I Hope: A Call for Positivity on Steemit.
I am normally too busy writing about nonsense like Ewok TV shows, kids movies, Disney announcements, and my personal epic fails to spend any time writing about steemit. In addition, I don't really consider myself an expert in that area. I'm still a crypto novice and I have no clue how any of "the code" works. Whenever someone asks me to explain something related to the math or "the code" I simply say, "It's magic". (By the way, the reason I put "the code" in quotes is because I can't figure out another way to portray the fact that I am saying it in a spoooooky and mysterious way.)
![Screen Shot 2017-07-24 at 12.47.25 PM.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmbNvX7gmwVQiHujiDH5pCPTuiSZU3jVzYDodD8UB49rMj/Screen%20Shot%202017-07-24%20at%2012.47.25%20PM.png)
But today is an exception.
Yesterday @calamus056 created a post entitled Self-voting user list since HF19.
@calamus056 clearly put a great deal of time and effort into his post. A big thank you to him for doing that.
Although I agree with the premise that self-voting one's comments is detrimental to the long-term health of the platform, I fear that the post will generate a lot of negativity towards fellow community members. It would be very easy for the community to look at that data, come up with some arbitrary, after-the-fact, "unacceptable" percentage of self-votes and say "get 'em!!!!" However that would also be detrimental to the long-term health of the platform.
Before everyone grabs their flag-shaped pitchforks and goes on the attack, I hope everyone takes a breath and tries to think of a positive long-term solution to this perceived problem. In addition, I hope that everyone thinks about the data instead of just saying "Those people are monsters! Think of the children!"
I hope people keep in mind that this data includes a very unique and confusing time period in the history of Steemit. If you recall, right after HF19, something odd happened to the reward pool. To a person who calls IT when their keyboard is unplugged (and even to many people smarter than me) it appeared as if the reward pool had suddenly become bottomless. It was magic! Single votes were worth three figures. Content creators who were popular before HF19 suddenly began making four figures on their posts. People saw their first $100 post. Minnows saw their vote matter and their rewards increase. All of a sudden, everyone got to drink out of the firehose!
![](https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.imgflip.com/1t00x9.gif)
Was this the new norm? Would it last forever? Or was it just an anomaly caused by some sort of rebalancing of the reward pool? Nope it was magic!
Sadly, the spell was not permanent.
In addition, people were still trying to understand how the new linear reward system would work. It takes time to adjust to such a huge change. And apparently with that huge change came an equally huge change to the "rules" (even though there are no rules).
For the year leading up to HF19, it appeared that self voting was completely acceptable. After all, it is the default setting when a person posts their content. During that year, many people racked up Steem by voting for themselves.
Then all of a sudden, without any public announcement or warning, the "rule" changed. The practice of increasing one's stake and receiving a return on his investment via self voting had become taboo.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://i.imgflip.com/1t01bw.jpg)
How many people on that list stopped self voting after realizing it could be detrimental to the long-term health of the platform? How many stopped after realizing the unwritten "rules" had changed? How many invested when the etiquette allowed self-voting? I bet there are many. I hope people take that into consideration before judging anyone.
"Ok. Great. So we shouldn't go and tar and feather people on that list. What's your solution genius? You already said you aren't an expert."
I sense some sarcasm there...
But here is where my area of expertise comes into play. I'm a special education teacher. Every day I work with kids who require help changing their behavior. I think we can apply that process here.
Step 1: Make sure the person who wants to change his behavior is invested and included.
You can't say, "Hmmm I'd like Johnny to change his behavior...but I'm going to do it secretly without him knowing." That might work for very small children... but it certainly won't work on thousands of adults on a social media platform.
I think this is one of the biggest problems so far. People are mad that others didn't change their behavior... even though no one asked them to change their behavior.
Step 2: Decide if the behavior needs to change.
Does this community want people to vote for themselves less and vote for others more?
Perhaps the answer to this question is "no" and we can stop right here.
For those of you who answered, "yes" I'd like to continue the process.
Step 3: Clearly identify the behavior that needs to change.
I think this one is easy. Some members of the community think too many people are voting for themselves instead of voting for others.
Step 4: Identify a replacement behavior.
Spend _______% of your votes on others and ________% of your votes on yourself (no clue what acceptable percentages should be... perhaps the community should decide)
Step 5: Choose a way to positively reinforce the replacement behavior.
I'm stumped on this one. I could use some help here.
I would hope this could be accomplished via "the code" (come on magic!). However if it is not technically possible, is there a way the community could positively encourage people to spread their votes around? Could whales delegate SP to people who spread out their votes? Could whales follow people who spread out their votes? Could community members simply make it a point to vote for others? Does anybody have a great way to positively reinforce the act of spreading out votes?
Step 6: See if the behavior has changed. If it has not, go back to step 5.
*A big part of this would be data collection. You need to establish a baseline before the intervention and then check to see if you are making progress toward the goal at certain intervals. I left that out of the steps to make it easier to follow.
Although I am a huge proponent of positive reinforcement, I also realize that natural consequences are also involved in this process. In our case here, I would imagine the natural consequence is that if a person doesn't spread their votes around, others will not vote for them.
Before HF19, there was a positive incentive to vote for others (due to the multiplier effect of voting... if you don't understand that, just know that there was a different kind of magic before HF19). HF19 removed that incentive and left it up to the community.
Although I do wish HF19 included a replacement for the incentive to spread votes around... wishes don't mean much in reality. I have no idea how the coding works. I have no idea if there was a specific reason why the team wanted to try a system with pure linear rewards. And actually it doesn't matter. The past is gone. We can belly ache about what we wish had been done or we can look forward and try to figure out how we can provide an incentive to spread votes around in the future. I hope we all do the latter.
I hope the community can have a real discussion about this.
I hope that the developers and/or community can find a way to encourage people to spread their votes around using positive methods.
I hope we don't simply fall into the pattern of flag first... ask questions never.
I hope.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://i.imgflip.com/1t01oq.jpg)
agree
As I'm quite new to this platform this was a very informative read for me. A lot of good things to consider with this. Thanks for the info. :)
I found that list to be quite reassuring actually. It showed only results related to some fairly high SP holders, and the vast majority were not abusive.
I realize abusive is a subjective term. But I am perplexed that many users don't seem to grasp the core of the debate. Many comments come from users confused and questioning if upvoting their own posts is wrong.
I think a pretty stark distinction can be made between the statements, "I vote on my own posts," and "I only vote on my own posts."
Socially acceptable percentage is the gray area. I'd hope it can be agreed at least that 95-100% self voting is a bit off balance.
I will outright agree with anyone who reasons that stakeholders are free to do what they wish with their stake. That position is absolutely correct as it applies to both self voting and flagging. This issue will be decided by flags/down votes. There's no code solution. The consensus of the community can only be properly formed with flags. The white paper and a lot of earlier discussion by Dan Larimer make this pretty clear. I think the most important thing is to stop vilifying flags and recognize them as a normal, vital, non personal & respectful means of conducting business on Steemit.
I understand your points. I probably should have defined/explained my terminology. In this case I see up votes as a positive reinforcer and a flag as a negative reinforcer. One gives something, the other takes something away.
I am just wondering if there is a way to encourage the positive behavior by giving something rather than punishing the negative behavior by taking something away.
Of course I apologize if I came off sounding too harsh! I hate to rain on a post promoting positivity! I can't think of any sensible positive reinforcement measures. The true positive reinforcement should be the fact that responsible voting should lead to a properly functioning platform and thus increases in the value of Steem. Excessive self voters are either A. Interested only in short term gain or B. Assuming enough other people will behave responsibly thereby enabling them to continue as they please.
Truthfully I think the vast majority of users do interact responsibly and self voting will not be the death of Steemit by any means. But flags should be recognized as positive and effective tools. For instance, posts are tagged NSFW voluntarily because failing to do so will result in flagging by the community. This community norm is therefore upheld because nsfw posters release their content in the most profitable manner (properly tagged.) This same behavioral steering can happen with excessive self voting by reducing its profitability.
Oh you weren't too harsh at all. I was hoping this would spark a conversation and you did just that. I agree that flags are 100% essential. I just think they should be used for the extreme cases where something needs to be dealt with immediately (NSFW, hate speech, bullying, etc.). For the "non-emergencies" it would be cool if we could try a more positive approach first.
Great post you wrote here and thanks for providing some counter weight in an objective manner. I did look over that list and checked if there was anyone on there that I was following. Ofcourse there were a few, but plenty that I want to keep following. I did, however, check if there was anyone I wasn't interested in anymore, because they could make place for people I want to support more. I got tired of that though, so didn't check them all...
I don't think there's much wrong with self-voting your own posts (unless you spam posts for the sake of it). I don't even mind self-voting comments at times. Heck, even I do it sometimes. Either to get further up in the comments list, or when I'm annoyed with how unfair this platform sometimes is.
I do think self-voters need to remember to also vote for others, because otherwise, this platform won't work and the prices will just crash and burn. I think many of our high-SP members will possess enough brain power to understand this, so I'm not sure there are many of those that need the consideration you're talking about (though I won't start flagging self-voters). Now some newer members might be a different story...
This is exactly what I was hoping for... a discussion. I bet if enough people discuss this and once ideas around, we can find a creative way to help spread votes around.
I fear that discussion is all we have. There is plenty of discussion all around Steemit. Some of which lead to quite a few nice ideas, but they get lost in the mix and I doubt they will all rise to the top and get implemented. You need to know the right people or respond to posts of the right people to truly get your idea out there.
Ehm, sorry for not being more positive! :-)
@hanshotfirst You spelled my name wrong ;)
People keep doing that for some reason.
Nooooo. I am so sorry.
You also forgot to follow me :p
fixed both lol
Haha :)
Good article btw!
You make a seriously valid point. People from all walks of life with different levels of knowledge need to be considered in this equation and i for one, being relatively new to Steemit, did not have a clue as to why self voting would be detrimental... so i did it... until i stumbled across a few informative posts about it. And i am what i believe to be "fairly tech savvy". So i can only imagine how clueless many others are.
Really a greatly informative post and one that more should read. 👊👌
Thanks! There is such a wide range of people on here. If community decides self voting comments is bad. So be it. But if that happens we need to make sure that it is easy for everyone on the site to make an informed decision about their behavior.
hello @hanshotfirst 😁 posiitivity always is useful!!
Before the hf19 voting yourself was standard why people should stop voting theirself now? I think every user desides alone where he spend his votes. There aren't any rules that says tha we shouldnt vote for our posts. Personally I use my votes for helping other users because they help me too. if someone wants to be selfish and votes only for himself, it is his problem. we shouldn't judje noone!! happy steeming
I hear what you are saying but it becomes more complicated as the size of the vote grows. This was in response to what seems to be a growing debate within the community as to whether or not to set its own community standard for self voting.
I remember when I first joined(not too long ago) there were these posts hating on people self voting themselves and I thought it was some kind of a taboo. I made my first into poat and shortly after I saw I am upvoting my self without clicking anything and did remove my vote not knowing it is a defauld option. Now I don't really care that much about it because my vote doesn't wven benefit me anything (it is worth 0.02$ at best) but i do understand the frustration about people upvoting their own comments. I don't mind people giving a little boost to their own post that they've spent tome and effort on but I don't think self voting random comments is very tolerable.
I think many people share your view. I am not sure where the community will land on this subject. I just hope we do it as a community.
Well yeah it is a thing that splits the community rather than uniting it but I guess all of this comes with the growth of the platform.
I'm sorry but the "steps for improvement" are silly.
If this is such a fundamentally important factor to the success of STEEM. Then they need to hard fork this. Some kind of 'naughty-police' from the politically correct squad is not something I would kowtow to.
If this should not be allowed, then it should have never been a feature in the first place. I am now going to upvote my posts and my comments in protest of seeing all this nonsense you guys are spreading on STEEM and trying to ruin the community by pitting us against each other.
Warped sense of fictional internet morality... just no! I am a Christian, I listen to God, I do not listen to utter nonsense from people who have way, way, way too much time on their hands to go around spying on people, and monitoring their behavior like they were appointed my baby-sitter.
Take this issue up with the Steem witnesses, get them to do a hard fork to resolve it. Until, then, I will intentionally up-vote myself to oppose this movement.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Perhaps I went about this in too much of a round about way. That may have caused some confusion. For that I apologize.
I think you and I are pretty close in our thought process. I too would love to see this addressed by the code (if it even needs to be addressed). I am just not technically savvy enough to give a suggestion on how that can be done. I wrote this as a call to avoid pitting each other against one another.
Terrific Community announcement Han - let's just keep spreading the love as best we can and others with follow suit.
Must be hard for whales (just like the rest of us) to see their posts drop to 10-20% of what they were previously receiving. There is a level and period of adjustment required for all.
Upvoted and resteemed.
Great post Han and couldn't agree more CN. As Han said - let's all stay positive.
I'd like to believe that we will all be judged for our behaviour in these times by the fabled Steem God. I will wait for the day of judgment and abstain from self voting until it comes.....
That day came faster than I thought :D
Have mercy oh God of Steem! I repent for I have sinned!! Please have mercy on me.... 😭
Try donating some SBD to @mercifulsteemgod, he might hear you then!
Someone has to snatch up that username, even just SteemGod, it's genius.
I just checked, we have a steemgod!
Does he/she up vote all of his/her comments?
He/she seems to not be doing much of anything for 11 months now. However, he/she/it did upvote two out of three of his/her/its own comments!
LOL. Well played! Is there Steem confession?
Thou shall not Self Vote in the Holy Church of Steem! 😝
You forgot to self vote that one.
I shudder at the thought of being judged by the Steem sky-daddy ;-)