long time for reputation to be impacted by unwanted or questionable behaviour.
There is a constant tension between the perceived costs and benefits of participation on Steemit and it doesn't help that everyone's expectations, influence, assessment of value and understanding of the system is different. However, the great thing about Steemit is that we have so much transparent information that we can analyze and such an adaptable consensus mechanism, we have the power to identify issues and address them. This is extraordinary and it just takes time and a bit of effort. Let's be clear about one thing, whatever the issues, Steemit has only gotten stronger for the testing, the community feedback and the development that has occurred since the Beta launch.
Solutions
How can we improve the flag, the SP distribution and the reputation measurement?
Flag - Let's describe the rules under which flagging is acceptable....what constitutes abuse? What constitutes plagiarism? Then ask everyone to observe the rules voluntarily. We could ask a creative Steemian to produce a badge which everyone who was prepared to observe these flagging rules could display within their account. The rules could also appear in the general steemit information pages with an explanation for why they exist. It might also be helpful to ensure that in order to deploy a flag, the reason for the flag must also be provided to help with further analysis. If an account is flagging with weak reasons, that fact alone would help to identify a rogue flag that the community might help nullify after discussion.
SP distribution - How about a curation reward sacrifice for one year? Ask all whales, minnows and dolphins to offer all their curation rewards to human or bot curators. Participant would also get a badge :) I think a lot could be done to accelerate Steem distribution by identifying beneficial behaviours and providing bonus rewards etc.
Reputation - Give reputation a greater number of characteristics so that an account can have a reputation for posting great fiction but no reputation for posting legal advice. Accounts could display their real world credentials and experience and we could have a plethora of additional badges.....witness, backup witness, steemit app developer. The only way I can think of that we can capture feedback about posts and general behaviour of accounts on Steemit is to enable a voluntary end -of-post-feedback addendum. Feedback could be another curation guild speciality.
Generally speaking, if we can truly remember that we are all beta testers and early adopters then the trials of the present may seem more reasonable and less personal.
This is a complex system and these are just my thoughts to help articulate some of the issues as I see them and hopefully some possible solutions. Please feel free to point out anything I've misunderstood.
Flag Meme Collection
Happy Steeming
I think that people should focus on posts they like and upvote them instead of flagging the posts they don't like!
Lol, that's very good majes. I hope i haven't created the impression that I would be happy about axes and saws! I'm only interested in voluntary approaches to help address these issues ;)
But but, we must... They are draining the reward pool sir !!!!
Let me ask you something since you seem to understand this problem better than most I have seen write about it....
What If, we only had two post in a 24 hour period, and two votes in that same period separated by 12 hours.
Once of those votes outweighed the other by 50%
Would one post earn 50% more than the other ? And would the reward pool be the same as if there were only one post or would it be decreased by 50%
Would the witness's keep producing blocks even though they were empty or would they simply stop for 12 hours until the second post was made and then produce a second block ?
This finite pool everyone speaks of, would it be the same if votes were to decrease by 50 % or would it too decrease by 50 %
It's all just too complicated, hatches, axe, and saws...
Should be fun to watch unless you actually invested in steem...
I will simply say that I don't know the answer to those questions. Hopefully someone with more technical knowledge will answer. If I can claim any understanding, it is normally at the conceptual level which I appreciate can be of limited use at times....this is one of them as I would only be guessing.
Fair enough, I respect your honesty regarding the matter.
I will share an observation for what it is worth. I administer a faily large investing forum, which is why I am online so much. Anyway, when the markets are going well everyone is happy, telling one another how much they admire each other, love in the air.
But when that market turns downward everyone starts looking for someone to blame. It gets fairly heated and many have to dealt with at the administrative level. The Big Red Button...
Steemians aren't happy with steem at 16 cents evidently, herein lies the real problem. So they blame everyone else.
Have a look at any of the numerous charts posted yesterday and notice that huge dip in steem price compared to everything else. That dip wasn't caused by some successful steemian "draining the reward pool" :)
I appreciate your insight and I agree to an extent...there is currently greater friction because the community reacts by trying to create efficiency. If Steem was making new highs daily, there wouldn't be the same focus on how the reward pool is being utilised....but the fact that it is creates an opportunity to try to deal with some of these issues, which would exist anyway, may be useful.
I also appreciate that the affects of steem price on the reward pool far outweighs the attempts to use it in enterprising ways which occasionally causes friction. I'm certainly not against innovation but I would like the most efficient, honest and value generating initiatives to succeed.
The bigger picture here is that a blogging platform will only attract a certain number of quality writers/bloggers/artists/photographers/experts etc. The majority of users on this platform will be readers if it succeeds. In order to help it succeed, it needs to be easier for people to aggregate and find information. Steemit could be the source of a considerable percentage of the world's trusted information. The success of Steemit is not necessarily tied to millions of bloggers but it is tied to attracting the best researchers, journalists, bloggers, writers etc....it's a bit chicken and egg but given the fact that ordinary people like me love Steemit, there is real hope.
Steemit is only the beginning and once the other applications that are exploiting other niches are all working in concert and offering the unique benefits of Steem, the Steemchain and synergies between them all...then the pressure may come off Steemit in a positive way and Steem should begin to make some real moves. It's certainly fun to speculate ;)
Hi @majes - a new block will be produced every 3 seconds regardless of user activity. The blockchain will produce the same amount of rewards regardless of the votes. If nobody voted for 24 hours except for one minnow who upvoted your post, you would get 100% of the rewards.
Thanks @timcliff :)
So then, if a third minnow enters the equation and votes for poster #1 but not poster #2 he then reduces the reward of poster #2 and poster #1 reward increases correct ?
So, flags aren't needed for "guiding the reward pool" at all. Just up vote where you think a reward should go.
If two minnows with equal voting power each vote on two posts (with no other votes cast), then those two posts will each receive 50% of the reward pool.
That is not a valid conclusion (IMO).
Let's say you have 20 minnows. 10 of them each vote for 10 unique posts that they think are awesome, and 10 of them collude together to upvote a 'crap post' and split the rewards. My math may be a tiny bit off, but I believe that the post that got 10 votes would get 90% of the rewards, and the other 10 posts would get 1% each.
If a dolphin thought that was unfair, it could downvote the 'crap post', and then the remaining 10 posts would each get 10%.
6 post deep thing is just annoying
Increasing the domination doesn't change the mathematics.
Let's stick to the 3 minnow example, if a third minnow votes for one of the 2 post and not the other he is in fact increasing one and decreasing the other.. He doesn't have to flag one to decrease it's value he simply needs to vote the other..
Colluding ? Really ?
So now the argument is conspiracy lol
Hatches and Axes Tim, ya'll go ahead..
thank you timcliff
Welcome.
@benjojo, classic memes and a touchy subject. I've been flagged a few times, but i survived. I only cried for a day or so, after I realised what had happened. Steem On Friend
Thank you bud, yes me too....though I actually ended up agreeing with some of the flags I was given and adjusted my behaviour accordingly.
I think the most important work will be to improve the reputation system. A good reputation should be more than just being good at earning Steem, but on the other hand would it also be complicating things more if you seperated the two completely and had a rep-button beside the upvote button for example. But if you put more emphasis on upvotes on comments, following the theory that an upvoted comment was a sign of friendly and civilised behaviour. Could be interesting to take an afternoon thinking about this, but right now I am awfully busy with figuring out how to continue my comic... Maybe later.
And a good post by the way!
I agree with you. A really effective reputation system would be sooooo valuable. It's a complex issue because you only get out what you put in which is time-consuming. Also because it's not perfect, you need to be aware of the possibility of missjudgement so that no-one is unfairly discriminated against and that there is enormous value in accounts of every level of reputation. We need to celebrate people's talents, knowledge, reliability etc that have been demonstrated within Steemit but we must see clearly that accounts with lower reputation may represent a person in whom you could place trust and that they are simply on a journey to demonstrate that. I hope Steemit as a community retains the ability to assume innocence and trust first.
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the first half of Jan 04. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $13.41 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jan 04 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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I think your idea to require a published reason for each flag is an excellent one. Even if it is just selecting from a small list of reasons. Actually there should only be a small list of acceptable reason to flag a post. Even better, each flag and user should be displayed in the comments along with the reason for the flag. Makes curating easier if I can see why a post I like has been flagged.
I love your additions to it bud, especially restricting to selections that fit the rules
By getting rid of down voting altogether....that would be the fairest way of all...
hi elewarne, how would you deal with plagiarism?
Just have cheetah say that it is,,,but even the bot is not always correct...flags can be abused easily for other reasons, like simply disagreeing with someone's opinion.
Hi @benjojo - When I joined in July I had heard of, but never seen, the down vote option. I do remember having discussions about flags and down votes a while ago so here is my opinion as it has never really changed no matter which forum I've contributed to.
I believe that the down vote should be reinstated without penalty to one's earnings. It's a way for people to thumbs down a post for whatever reason perhaps with an optional comment box to explain why they're getting a down vote.
Personally, to have the upvote without the down vote is like giving all the kids a trophy. If everyone's special then no one really is -- again, that's just my opinion.
Flags, on the other hand, should have governing rules because they DO affect earning potential. If a person is going to flag a post, there should be a mandatory drop down menu with reasons: plagiarism, abuse, SPAM, other. The flag could then be sent to Steemcleaners (or some other resource) to investigate the claim.
If the claims are founded they get a warning. If they keep doing it they get nuked. If the claims are unfounded, there should be some kind of canned explanation for the investigation and hopefully the accused continues to participate in the forum.
As things are now - flame wars happen and people love stoking the fires. A community moderator should be hired (by Steemit) and called upon to assess the situation. Flags can be undone but sometimes you need an independent third party to find diplomatic solutions to the problem.
I don't think a down-vote is necessary personally....just vote for stuff you like and ignore the rest. However, if there was one, I agree that it shouldn't affect rewards.
Generally, with the flags, I would like the scope for interpretation to be more restricted to a set of community agreed uses. Hopefully that would prevent the flag from being used maliciously or as a means of punishing posts that are not abusive but the account flagging has some other subjective issue with. Ultimately the upvote rewards are enough to enable an initiative to thrive or die off. Obviously we need excellent definitions for abuse, plagiarism and spam.
A downvote with no reward penalty to the author for a reader's disapproval along with a flag that applies an actual penalty and an arbitration system for disputing flagging and penalties is necessary in my opinion for a full system.
I think the biggest issue is steem distribution. The flagging mechanism is good for eliminating fake accounts and I have seen it used in that way wonderfully. I think every "person" has a right to their opinion if genuine and should not be flagged if it is not popular. Everyone has a demographic they appeal to.
As steemit grows I feel sites will be built to run on top of the chain with their own unique features, some would cover what you mentioned. The real need is to distribute the currency to even out rewards.
Thanks for your post, was very good.
Thank you very much for reading. I agree with you.