Game of Flags - a "fun" Redistribution Game - WIN STEEM by flagging
Sometimes your given a choice in life...
Make powerful friends or make powerful enemies...
That choice isn't always easy...
As I write this there is a little voice inside me saying "stop... Don't do it... Your opinion isn't popular and your reputation is on the line..."
But I don't want to feel like I'm walking on egg shells because I'm too cowardly to stop the abuse.
According to the STEEM Whitepaper:
The challenge faced by Steem is deriving an algorithm for scoring individual contributions that most community members consider to be a fair assessment of the subjective value of each contribution. In a perfect world, community members would cooperate to rate each other's contribution and derive a fair compensation. In the real world, algorithms must be designed in such a manner that they are resistant to intentional manipulation for profit.
Any widespread abuse of the scoring system could cause community members to lose faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system.
Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds.
When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community.
A proven system for evaluating and rewarding contributions is the free market. The free market can be viewed as a single community where everyone trades with one another and rewards are allocated by profit and loss.
The market system rewards those who provide value to others and punishes those who consume more value than they produce.The free market supports many different currencies and money is simply a commodity that everyone finds easy to exchange.
There was a time when there was a sense of nobility and respect for the system across the community. There was a community effort to downvote abuse and discourage it. I watched and was thrilled by the efforts of the stakeholders to keep the system clean from abuse by downvoting those who were consuming value from the rest of the community. Somewhere along the line we lost something and our souls were bought. Something shiny distracted us maybe...
Here's how the community used to react when somebody attemped to BUY votes on steemit.com
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steve-walschot/bloggery-1-get-all-sbd-rewards-for-this-post-fair-and-equal-for-everyone
https://steemit.com/steemit/@claudiop63/steembets-bet-for-free-by-upvoting-and-win-steem-dollars-inauguration-bet-clinton-vs-trump
https://steemit.com/steemit/@august-newbie/flag-abuse-or-how-to-kill-the-steemit-community
https://steemit.com/market/@steemitmarket/upvote-follow-market
https://steemd.com/market/@steemitmarket/upvote-follow-steem-market
https://steemit.com/steemit/@frosty/escrow-backed-newbies-welcome-everyone-who-upvotes-this-post-will-get-an-equal-amount-of-bitcoin-just-provide-your-bitcoin
https://steemit.com/steemit/@etherguy/steemitlotto-just-comment-with-a-number-0-99-and-an-upvote-to-play-for-a-chance-to-win-the-daily-jackpot
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mark-waser/power-up-your-steem-account-with-120-sbd-for-usd100
Now, one could argue that vote buying is inevitable. For instance, when advertisers come to the platform, they may well just slip something in a whales pocket behind closed doors. There is nothing to stop them from doing that other than the risk of being suspected - which might not matter to them. But how much do you think a whale would be willing to charge for their attention (vote)? Do you think "a portion of the rewards from the post" would do it?
I highly doubt it
Here we are on a revolutionary platform that is teaching us for the first time ever to value our attention and we are valuing it at what? .... 0.25 STEEM?
YOU ARE DEVALUING YOUR VOTE
Some of those who support @steemsports argue that it is a game that keeps users active. Apparently people get a little kick out of winning less that one STEEM. When I joined steemit, you know what got me hooked? When I got significantly more steem than that! And I find it hard to believe that anybody here really beleives the fun part is winning less than one steem, when steemsports reaps the rewards 4 times a day on a daily basis.
Look! I have nothing against sports or betting. In fact, I enjoy them. But if you want STEEM to become the cryptocurrency of the masses then that is what we need to learn to use as money. Steemsports has been building their own platform for accepting bets and I look forward to using it to actually gamble with STEEM. On top of that, they have accumulating enough SP and popularity from the community to continue without redistributing STEEM back to those who vote for them (buying your votes). Further, I do not wish to discourage people from voting for them AFTER they refrain from vote buying. Their content and writers are good and I would hope that they would respect the communities wishes and stay with us if the community were to turn against their vote buying efforts - which is what I am about to ask you to do!
I'm sure that this will stir a lot of controversy and some might even call me a hypocrit for this but here goes....
Flagging is for Abuse and Vote Buying is Abuse
I am pledging to reward everybody who stands with me by flagging one of the following @steemsports posts (before their payout).
https://steemit.com/nfl/@steemsports/minnesota-vikings-vs-green-bay-packers
https://steemit.com/soccer/@steemsports/juventus-f-c-vs-a-c-milan
https://steemit.com/nba/@steemsports/toronto-raptors-vs-utah-jazz
In fact I will distribute more STEEM because I will value your attention much higher than they have by distributing all of the liquid rewards in my wallet at the time of the payout from this post. Here is a screenshot of what is currently in my wallet but I would also include any STEEM or SBD that anybody wishes to donate towards this effort.
These flags should serve as a message - not to ask @steemsports to leave - but to ask them to respect the votes of the community and their value. We want this to be a place where the whole community can feel like they have an opportunity to grow here. We also want our STEEM and our votes to be valuable. Please do not see the flags as an attack, but a message to show just how many steemians would prefer if @steemsports was not pulling so much of the STEEM rewards from the daily payouts by buying their votes. We would much appreciate if you would just accept the votes you get without purchasing them with the promise of redistribution.
Edit: Because this post has been censored by a whale and there has not been any entries for the flag rewards yet, the SBD from my wallet have been spent on buying the attention of anybody who has used their flag on a steemsports post before. The steem in my wallet by the time of payout of this post will still be rewarded to anybody who flags the steemsports posts linked above before payout. There is no need to upvote this post unless you want to increase visibility.
nested reply to @beanz
It is not really an easy call. They've built a real team, with developers, a brand, a following on the site, a dedicated UI, and a marketing and business plan, all of which is based on Steem and promotes Steem to people not already on the site.
To be clear I have given them feedback suggesting to distribute some of the SP in some manner (such as season-long contests or special bonus events or something), but at the same time when I look at their account and I see a value of $16,607, and I think about the amount of time and effort that has gone into it along with what is being done, to me it appears they are bringing that much value and more to Steem.
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the second half of Dec 23. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $7.89 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Dec 23 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Abuse is subjective. I don't think you should flag things simply because you don't like them.
Then why did you flag kyusho's comment on my post? It was a good comment. Absolutely no reason to flag it!!!
If you have to ask, my explanation won't mean anything to you.
You're probably right. Because you explanation would be bullshit.
Abuse is subjective. I perceive vote buying to be abuse. Isn't the flag for downvoting things we perceive as abuse?
Vote buying defeats the whole purpose of what we are doing here. Curation means nothing with vote buying. Our voices mean nothing because nobody values their vote. People keep saying "the markets decide" but it's quite clear that if people who will voice that they do not agree with something but they will not vote against it then the market is not deciding. They refuse to decide because they either perceive the downvote as some kind of attack or because they feel their vote can always be countered.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the flag was introduced before the voting scale. I could understand when I came to the platform first why the downvote was changed to a flag since any downvote by a whale could send a post straight to $0.00. But originally the downvote was used almost as frequently as the upvote to decide whether a post should be rewarded more or less.
Now since we have that scale, I think the flag should come back down - though it may be too late to change people's perceptions of the downvote now since it's been a flag for so long.
Originally there were up and down buttons like reddit. It was changed to a flag icon for nebulous reasons that I never was particularly convinced were a good idea. Yes I think all of this predates the vote slider but many of us always used the cli for lower strength votes when necessary.
Would it be a crazy idea to have both up/down votes for curation plus a front end gimmicky like/dislike or agree/disagree option to diminish this association of a downvote with a kick in the teeth ?
That is one reason I have not been convinced about the flag icon. It reinforces the kick-in-the-teeth aspect, which doesn't seem well-suited to a decentralized system. When you flag or report something on a centralized system that means bringing it to the attention of the operator who decides what to do about it, which can also include using its discretion and authority to temporarily or permanently ban the person doing the flagging/reporting for abuse of the feature. That concept makes no sense here. All we have are people expressing their opinions, and I don't see how attaching a value judgment on opinions at the UI level with an icon makes a lot of sense. Better to just leave it value neutral and let the blockchain use the resulting consensus to allocate rewards. That is my view at least.
That would work, I think, if down-votes were to all have equal weight on the payout hit that they cause.
I, personally, am not that fond of the idea that I can get hundreds of up-votes, meaning that a large portion of the community finds my content valuable, only to have one or two whales show up and flag it down to little payout, or, better yet, becoming "invisible" due to the overall vote weight swinging to the negative.
IMO, a fairer way to do the flagging mechanism would be to take the average voting weight of all prior voters and make that the down vote weight. Or, if we must retain incentive for higher SP even with the flag, then give dolphins the equivalent of two down-votes, whales three, and mega-whales four....or something along those lines. It's ridiculous to me that a post can get 10+ up-votes and still be made invisible to the public by one whale flagging it.
I don't think the majority of people uploading content onto YouTube would appreciate having their video thumbed up thousands of times only to have one or two people come in and cast tens of thousands of down-votes. I don't care if those one or two individuals happen to be Jesus Christ and the Laughing Buddha, themselves, people aren't going to take it well, they're probably going to become frustrated by it very quickly and leave the site for good.
Yes?
Of course.
If you haven't read this, I would recommend that you take a look at it and the comments. There's no reason to flag. Just ignore it and move on. We should be building up/expanding the community, not fighting over content preferences.
Comment removed
How kind of you.
I think you should probably re-read the post. You can flag whatever you want to flag. It's probably not a good idea though, considering what usually happens.
I never told anyone how to vote. People can vote however they choose. But if you insist on believing that flagging content is a good idea because you don't like the content, then feel free to do so. It's your own reputation that will likely suffer for it.
I think this very post is more harmful to the community than anything that @steemsports does - or anything that I do. (Again, you might want to re-read my post and try to understand what it is that I and others are trying to do.) But note, however, that I have not flagged your post or encouraged others to flag it. Although, if the idea is to be abrasive and insult people in addition to buying flags, I might reconsider. I think we could both agree that this wouldn't be good for you, right?
Apology left on your post.
I see that you brought my post to the whales channel on steemit.chat. Thank you for the honesty.
What "whales channel?" Are you referring to the price channel? If so, there are many people there and we discuss many topics.
Perhaps this post just wasn't a very smart idea? Surely you knew that before you posted it. Accept some responsibility.
I take full responsibility. I'm just making note here on the blockchain that you like to say one thing and do another.
(Nesting limit)
Yeah - you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I never asked anyone to flag your post. Sharing a link with others isn't "encouraging flagging." You getting flagged was a result of trying to buy flags. Looks like you attracted the wrong buyers.
You lose more credibility with each new post. You probably should have stopped while you weren't too far behind.
Good luck. I'll be sure to not follow you and refrain from upvoting you in the future.
Hi @beanz,
This is an interesting post, and there has been a lot of discussion about @steamsports lately. I voted for your post, but I am not going to flag anyone. I do think it was a brave post and I want to leave some feedback.
I have mixed feelings about Steemsports and I will try to explain why.
I have made a decision to not vote for the Up and Down Games whether it be sports or even worse, let's compare these two people physically. I don't care for this idea at all. I want to use my vote to encourage more content I am interested in. (Which is a bit of a joke, because even at 4k SP, my vote doesn't mean much.)
On the good side of Steemsports is it does keep users engaged in the community who aren't bloggers and it gives them a chance to earn some steem. Without Steemsports we might have lost some of those users.
I do not know if they "manage" how many posts they do a day, but that would be helpful, if it wasn't so often.
The good news is I think the Free Market it going to handle it. There are now too many people trying to cash in on the idea, and it gets boring.
Great thoughtful post. Thank you for hitting post on it. :) Resteemed for discussion reasons.
Thank you @whatsup. Personally, I think the free market is failing to handle it because people are failing to see any value in their vote - whether that be for upping or lowering a reward. (Just as you've said just now)
Thank you for the resteem too :)
That is a good point. I hope that people will feel like they can comment honestly on their thoughts on this post. It would be good to get a feel for how people think about Steemsports. I know there are some who really value it, and find it is a good way to build some steem. I don't want to lose those people before we get a better solution to gambling on SteemIt.
Yes and that's the trouble I guess... We don't really hear the voices of those who give up and go (and when we do we don't want to hear them).
Sane people who conclude that the system is rigged would just leave and not come back. That's what I believe is happening and I strongly doubt that steemsports is keeping people active.
I used to work in a bookies and I can imagine showing this to my punters. They might show some interest until they find out how much people are winning (nothing) and then even they would lose interest and these are people lived in that shop when I worked there spending 50c to a euro at a time.
It will never attract new users unless they come to write for them.
Agreed there is little to no value in gaining new users, perhaps some value in retaining some that are here and frustrated though.
Yes. Retaining them until they leave out of that frustration.
So you are telling everyone to flag out of subjective reasons?
Its not only for abuse?
Is it a flag or a downvote?
This is a major thing, so please let me know.
If it is not only for abuse I will stop making posts about flaggots, I will however start up a flagging guild to start the flagging wars off.
Please let me know.
Lol. It is for abuse but abuse is subjective. You can start your flag war for what you subjectively feel is abuse, but being aware that others may see your use of the flag as abuse - hence why this post has been flagged.
But to be honest, you do seem to be using the word flaggot wrong. "Flaggot", if I'm not mistaken came from the use of flags on YouTube videos where once flagged, the video is reported and extremely difficult to get back on the site. On steemit the flag doesn't do that at all. The most it can do is put your post to the back of the line, where it's d difficult to see it - but not impossible.
Unfornatly some people find abuse in anything.
It is a subjective term and to say the flag can be used for subjective reasons makes it a problem. I find offence to the letter "r" and anyone that uses it is abusing me, so I can now flag anything with the letter "r" in it and be in the right not the wrong correct?
Flagged for basically flag buying.
Vote buying is considered abuse because when someone purely buys votes, the assumption is that he adds nothing else to the community. This is not the case with Steemsports, which a lot of people seem to enjoy.
In fact, you yourself are basically incentivizing malicious behavior, hence the flag.
If it is a flag used for subjective reasons and not abuse I will be starting up a flag guild. Would u want to join? Also is this post not saying that we should flag it? Im thinking it is.
:O
"incentivising malicious behaviour" suggests that 4 months ago you considered the downvote to be maliscious.
The irony.
My view on the downvote has changed over time, yes. I've even said as much "on the blockchain".
But what I meant was that, to an outsider, the mafia type blackmailing of "pay me to stop flagging you" would seem ridiculous.
I actually thought I was replying to something completely different, and got my stuff mixed up. :D
Anyway, I'm not sure why you feel the need to be snarky when I've actually just come to agree with you on something. That being the downvote.
Isn't NOT voting the common way to NOT add value to a certain content - hence to express our disagreement? Isn't the decision to NOT transfer Steem Power to an author the way we are able to express that we don't like or don't wanna support a specific content? I've always thought that a flag is an 'alarm system' only to be used in 'emergency situations' when a certain content could be a threat for the community (disrespect, racism etc).
There is a budget. When 50% of the rewards is going to one account, by not voting I am agreeing that I am OK with that. There isn't an unlimited amount of SP to transfer. As more and more rewards go to @steemsports (as each vote on top of the last gets bigger) more and more rewards are actually being taken away from everything else.
I perceive a vast majority of the rewards pool going to one account to be a serious threat to the system. You are entitled to disagree.
I don´t disagree, just try to think about an alternative solution to flagging. Because I don´t think that it would lead to the desired effect in the long term. Your post got flagged several times, I am not sure if this was your aim here.
The smoothest way to re-establish balance would be creating more attractive content / products. If there was a really good alternative to steemsports (not only in financial but also entertaining way), the problem would disappear. Maybe the solution is not in attacking the monopoly but trying to position competitors.
steemsports isn´t actually my thing since I am interested in other type of content, but I comprehend the attraction.
It was expected. I don't think the system works without the downvote. As a curator we decide if something should be rewarded more or less. It seems the consensus is to only vote things up, but ignore anything that it says right there in the whitepaper not to ignore.
50% of the rewards are not going to steemsports. I doubt that is even the gross amount (not 100%) sure, but beyond that, to be accurate you would have to subtract the portion that is redistributed not only to the voters on the posts but also the authors and editors who contribute to each post and get a share of the rewards.
You're right, that was a thoughtless exaggeration.
Here are the top rewarded accounts of the last 30 days.
Given those numbers I would guess it actually is close to 50% (post rewards over 30 days is probably something close to 160K STEEM). Still as I indicated a large portion of that does not go to steemsports itself, despite that being the first stop on its way to its eventual recipient.
Well then around 50% of the SP from the rewards pool goes and stays with @steemsports. If you don't see that as problematic then I have little faith in your judgement.
Another one bites the dust.. Happy Christmas.
Free market