In defence of fiction on Steemit
An unfortunate situation arose earlier today on Steemit. @michelle.gent is a prolific and talented writer who posts original content on Steemit, has quite the following and investment in the platform, and has brought many other writers here. A lot of her posts do very well, but this was taken exception to, and at least 11 of her posts were downvoted for 'Disagreement on reward, Posting a novel page by page, getting ~65$ for ~20 views' by @transisto. Thankfully they were not downvoted to $0.00
While it is indeed his right to flag posts due to Disagreement on rewards, the effect of this action has sent ripples throughout the writing community on Steemit, and The Writers' Block, a Discord group made up of around 260 writers of fiction, non-fiction, screenwriters and poets.
I replied to @transisto with the following text:
I received this reply a little while later:
While I respect @transisto's view, I have to disagree: original writing of any form should be lauded and welcomed on Steemit. The platform is rife with memes, plagiarised content, shitposts and bot abuse. Original content should be praised and sought out. It brings value to Steemit, attracting readers, curators and other members who see success such as @michelle.gent's and aspire to attain that same level of respect and success. Already I have had messages from people genuinely scared by this turn of events, questioning if this platform is for them.
What worries me more is Original novel writing will never be a good fit for Steem, as stated by @transisto. At The Writers' Block, our vision going forward is to create a publishing house backed by crypto, bringing authors through our workshops - who all write original content on Steemit, unpublished elsewhere - editing and critiquing their work to a publishable standard, and then publishing it through Steemhouse Publishing. We truly believe our vision will attract more top class writers from beyond Steemit onto the platform, helping it to grow in numbers and in value.
Flagging does have its place, I agree, particularly for rampant abuse of the system. This situation, I feel, does did not merit it. Let's discuss this.
Are you a writer or keen to learn? Do you wish to join a community of like-minded individuals who can help hone your writing skills in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, technical, poetry, songwriting or playwriting? Join us at The Writers' Block on Discord and follow our community account @thewritersblock.
I have said it once and I'll say it again, this ability for ONE (or a few) person(s) to downvote a post and potentially destroy the payout is absolutely ridiculous. It should be based on the number of downvotes not the financial power of said downvoters.
I don't agree necessarily. If upvotes are weighted based on stake, then downvotes likewise should be weighted. However, there should be standards for how and when flags are to be used. The whitepaper needs to be editing to take out disagreements over rewards. That, more than anything else, has opened the door to this kind of abuse.
I don't believe upvotes should be based on stake either, again, it should be based on popularity or a derivative of that, anything than the whale chasing, circle jerk we have currently.
this is not democracy...
neither is being down-voted by one person something that you could call democracy
What i meant is that if everyone had the same power (democracy), the blockchain would be of no value. Its important to understand the fundaments of the blockchain prior to throwing invalid arguments
Or it's entirely possible that a blockchain that provides equal power to anyone that uses it would be the most valuable one in the world.
It theoretically is possible you’re correct. And I would love to see someone trying that approach so we could measure the difference. I though am convinced that it wouldn’t work. Maybe I’m wrong...
Don't you think it's more efficient to downvote something you don't like and upvote what you like?
It's all about the sigma attached to the "flag" (used to be downvotes). I didn't actually flag the author I suppressed some of the votes from others who upvoted too much.
By public outrage, declaratory statements, and, if necessary, flagging abusers. Establishing community standards can, and does, happen organically. Moreover, social pressure can exert an extremely powerful force on preventing behavior generally regarded as negative or abusive.
I'd also like to add that the behavior actually has to be abusive. Someone getting noticed by a whale, without fraud or some sort of collusion, is not abusive. Arguing that their popularity and viewership is insufficient to warrant that kind of reward is the height of arrogance.
It's not currently organic. I have not and will not downvote someone for the fear of retribution. We have cases where someone said something a whale didn't like and that whale downvoted every single post the person created. Destroying any sort of profit he could make. The person had to leave the platform and the whale kept on whaling.
I agree it's not organic at the moment. That's why others who are willing to take that risk, like myself and others, have to step up to the plate and speak out. It's likely going to hurt, but that's the risk you run.
Can't silence me forever. If I have to post the same sort of message dozens of times a day to overcome the destruction of the previous posts, I'll do it. I'd rather focus my time and effort on delivering quality posts, but if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.
And that's exactly my point, you shouldn't have to risk anything. For steem to become mainstream, I believe, it needs to fix this glaring issue
The only way I see us doing that without reverting to a centralized system is for some of us to take the hits and expose the behavior for what it is: self-serving abuse.
Hmm voter suppression much?
If you don't like something, just leave it alone. Nobody is forcing you to read it or vote on it. Do what I do, just ignore it.
If fiction wasn't a good fit for Steemit, people wouldn't be reading the fiction.
In my opinion, Steemit isn't just an echo chamber for cryptocurrencies. To make it so makes it no better than facebook, which is just used for cat pictures and anti-trump messages.
Just between you and me, you aren't the only determining factor in what is valuable. I don't vote on Crypto stuff, since that's not what interests me. I vote on arts, science, fiction, stories,photos, and I try to uplift other creators of content.
Why can't steemit be about everything? Let the people decide what they want to spend their SD on?
My take is that nothing that doesn't harm steemit should be flagged. Period. Nothing that provide quality and used human thinking and brainpower should be given the negative feedback of a flag. If you don't like/agree, then pick the 3rd option: Do nothing. Ignore. Personally I consider the reward distribution is broken and I see posts with far less work put into them making X100 times of what I make with my tiny minnow account of 250 followers. But I don't want to see my share getting increased at the expense of another content creator. As an Austrian Economist I believe value is subjective. As a human being I believe in positive and negative feedback. As a content creator on steemit. I believe no productive hard working content creator should be given negative feedback. Save the flags for spammers and etc. If you want to know what kind of posts I want to see flagged, please visit this link: https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/my-commitment-to-making-steemit-a-place-free-from-spammers I have no connection with @miti other than a common ground on what should be flagged. Thanks for reading. @vimukthi
Exactly! I've commented this on multiple places. https://steemit.com/@vimukthi/comments My take is that since flagging is a negative feedback, it should only be used against what diminish the value of steemit. Austrian economics understand that value is subjective. Flagging shouldn't be used to decide on the value but to decide whether the content is harmful or not. Eg: Spam, Plagiarism, Piracy, gaming the system with low shallow content coupled with upvote bots etc. If someone creates value, such posts shouldn't be flagged. Period. If you don't like it; Don't upvote. Pretty much all these problems arise due to lack of opt-in constitution. Whitepaper is simply about tech. DPoS is Great. Steemit is working great. But unlike other blockchain projects, steemit claims to be proof of brain. If any productive post/comment is flagged, it defeats the entire point of steemit. Save the flags for spammers. Here is a great initiative by @miti. He/she is doing the flagging thing right and I fully support it. Please take a look: https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/my-commitment-to-making-steemit-a-place-free-from-spammers
You could just create an army of sub-accounts and be the "wealthiest" person in both upvotes and downvotes. Before coming to such a conclusions I’d advice you to study the Blockchain further and make such a statements when you can back them up with technical solutions... Flags are here for a reason. It’s totally in anyone rights to deem the article as overrated, or when a reward-pool-rape is spotted (someone has created sub accounts and is circling over 100 bucks in rewards on every single post he makes) there needs to be a tool to stop it. Whoever invests in the platform the most can also lose the most, therefore has bigger power. This will NEVER change. You will either have to make peace with the fact or leave:)
As an aspiring author who is using steemit as a platform for some world building exercises, this scares me! I love the original content here and would be incredibly disappointed if we lost this platform to the bots and spammers.
Please don't give up yet. Even empires eventually rot and fall apart. But steemit is still a baby. Fight for the right thing. Don't be in the sidelines. No productive content should be flagged; even a discussion that is favorable towards a ponzi like BitConnect. I don't feel like I don't get the fair reward for my work. But still I consider reward-pool-rape to be a manufactured crime. A good lot of Billionaire's kids didn't earn their wealth and it doesn't look fair to me when their pocket money is my household's income. Still I have no right to control their wealth on the basis that it's unfair. Their wealth should only be controlled if the violate the Non Aggression Principle. Nobody that doesn't negatively affect steemit should be flagged even if you, me or anybody feels like they earn too much for too little work. Anything else is path to communism. Please spread the word and stand by it.
Oh, don't worry...I haven't given up. I like steemit as a platform and I've continued to add original fiction and non-fiction. I tend not to flag much unless it is obviously abusive or doesn't add anything to the site. In fact, my most successful posts have been my original fiction!
She puts in a lot of hard work and original content, you said it well mate it is always refreshing to see all the original content people come up with.
This is ridiculous. I have seen copy pasted memes and bs making upwards of $15-20/post, but someone is downvoting because they think the payout for original content is too much? Wtf?
Feel ya
I agree with you. Any original material should be welcome on Steemit. It is way better than the spam that already exists on here
Exactly @chelsea88 the nastiness is why I left in the first place. Only back here to blog.
I hear you @miriamslozberg ♡
I'm with you on this one @gmuxx. In fact, I had a discussion earlier with @transisto trying to understand his motivations for flagging that author. I'm still not convinced his move was justified. Pestering true authors will hurt the platform and drive people away. So what happens in the end? Those with high stakes will be left alone on Steemit to circle jerk each other? What happened to the spirit of decentralization, blogging and bringing more people to Steemit?? Having big stake holders exert their power in this manner is not how I envisioned Steemit. The pretense of disagreements over rewards is causing backlash and scaring people away. There are many posts that I totally disagree with their reward and content, but I don't go on flagging them! I flag when I see true abusers, spammers or scammers. That's what whales should be doing to set a good example, instead of trying to teach people lessons how to use the platform and dictate how much reward they should get.
thank you I'm seeing the same thing.
Spot on bud.
Perfectly stated. You earned a follower just for that statement. Happy to see similar sentiments.
I've expressed similar ideas throughout the day: https://steemit.com/@vimukthi/comments
Since It seems you and I have similar sentiment towards flagging, you might want to support @miti in his/her efforts to fight spam. It's a small account. But it's doing what whales should really be doing instead of pestering creators who bring actual value(who may or may not deserve the reward): https://steemit.com/@vimukthi/comments
Thank you for your time.
@vimukthi
Wait, wait, wait... so the downvotes were made because "someone" doesn't think this particular content is a "good fit" on Steemit?
I was under the impression that people could post whatever they liked and it would be upvoted on its merits and downvoted if it breached particular standards ie plagiarized, racism, sexism, offensive, etc.
My understanding is that if you like an article upvote it, if its not doing anything for you don't upvote it and if its breaching aforementioned standards then flag. but hey im just a noob what would i know? I guess that i just thought that we were all going by the thumper rule
very disappointing...
This is exactly what I believe in. Anything else is path to communism. One could say don't be on steemit for rewards. But for those I say don't expect anything productive from me. There should be a path of least resistance created for the productive actions. I come across half a dozen spammers a day. I've seen spammers with 56 reputation and over 5 of them that had at least 40 reputation. That's what we should fight against. There is a great steemian @miti who's actually doing what these whales should be taking care of. You can read about it here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/my-commitment-to-making-steemit-a-place-free-from-spammers
Hold on to your principles as they could certainly make the world a better place. Don't give them up no matter what and know that you are right.
Happy steeming!
@vimukthi
The evolution is a scary one, I must admit, for any writer. Which one of us will be the next author who ends up earning more on a post than someone finds acceptable?
The amount of money in the reward pool going to crappy, plagiarised posts and "empty" content is much more of a problem and people determined to become not the Steemit police, but the Steemit vigilante, are quite welcome to that if they find themselves with an itchy trigger finger.
Understanding things like this, the flagging of a hard working author who has done a lot for this platform, is more than my brain can handle, I'm afraid.
It is redikulous that a good novel is downvoted while the basically copy&paste screenshots of a crypto chart with a few maybe-auto words get 20$ each day.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have posted fiction here, too (German). People liked it. So how can it be bad for steemit?
This sort of petty down voting is unfortunately a real problem on this platform. And that is coming from someone who loves steemit, & has done original fiction short stories before:
https://steemit.com/story/@chelsea88/the-seg-fleet-a-robotic-police-unit-short-story-original-fiction
If you dislike something that much unless it is a real problem that is actually hurting people, and is more a matter of opinion than anything, you may consider the MUTE option
But Chelsea! Unknown authors without a huge following clearly don't deserve big rewards. That would just incent people to post great content in the hopes it gets noticed.
Yeah, i know right