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RE: The Dwin fallacy(In defense of the flag part II)
@sigmajin - great post! As someone who personally subscribes to the "only downvote for abuse" policy, I found that you made a very compelling argument.
One question that I have (and maybe you will address this in your next post) is how do you address the fact that being downvoted harms the user experience? I don't think that there is any way around the fact that being downvoted and losing rewards is going to make people unhappy.
oh, I blame you for that.
Well, not really, though i do think that the UI is a part of the problem. showing the non-aggregate down votes in the UI, and representing it as a flag is a big part of that problem though. Im not in favor of hiding it, but showcasing it is a mistake, IMO.
That said, i think you address it by educating people. There is so much about steem that is completely different. The blockchain. porn now. paying people for social content.
I think if we can get people to accept posts about alexanova and her adventures with Moe The Monster, we can get people to accept the notion that a vote is a vote. Its about money, and it isnt personal.
Step one is when people get flagged, and get upset about it, you say: "Grow the fuck up. this isnt facebook. votes arent personal here. Its about money." well, maybe youre nicer than that, but you get the point.
Part maybe, but I think it is a huge oversimplification to try to put too much of the problem into that narrow bin. As you perhaps remember, the original UI had a naked downvote button (matching the upvote button but inverted, with no confirmation box). Part of the reason for the UI change was that people were getting downvoted and getting upset about it. Dismissing that the existence and significance of that reaction is to dismiss a huge component of this system, the human component.
Even prior to that, the @bitcoindoom post explains that Ned and Dan originally wanted to create an upvote-only system. Why? Because they felt it would result in more positive user experience that would be more successful (and probably drawing on some user experiences in other systems with and without downvotes). It was only after working through the game theory and identifying the necessity for downvotes were they included in the design. So again, there is clear recognition (possibly incorrect, but I don't think so) that the human component of this system would really prefer not to be downvoted.
So while we may indeed want to transition to an upvote-downvote system for various good reasons, it is not something that should be done with an unrealistic view of the very real costs of such a system.
As you know if you reviewed issue 215, I'm not a fan of the UI telling people how to vote, but I'm not at all convinced that the UI is to blame for the negative reactions and the resulting reluctance to routinely use downvoting. I think that is getting the causality backwards.
I agree completely with this. This is completely rational. After all, no one wants to be downvoted.
The thing is that even though it is rational to not want to be downvoted, it is irrational to_get upset_ about being downvoted. For the same reason its irrational to get upset about a bad beat in poker. Because the very same system that allows your hands to hold up most of the time (and therefore allows you to make money) also causes your hands to get cracked sometimes.
So it was irrational for these users to get upset. There are three ways to handle someone who is irrational: The first, middle of the road, solution is you can do nothing. The second way is that you can embrace their irrationality. The third is that you can reject their irrationality. The advantage of embracing that irrationality is that the immediate effect of doing so will be to comfort the irrational person. The disadvantage is that it will also reinforce his irrtionality. The advantage to the third solution is that it might get the irrational person to think more rationally.
Consider Rudy. Patch's roommate in the movie in the movie "patch adams". RUdy believes that he is being stalked by an army of millitant squirrels
In this scene, Patch uses the second method to address rudy's irrationality.
Note that choice 2 and choice 3 are mutually exclusive. Patch can either try to convince rudy that the squirrels aren't real, or he can help Rudy fight the squirrels, and thereby implicity acknowledge that they are real.
If someone is irrationally upset about getting downvoted, Choice 1 would to just ignore them. Choice 3, which is the way i would have gone, would have been to say, especially to the very well paid authors who were most vocal about downvoting, "stfu and stop whining. the very same system that allows you to make all this money also allows you to be downvoted. If youre taking the money, youre accepting the system" and followed that up with an explanation about h ow its not personal, and its necessary for the system to work.
Instead we grabbed our trusty squirrel bazooka, changed the UI, and went with choice 3.
So changes to the UI might not have caused the irrationality, but the decision to reinforce it (versus do nothing or actively oppose it) is, perhaps, why it persisted. (although its also possible that it would have persisted regardless of either inaction or active rejection)
I agree that UI changes to help clarify would be good. The current "rules" that are shown (mentioned in another user's comment) are contributing to the belief that a downvote (i.e. 'flag') means they have done something wrong.
Can you please clarify what you mean by this? I'm assuming it was a joke, but it went over my head ;P
^ Yes. This.
Aren't you the UI guy, or have i got you confused with someone else? (it was just a tounge in cheek way of saying part of it is a UI problem)
No problem :) I should probably start mentioning in those posts that I do not officially work for Steemit.
I'm not sure if Steemit will approve it, but I opened up a GitHub issue to make three changes:
https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/932
Wow awesome. That said, i think there is some degree of resistence to this.
I finally looked issue 215 and its interesting. Regarding what you brought up... the flag/downvote seperation issue... I don't really see why we need a flag at all. The downvote does everything we need it to do. Besides the fact that we elect to call it a flag, theres nothing about it thats different than a downvote would be.
Renaming it from "flag" to "downvote" does go a long ways towards resolving it. Maybe it is all that is needed (along with the other changes being proposed in 932).
As far as the reason to have two separate options though - I think the idea is that the community would want a way to tell if users are being actually abusive vs. just posting posts that people thought were too highly paid.
In a future state of Steemit where there is a marketplace - I would have concerns about doing business with someone who had 500 flags, but if a flag and a downvote meant the same thing - then I would have no 'warning' for someone who actually did something worthy of 500 'flags'.
Yeah, i see your point. That said, i suspect the 500 flags guy probably makes a new account to use on the marketplace, unless hes both dishonest and stupid.
I think a marketplace would be a great developement, and i can even see it happening, but if it does, there is going to have to be some marketplace-specific reputation/fb system. The current rep system we use (including upvotes. downvotes on posts and reputation score) is insufficient to handle actual commerce.
The github issue was rejected. Looks like we might have to wait for larger UI changes related to flagging/downvotes further down the line.
I'm honored that you would think so, but no. You might be thinking of @roadscape (also named Tim). I have done some work for the UI (like working on the welcome page) and reports about the dev team (such as the Steemit.com development report), but this is just as a member of the community trying to help out. I am not actually employed by Steemit ;)
doh! i must have gotten some mental wires crossed. I think i saw a couple posts about a release of the NSFW filter, and assumed you were posting them as official dev team announcements.
I agree with you that this is how the flag should be used currently, but since not even the founders use it that way it makes it look very silly unfortunately.
Please, see my other comment.
/Ego
Yep. Agreed.