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.)

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!

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.

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.

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