Imagine for a moment you are an entertainment judge. Maybe you're on the panel of "The X Factor" judges. Or maybe it's just a local talent contest or an international sports event where the winner is chosen by subjective judgement of value (such as dancing). Whatever it is you are judging, your vote is important in making this a legitimate competition that people enjoy. It's an annual or quarterly event that brings people together. You are honoured to hold the position on the judging panel that you were trusted with to choose the winner in a fair manner that encourages competition so that each time the event comes back around people are happy to return and watch or compete.

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Now lets say you witness something. One ... or two ... or maybe even all of the judges are offered a bribe. The bribe is coming from a very talented individual who badly wants to win the competition.

You have a choice.

You can accept the bribe but you know that for anybody who realises or even suspects what happened the competition will no longer be enjoyable. You know that by accepting the bribe you would be initiating the beginning of the end, as gradually people will lose interest in the events.

We don't want that...

Lets say you choose to reject the bribe, but one of your fellow judges accepts. In this position you also have a choice. You can allow the game to be skewed and manipulated damaging its reputation, or you can actively counter the vote of your fellow judge.

Of course this doesn't solve the problem completely. If you walk away, that bribe still incentivises future bribes and your other fellow judges are likely to join in if they don't see a way of stopping it. There's only one thing for it.

RULES

Every competition like this has rules. The judges have to abide by the responsibility they were honoured with by choosing the talent that deserves to win - not the talent that offered them an extra buck!

There has to be repurcussions for anybody who attempts to bribe a judge.

Anarchy without rules is chaos!

@fyrstikken suggested that we put a stop to voting games on steemit and this is not just coming from him but from many members of the community who are afraid to speak up because of the support it gets from individuals who tend to use their flags without thinking about the importance of user retention.

When you use your vote for a game in which you can win back the rewards from the post other people are incentivised to pile on that post even if they have no interest in it. I believe this undermines the system in place because the system was designed intentionally to disincentivise pile-ons.

Please click here to read how the curation system works according to Dan the co-founder of steemit.

Since this is a social media platform where we are the stake-holders we are the judges who choose what gets to the front page of steemit. In order to incentivise people to find quality content that other people will like we have curation rewards and those rewards are mostly only for those who are the first to bring that post to the communities attention. Unfortunately these voting games that reward the players with the post rewards don't play by the same rules. You can pile on whenever you like and you will be rewarded with a bribe. I believe these games can work off the site, while still using posts to engage the gamers and leave out the aspect of using the post rewards to incentivise gamers to vote for the post. I'm sure anybody who enjoys the game will still upvote the post.

Native speakers only.

Google translate not permitted.