RE: Why Flagging Is Bringing Down The Value of Steem, As A Currency
I really like Steemit, and can only hope that what we're experiencing here falls under the broader heading of "growing pains."
For me, the most important thing to remember-- and to keep stressing-- is that communities are built by people, not by technology or scripts or bots. And so, when we look at these issues now surfacing, they are ultimately "people issues" not technology issues... which seems to be your undertone, as well.
Maybe it would behoove everyone to look outside Steemit and look at the broader dynamics of startups. There tends to be a core group of early adapters who end up as significant stakeholders because they took the risk of getting involved early. They end up as "micro-millionaires" on the back of... well, very little but good timing and good fortune.
Nothing wrong with that... but their simply human attachments subtly shifts from having a vision of the project going forward to "preserving my pile of gold." And it's just human nature at work... not evil intent. You look at people who invested in a private offering in a company, and they start wholesale dumping their stake immediately as the IPO goes out... "holding onto the gold." At which point the long term stakeholders jump in and make long term investments.
How does this relate to the flagging and related? Well, it's a sort of battle of "the old, let's not change anything" vs. longer term community members. The inherent fear of "I'll get LESS, if I allow things to change." Of course, few will fess up to that in public, but the underlying psychology is there.
So what truly FUELS Steemit, going forward? Houston, we have a problem. Or at least a conundrum... this bills itself as a "social" site, yet it seems rather dominated by bots, scripts and technology. Well "rewarded" content can have 300 upvotes but has been READ 25 times? That makes little sense... especially if you're a content creator trying to make the decision "Should I set up shop here?"
I don't know about anyone else, but I like to collect readers not bot-pings." If I'm an artist, and I post pictures of my art and link to my web site? I'm pretty sure those bots aren't going to go to my web site and order a piece of art!
Whereas I can see your point about "breach of contract," I can also wrap myself around viewing the first 24 hours more as a curation process, a period during which the "score" for my content is determined, through some form of community consensus. Not everyone is going to like what I created. Such is art, writing, photography, protests, politics and what have you.
So I'm really OK with someone casting a "minus vote" for not liking the content-- not so much with casting a minus vote as a protest against others liking the content... which seems like what we're dealing with.
From where I am sitting, it's not the flagging-- itself-- that's hurting the price of Steem, but the relative arbitrariness of that flagging... which creates unrest, instability and division in the community. And an unstable community is not an attractive investment...
https://steemit.com/life/@j3dy/water-and-light-d4-challenge30-play-2
https://steemit.com/story/@j3dy/having-fun-on-steemit-c30-d3-week-recap-work
You are welcome to read my posts :) made in more peaceful times :D when the challenge30 was active :)
Those would be the most concerning community. Other material I have on the topic is from comments and no where near as coherent. I would like to hear your thoughts :)
Thank you for actually taking the time :) I saw an upvote so I suppose that's a check mark :D
@j3dy, I really enjoyed the posts-- sadly, they are evidently "too old" to allow new comments, so I couldn't leave anything. Not the first time I have encountered this... but it does beg the question of why readers would not be able to leave a comment after a certain time.
I know I have felt the same way multiple times, since I tend to dig around and find some gems here and there, normally I link back, try to find the people involved and spark that topic again in one of their newer posts, I've always thought the way Steemit is built is just flawed, people should be able to receive rewards whenever somebody finds that content meaningful and with the current state of affairs nobody is up for that, ned and dan even believe that all the votes for a piece are cast within the first day, without taking into account the system design MADE to push people to promote and create new and new posts/blog/interactions each and every day, with the "creme of the top" being what is rewarded/trended/read/bot whatever. The fact is that most people care for rewards, most authors care for rewards and that is no way to build anything sustainable and long term, much less creative.
I would love to see somebody address these topics but I'm sure I'm not the first to do so, the posts probably received their minor payouts with a moderate conversation and were quickly forgotten with the majority of people here having a memory of either memes(how cool I am ME ME) or fishes with a 2 second attention span :|
Waaay to promote steemit, your posts are forgotten after the payout, :D
And way to go me ranting on people's heads all day :D
But yeah its 80% a game for me while I try my best to take the good and learn as much as I can, the rewards are already passed around anyways and playing or likely preying on people's emotions doesn't fit with my "morality"
The platform has so many possibilities and could be worth so much for people in general and rather than making something meaningful, people are debating: game theory, bullshit, saying that's the human nature and we are mostly stuck on that downward spiral, because nobody can catch up to reality and stop their madness, I suppose that is what you get when you leave monkeys pushing buttons(Upvote/flag and repeat)
Some extra ranting for the benefit of having it out there, btw having this information is a gem in its own right, we can revisit the comments maybe even years from now.
A lively platform would be great, buuut we have this daily grind.
Sure beats playing any web-based game tho :|