Time for a change? Handling flag abuse and ideas that could solve this.
To start off ill say i have no particular side in this argument but it seems certain whales are targeting users and acting maliciously. To prevent abuse there needs to be some kind of talk by the community. My opinion is that flags are a good idea but using them to target people because you don't like them is a bit of an issue. We need long term solutions and quick.
Current ideas that are floating around:
Anti Flag Guild
- To go around and to counteract abusive flags.
Visual Flag feed of likely abusers.
- Sites that offer steem stats that show people abusing power.
Getting rid of flags
- User are complaining it doing more bad then good.
Constructive power holder meetings.
- Bring whales and normal users together to have a chat about the site.
Charging flag abusers.
- Possibly charge payment to the abusers for harmful actions.
I would love to hear your ideas its time to get organized and to figure out possible solutions that could be tried. We also need to set up some kinda of consequences for abusers.
Change the code.
Eliminate flags.
I would start here as well @everittdmickey
Eliminating flags gives spammers and abusers more lee-way.
I agree. But the current use is causing more harm than good.
My solution.
Opt In/Out:
Let us choose who we want to receive SP power to our post from. This enables us to get rid of flagging / mute / block whatever you want to add to it. Let people choose if they want anything to do with a whales SP both bad or good.
good idea. you could even still flag it in protest but it would not effect the pay. If it was content that needs to be censored and its that bad do like Facebook and call the cops. Well Facbook only calls the cops if you are trying to expose pedophiles on their site but I digress. Also if the entire community flagged something the abuser would be forced to accept the censor since opting out meant not getting any money anyway.
Thanks. I just think it simplifies things and lets people have the control they need.
Removing completely flags is not suitable. Perhaps replace for a new mechanism. Must have some mechanism to solve spam, auto vote farms, abuses, to down rate content, etc.. Some of this situations could be handled automatically by the code others like rate content is very difficult without the help of a human brain.
Spam, auto votes could be easily handled by software.
Abuse or rating content need other way to be solved. Perhaps separate the content's ratings from the payout. When you downnvote you just lowered the rating of the content and this rating with the votes, weight, etc. give the final payout.
'Grey out' the down-vote button once the SP>1 million :)
I am new to this site so I have not yet encountered a whale, but the stories are enough to scare me. I am glad to see that there is some ideas about how to fix it.
I joined this site hearing about how BlockChains will save free speech, so seeing abusive users is a little disturbing. With that said, I believe that flags can be important, but flag abusers should be penalized. (No STEEM income for 25 posts or something)
PS: I am new on this platform and will be posting about my home country, South-Africa, so feel free to check it out.
One more idea that is floating around is that making it so every time you flag you have to use your active key. That way it makes its inconvenient to spam flags.
I think having a site that offers stats on flags is a very good idea. This would make it clear what is actually happening. If some of the motivations are doubtful, it would not be easy to continue when details are plain to see. If the flagging is legitimate, such a site would now be a problem.
Agreed – anything that provides more transparency and reduces abuse is a good thing, in my opinion.
I recently posted about my thoughts on flagging as a newbie. tl;dr – it sucks…
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I have no problem with bots supplying up votes, I think it can be positive to ensure that you are consistently supporting a certain author or tag category. Something doesn't sit right with me about automated down voting though. That is too easily abused.
I know that up votes and flags (downvotes) are two sides of the same coin, so I don't know how tied together they are on a technical level, but if we could implement a way to block auto flagging I think that would help. Some form of captcha/ questionnaire to categorize the down vote reason that requires manual input. It wouldn't stop the flag battles, but if the participants have to spend a couple extra hours a day on them, maybe they'll reevaluate if it's truly important.
Also in favor of a "block" type feature that others have mentioned.