Steem 'Smack-down' analysis - Do you have a Flag?

A look at the data behind the seemingly increasing number of flags/down-votes that are been distributed on the Steem Blockchain over the past 6 months.

Are the number of flags rising?

Who are the top 'distributors'?

Who is on the receiving end?

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A brief introduction to Flagging

Flags, or down-votes are a method to reduce the rewards on a post and or make the post less visible on the Steemit user interface.

This can be for a number of reasons including a disagreement on the rewards payout, which may be due to plagiarism or spam. Additional flags may be given due to general disagreement on what is being said, or a general dislike to the user making the comments.

With up-votes, we have down-votes. Voting power is used either way, and the user flagging is entitled to do as they wish.

By the way, did you know that if you 'change' a vote, for example, you have voted on a post with 10% but you really like the post and want to give a 100% up-vote, you will receive 0 curation rewards for this new vote, and these rewards will be split between the other curators? If not, you do now :)

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Flagging - A six month high level data review

Data in this section has been captured from the 1st June 2017 through to the present day (30th November 2017).

We can see that prior to the end of July, flagging activity was relatively low and steady day-to-day. This could be due to the increasing user count and the introduction of more accounts used to combat spam and reward pool abuse.

The above chart in numbers:

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The average number of down-votes each day rose from June into July, and was almost 5 fold June's average in August. Since then, the daily average has dropped each consecutive month.

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As you would expect from the average totals, the 'busiest' month was August which totaled 50,000 more flags than June and July combined! Since then, the monthly totals have again fallen month by month.

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Who's flagging?

I feel it important to say here that Flags do serve a purpose, and that it is the free-will of the use to both the 'up' and 'down' vote for content they agree/like and disagree/dislike.

Top 20 Flagging accounts over the last 6 months

In the left-hand table below, all users.

Excluded In the right-hand table, a short list of known (to me) 'services' in place to combat spam and reward pool abuse. ( @blacklist-a, @cheetah, @steemcleaners, @sadkitten, @steemservices, @smackdown.kitty, @mack-bot, @spaminator, @adm) * This list is certainly open to interpretation!

Firstly, it's good to see such accounts like @blacklist-a, @cheetah, @steemcleaners, @sadkitten on the left side list above - this is what I hoped to see.

The list on the right shows up some accounts we may know of, including a couple 'old' accounts with a good 'reputation'.

Is this list how you expected it to look?

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Who's being flagged?

No-one likes a down-vote, but you if you blog and comment multiple time a day and like to share your mind, then it is likely, in time, you may be on the receiving end. His is a list of the top 20 most flagged accounts.

I am surprised to see @zappl at the top of the list, but am not sure if this is the official account or not.

There are also many accounts I recognize on the list above - perhaps they are being flagged in retaliation by accounts that have received a 'valid' down-vote.

Running a check to see if any particular accounts were taking a dislike to @zappl, I found that the account had received down-votes from over 1050 different accounts, with over 1000 of these voting to the negative over 10 times each.

This is interesting to me, and what's also interesting is that @zappl still has a reputation of 65. Clearly these accounts are no match to the power of the up-votes the account is receiving.

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Summary

Despite recent press, down-vote numbers in November are no match to months of July and August.

Since the beginning of June, there have been over half a million down-votes issued. This should make most users feel quite pleased with occasional flag they have received!

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Tools used to gather this data and compile report

The data is sourced from SteemSQL - A publicly available SQL database with all the blockchain data held within (Data is normally 1/2 hours delayed from live)

The SQL queries to extra to the data have been produced in both SQL Server Personal Edition and LINQPAD 5.

The charts used to present the data were produced using MS Excel.

A selection of SQL Scripts used

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_{This data was compiled on the 30th November at 10:00 am CET}

_{I am part of a Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #bisteemit. If you have analysis you would like to be carried out on utopian-io/Steem data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you.}

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I'd like to end this piece of analysis with something a bit lighter relating to 'Flagging'. 3 minutes of Eddie Izzard.

No flag no Country, you cant have one!

I hope you found this analysis interesting.

Thanks

Asher @abh12345

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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