Flagging Etiquette and Practice
We are all Admins here in steemit, with curating powers.
But one abuses one's Admin privileges by flagging a post for other than reasons of steemit abuse. (such as plagiarism, deceptive tagging, verbal abuse, etc.). Personality should not come into play in flagging.
That you disagree with a post is NOT a reason to flag it.
Jealousy flagging
because the poster's offering is "less artistic or less worthy than your posts" is especially an abuse of your Admin/curating function.
Your subjective opinion
that a poster seems to have spent only minutes on his/her post while others spend hours perfecting their posts but are paid nothing is NOT A REASON TO FLAG. It IS a reason to not upvote. If many others do upvote, then the world does not see things the way you do. Accept that with humility as you try to persuade the World to see things your way.
Disagreeing
with a poster's ideas or viewpoint is NOT A REASON TO FLAG. It is a reason to reply to the poster with your countering idea or viewpoint. Or start a whole new post with your ideas/viewpoints.
Those who upvote the post may see something in it that you don't (for instance the chance to bring in a number of new users, or a way to fund a project they think will be highly beneficial for our community.
At one point there did seem to be a consensus within our community
that downvotes were to be used very sparingly and only for obvious, persistent, and/or provable cases of steemit abuse, and never to merely express disagreement or jealousy. But we now have many new members, and are gaining more daily, who were not around the chats when that consensus was being formed and thus do not know about it.
There are very active and vested members in the
https://steemit.chat/channel/steemitabuse
and the
https://steemit.chat/channel/steemitabuse-classic channels that you can join to discuss with other vested and concerned steemiams as to whether any particular post violates community standards and should therefore be flagged. The discussion helps remove the danger that you might be flagging out of disagreement or jealousy.
I have to totally agree with the post.
In some forums, up and down votes are used to "vote" on the level of agree/disagree the community has for each individual thought.
Not so on Steemit.
Here, it goes against someone's reputation
When you flag someone you are literally spray painting graffiti on the bricks of their home.
I think that's why the developers moved the flag away from the voting field to separate the two concepts.
It is especially outrageous when a killer whale uses his deadly power to flag someone for mere disagreement - pounding them into the ground with the Hammer of Thor.
I saw some horrible abuse here this week of that type. Someone asked the community to join in one of their promotional campaigns and BAM they were hit by a mega whale's sanction costing them thousands of dollars and egregious damage to their reputation - even though they had far more than a hundred up-votes from people who loved the idea.
I was horrified.
You are 100% right..Sir
Yep. Ironicly, steamcleaners is one of the worst culprits :(
Too many times I have seen flags and been flagged for invalid reasons.
If you don't like it skip it. If it is blatant botting, spam, abuse then flag it.
Yeah, if I flagged people for personal reasons and disagreements, I'd blow all my daily voting power in minutes. lol
Ive yet to flag anything or witness any abuse other than the guy claiming to be Mark Zuckerburg, lol but could not agree more with your post!
keep it classy,
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Yes. It needs to be said. People often need to be reminded that the world doesn't actually revolve around their personal values.
Thank you so much for this post. I totally agree with your sentiment and have been spreading a similar message through my multiple comments lately (not much of a blogger). I believed that the platform is set up in a very thoughtful way to not include down votes as a typical element in the Streamit community interaction. This greatly improves the social cohesion of the community. Flags (what some call downvotes) should be minimally necessary in order to police rule beakers (breakers of social consensus.) To minimize flag abuse more effectively I would propose the following:
Add additional functionality to the "flag" feature which would provide the user name of the flagger and also would require the flager to provide a reason for flagging.---(this may be able to be provided quite efficiently by the use of a radio button to select from violation categories.) This way the community can also analyze the flag to see whether it was just, while also providing negative/positive feed back to the flagger. Additionally, I have also been preaching quite a bit of the need for a "community rules" tab to be attached prominently on the main menu bar. Steemit is a very new and unique social platform unlike anything that has gone before it. I listing of basic community rules would be very helpful for newbies to quickly understand the context in which we operate.
If you flag a post. You would definitely show up as one of the votes (it would show up as negative).
Your proposal is self-contradictory. You say posts should not be flagged due to disagreement but you propose to flag people with whom you have a curation-style disagreement.
Your proposal also suggests making many times worse the problem you complain about because you propose to turn one "bad" flag into many more as multiple people flag the "bad flaggers'" new content.
How do you reliably determine when the curation activity you disagree with has ended? How do you communicate that across the network of curators in a timely way?
This is touched on in the white paper. People flagging for the unproductive reasons you mentioned is a minor matter and it doesn't require a crusade to keep it under control.
I suggest you give this more thought before proceeding further.
See, you disagree with me. Now that is no reason for me to flag you, is it?
(I just won't upvote you because I think you are either wrong or have misunderstood my proposal)
Likewise, you disagree with some people's curation choices. Is that any reason to flag posts you wouldn't otherwise have flagged? What you propose is, itself, abuse.
I am saying that they should post their reason for the flag in a reply. It would then become apparent to discerning readers whether they are abusing their Admin powers or not. If they post their reason then no flagging of their future posts. But their motives become more transparent and displays of envy and jealousy will probably cost them (vested) followers.
As I stated on another comment on this blog, I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment in the post. However @georgedonnellly may have one salient point; Engaging in "flag wars" in an attempt to control flag abuse, may not be the best approach. I think additional functionality is needed to handle this. See my post above.
Thanks again for bringing focus to this issue!
The concensus for appropriate flagging is going to keep changing and eventually disappear as steemit expands to the masses and telling people off becomes pointless. Here are my thoughts.
Haha, tough crowd. I'm with you on the down voting.
There is no contradiction. I am proposing that flagging without a reply stating the reason for the flag be considered as a steemit abuse (as it was before - just new people don't know about it). And the flag abusers merely need to stop downvoting without valid explanation in responses in order to remove the sanction.
The contradiction is that you propose to meet what you consider to be abuse (might or might not be, might have negligible impact) with even greater abuses.
It's also contradictory because you imply people are flagging too much but you want to build a group of people and train them to flag even more.
I don't think you're going to get the flagging army you want, because flagging is a risky activity and can cost you money.
Bad flaggers are not going to prosper. Not unless you start encouraging people to be bad flaggers, as you propose.
It is like you could see into the future, your post is very relevant now with all the @dollarvigilante controversy, I invite you to re-post it for others to see!
Well... do you follow your own rules?
I think you yourself have flagged just for disagreeing...
Please show me where. I have never flagged anyone for disagreeing with me. I have returned a flag to posters who flag me because they disagree with me. When they removed their flags, I removed mine.
Here:
Steemit Is Not A Casino
I flagged you because you were advocating the abuse of the down vote function - exactly the matter at issue in this post today. You were telling people to downvote based on the earnings of posts in Trending rather than for any steemit abuse like plagiarism. That is flagging based on jealousy.
But you are right. If my reasons for flagging had been stated clearly in a response - then readers could evaluate for themselves my reason for flagging. That is the proposal that I am advocating.
I agree at @onceuponatime . I think a "potential abuser" should be given a warning with a time to respond. Continued abuse would then merit the Down vote. I think some people think "I don't agree, or like the post, Down vote." And I don't believe that is the purpose of flagging a post. Any how my 2 cents, literally.
full $teem Ahead!
@streetstyle
Dan & Ned Will Rule the World