Upvoting – Meritocracy or Mediocrity?
I’m days-old in Steemit and have much to learn. What attracted me to this elegantly democratic vehicle was, in part, the foundational concept of “meritocracy.” Everyone in the community may contribute to the limits of their abilities and efforts and the community determines the value of those contributions… in a far more tangible manner than a digital thumbs-up icon.
Today, while reading posts, I happened upon a comment in which the author was aggrieved that some of us did not award the full one-hundred percent value of our upvote capability. The author, and a number of other responders to his comments, believed it insulting to receive less.
I found their reasoning disconcerting on a number of levels:
Fairness – When we award full value to an average or below average work, we cheapen the value of creation truly deserving the full one-hundred percent weighting.
Dishonesty – It's intellectually dishonest to overly reward average performance; it cheapens the reward concept within the community as well as deluding the contributor, robbing them the opportunity for reflection and continuous improvement.
Reputational Damage – When Steemians overly upvote mediocre content, it calls into question the values of not only the creator but also the upvoter. We are all aware of pundits to whom we ascribe little value regarding their opinions.
Pettiness – Some contributors suggested that they were fearful of awarding less than full value because a contributor might retaliate by downvoting or flagging or other malicious payback. Is this any kind of environment for evolving standards?
In every topical tagline, there would be a "Gold Standard" body of work that critically thinking people consider as top-notch creation. Granted, that standard is individual and certainly subjective. It is against that individual standard that one-hundred percent value should be awarded. One would imagine in a global Steemit community extremes of subjective opinion would be attenuated and a consensus opinion would eventuate.
So, my fellow Steemians, if I review your creativity and it merits one-hundred percent – I look forward to fully upvoting. If, IMHO, the work merits an upvote of lesser value, I would hope that you graciously accept my upvote in good spirits and consider why I might have offered that award value.
Think of the analogy of a rising tide – as the water fills the basin, all boats rise. Sadly, the converse is also true.
Namaste
Great post!
I completely understand not enjoying the 1% upvotes that follow a voting bot, because once your post has had over 200 votes and a payout of less than $1.00, hardly anyone that cares about curation rewards will still upvote it (and many do care about that, just look at the trending page always having the same authors).
I cannot, however, understand people not being happy with a less than 100% upvote if even the less than 100% upvote gives a visible reward though. I have hardly been voting with 100% power lately, simply because I want to welcome new members with my upvotes, but doing that with full percentage will drain my voting power within the hour.
There are people with a massive amount of voting power where 100% will bump you to the top op the Hot page instantly. Ofcourse they don't use this on every single post, because, as you said, they are not all so great that they deserve this kind of bump.
Thanks for your instructive reply. I appreciate.
Great post buddy and very well said. I am in complete agreement with you but also have to accept your correct assessment that quality is a matter of perspective and it will be the community that decides what is good content. Whilst I know there is indeed a lot of fantastic content on the site, there is also a lot of content that I personally would describe as less than good being rewarded with upvotes and large payouts.
I think it can be a good thing for average men and women like ourselves to to be able to earn from our posts but it also leads to a lot of abuse of the platform and greed within its users.
I would like to have a popular blog with lots of readers and viewers and also I would like to be rewarded for my efforts if the community feel it adds value but I do not want to be involved in a popularity contest and have hundreds of 'followers' who upvote my work without even looking at it and I don't have time to look over hundreds of posts from those I follow so I try to keep my following list as short as possible so that I can interact with those who add value to my experience of the platform.
It's a work in progress I suppose but it needs a lot of work I feel.
Thanks again.
I agree. I cannot abide just following persons who decide to follow me before I even made an initial post. I cannot just reciprocate following when, after reading content, I don't actually agree with that thinking. All the best.
You too mate!