RE: What the Hell? A Fucking Rant by Michael David
Not a bad idea for something people could opt into. You could get whales and minnows to do this like a group thing and could grow it large I feel. I've seen some things like this start and have not really seen them continue mostly cause the creators were not motivated. Maybe it is something you could start. Making it mandatory would not be fun for most though as many just have fun swimming.
What you said about self upvoting is exactly what my example was meaning to show. You lay out the "etiquette". This etiquette is not agreed upon site wide and is controversial. Many agree, and many do not. This is exactly the type of issue that should simply be a rule one way or another by the site creators. This way there is no fighting back and forth. This fighting is resulting in cyber bullying, self policing and a whole range of undesirable things. Whether people agreed with the sites decision or not it would then be a rule instead of an acceptable etiquette and could be respectfully enforced without cyber bullying people for expressing what is now only opinion and not stated to be wrong by the site itself. By not having a rule in place they are actually saying it is not wrong at all and therefore making it wrong for people to judge and attack those doing it. If self upvoting your own comment is wrong then where is the line? One word can be so meaningful and impacting that how do you say that one comment is worth more than another or that the voting power that I have built on my own was used incorrectly because of your belief of etiquette?
What about the guy who spent a lot of money buying delegated sp from minnowbooster only to realize after that it takes 8 of 10 of your votes coming back to you to pay off (this is actually what it takes). Is this guy just supposed to sacrifice his money? He is now in a very tough position and if his posts have not attracted enough (with how the format is they likely have not) upvotes to cover that 8 of 10 he really does not have many options for recovering his investment into himself.
Or the comment that he really wants to be on the top of his post. Does etiquette state that we cannot vote one of our most meaningful comments to the top for it to always be seen first?
This "etiquette" has been created and promoted by people thinking that it is somehow cheating without looking at many example of it not being at all. You also find out after a little digging that many people promoting this etiquette are actually guilty of doing it themselves and in fact really just pointing the finger away from themselves.
Of course there are many examples of how it is cheating as well. Does a bot know the difference? Of course not. Most people don't unless they take the time. Which begs question... If it is your upvote power then how you use it is your decision so then what is cheating?
The biggest reason I hear for why it is cheating is that it "takes from the reward pool". Well, so does literally everything on the platform from bots to stupid posts to minnowbooster. Then what is take? They get steem and go sell it on exchanges to people who bring it back here. Did it really go anywhere?
I can tell you this... The only person to really get much from self upvoting comments would be someone that already had a lot of genuine (not delegated) sp. Steemit is really just a fancy way to mine coin. A way we can all have fun doing. If people don't self upvote to get it they will find other potentially more scandalous ways like phishing.
My point is not to argue... It is to show that there is no winner here. You could go back and forth on this and many other issues here forever. This is why it needs to be a clear rule plain and simple.
Anyway, loved your comment. Thanks :)
Thanks for your elaborate reply. I get it. I'd not exactly seen it that way, I was simply following the etiquette, but yeah, it's true that sometimes a short phrase will be more meaningful than a super long comment. It really depends.
Have you seen Meep? Meep is some random person who only write Meep, and have the image of that muppet, the meemeemee guy. Comments and posts are Meep and people upvote him (or her, or it) and as far as I can tell, not many people have complained or flagged Meep. His profule deos say "all I say is meep" so does that consist of a warning and therefore makes his meeps legit, or should he be flagged? Like, I'm sure there are people getting in trouble with the self-policing steemians for much less than Meep. Seriously!
I'm not sure how I would start this trend or who to tag or contact to get it started. My posts don't gain enough traction.
As for your set of rules that could be implemented, I think it would have to be Ned who's implement them, he and his team could figure it all out and he does have the final say basically.
I think the reason there is no set rules is that the whole thing here is about freedom of expression, but then there needs to be a set rule that this freedom of expression extends to self upvoting and that it would then be our right to self upvote. The etiquette would be a courtesy of politeness and logic, because if all you do is upvote yourself, then your voting power goes down and others won't vote for you, so you win by upvoting others AND yourself and they do the same. But then if that is set in place, people need to stop downvoting those who upvote themselves and stop policing them. Then again, we have the freedom to upvote however we want, people have the right to downvote however they want. It becomes a debate of freedom of expression in full 100% freedom, which means there will be abuse and bullying, vs censorship and rules. Since I'm a Libertarian, I believe a set a clear rules, only a few, should suffice. Too many and you start dictating to people, too little and chaos can ensue. Clear rules, just a few to establish a few things and that's it.
I have seen meep. I've even responded to him with meep a couple of times. To me he is just having fun on the platform being silly. I can appreciate him more than cornholio. I think he has been flagged a couple times though cause I believe his rep has been going down.
Is it annoying at times, kinda, but it all looks like fun for him or her. Could even be a kid. I see no issue as it is not malicious like much of the downvoting I see.
Even in so called utopic society there are guidelines and rules. Normally only a few but still a few. If this is just a free for all then those that agree with things others are downvoting need a way to protect themselves from the downvoting somehow as it would be their right to do so. Currently that is not possible unless they are loaded.
I've lived in psuedo utopian society at Rainbow Gatherings many years ago and as much as it seemed like a free for all there were many rules. In fact they even began to print them. What made it work was people coming together at large circles and deciding issues together. Not finalizing any issue until it was 100% consensus.
With this model it was very important to show up to these circles if you had an opinion to offer up for discussion. There would often be hundreds of folks deciding something and with 100% consensus many things took very long to decide but once decided that was it and people respected the decisions.
Personally, whether we decide similar to this as a group or the site decides is not important as long as it is fair I believe people will respect it.
They have already copyrighted the new logo so we may be about to see changes none of us like coming lol. Hard to say.
Maybe I should aproach Ned directly however I have already seen at least one account that was just destroyed with vengeance couple days after she spoke out directly against him so I may need to tread lightly lol. We'll see
Some of us only invest time here and some invest money as well so either way these things do need sorted out.
Yeah, they do need sorting out. I think the best approach would be to make some suggestions to him without overstepping one's bounds. If people attacked him, maybe he saw it as cyber bullying or something. I wouldn'T know since I didn't see these messages or posts, but we also have to trust that he keeps an eye out for such things and that he has a team of people taking stock of some of the things they see people talking about on the site.
There are only a few months left to the year, and we will see a new roadmap for Steemit in 2018. Ned regularly posts an update as I've seen, so he's working on this. Obviously he can't know everything, but these things will come to his attention and I think something he COULD do is in one of his update videos, ask us certain things to get our opinion and perhaps create a specific post for us to write them in. It would be like a community feedback post and he would take that into consideration and see what can be implemented and what he feels is more urgent or not.
I'm fine with the Steemit logo being copyrighted. The Steem logo is not. Perhaps the changes we will see are some basic rules that will help the community. I'm sure Ned has all our best interest at heart, but since the community is so diverse, not everyone can be pleased or right away. You and I both know that things take time and even the best changes might please one of us and not the other. I think others need to remember that as well.
We shall see. If you do reach out to Ned and manage to actually speak to him, see if you can mention the Guardian idea. That being said, even if you don'T manage to speak with him, I trust that he'll implement the changes that will be best for us all. As you say, we'll have to wait and see.
You are right about things taking time. Advancements are worth waiting for. Usability issues should have already been addressed. It's really about priorities.
I really don't care about the logo either. It does kinda lead into what I'm getting at here. This site is centralized.... It is steemit. The logo shows that they feel that way also. So that means their team is responsible for making the site usable to the masses without all the extra crap.
You may have given me an idea though for how to induce quicker resolve peacefully. I've got some things to think about now.
Hey, I'm glad my thoughts can inspire, if it helps. I look forward in hearing about what you come up with.