A downvote/flag does not mean you did something wrong.

Wow nice post.
Resteemed

I understand your point. I just hope that people don't use it because they disagree with an opinion. On some Reddit subreddits, people will downvote you in a polite discussion because they disagree with some pretty trivial thing. I mean, there are subreddits that discuss *fiction" where you can get downvoted for having a different interpretation. IMO, that's misuse of downvotes, and I know that's NOT what you're suggesting.

Karma on Reddit means nothing. I used to have a negative total for pointing out plot holes in popular series and it meant nothing in the longun. Votes on Steemit on the other hand mean real money. Said money are supposed to be witnessed by everyone when given as rewards. Have a public chart every day with the 100 highest rewards and/or flagged posts. Let everyone see them and decide if they deserve them or not.

Good idea about the chart. You're right. It doesn't mean anything on Reddit. It's just the closest example I could come up with. We're breaking new ground here, so I imagine there will be a few bumps.

see my comment here

https://steemit.com/statistics/@chinadaily/daily-top-posts-authors-and-stats-in-the-past-7-days-2017-12-16-2017-12-22

Putting together a public display of the past rewards might actually be a good idea.

So far this has only been done by volunteers on a case by case basis and published as regular blog posts.

see my comment here

https://steemit.com/statistics/@chinadaily/daily-top-posts-authors-and-stats-in-the-past-7-days-2017-12-16-2017-12-22

Cool, but I'd like something integrated into or maybe even a separate interface actually. @jesta maybe an idea for the future?

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Totally agree. If the system allows downvoting its not unfair to use it.

The system also allows voting worthless posts for the sake of curation, as seen in the image. It is not ok if it's simply allowed. It's ok if it's fair for the Steemit agenda.

that's great...what do you want to do...just do..
hopefully you will get your result...

@upvoted

It seems like there is a lot of judgement involved. When there is a lot of judgement involved, things get complicated very quickly.

I completely agree with you here, but it can't be any worse than the shit storm that is going on now.

but @themarkymark you were fueling this shit storm by supporting a purely fictitious claim about someone receiving 6% of the reward pool.

It was what was presented by a third party tool, out of my control. The author has since made an update to correct it.

Doesn’t change the fact it was over 50k usd for two days and it is still over 1% of the reward pool.

Well that is an interesting claim but he had not made that many votes!
But lets say he had made that many votes, it probably would only be a small percentage of what the guy made from following the advice of the person who he was up voting.

I am a computer dunce i dont have a fucking clue but it took me about 5 seconds to verify that the claim was complete bullshit.
But you are a real good with computers and you already know for sure that your friend berniesanders is untrustworthy. So the question is why would you be tempted to support a deception like that?

when large amounts of money are exhanging hands, things NEED to be complicated, so they can be fair

@timcliff You've got a solid point! But I wouldn't like to witness users flagging others just because they disagree with their views or to silence them because they hate them.

Either way it's still power and it comes with responsibility. It's up to us.

Flagging and high rewards should be double checked before verified. Which is why we need public lists of daily rewards and flags for all to see and judge before verifying.

the organized groups for countering the abusive voting and/or downvoting would be a really good thing for the @steemit account to contribute a substantial amount to.

It would demonstrate their resolve to maintain balance in the community while delegating the actual operation of it to trusted community members.

The devil being in the details.. setting out the guidelines of what constitutes abuse could get interesting

@timcliff sir
What I learned here :
Steemit is not only about UPVOTES & Money
It is about writing..
It is about reading..
It is about knowing people and their side of the story..
It is about learning..
It is about finding a path to follow..
It is about keeping yourself motivated to write better..
It is about broadening your thinking..
It is about spending your time productively..
It is about making you think from a different perspective..
It is about writing without any expectations of UPVOTES..

Currently there is a stigma against "flagging"

Yes, because flagging a post will invite retaliation, and your encouraging of new and vulnerable Steemit users to flag people is highly irresponsible.

You suggest that we need to downvote more people to keep them from getting rewards that are too big. This is nothing more than the politics of envy. Who decides what kind of rewards are "too big"? And why have you neglected to mention the third option?

Because guess what? You don't have to upvote or flag any posts. If you feel that a post is receiving too many rewards, you can express your opposition by simply not upvoting said post. Or unfollowing/muting the author, if you're really ticked off.

Flagging is, and ought to be, reserved for cases of abuse and fraud by bad actors. To go beyond that is to lump in a bunch of innocent Steemians with the criminals just because we don't like their opinions.

All of this would make perfect sense to me if the rewards they are receiving have actually been handed to them by somebody. Then why would you care if someone earns more money than you? It's just good for them!

However, on STEEM, we all pay for people's pay out. I pay an author even when I don't upvote them, but because I choose to buy more STEEM to power it up instead of selling. I, and any long-term investor (big or small), should then care about the overall value of the platform. And the inflation of the token that is used to pay content creators is our way to fund its progress. It is how we attract great creators and incentivise work that builds STEEM.

So no I disagree with the idea that by flagging you are taking away something that a steemian has earned. Instead, you are responsibly taking part as a stakeholder in how the scare resources the platform has is used.

I view it like an investor in a newspaper company who, because of his or her stake, has a board member steat. If they observe from their statistics that one contributing journalist is a poor investment as the value they produce is less than their wage + the alternative cost of not having another author in the paper, they can use their power to change that. Similarly, but instead of the binary power of "either you have a seat at the board or you don't", STEEM is beautiful in that all stakeholders has this type of seat according to their stake. And where instead of decisions influencing writers being hidden from their eyes behind closed doors, any content creator can observe who is having an issue with their payout, and make contact with them.

I really like that aspect of it, and think it would be a loss for STEEM if it was taken away and "reserved for cases of abuse and fraud by bad actors".

But as mentioned above, I totally get that this responsible way of using flags is not "felt" by anyone who ever gets flagged. Which is a fault of the UI and resulting user expectations.

And what happens when the self-upvoters start flagging the people who flag them, and then they retaliate, and then are retaliated against?

Where does it end?

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/250x250/74008113/do-you-want-civil-war-cause-thats-how-you-get-civil-war.jpg

If so many people start downvoting, the abuser will not be able to hurt them. Remember that downvoting consumes some SP too.

It doesn't end but it balances.

If you think that makes a civil war (I don't) then if you look around you will find that that war is constant and permanent, because that's that's what allowing for both up and down votes leads to.

Yes, this ongoing civil war in upvotes has me constantly unnerved... we should come together as a community and put an end to it ;)

Well, as I said, I don't consider there to be a war going on.

I know, just having some fun ;) Your analogy made a lot of sense.

Oh! 😅

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Over time I have also come to believe that flagging is necessary.
I know there are no financial incentives, but to me that is like a shop owner saying they don't want to clean the shop because it doesn't pay.

It is just part of the cost of doing business.

"there are no financial incentives"

Imagine someone with 500+ followers making a topic every time he finds a cheater, and says "hey guys check what I found, this guy is abusing the system, flag him". Won't he be rewarded for his contribution? XD

There are no direct financial incentives. It takes extra work to earn from it.

When there are enough people double checking every high reward and mass flag, Steemit will be a better place.

It seems to me that people got the totally wrong impression/perception of what a downvote/flag really is in my mind. They seem to think it removes something they have already rightfully earned. Or that it is somehow an attack on them unless they have breached some "rules" such as plagiarizing etc.

I try to explain it like this to new people: Anyone who holds STEEM has the ability to contribute to the giant "Pie" that is the blockchain. No matter what other stakeholders think, you have the ability to express yourself and add what you want. However, all stakeholders have the ability to decide according to their stake how rewarding your contributions to the pie should be from the scarce amount of rewards that can be given by the blockchain they hold a stake in (It is very important, in my experience, to stress how it is not the people who gave you an upvote who gives you a reward, all stakeholders to give value to the token through their investment are giving you a reward, it just so happened that only some noticed it in the time window where rewards could be given. An imperfection of the design perhaps.

I think it is ultimately the UI that is to blame for people having the wrong "feeling" about flagging. After all, it is the job of the User Interface help provide a User Experience where the most healthy and natural set of actions are experienced as indeed natural and healthy. That there is no large mismatch between expectations and reality.

My only suggestion would probably be to remove the display of pending payout until after 7 days. Then have one set of tabs like we currently do that displays posts based on vested votes, and another tab that displays posts with the highest final payout over the last X days (that the browser can select in any useful fashion). On top of a few other utilities I could mention, I think this would also help restore the view that payout means nothing until it is indeed paid out.

upvoted for visibility. Hoping for a fruitful discussion.

I would also support the change to a downvote to replace the current flag.

You could still keep the flag basically as the equivalent of a "report" button. Just for the worst kind of abuse like posting child porn, plagiarized content etc, although I can see the community taking it upon themselves to create a feature whereby clicking a flag you send a link to the article to the equivalent of steemcleaners, or some stakeholder capable of nuking a post.

> You could still keep the flag basically as the equivalent of a "report" button. Just for the worst kind of abuse like posting child porn, plagiarized content etc,

This is absolutely the way to go. And this should not be a blockchain feature, but a Condenser (steemit.com) feature. In the steemit.com Terms of Service Steemit Inc. reserves the right to not read any copyright infringing content from the chain. This does not modify the chain obviously, but it does stop access through the steemit.com portal only. This is what should also happen for the most vile content that there is a human society consensus about, such as child porn, but it should only be used in the most extreme of cases, not simply for plagiarized content.

This is what "reporting" should be. The idea of the "flag" needs to go.

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

I wholeheartedly support trying this approach, at least. Ironically, I think it would create a truer free market here, as it would render downvote-terrorism powerless. Controversial views would no longer be a liability...except for witnesses, I guess, who could have voted removed. One step at a time.

Personz for flag-change mayor.

Nice to have agreement across the aisle. It's cool that though we read the situation differently there's still a solution which looks like it solves the over all problem to some degree.

Step by step. But I think you'd make a better mayor 😉

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Finally, there’s a reason why every country has public – or at least the collective coming together to jointly finance – basic cleaning. If everyone is left to do it on their own, people won’t put in the effort, them alone, to clean the neighbourhood. And when nobody does it it results in a messy street that reduces the wellbeing for everyone.

I think similarly, we’ll need to collectively fund these types of flagging. After all, it doesn’t take that much Voting Power when many people join the idea, to defeat the majority of abusers or at least make it far less profitable to the point where it makes no sense. I can imagine a community account that people can delegate to that does these types of flagging and where the transparency of the blockchain means that anyone can scrutinize it’s behaviour and openly discuss if it does anything wrong.

Not saying this is the solution, but it will have to be the community building something together.

> I think it is ultimately the UI that is to blame for people having the wrong "feeling" about flagging.

Agreed.

The big problem with hiding the "Potential" Reward payout is then no one will know when someone is scamming the system. Example: Slowwalker giving himself that $4.00 self upvote. I am sure it was for visibility like your self upvote, to bring notice to an issue, that may need to be looked into.

If it were for visibility, he could simply upvote and decline payouts, right?

In this case I would say no. He did it, (in my opinion) to show people a problem with the self vote. You see it is not against the rules. It is in fact an option when you make a post or now even a comment a little check box that says "Upvote post". He wants to change that. While it is not against the rules, the steemit community believes it should be used in a more ethical manner. In @slowwalker 's use it was used in an ethical manner, once again that is just my opinion.

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Resteemed! This is a great idea and more people need to see it. Only by managing our interactions with each other can we make sure the reward pool will be put to good use!

Wonderful writing.I just have read your post.This is most valuable post for us.Analytic post.Thanks to shearing.I like your post.

While I like the idea of having an entire bar that I can just go nuke the daylights out of a comment spammers. The fact of the matter is that guy could just go and buy some down votes from bot and take me out in his attempt of retribution.

There comes to a point in society when you start looking at thing in such a negative way that happiness just drains out of it. Now should people be forced to give up such a large stake of their own just go to hunt down and deal with people giving themselves $150 upvotes on spam comments --no.

Do I want to have an entire downvoting bar that I could not only sell but also delegate to another party to wage war on whatever I wanted. Eh that sounds like we be lighting Steemit on fire. There got be a middle grown somewhere where your downvote uses less of your voting power up then a normal upvote. I just don’t know if it having its own bar is the solution.

All it needs is a double check. Nobody gets 150$ or gets his posts permaflagged without a large team of people agreeing with that first. Which is why we need public lists of daily payments and flags that need verification.

I’m glad you wrote about this. IMO the huge problem with the flags on Steemit is that many users, especially new ones, don’t treat them as downvotes... they know the flags mostly from YT and FB where the purpose of flag is completely different. If we can have a downvote button and keep the flag only for serious violations I believe this can save us many conflicts. ;-)

I agree. I am very new and honestly was confused about the whole flagging issue until reading this. Flagging and downvoting should be separate. Or, at the very least, there needs to be a better explanation somewhere about what flagging is and why it is important to the community.

Right on! "MDGA".. and "Drain the Steemit Swamp"!

I got an idea. We could create an anti-flag-war account that protects everyone that gives it a portion of their sp

This kind of exists already in @freezepeach

great post my when i upvote your post upvote number is 200 complete can you upvote mine
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@wahabali/crypto-assets-bolster-the-season-of-giving-in-2017

Lets downvote to impose the rule and upvote to encourage.

This has been on my mind for a long time as well. In most other communities "flagging" is reserved for offensive or illegal content that people wish to be removed from the website. Stuff that portrays violence, stuff that is NSFW etc.
Meanwhile, the reason for upvoting/ downvoting is often a way of seeing the ratio between readers who agrees/ disagrees with the writer.
Therefore there is likely a lot of confusion about what flagging actually means on steemit, as it can seem very harsh to flag someone who hasn't done something "illegal".

Just my two cents :)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tim

This 100%. It's very encouraging to see a growing userbase that agrees with the above and wants to adapt the UI especially.

I guess you should also provide a definition for "too big reward"

If I would see a completely unprofessional photo-mess-post with a reward XX from first-day-on-steemit user, should I downvote the post or opposite: to upvote and support newbie?

Also, by downvoting you would punish all people who already upvoted a post.

It is subjective.

^ this. And I would add that the consensus is reached by factoring in all votes of interested parties.

you wrote a nice blog... its really informative for us....

hello everyone good morning

It is important to point out that Self Vote Abuse (the self vote of low effort spammy posts/comments) is bad even when done by smaller accounts.
Policy enforcement by any new formed group needs to be consistent across the board:
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part

This seems in line with the definition I gave in the post - self-rewarding content more than the value it is worth.

Yes, the problem though is always drawing the line... but as with the flag vs downvote issue I think in then we will be able to find better solutions than bots and retaliation wars.

Thanks for sparking a great conversation Tim, I've reblogged it of course for what it's worth.

Steemit doesn't need a police force. There is no need for the kind of policy enforcement you are advocating.

I'm calling for the same thing as what Timcliff is advocating for. I guess you just don't like my nickname. I don't either. And I don't want this new group to be called "Police", nor I'm gonna be part of it.
Whether you like it or not Steemcleaners, Spaminator, Cheetah and even your bots have been POLICING content and behaviour....but not very effectively against Self Vote Abuse (the evidence is all there to see)
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part
This new group would be no different to the above but specialized to tackle Self Vote Abuse, and with enough Steem Power to neutralize the abuses.
Next time you downvote make sure you understand what you're downvoting, and not just downvoting based on emotional reaction to a nickname. That's why among the names I suggested to lead this new group there isn't yours. Your previous attempts to tackle the issue were ill judged and ineffective....and you proved your ill judgement once again.

I don't like your nickname or your previous posts. You are not quite coming at the problem from the same angle as Tim.

Concepts matter. Calling yourself police is creating an association. Calling what the services and bots you mention "policing" matters, and I reject the association.

> Next time you downvote make sure you understand what you're downvoting [...]

The whole point of @timcliff 's post is in recognition of the freedom to vote up or down. No explanation is required. It does not matter to me if you understand why I vote, the vote speaks for itself.

> Your previous attempts to tackle the issue were ill judged and ineffective....and you proved your ill judgement once again.

I have to admit that it was not a success. I do not claim to have perfect judgement or to be correct all the time. I seek the best advice and do my best to learn. I hope to be part of current and future discussions on the subject and do what I can to contribute to the best ideas.

In a personal capacity, when I am not charged with responsibility of delegations for a purpose, I act as a free agent and I vote how I please. You would do well to respect this.

In my posts I do not advocate for anything different than what Timcliff proposed.
>Have an organized community group (similar to SteemCleaners) with delegated voting power specifically to be used for the purpose of downvoting serious cases of voting abuse.

In the comment you downvoted I just called for the new (community) policy to be consistant, and apply also to abusers with lower payouts.
Do you disagree with the content of my post? No, just the terminology and the nickname.

Policing is enforcing an agreed policy (which is what Steemcleaners and Cheetah have been doing).
Shall we change the English language just because of our dislike for the (real life) Police. Maybe.

Don't get me wrong. I understand why it triggered you. My first reaction to Police is....Fuck the Police! But you know once upon a time there was also community run policemen, they wasn't always the armed gangsters of the Government.

I would call the new group something like SelfVoteAbuseTeam, not certainly Police.

And I would likely support it. But not under your name of police.

In my latest post (pls see it) I indicated an abuse going on here (I mentioned you on the post) and I want you to see it and take action. I wish you more success.

Hey @timcliff that's a great point I know it's can be helpful for all Steemian I appreciate your post my friend

Totally agreed @timcliff. Anytime don't wait upvotes in steemit platform.
Important info entire.

>A UI change to condenser (steemit.com) to change "flag" to "downvote".

Gotta admit that I’m surprised this change hasn’t happened a long time ago.

For what it’s worth, I’m okay with people using their SP to downvote as they see fit. And this even applies to the spastic stalker-troll who downvotes almost everything I post. Meh, what goes around comes around.

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

The idea, like many others that involve any sort of regulation, sound appealing. You make a valid point. Garbage content should not be pulling in hundreds of dollars. But how do you draw the line between garbage content and quality content?

The example you posted is quite clear. It is not adding anything to the conversation, or the community, and it goes against the very purpose of steemit. But what happens in the case of a more controversial post? Or in the case of differing opinions?

What you advocate for in essence leads to censorship. Perhaps clear rules on blatant abuse (upvoting self-comments like the one you posted) could help the community as a whole, but I'm doubtful they could be properly implemented and not lead to greater complications. A single downvote from a user with a large share could literally take away the entire payout of a well-written post, which they happened to disagree with.

I do, however, love that you're always thinking of ways to make the community better. And that you're willing to listen to the people who disagree with you.

Edit: Finally upvoted your post. Steemit wasn't cooperating for a while.

Steemit is supposed to be working as a team effort. Just have all high rewards and flags be up for verification via public lists every day.

I believe downvoting is open to abuse and does in fact lead to censorship. I was attracted to Steemit, not because of the monetary rewards, but more for the belief at the time, that the platform was not subject to the same levels of draconian censorship we have seen on FB, Twitter and Youtube during 2017.

I have been a long time follower of a writer by the name of Sarah Abed who has written extensively on the War on Syria. As a Syrian-born American, she has an insight into the conflict that many others do not. Her extremely well-researched views are counter to the views pushed by the mainstream media. When she writes an article, she puts a lot of time and effort into the research and writing. Soon after I joined, I was excited to discover Sarah was a member of Steemit and sharing her articles on this platform.

While her posts were providing modest rewards, she was spending days and even weeks researching each article. But someone, or someones, didn't like what she had to say, and started downvoting her because she had the nerve to criticise certain governments and express support for others. The rewards she earned dropped dramatically and she has virtually stopped posting.

If she is gone for good, she is a huge loss to the Steemit platform. If other talented writers and researchers with alternative viewpoints are also flagged into oblivion, I'm not sure what the future of Steemit will be.

Good example. I think there is a solution somewhere, but it is not as simple as what timcliff presented. I don't think it's bad for people to disagree and voice that opinion, and in reality, when people disagree it does mean that what is being said has less value to those people. My issue is the impact one vote can have, and I can see a single vote wiping out the entire value of what 50+ people voted for.

Yes, I believe any solution has to protect the platform from censorhip as a key priority. The censorship on Facebook is getting ridiculous. I rarely use FB any more, but when I went on for a quick update yesterday, for example, one of my Syrian FB friends was announcing that she was now back on after being banned (just for expressing her support for own country). Another FB friend Jay Dyer has a large following on his website, Youtube channel etc, he appears regularly on many popular podcasts and has his own show on Gaia TV called Hollywood Decoded. He received a warning from FB recently that he may soon be banned for life.

It's these people who should be welcomed on Steemit. Jay Dyer, for example, puts a lot of work into his writings and Youtube lectures and would be a great asset to this platform. He is extremly knowledgeable on a wide range of topics from religion to geopolitics and movies.

Yes, debate is healthy, and I know Jay for one would welcome the opportunity to debate his ideas in the comments section of his posts. But will these talents come if any income they can earn for all their knowledge and hard work can be wiped out by someone, or a group, who does not agree with their point of view.

While possibly flying under the radar now, Steemit will eventually receive the attention of professional lobby groups, PR campaigners, political groups and even governments. all with very deep pockets. They will be able to invest in the platform and possibly wipe out all dissenting voices.

If that day comes, we will just have another heavily censored platform where the free expression of ideas is not tolerated.

Yes, that's the problem with flagging. The 'weaker' one often doesn't dare to contradict the 'stronger' one.

> But how do you draw the line between garbage content and quality content?

By your own subjective standards. We do not need to have totalitarian rules on this, the consensus emerges from the individual and independent votes of all interested stakeholders.

> What you advocate for in essence leads to censorship.

Not so. Removing some potential financial rewards by down voting is not censorship. It is showing the market value of the post to be less than it was a previous point in time when the opinion of another stakeholder is factored in.

You make a valid point. Perhaps "censorship" was a bit extreme. I'm not against the idea of down voting, just against a systematic pattern with no objective rules.

The biggest issue I have is that timcliff brought this up as a way to combat abuse by those who are self voting useless content. It isn't a solution to that problem. Logically, when their posts start getting down voted, they'll do the same to others. And then it becomes a measure of who has more vests.

Perhaps down voting that only impacts a post when it has more downvotes than upvotes, or is above a certain threshold would work better.

>The idea, like many others that involve any sort of regulation, sound appealing. You make a valid point. Garbage content should not be pulling in hundreds of dollars. But how do you draw the line between garbage content and quality content?

The market self-regulates. In other words, ordinary people will have to make those decisions themselves. Stopping them from doing it or encouraging them not to by making a user interface that encourages other voting patterns is just as much "regulation" and can be much more harmful if it stops all forms of downvotes (to any extent).

What we need is to have a separate downvote and yet another separate flag. One for dislikes and one for site abuse reporting.

>What you advocate for in essence leads to censorship. Perhaps clear rules on blatant abuse (upvoting self-comments like the one you posted) could help the community as a whole, but I'm doubtful they could be properly implemented and not lead to greater complications. A single downvote from a user with a large share could literally take away the entire payout of a well-written post, which they happened to disagree with.

Less or no rewards is not censorship. Real censorship is impossible due to the blockchain that stores the information. If you want to show more or less of the information, you can switch the app you use to access Steem.

You also make a valid point. See my above reply to personz in this comment thread, as I think it applies to you as well.

>The biggest issue I have is that timcliff brought this up as a way to combat abuse by those who are self voting useless content. It isn't a solution to that problem. Logically, when their posts start getting down voted, they'll do the same to others. And then it becomes a measure of who has more vests.

This is what is supposed to be self-regulating. I can agree that there might still be good to have some coded limits to this, but they are not all that easy to actually impose because they have to be done through incentives somehow. Not just blocking a feature.

>Perhaps down voting that only impacts a post when it has more downvotes than upvotes, or is above a certain threshold would work better.

I stand corrected. Maybe you made an error in your writing here. But limits like these can't certainly work to mitigate at least part of the problem, because they can't be avoided by buying votes etc.

I think it would be good to have downvotes and flags. Flags having a negative consequence to rep and downvotes not.

Downvoting will continue to be tied to reputation (that is how the blockchain works, and there is not enough incentive to change it), but it really only has a net negative effect on someone's reputation if their post or comment gets voted below 0.00 payout.

There is talk about after communities are implemented, creating a new 'flag' feature at the UI level that can be used to get moderator attention. Moderators at that point would have the option to hide the post/comment, as well as downvote.

But the real question isn't that: what is reputation for? For me it just serves to give an indication on the number of SBD SPs gained by the user nothing else. What do you think of this reputation system?

It is well known and acknowledged by the dev team that the current reputation system is very limited. It really serves one main purpose (which it does fairly well) and that is to provide a mechanism to hide content from spammy or abusive users.

Yes, for small spamming accounts it works very well, but it also penalizes some new accounts that make beginner's mistakes :-( .

Regarding your article, I find the suggestion to create two separate reward pool very interesting. I think there will be other issues that we don't think about right now, but I would like to know more about your vision of this possibility. Can you tell me more about it?

With two voting pools, users do not have to sacrifice curation rewards if they choose to downvote.

But that would decrease the hesitancy to downvote too. As it is, most users will pause before using more than 2 or 3 downvotes.

That is the intent. Currently users who fight abuse for the good of the platform are actually penalized financially.

No. Not unless they heavily self vote.

Their downvoting in JUST cases is positive for their real investment..THE STEEM that they have powered up.

If Downvoting is too easy....abuse will be worse because you can downvote everyone/anyone and not lose your Voting Power. The current system makes most people weigh the cost...and, in theory, only downvote to help protect their longterm investment.

They lose out on curation rewards.

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

It would also be nice if 70+ rep users like you make a topic every time they find a cheater, so more people will flag him (and the reporter gets some reward for his contribution).

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Question: if my upvote at full strength is 15 cents will my downvote at full strength take 15 cents of value off? Thanks for any answers in advance

Yes

flag does not take out anything, it just removes the reward and hides the comment

Upvoted, Tim, but I'm skeptical that downvoting will solve the issue. Good discussion.

it will solve it if there people are double checking what is flaged or highly rewarded

I agree with you,thanks for your wonderful post sharing us.

I completely agree that if it can be started again then it will be better to use. @timcliff

I agree with you @timcliff we don't want to give up the ability to flag.

I get the sense that much of the down vote witch hunts, are really about narrowing down the spread of the reward pool so the whale accounts using Reward Pool Mining Bots pick up a nice bonus.

Downvoting is apart of the website and it doesn't always mean that you are being attacked as many seem to think. I think the terms "downvote" and "flag" need to be separated.

For me, when I hear flagging, I think of someone that had done something wrong. While a downvote doesn't mean that you have done anything wrong but maybe a post is over valued at the current amount.

Mr. posted on your post so I think it will be good to have downvotes and flags. Do not flag for negative and negative effects@timcliff

This is a very good idea, downvoting could be what you have just suggested but flag can be used to deal with these spammers who are just there to get on people's nerves and have not realised what this platform is all about yet.

Furthermore, I think something like an orientation can be carried out to further educate steemians who still do not know the difference between downvoting and flagging just as @aggroed has put down.

Thank you @timcliff

Critics also help is success

I completely agree that i like you post thank you for formation@rastalikelove

what should I say about @checkthisout ?
If this kinds of thing happen again, the system of the STEEMIT would be totally demolishted.

I' d like to ask you "WHAT DID YOU DO?"

I strongly recommend to find out 'Who is @checkthisout?'

@checkthisout is @grumpycat.
Self Vote Abuse has been rampant on Steemit for some time, @checkthisout just made it impossible to ignore any longer (and may have been one of his objectives)
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part

Your comment is not worth the 4$ you have given it! I'll down voted.

Theory applied :)

Self voting in a reply to this is not setting a good example. I'm not even voting on the post as I think it's done well enough

Feel free to downvote if you think it is making too much ;)

I couldn't dent it much and you do good work. It's crazy what some posts are making lately when you work it out in Steem and US$. I'm doing okay, but I see others just being greedy and it's frustrating.

absolutely essential topic for the future of Steem and which deserves even higher visibility!
disappointing that the Whales are shying away from upvoting it, as they are busy farming SBD! If anything they are trying to cover the extent of the abuse going on! My post exposing the wide spread abuse of the self vote was quickly censored by Bernie (yes @ rewardpoolrape is him)
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

I agree. His comment is not worth 4$! It must be downvoted. Please like and follow.

^ Another example XD

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

http://www.steemreports.com/incoming-votes-info/?account=slowwalker&days=200

It's all visible...

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

It's very obvious who it is, as they are now mocking Haejin.

It's one of the top two flagger/abusers on the platform, and it's not Transisto. Who could it possibly be?

(Self-vote: visibility)

Yeah people are degrading their quality and quantity !

I think downvote is absolutely necessary but there is some problem with that like if you have a personal problem with someone who have strong community in Steemit they can flag or downvote your posts unjustly and you can loose your reputation . But,still downvote is necessary.

Flagging and high rewards should be double checked before verified. Which is why we need public lists of daily rewards and flags for all to see and judge before verifying.

Yes , if control mechanism work proper for it’s aims, this problem can solve with double check.

see my comment here

https://steemit.com/statistics/@chinadaily/daily-top-posts-authors-and-stats-in-the-past-7-days-2017-12-16-2017-12-22

@timcliff, I totally agreed with your points of flagging. I think It decided to do would be better options downvotes and flags. Then Can keep decentralized platform cleanly.

I completely agree. I think flagging/ downvoting is an important part of insuring that good content continues to be produced and rewarded on Steemit. Steemit is a wonderful community, but I think we can all do our part ensuring that only positive content continues to be rewarded. However, I would hope that someone would not flag someone else's post unless there is something blatantly wrong with it (like with checkthisout). As long as we continue to put forth what we would like to see and the majority of people produce great content, then I think the platform will succeed! :) Thanks for your take!

Overly rewarded is going to be a subjective call. Take the trending page for example. A lot of users may feel that the content there is not deserving of such high rewards.

I agree, subjectivity becomes difficult. I would like to think that it is pretty easy to tell between blatant cheating of the system like checkthisout, and people that are at least attempting to create content of value.

please look into my idea of adding a market for goods based on SBD transfer within Steemit

will do!

"Blatantly wrong" is too hard to judge without any objective standard. That's why we need a separation of flags and downvotes, so that you can flag only the truly abusive stuff that fulfills an objective criteria and downvote anything that you personally think is worth downvoting.

Easier said then down of course. Which I know, or I think is the point of your post to encourage downvoting as a positive instead of a negative. Discussion or changing the discussion is one way to start, but how do go about removing the fear of downvoting then beocoming a target?

It will likely be a process, with some bumps along the road.

Creating a method of down voting the excessive upvote, instead of downvoting the poster. You punish the excessive vote giver, not the vote receiver.

Are you saying that the negative effect on reputation from a down vote should be removed?

I think reserving a "downvote of the rep" for flags might be a good idea. Keeping it separate from "dislikes".

This is exactly what @aggroed is suggesting below and it's something I've supported in the past too. I think it's still a good idea, but now in my opinion the better one is what @timcliff suggests

I don't think the two concepts clash though. On a fundamental level, they are both sounds and could be implemented side by side, could they not?

Edit: Duplicate. Tried editing the first comment so that it didn't say "sounds" and this is what happened.

Lets say whale 5 gives you a vote with a value of $500.00. Whale 3 thinks that is way way off the mark, so they down vote YOU 100%, which happens to take you from a reputation of 60 to a reputation of 25. Is that fair to you? Did you ask whale 5 for 500 dollars? Did whale 3 see that it was whale 5 that gave you 500 dollars? Did I as a drive by steemit surfer, bother to look at your post that was greyed out because of a whale vote? What I am saying is if it is a disagreement about money, then the person giving the excessive money is the one who should take the hit, not the person who just posted their thoughts ideas or dreams. The poster did nothing wrong or deceitful. They did not ask, beg, borrow, or steal the 500 dollar vote, (they may have had a heart attack, I know I would), but they did nothing wrong. Why should they be punished?

It's a good point, but you should be accurate - you cannot down vote an account, you can only down vote a post. Whale 3 down votes a post, and this indirectly has negative effect on your rep if and only if the post goes into negative rewards (you can't see this in the steemit.com UI, it just shows zero, but it's recorded).

It's up to Whale 3 to be responsible enough to just counter the rewards they think should be countered. The UI could help with this simple calculation if the Whale is not bothered to do it themselves.

I understand your point. But we should not restrict the possibility of this situation on the blockchain, we should just support positive action and warn of potential common mistakes in the UI (like we do with transfers for example).

I am still new, August 1, 2017. So I am still learning and trying to remember the different terminology used. The person may only be downvoting a Post, but it does affect the posters account and rep. I know because I was downvoted without cause very early on by bernie and his house of 52 cards, (52 down votes), that did affect my reputation. Fortunately I knew about cheetah, steamcleaners, and @timcliff, and they fixed things for me.

But yes when it is strictly a money/reward issue, it is not always the posters fault.

I'm assuming what you're saying is not actually about "punishing" the upvoter, but rather neutralizing his vote.

No, just the opposite. If a person gives an excessive upvote, they are the ones that should be punished. maybe not to reputation, but perhaps for the next 30 days put on a vote limit. strict 10 times a day only and at 1/100 of what their vote would normally be valued at.

Now what would this do? It would curtail vote selling,vote buying, and mean that they would not be able to use for those 30 days a vote curation trail. Their account value remains unaffected, their ability to is all that is affected.

Vote negation I can get onboard with as well if done correctly and with enough safeguards, but "punishing" would be a lot more offensive and risky than "restricting".

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

nice post

@timcliff,
Downvotes or flags, if someone use it for great purposes as you said, it's acceptable! But some people use it to bully others, that's can't accepted. Anyway if downvote for great purposes, it encourage people to be more creative! That's how I feel it!

Cheers~

which is why we need to have a public daily list of rewards and flags per user to double check if such things happen

Flagging just like self voting is a built in part of steemit. I've seen many $100 posts that create less value for Steemit than some $10 posts.

While the system isn't perfect flagging is the only tool that we currently have to prevent abuse on the platform and to equally distribute rewards. People are just too sensitive and need to get over themselves.

With that said I think abuse needs to be the focus for flags more so than "over valued" posts. "Over valued" posts are based on opinion while abuse is more apparent.

which is why we need to have a public daily list of rewards and flags per user to double check if such things happen

I have a simple, albeit impossible way to lower exaggerated rewards.
It includes 2 impractical parts:
1. people stop being dumb
2. make curation algorithm known.
After over 1/2 year here, I still want to know how curation works.
When I see a post with over 0.02$ in rewards, I assume that I already missed the opportunity to make any curation rewards off it, and opt not to upvote it.
I consider self voting close to an obligation to curators, as well as rewarding, but my late policy is to usually not vote a post once it had already been self voted.

There are two posts on the welcome page, which contain all the info you need to know about curation.

Can you give me the links?
I found this one: https://steemit.com/welcome#Curation
It contains no content of value.

https://steemit.com/curation/@liberosist/mind-your-votes-ii-a-guide-to-maximizing-your-curation-rewards

https://steemit.com/steemit/@calamus056/curation-rewards-explained-in-great-detail

There are a lot of good posts there. You should take the time to review them.

I happened to read the calamus056 post before.
I read liberosist's post now after you presented it to me.
None of them is good as reading the piece of code which calculates curation rewards.
For example none of them answers the question of how curation depends on intervals between following upvotes, and other ensuing questions.

Other than the 30 minuet early voting penalty, which is explained in the article, there is no dependence on time. All curation rewards after the first 30 minuets are just based on the order of the votes, not the time in between them.

If you have other specific questions, I’m happy to help. Also, the code is open source in GitHub. You are welcome to check it out :)

What happens to the aggregated unrealized curation rewards?
The sum of all curation rewards lower than 0.001 STEEM.
Is it distributed between those surpassing this threshold, or does it stay in the reward pool, i.e., taken from the author and curators combined?
Also, in case of a downvote, does it affect only the rewards of those voting before it, or does it affect the rewards of those voting past it too?
Is the voter's own vote counted in his curation rewards, or only the votes that come past him?
In a case of an un-vote, are curation rewards calculated from scratch, as if the vote never happened, and whatever declining exponentiality of curation rewards being re-shifted to accommodate the new ordering, or is the exponential penalty retained?
And what is the link to github in which the code resides?

> What happens to the aggregated unrealized curation rewards?
> The sum of all curation rewards lower than 0.001 STEEM.

Curation rewards that are not paid out are just left in the rewards pool.

> Is it distributed between those surpassing this threshold, or does it stay in the reward pool, i.e., taken from the author and curators combined?
Also, in case of a downvote, does it affect only the rewards of those voting before it, or does it affect the rewards of those voting past it too?

For downvoting, it lowers the overall payout, which will affect the curation rewards for all voters. I am not an expert on the curation formula, but I believe it will affect the early voters more than the later voters.

> Is the voter's own vote counted in his curation rewards, or only the votes that come past him?

A curator gets curation rewards from their vote.

> In a case of an un-vote, are curation rewards calculated from scratch, as if the vote never happened, and whatever declining exponentiality of curation rewards being re-shifted to accommodate the new ordering, or is the exponential penalty retained?

I believe so, but I am not 100% sure on that.

> And what is the link to github in which the code resides?

https://github.com/steemit/steem/

These are really great questions. @liberosist on steemit.chat would be a good person to ask them to as well.

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> New users are attracted to the platform by the potential to earn rewards. Existing users produce high quality content in hopes that they will be recognized and rewarded for their efforts.

Replace "content" by "contribution" and that thing might actually go somewhere.

If Steem isn't in need for more content at this time it's misleading to focus on telling people to produce, find or post quality content to get rewarded.

Posting quality content can be a noble contribution to Steem but it's far from being the only kind of contribution.

Help me out...what IS the right kind of contribution to bring to steemit.com?

How about a better variety of topics instead of spending 90% of them in talking about SBD value fluctuation?

I had this idea of introducing a market within Steemit. For a transfer of X SBD, you mail goods to the benefactor.

+1, @transisto can you answer this? I presume you mean curating (aka voting), witnessing, and development contribution.

Great point. Update made. Thanks for the suggestion!

Explanation for high upvote : https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/temporarily-pausing-my-anti-abuse-efforts-while-sbd-is-off-the-chart

You have a strong point why the downvote/flag option should be encouraged and used however I have noticed that once any user flags a post probably for low quality content, it usually brings a flag war as some of the victims of such flagging will invite all his/her friends, get higher steem delegation and flag such user steadily even without any reason till that user's reputation is completely down. Unless there is a better way of reorientating the steemit community on the good sides of downvotes, if not flagging breeds hatred and segregation.

If flags/downvotes are uncommon as they are today, then they become a big deal when they occur. If they are a regular/normal thing, then a lot of the drama should disappear. There will still always be cases of retaliation, but hopefully they will be isolated incidents that can be dealt with on a case by case basis.

Your opinion is very correct.

which is why we need to have a public daily list of rewards and flags per user to double check if such things happen

I totally agree with you @timcliff. If steemit is ever to have a future, downvoting needs to be more active.

There is no good or bad comment about the matter of post flag.Butt seems a lot worse when other steemians are jealous of someone else. Really very sad is the matter. .

interesting and informative, thanks for articulating the issue.

I am also agree on your decision that if you started to down vote then steemit will be more fresh and will be free of some scammer. Love to hear that from you...with best wishes...

The self upvoting is good till their post are worth for the reward. Downvoting is not a abuse till it's used in right way. but sometime i found that people downvote posts for their personal reasons.

It's hard telling people to vote or downvote based on what they find useful instead of appealing

It's really a tricky issue @timcliff, but on the whole I agree with what you're saying here.

On the whole "the rewards are mine when I get upvoted" I think we need to change that a bit think of it more like a game... just because you are leading by 20 points at half time doesn't mean you're entitled to win by 20. Probably not the world's best analogy... but this stuff is not cast in stone.

I agree with the changing of "flag" to "downvote." There's something psychological there because historical web terminology calls for "flagging" of illegal/inappropriate content on every site under the sun, while "downvoting" something merely means you don't like it, or disagree with them. People get offended and butthurt by flags because they bring old terminology with them to Steemit.

I keep coming back to a possible solution that's borrowed from a very old site I used to create content on... in which you still have your reputation and vests... BUT there would be an independent "trust rating" for every person here, based on an algorithm that takes into account age of the account, site activity (posts and comments), curation efforts and more-- too complex to fully explain in a comment.

Anyway, the purpose would be to create a "trust based" rewards/voting algorithm that effectively bridges the gap between "n" and "n^2" by adding this "trust score" into the mix.

So for example, let's say we have Tim Cliff on one side with 50,000 SP and thousands of posts and followers and "trusted activity" and then we have "Joe Nobody" who just buys 50,000 SP and does little but upvote himself. But because Tim has a "trust score" of 99 (about as high as you can get) but Joe only has a trust score of 17 (these would probably be figured on a logarithmic scale), Tim's vote with the same amount of SP actually carries 10x(?) 20x(?) more weight because of the trust factor.

The key with the trust factor is that it can't just be BOUGHT, it has to be earned. A system like that might create a little more fairness in the system and make it much harder for someone to just open another account and transfer SP around. Sure, you have all that SP, but until you've "done the work" and earned a high trust score... a relatively minimal effort by those thoroughly invested and involved could negate any shenanigans, without too much trouble.

For example, in the recent Haejin debacle, the "dormant whale upvoter" causing the stink would have had maybe 1/20th of the impact, being largely a previous non-participant.

I'm just throwing this out there as a possibility for the future...

Cool idea. I’d be interested to hear details about how the trust score would be earned in a way that could not be gamed.

"trusted activity"

Hey, we found a usage for reputation!
But seriously, let there be a daily list of rewards and flags as well.

> [...] just because you are leading by 20 points at half time doesn't mean you're entitled to win by 20.

That's a pretty good analogy!

> "trust rating"

Are you aware of @scipio 's User Authority idea? I think there are flaws to it but there could be some support for something like this.

The main problem with anything that mitigates the raw power of capital is that you are going to have push back from whales and their supporters, who contend that buying in should simply be enough to get access because if it didn't then no one would buy in. So that gap also needs to be bridged. Go solve!

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

https://steemit.com/abuse/@lukestokes/whales-you-have-some-flagging-to-do

Please resteem or promote to finally a good witness that cares about this platform and isnt afraid to stand up to berniesanders....haejins followers upvote my posts and resteem....
.if your a whale or dolphin delegate to me your SP so i can stomp bernie aka justin for good...i delegated all my steempower to haejin already im weak8

I already resteemed it earlier today :)

Thank you sir.

Not a great idea at all

Elaborate

when real money is on the line, things definitely get interesting. thanks for enlightening us with this. i will do my part to make sure we get quality content and their creators get rewarded. and flag abusers

I have only a couple of problems with down voting.
1. It is a one way ticket. I have read the FAQ and a person with less reputation downvoting a user with higher reputation has no effect. That needs to be fixed so that if I as a minnow think that a whale or a dolphin has overpaid themselves then I should be able to effect their payout, right now a redfish (my current status), or a minnow or even a dolphin can not do very much when it comes to effecting reward pool payout.

So you do not need to convince me about reward pool rape. It happens. It is done mostly by whales. A redfish is not going to remove significant amounts of money from the pool. A really fat dolphin or a skinny whale will. People need to look at who are causing the so called reward pool rapes. I would bet that 90% of the time it is caused by a whales ridiculas valuation of a post and their upvote to it. Slamming and pounding on a minnow, or minor dolphin is not the way to go.

Solution, Make it easier to see who valued the post so high, and then make a downvote system that affects only that vote. Not a person's reputation, not a persons post. Make the downvote go where it needs to go, against the individual that gave it such a ridiculous high valuation.

2.Any one downvoting a post/poster for reward dispute, should not be allowed to profit off of their actions. IE: making 3 follow up post and collecting in excess of 3 times the amount of money they state they saved for the reward pool. That is total and complete bullshit and the rewards should have been declined if they were indeed doing it for the user of steemit, and not to line their own damn pockets.

Final Conclusion: This is primarily a whale and scammer issue, and not a minnow issue. There is unfortunately no easy method to determine who owns what names. When an individual is downvoted by 52 names though, that kind of gives a clue that they are all connected to one person.
P.P.S.

Tell the dev's thanks for making the comment box resizable.

When you downvote a user with higher reputation, you will not affect their reputation, but you will affect their rewards.

Minnows and dolphins abuse the rewards pool too.

You are right that it probably isn’t effective (or wise) for someone to try to go after someone with significantly higher stake or reputation than themselves. Users still have a responsibility to go after abuse that is within their pay grade though. If dolphins and minnows aren’t willing to do their part to protect what they can from rewards abuse, why should the largest stakeholders be expected to do any different?

Because the largest stakeholders are the largest stakeholders. They have the most stake in it and therefore the most reason to have a prosperous atmosphere, rewarding community and quality content as that will ultimately reflect in the value of their stake.

The most common way for minnows to abuse the rewards pool is to use bid bots or post-promotion services. Once again, it's the whales stake that does the upvoting in these cases. They offer their stake for these usages, they incentivize minnows with big rewards, but they are ultimately responsible for what is done with their stake. A vote by a whale is a vote by a whale, bought or not.

Unfortunately, we need judges who will confirm high rewards and devastating flags before they take effect. And for that, we need snitches who will be pointing at possible scammers. And for that, we need a public daily list of rewards and flags per user to double check if such things happen.

Steemdb.com already has a lot of these types of displays.

ah, nice, now if we could have a sticky of a daily report somewhere, things will already look brighter

Tim, I found a serious case of self-voting. How do we report (not downvote) @moses153 so he won't get any rewards?

I forwarded it on for review.

did you see my latest topic?

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Replied there

> "Solution, Make it easier to see who valued the post so high, and then make a downvote system that affects only that vote. Not a person's reputation, not a persons post. Make the downvote go where it needs to go, against the individual that gave it such a ridiculous high valuation."

I like this! Downvotes should apply to the upvote and affect the upvoter, not the author! Some post are quite good, but suddenly get rewarded up to astronomical heights. The author cannot always control how their content is voted on, but the ones who are voting are. So absolutely agree here, and like this, downvotes should also have significant consequences for reputation, etc..

This would help so much.

which is why we need to have a public daily list of rewards and flags per user to double check if such things happen

A daily list of votes and who voted for who? Here is a challenge for you then to see how easy that list would be and to maintain that list. pick 100 users, find who they voted for yesterday, who voted for them, and how many votes that person used that day. Lets say one of those users is a whale. He has a lot of vote power and can vote at 1% and cover all those 100 people. Say he only votes for 30 of them and some of those 30 people recieve 1 vote some 2 votes and some 3 votes. Then you would have to dig deeper and see if those that received 3 votes had 3 post 4 or more post and then decide if he voted because of content or because it was just a post. Building a list and then double checking it? That small example was for 1 whale, 100 people. I think there are a lot more daily active posters than 1 whale and 100 people. I do not see how a list would help.

It won't be done manually, obviously. Since rewards are public to begin with, there will be an algoritm sorting them from highest to lowest every 24 hours. It will be doing the same for the highest drops of rewards because of downvoting. Then it would be making a post once every day automatically for all to see. One list for the 100 highest pays and one for the 100 highest drops.

That may help some, but how many people would look at it. not that many look at the steamcleaners reports, granted it is a pain in arse to try and use the report, but people still don't look. How many of of year best of list have you looked at in the past say couple of days? They are out there, but do or will people care, it is just another list.

The difference is, people can't complain about scammers if the lists are official, public, prompt people to check them out, and nobody does something about it. It has to be done for clarifying this.

see my comment here

https://steemit.com/statistics/@chinadaily/daily-top-posts-authors-and-stats-in-the-past-7-days-2017-12-16-2017-12-22

Hello @timcliff,

Some people tend to abuse their flagging rights, that is why it is looked at has bad. You disagree with my opinion about something and then you flag me. I don't think i would be happy with that.

@yaanivapeji.

That’s the thing though. As a stakeholder, you are allowed to do whatever you want with your stake.

Downvote is an essential feature to keep the basic of etiquette in this community intact. Just imagine there won't be any downvote feature then how many spammer would flood your post with unsolicited messages and comments

I think the risk of down-voting is the retaliation. If a 1M SP holder retaliate against 10K SP holder due to downvoting, it will be devastating for the small SP holders. Therefore, it should be an account like @steemcleaners and should have more than 1-5M SP so that retaliation could not have significant effect. Moreover, in some cases recognizing a blatant self/proxy-voter such as @grumpycat is not a controversial issue, it is quite evident as spamming. Similarly, self/proxy voter can always petition if they think they are unfairly treated (which I believe they will never do). Now how to make such fund is a big issue, few whales and wealthy dolphins can delegate or delegation can come from Steemit Inc.

Downvote is always good and continue to be a an excellent feature. But please have look on the following points :-

(1) Has any donwvoter downvoted with out the looking at the SP of the user before downvoting. probably NO, because it would lead to be flag war from either side.

(2) Downvote is mostly used as a weapon to exercise it again the weak(less SP steemian) and cheetah is also not fair in its part to downvote, because it somehow overlook some spammers and downvote some spammers.

(3) If someone is downvoting without being biased then it is good for this community but that has not happened on a broad scale so far.

Thank you @timcliff and for the first time I can see some good and interesting article.

If some one after receiving a downvote, consider it as a way to learn and do better then I am sure he can go up the ladder and if he takes it personally and wage a war at some point of time, the it makes the entire scenario ugly.

It might have nothing to do with the author though. It could have just been that it received more upvotes than it’s really worth.

Dear @timcliff,

It is a really good sign that when these excesses happen, they are immediately adressed by witnesses such as you and @lukestokes. It shows to what extent the witnesses care about the platform and their perspective on how things should work. That is really awesome to behold. This system works and that is promising for the future.

However, on the subject, I think your requirements will probably never be met more or better than they are today, with growth of user base I'd expect the viewpoints to shift away from these requirements instead of towards. And the suggestions go towards monitoring/controlling unwanted behavior. That is the exact governmental approach many on this platform do not appreciate either.

Personally, I would opt for a different approach, which I've posted here last week. I think it would fix these kind of situations entirely and elegantly. But hey, I'm only 6 months on this platform, don't have much stake invested, so this is just my 2 cents.

Your proposal is interesting, but unfortunately it would be way too difficult to implement a system like that which did not introduce even more avenues of abuse and unfairness.

I'm afraid you are right. A handicap I often have: when I come up with an idea, I'm already biased positively towards it and sometimes fail too see the disadvantages. That said, many thanks for having taken the time to take a look at it. Certainly appreciate that!

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

I've seen people saying flagging is abuse, but it's a tool to deal with rogues like checkthisout. Of course it can be abused too, but so can most tools. Change the name of you like, but we need this power.

> [...] I have come around to the idea that we need to make downvotes a regular and accepted part of the platform, if we want to be able to combat abuse and effectively distribute rewards.

I'm really glad for this post, and happy you've come fully to the side of freedom.

It's interesting to note that the issue has be exaserbated primarily by Condenser which by a very foolish choice was decided to use the term "flag". As you know, you will not find this term in the steemd source with respect to voting. You will also not find up vote. There is just a vote, with positive, zero or negative weight.

I have long held the position that we need to move away from flags as a concept and return to a sensible down vote concept. So optional point 2 for me is essential.

I also think the community group is a good idea, it's something that is being done here and there, but more visibility from witnesses would be good on this. Steemit Inc. needs to take a position and officially support people like @patrice too.

I'm not sure about separate voting pools but something like, if properly worked out, would be good because I am always hearing about the opportunity cost of flags just being too much and that it ruins the incentives around them. I tend to agree. Let's trash out this particular point more.

Glad to see more big players positioning themselves.
I Just think you should add one thing:
The payout is not yours until the 7 days threshold. Until then, is still part of the pool.

Speaking as a school teacher, I can guarantee you that once you introduce the notion of downvotes as a means to improve content, you will lose quality contributors. Negative responses beget negative responses. It won't work. Therefore, I do not support it.

High rewards and large downvotes should be double checked before approved to avoid scams and revenge

Well to me the most difficult thing as someone that doesnt have almost any steem power compared with the people that is doing that is that if you downvote them it might be the end of you as a steemit creator. Because if they come for your account. Say goodbye to your reputation and also the small rewards you are doing already. :( i guess there are a lot of revengeful people out there and they will go for You if You mess up with their plans to be making easy and fast money. :( but I do think people should not be afraid of flagging in abuse situations. But I guess nowadays the majority of downvoting that happens in the community it is all about revenge games. :(

High rewards and large downvotes should be double checked before approved to avoid scams and revenge

I fully agree that downvoting is important for many of the reason you mentioned. I have a slightly different solution to propose which is similar to your "Optional/Suggested" proposed change #3 where there power in upvotes and downvotes would be separate, but in addition to creating a new "steeminator power", I created an incentive from the rewards pool similar to the incentive for witnesses. I would be interested to hear what you think about the concept I proposed which you can read about here.

The splitting of SP into two groups is very similar to what I proposed. You allow them to be delegated independently, which is an extra feature, but I don’t think it is something that is 100% necessary in order to make it work.

Paid positions are part of the design to be included with SMTs. If you want to launch a SMT with paid positions for users who downvote, it should be supported.

Great post. I'm glad other people are taking this as seriously as I am. My solution is to add trials by jury to Steemit.

Steemit is a virtual government and should be treated as such. However, the root of all problems with steemit is investor centralization and the ability to buy trust (aka Steem Power)

We need to form a political party of sorts that threatens to fork the blockchain if these problems are not resolved.

How is the jury elected?

Either completely random people using the site at the time who opt in, or better yet, using a system of three reputations. One of the reputations would be for Judgement. People who are good at judging would have a higher chance (weight) of being randomly selected for duty.

It is an interesting concept, but the devil is in the details. Setting up such a system in a way that can’t be abused is a very difficult problem. If you can articulate how one could actually implement such a system, and demonstrate that it is not open to abuse (including Sybil attack) I think it has some merit.

>A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated

So basically, picking completely at random is a bad idea. With the reputation system we have accounts that have time and time again have proved that they are on the side of true justice. Therefore, a Sybil attack would be drowned out by trusted community members.

In case of lower court corruption, we could also add higher courts that require even higher reputations. Everyone that tries to cheat the system should be slapped down, financially, with Steem Power fines.

There are a lot of implementation details about your plan that are unclear.

You actually just gave me a good idea to make it zero-sum-game so that you wouldn't have to allocate any resources from the reward pool.

It would help if I knew which blog posts of mine you've read.

I read the trials by jury and system of three reputations.

If flag would be advertised as downvote and if it then would give me the chance to weight my downvote I would probably be engaged into a mechanism you describe.

Agreed. It is one of the items in my proposal.

I agree with many of the proposed changes and I wish there were a way to condense threads to one. I wrote to articles on this specific topic addressing the apparent fear of steemians to down vote as well as suggesting potential changes to the platform to flag abuse. We have a great discussion occurring over there as well.

https://steemit.com/steem/@pawsdog/join-me-in-discussion-to-build-a-better-platform-pawdog

Here is an example of why downvoting is a fair game. https://steemit.com/downvoting/@hackerwhacker/downvoting-the-dough

Unfortunately there are quite a few such examples.

Jees - I just followed that through to the guy's wallet. Unreal.

I think this is a massive problem - Your suggestion about collective downvoting pools I think is a good idea, where people could delegate some steempower to such a thing on a regular basis - sort of the opposite of curation.

I don't think people are going to individually get on the flagging - for fear of retaliation, collective, consensus based downvoting seems to be like a sensible solution.

I don't know much (read: anything) about the technicalities of such things, but surely it'd work just like a curation trail, or could we create a 'downvote whale'?

I think there also needs to be some really explicit tightening up of what counts as abuse - so that no one's surprised when then get voted down.

If this platform is going to evolve I think collective curation in general needs to play more of a role - I've been upvoted a couple of times by curie and ocd, and it's a massive boost... the same could work wonders to stop discouragement at the other end!

I agree that something needs to be done. I am never sure how to handle it when I come across established Steemians who do know better, using stock images for free, and what's more without image credit (which doesn't pay the photographer's bills). It's not only image plagiarism, but it is also copyright infringement. I keep writing about it now and again, but I preach to the converted. LOL! I feel like I really want to downvote their content because they are making money at the expense of the photographer. I certainly don't Upvote their posts - no matter how good the rest of the post is, but I'm just one small minnow. :-( I hear horror stories about downvoting wars, so I'm not sure that it would work!

For plagiarism, there is already a channel to report that. #steemitabuse in steemit.chat.

Yes, I use that. But I'm disappointed about who I am coming across that is abusing image usage, and am a bit more reluctant to report in case i get flagged. I guess I can report anonymously in those cases.

Hey please following me and bote, thank you

I had another idea in mind concerning flagging. How about we create an automated solution that will query the most significant flags (likely from trending), create posts for these flags noting the ones that have flagged, and have the community determine if said flags were indeed merited example overvalued content. Once the respective posts pay out, the automated solution will then distribute the rewards to the downvoters for their service to the community through use of their voting power for supporting quality control on the blockchain.

I will state emphatically that I am not a proponent of self-voting in any fashion. I am a huge fan; however, of the sweat equity principle. As one who has recently gone through the entire whitepaper, I believe I may have some semblance of the ideal present but believe fully that we as a community have strayed from it. But that's just one minnows opinion. If you happened to read this far, thank you.

There is actually already a report for this on steemdb.com. I’m not sure how to go from a report though into a way to actually distribute rewards back to the downvoters. It seems like an interesting idea, I just don’t know how it would play out in practice.

I agree 100% about the sweat equity principal. I’m actually a good example of how it can be done. When I joined, I had no followers and nobody on the platform knew me. It took many months of posting where I earned pretty much zero rewards, but I kept posting and finding ways to add value. Eventually I turned into someone who most people here know, and I’m happy to say my posts now earn a lot.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I would probably use python as my go-to for this but I'm a relative novice to the language (but not scripting in general). I created a post about the project. As stated above, I have reservations about self voting so have opted out but any support would be appreciated. Most immediate thing I am hoping for is finding a benefactor willing to donate Steem for the account creation. I think I can figure out the coding but may take some tinkering.

Can you send me a high level overview of how it will be implemented? If it is a feasible idea, I'm happy to pay the 6 STEEM to help you open an account.

Sure, I can do that. I did a high level in a nutshell on the post kind of hastily but I can give you more technical details. I assume you are on steemit.chat under the same name?

Yes

Who are the central forces that get to decide that a post is worth too much? What exactly is too much? I can understand this in cases of obvious abuse like the example you gave of the bogus commenting, but I have seen a lot more posts where people are targeted for no reason. I have had that happen myself, where some dick face came along and decided 11 people voting for my post shouldn’t equate to the $100 or so it had, claimed there was something bogus, but there wasn’t.

Votes shouldn’t be tied to money in this way, then. If 10 people come along and decide to give me their votes, how then, can the value of those votes be degraded by the actions of singular person or account because they arbitrarily say so?

This is exactly how the system is designed though. The consensus on how much a post is worth is based on the sum of all the upvotes and downvotes at the end of 7 days. It is very similar to how ratings work on most other content platforms too. If a movie gets four people who give it five stars, and one who gives it one star - the movie will show a 4 star review. I don't think there is anyone who would say that the movie deserved five starts because of the four people who said it did. Most people would agree that based on the votes it had received, it's current rating is at 4 stars.

I agree, which is why I think the dollar amount should be hidden, similar to Medium. Upvoted posts rise to the top, people can still vote up or down. The issue is the disproportionate impact one single downvote has.

https://steemit.com/downvoting/@thatanimesnob/an-easy-way-to-find-and-eradicate-self-voters-like-checkthisout-and-moses153

Showing the dollar amounts is one of the main things that makes the platform interesting to visitors. They are not going to remove them.

What do you make of this? This is the abuse we are talking about https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarquinmaine/are-you-using-randowhale-he-has-censored-this-post-with-his-bots-to-stop-you-reading-it

Stakeholders are allowed to use their stake however they want. If someone is providing a service like randowhale, and by misusing their stake they are not honoring the terms of their service, then people should not use their service.

Yeah, this singular issue will keep steemit from going mainstream, imo. People are purposely flagging at the last minute and the witnesses are also doing it, condoning it or, like yourself, saying oh well. In this case, there is blatant evidence showing the scam and the accounts benefiting. Thats why there's so much drama about that now and the guy is crying he's the victim. It's good the community has fought back too. Steemit is just going to be a battle ground of recip flaggers. But hey, virtual misdeeds can still have real world consequences too.

I am not sure what the solution is to be honest. A recurring and understandable criticism of steemit as a platform is the disproportionate voting power that whale users possess. It makes it difficult for any new user without an established following to attract attention to content, irrespective of how much effort they put into their posts or the quality of their contributions.

It took me around 6 months to get established and build a following before I started to earn much of anything as far as rewards. I think users who expect to come here and start making a whole bunch of money before they have put in significant effort to build a following is part of that problem.

Yes I understand that a following is ultimately needed to establish oneself on this platform. But I think what discourages many new users, and even those who have been around for six months or more, is that in order to attract a following one must also attract visibility to one's posts.

Writing about certain subjects on the platform doesn't exactly work in one's favor in that regard. And the economy that has developed around upvote bots is an indication that minnows are struggling to be heard. I did not garner attention to my posts until I finally caved and started using the bots. Is this type of paradigm indicative of a platform which warrants a Top 10 valuation among global cryptocurrencies, as has recently been tweeted by one of steemit's cofounders? The market ultimately decides and at this time the support from the investment/trading community in the crypto space is still lacking for steem. Until the situation improves I think that will remain to be the case.

I am open to suggestions on how to improve it :)

Thanks, it is only through discussion that solutions may ultimately be realized. I have delved into this subject a bit and if you have a chance to comment, my latest post addresses Ned's recent assertion on his Twitter page that steem warrants being a Top 10 crypto in valuation. See: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@syncubate/reflecting-on-the-value-of-steem-part-ii

If I had the ear of the cofounder's of this platform, I would immediately dismantle the self-voting feature to start. I would also do away with the Google search functionality and focus resources on developing an adequate in house search feature. I would also do away with the three different steem-based coins all together and simply have one, since this creates confusion among new users and essentially forces the investment/trading community to decide between steem versus steemdollar, much like the bitcoin versus bitcoin cash split. Just some thoughts off the top of my head at this moment.

Disabling self voting would do nothing to fix the problem. Abusers would just create a second account and upvote account A with account B.

Replacement of search is on the list of things to do, but it is dependent on some back end changes that are in the works.

There is not consensus among stakeholders to remove SBD or SP. I agree that it causes some confusion, but I disagree that it is sufficient to prevent STEEM from being a top 10 coin.

I understand that doing away with self-voting has its limitations from a technical standpoint.

In regards to the search functionality, it's good to hear that it is being updated.

I agree that removing SBD and sticking with steem alone is not enough in and of itself to propel steem to being a top 10 coin. Nonetheless, it would at the very least steer funds to one base coin. It is perhaps the associated perplexity of steemit having two distinct coins that has limited steem's broader adoption on major exchanges.

If SBD were removed entirely, I would simply afford users the option of capitalizing on content contributions via 100% steem "savings" or 50/50 steem and steem savings. The savings account could be "powered down" similar to how steem power already is if one seeks to cash it in. The steem itself could be withdrawn to the exchange immediately. This is semantics and not very different from what exists today, but may lessen the confusion that persists.

I agree it would be simpler, but I don’t think it adds as much value as you think it does.

It would at the very least consolidate the liquidity on the exchanges to steem entirely. This may encourage further adoption of steem by the bigger players in the crypto exchange space. I understand your point though, as the daily trading volume in both SBD and steem are very low relative to the Top 10 cryptos. SBD is currently at about $2M and steem is at about $6M per Coinmarketcap. By comparison, the number 10 crypto, Monero, is at $170M. Liquidity is what ultimately drives markets and if steem is going to have a shot at attaining Top 10 status in the future, this will have to be addressed somehow.

When my friend told me of steemit, i was like wow! So i finally get to share , earn and learn from a community all beacuse i have something to offer... i clicked the sign-up button without hesistation...
But in days to come i finally understood how complex the steemit system is, how some people qith apparent content drain the reward pool while people dropping good contenta sometimes go home with cents... i am discouraged and so are thousands like me who are not adequately appreciated by the community.

I intend saying rewards should be capped but that qould be selfish of me, so i say a big Yes to the downvote and also, a limit should be placed on these superaccounts and whales.
Thanks.
Ezinwa, Nigeria

The super accounts / whales are often the investors who are buying STEEM tokens. They are the reason the tokens we earn have value.

I now understand... Thanks for the clear up

Place Holder Prays that this comment too get a 100$ reward :D

Even I have come across such ludicrous comments that neither make sense nor they add any value to the topic/article/photo being discussed yet they pull truckloads of dollars.

This system of downvote has to be monitored though otherwise there would be no dearth of folks trying to pull down users who add real value to Steemit platform.

I got downvoted when I started and it really turned me off to the entire platform. I only think things should be downvoted if it is illegal or offensive.

When you produce content, you are putting it out there for the community to review. Just like movie ratings, there are going to be positive and negative reviews. Negative doesn’t necessarily mean ‘bad’ but you have to be able to handle positive and negative reviews.

I would prefer to not have a seperate reward pool for downvoting... That would remove the "thoughtful consideration" side of downvoting. But maybe have a downvote only burn 50 or 75% of what an equal upvote would from a person's Voting Power.

And I almost suggested having a user limited in their downvoting, by daily basis, to an amount not more than half the amount they have upvoted. However this would hinder the work of "police" accounts like SteemCleaners.

Peace

Why would anyone want to use their stake to fight abuse when they are penalized financially for doing so?

Their is no financial penalty in a healthy ecosystem. Followers will be happy to upvote a whale(or other account) that is flagging for the good of Steem and Steemit.

It is only a financial penalty to those upvoting themselves more than say.... 15%. To the common user and anyone in a healthy ecosystem... Flagging is no different than upvoting someone else. It is, in both cases, an act done for the good of the community. And gives a positive financial future for those invested in SP(HODLING Steem).

You do not understand curation rewards.

Hmm, gotta flag this article :P

well that is the best breakdown of this that I have seen, only been on here for a week, and for 5 days I never even knew I had the downvote / flag option, at least now I can know a bit more about what decisions I make from now on, so thanks for the info

Place holder!

Great post there, keep up good work ! This replay was created using STEEMER.NET Alpha ( support STEEMER.NET / Wallet / Exchange Project here: https://steemit.com/investors-group/@cryptomonitor/steemer-net-steem-blockchain-transactor-for-windows-android-app-funding-update-243-1200-sbd-28-12-2017 )

I got flagged for writing this same article, then Transisto funded an auto-downvote bot with lok1/elfspice called "sadkitten" to follow and downvote any vote I made for myself arbitrarily as retaliation:

https://steemit.com/curation/@lexiconical/make-flagging-great-again-on-self-up-voting-and-a-suggestion-for-improving-curation-on-steemit

Resteemed, but I have no hope. Grumpycat is now the standard.

https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/279

nextgencrypto commented on Aug 16, 2016 • edited
This is nothing but another method for Dan to control who he wants to see earn and who he doesn't. I expect we'll see him and his inner circle stifling whales they wish to see stop earning as soon as this is released.

Just a reminder, this is being implemented because of the feelings of 1 person who will use his control over the witnesses to push through anything he wishes. Don't let it be disguised as fixing voting, he's trying to suppress accounts he doesn't agree with.

bytemaster commented on Dec 27, 2016
I still think that the first principles are right on this concept. Unfortunately, having logical first principles and appealing to the masses are two entirely different things.

Will probably self-vote this for visibility later as idgaf anymore. Flag it if you don't like it. #grumpycat

Sorry to hear about the flag war. IMO that aspect of the platform is one of our bigger issues.

I’ve responded to that issue already in a few other comment threads, so I won’t repeat myself here.

Regarding grumpycat and the abuse, I shared my views on that in reply to your post in the subject. (Great post btw.)

Nothing personal, but I am downvoting this comment over disagreement on rewards. Hoping other people start to do this more too.

Have at it. If there is a penny still pending to Grumpycat, this is a highly suspect decision.

I think you'll find the game theory here renders your solution useless.

Here's another example.

In my view, it is the broken window theory. One broken window in a neighborhood that goes unfixed leads to people not giving a f about the neighborhood and everything going to shit. Unfortunately we have a lot of broken windows at the moment.

I'm afraid you are correct.

I do not know if it makes me a hypocrite, but I did not much care for the broken window theory when it was applied to NYC policing. However, I didn't even live there at the time. When I moved there later, it sure was clean.

The truth is, I labor endlessly, both literally in the physical sense, and mentally in the temptation sense, to use my stake correctly and provide as much value here as I possibly can. But I just can't do it after looking at this image anymore:

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ4jXwBY9iqnysRvHfKUpcx6rM5RkaheRQ2rVZ4MYXuov/Abuse%203.png]

or this one:

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmeJAMdkgZvvhuhi5M9soaofu17koqtxTuvDrvpec6xRBP/Transisto%20Hypo.png]

How can you, truly, justify taking away my $7 while this goes on?

Is it only because I can't (or, even if I could, won't) nuke your blog and articles back, because I know you to be on the "good" team?

From another comment I recently made, to add some substance to my votes here:

As I was warned early on by another quality user of rep 72+ who now appears jaded, "almost everyone around here is dirty."

I mean, you can literally vote yourself money with a click. Anonymously, on the internet. Is any of this a surprise?

The stupidity is really those of us that thought they could invest here and operate in good faith for any period of time without going fucking insane.

Well, I hath gazed too long into the abyss, and now it gazeth into me.

I am trying to change things so the big broken windows get fixed. In the meantime, you are a broken window that I can do something about 🙂

There are always going to be ‘bad’ people in the world that exploit others for their own personal gain. My view is that the amount of people that are in that camp are actually less than the ones who want to do good.

If/when the good people start looking at the bad that is going on in the world and using as a reason to stop doing what they think is right - that is when we start to have a real problem.

" In the meantime, you are a broken window that I can do something about "

What you really mean, is you can push me around, but you're fine with this:

Randowhale randowhale downvote @lexiconical/steemit-is-ruled-by-a-communist-party… (-100%)

You are just proving this is an ATM for robber barons by misallocating your VP to me, while the real problems burn down entire blocks, rather than break windows.

You are a hypocrite.

Did you miss the main complaint about "broken windows" being that it's fascist overreaction?

K.. I think we are done.

I wasn’t really going out of my way to downvote you. I was ‘fixing’ what was in front of me because it was in the context of a conversation we were having. I assume you are doing it on a bunch of other comments too, and I left those alone.

The impression that I had of you were that you were one of the ‘good ones’ who just got fed up and went dark. Based on the tone of your reply, you seem too far gone for me to help, so carry on. Use your stake to reward yourself if that is really what makes you happy.

I’ll keep doing what I can to fix the windows. It is a pretty major problem, and not something that I will be able to win on my own.

Well said crypto fam. But is it not possible for those witnesses voted in to solve these glaring issues so that this platform can continue to grow.

I don't understand. You seem to be saying that it is OK if you vote for your own good posts and replies simply because you give yourself less money than some others? I don't believe that your smaller financial gain is is more than others make (despite hard work and original content) on their good post? Not to complain but $7 would be a good haul for one of my posts. To get that kind of reward I would need to pay a bot which instead of being free, costs me a portion of my wallet. It seems to be counter to the argument.

It's not that I think that those who have put in more time and effort don't deserve more compensation but wasn't one of the founding beliefs that the compensation would occur through gaining a larger community around you and their current curation rather than a blogger multiplying his reward based on previous financial gains?

If you aren't willing to depend on your following for their honest and current curation in order for you to stay competitive shouldn't you be arguing with checkthisout rather than against him? He too is giving himself the ability to gain attention from other potential bidders and making more money from his own votes on the side.

Maybe your argument is that you believe that checkthisout's content isn't high enough quality to give him to have the right to upvote his own contributions? I don't ask this in support of any blogger in particular but how do you determine quality from other people's content?

Lol, isn't that obvious? This isn't content:

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ4jXwBY9iqnysRvHfKUpcx6rM5RkaheRQ2rVZ4MYXuov/Abuse%203.png]

OK, he is a little light on anything substantive. I confess, I don't think I've seen may comments worthy of over $100. ☹

What if downvoting/flagging was reserved for a certain type of group, similar to Witnesses? We could vote in our own community-police, who have the 'monopoly on downvoting' and are charged with keeping the community respectable.

This would be very similar to how governments have a monopoly on violence in our current societies, which I feel does not conflict with DPoS which is also very similar to our current political systems (represented democracy).

For longevity and objectivity, the 'community police' should be a different group than the Witnesses.

As such, when flagging powers are being abused, we can vote to take away those powers from those who abuse it and vote into power more honest people.

This makes more sense to me than flaggingpower based on financial prowess, as the current system is. We can't stop flagging done by people with more money unless we can accumulate more than them. If the powerful people are corrupted, we are thus powerless to stop them. But a voted-in group can also be voted out, regardless of their SP.

It is a good idea.

Best response to the flagging wars I have seen! Everyone that wishes has a vote, then we vote on honest steemians to flag abusers! But they would become corrupted as well......

Congratulations @timcliff!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:

• Comments - Ranked 2 with 243 comments

In extreme cases like placeholder guy, then the community brings this to the witness's attention, then witnesses vote amongst each other to impose mass vote, users do the research and make the final choice. Rarely used, but would show fuckers the potential losses of coming with that bullshit. We already have mass voting built in. And think about it, how else does a decentralized platform protect itself? Fb,YouTube centralized control mass bans people, I'm not talking that we do that- but we have to protect ourselves too. That's why the flags are in play, but they aren't working.

The witnesses do not have the bandwidth to deal with reviewing the amount of posts that need to be downvoted, and the problem will become worse when platform scales to 10x, 100x, or even 1,000x what it is today.

Flags are not working because nobody wants to flag.

Hi Tim, thank you thank you thank you for addrssing this, I think as you can see this is important to the community.

My ban hammer suggestion is more in terms of extreme cases, though you are correct about scaling.

Reading through the posts as I'm sure you have, I saw the idea about using the rep ofan account as a sp modifier of sorts so users can't just get a new account power up and game the system, seems very interesting.

Per our current system, flagging is dangerous for fear of retribution.

My take aways from the conversation.

I feel like this is a very touchy subject (especially at the moment). In general I think you are right about downvoting but huge downvoting 'sprees' can also be abused. To a certain extend we also need to realize 'who is to judge if a post is overvalued'? I am talking about a good post that might get downvoted because it earnd a lot more than similar posts with no fowl play. Jealousy needs to stay out of this 😉
Upvotes and payouts will regulate themselves for the most part if people don't push useless posts with bots for example - at least that is what I am hoping and what I understand about this problem at the moment. I am still learning though 😉
I am deeply hoping that this platform will regulate itsself one way or another so that we have a certain level of quality and people realize that it is not about quick money but rather a platform with a great community that can support each other for efforts, entertainment, education..........

Thank you so much for your support for my posts as well! I appreciate it a lot.

Very well said sir...

I think the problem cannot be solved (solely) by flagging (the bigger the abusing accounts the more hopeless it will be to fight against self-voting with flags). Instead of that (or in addition to that) the system should be improved in a way that self-voting, circle-voting and spamming would be less attractive again. That can be tried for example by ...

• implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including own ones) again and again.

• reintroducing the restriction to four full paid posts per day (from some hard forks ago) which was very reasonable.

• thinking about other ideas like a sigmoid reward curve. Due to it's flat begin it would be far less attractive to upvote posts on which nobody else is voting (self-voting of comments would be less attractive). As it also ends flat, extreme rewards (like with n^2) would be avoided, as well.

• considering also other ideas like the one of UserAuthority from @scipio.

• Other ideas appreciated!

There should be an open discussion (and yes, I especially would like to hear more from the witnesses here) about how to solve the self-voting problem.

These are really good suggestions. The witnesses and stakeholders have actually talked about them quite a bit.

The problem with the diminishing returns and 4 post limit proposals is they are only a deterrent. It may seem difficult to a ‘normal user’ to setup 20 or 100 accounts, but for the people who are abusing the rewards pool for hundreds or even thousands of dollars - they will put in the two hours of effort to create a bunch of accounts to get around the rules. The users who stay “in bounds” will be at a disadvantage, and the net result is the true abusers would be able to extract more than they could today.

The alternate rewards curve would help lower the amount of rewards that go to abusers, but only to an extent. The ones with enough SP (including leased delegated SP) to get over the initial ‘hump’ would still be able to reward themselves a lot through self voting.

UserAuthority is an awesome idea, but unfortunately it will not fly for STEEM rewards. The reason is that it breaks the contact with all of the existing SP holders that bought SP under the premise that more SP meant more influence over rewards. It could very well be something that could be implemented with SMTs though.

Thanks for your well-elaborated reply! Good to know that you are discussing the matter and also seeking other (additional) ways to solve the problem than with flagging only.

On the other side your answer leaves me somewhat discouraged: my suggested ideas may not be effective enough. I always think that we must be able to find any solution within the system itself (which is more 'elegant' than flagging - which has always something of a 'subjective nature') ... but maybe that's just wishful thinking ...

Nevertheless let's all keep seeking, collecting and discussing ideas.

Agreed :)

Thank you for posting this @timcliff. I do have a suggestion, or a change to one of yours actually:

>A UI change to condenser (steemit.com) to change "flag" to "downvote".

How about separating the two. The internet in general has already defined flag as something bad. A downvote is not necessarily a bad thing. Say I write a quick post that happens to be picked up by a big whale and upvoted to $320. I mean, I'll take it, but I know my post isn't worth that much. I would have no problem with others voting that down. Now if you flagged me, now I see that as a problem, because it affects my reputation, not my steemit reputation, but my real reputation. I think that is a major cause of the flag wars happening right now.

So separate. A downvote doesn't equal a flag, but a flag equals a downvote and an alert to other users that objectionable content lies within.

Ok, I see now that @aggroed basically said the same thing, but I think keeping the downvote as a function of flags is key. Just make it so you can downvote without flagging. It might be good if downvotes only affected payout and flags affected everything they do now, to include payout.

There is discussion about doing just that. What we have today is a downvote. Nothing will change with that, other than possibly calling it a downvote instead of a flag.

If/when downvoting is renamed to downvoting, then we could implement a new ‘flag’ feature. The implementation details of what this would do is TBD.

Would the details of the downvote change too? I don't think downvotes should obscure posts unless they are downvotes coming from flags. Meaning after a post has reached 0, it should not be able to be downvoted any more because there are no rewards to disagree with. Thanks for answering my post.

I don’t think that would change. If a downvote isn’t a flag, there is no reason for the voter to take away all the rewards. As long as the post has some potential payout, it will still be shown.

You articulated this subject better than I could.

You are a good-willed honest person. So was Dan Larimer when he envisioned and created steem.

> have come around to the idea that we need to make downvotes a regular and accepted part of the platform, if we want to be able to combat abuse and effectively distribute rewards.

...just like Dan expected. There would more of a good will to self-preserve the platform by good natured people who had a VESTED interest in the success of the platform, it was also to be self-curating. It was a circular healthy prospect.

Until...

Some unnamed individuals pushed him away, and the organic growth got stifled. Which none of that actually matters today for a single reason... most being:

The STEEM blockchain is the first of its kind. I does (at its best) give freedom of speech, open opportunity to both old and new users alike.

>It is through discussion and debate that we arrive at a consensus for the best path forward.

Absolutely. AGREED.

We just need to realize it so we can all benefit.

I agree with you on this post and wrote about the same topic. We need more great steemians like you...keep up the good work.

I mentioned you on my latest milestone post, feel free to see it. I wish you and your family a blessed holiday season.

Same to you!

I think this is a good idea! Good luck in your business!

Yes a separate pool for downvoting would be ideal because we would each benefit from having the choice to use our stake both to upvote and downvote. If I did not have to choose between an upvote and downvote I would use my downvoting share to counter abuse. When it is a choice between an upvote and a downvote, why bother fighting abuse when the vote can instead be used to reward others doing good work, run a voting bot, and/or self upvote?

A separate voting power for downvotes would also remove the sigma of doing something wrong and eliminate the huge power available to those willing to use the downvoting power.

Thank you for this discussion Tim!

If flag would be advertised as downvote and if it then would give me the chance to weight my downvote I would probably be engaged into a mechanism you describe.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@luzclaritareyes/i-am-new-to-steemit-luz-clarita-reyes-introduce-your-self

@timcliff but many users who have higher steem power use this power for bad use and it indirectly affect a genuine user analytics there should be a proper solution for this problem then I think steemit platform will definitely reach new highs....

Nice to meet you and I am so glad to have found this post. I have less than a month using the platform, so know very little about it and am quite lost. This post has given me tonnes of insight into the workings by understanding the flaws. I like the idea of having the votes and earning amount hidden until payout. If you want to have full freedom of speech, both votes must have equal benefit. I don't know how to do this fairly, but it's the only way to truly represent freedom.

Glad to have you here :)
You should check out the posts in the welcome page. There is a lot of good info there. Also read the bluepaper :)

I liked the contribution bit. It helped me understand high payouts for some creators who I could say contributed a lot to the betterment of the platform as opposed to some amazing content or art. This is a great way to differentiate between the two core peoples that make steemit what it is. I like your proposed ideas, especially to delegate voting power to flags and even a separate downvote pool.

However this also in my opinion takes away from the sense of community. We as a community need to come together and decide what is more important? Curation rewards, or giving our favorite author rewards they may very well deserve, or do we want to come together as a community and sacrifice some downvoting for the sake of protecting our investment?

Not doing anything won't give us different results, and if I know one thing, there is some serious power in numbers.

For the sake of I've not been here long enough to be a worthy downvoter, I would still be happy to sacrifice my 2 cents to stop the rewards pool issue if it meant that my mere 2 pennies helped save the world. Ok maybe not the world, but at least the rewards pool

I know, ROI. Stakeholders. This is great. It only takes 5 days to power back to 100% so I fail to see the problem.

With the thousands being stolen from this public purse I would think one week or one month even of less pay to correct the issue would benefit everyone. I'm also pretty sure that once again, power in numbers works.

As I promote this platform the more talented and logical individuals who see this can also see the problem and are staying away. Even exploring other steemit-like options.

It’s a great point/view. For the larger stakeholders though, it is a lot more than a few cents. It is several hundred, sometimes thousands of dollars per day. It would be nice if the stakeholders were willing to give that up for the betterment of the community, and some are, but at least currently it seems not enough are willing to make the personal sacrifice for the greater good.

Yeah I understand. Some individuals are more about personal gain. Hundreds or thousands yesterday was not enough. I mean I get it but that kind of thinking stinks. Not at all surprised and I still think that this will get resolved sooner than later. Especially if we put together some downvote delegation like you suggested.

Supplant "content" by "commitment" and that thing may really go some place.

In the event that Steem isn't in requirement for more substance as of now it's deceptive to concentrate on advising individuals to deliver, find or post quality substance to get remunerated.

Posting quality substance can be a honorable commitment to Steem yet it's a long way from being the main sort of commitment.

https://steemit.com/story/@englishtchrivy/jumping-my-highest-to-grow-my-tallest-during-the-new-year-s-eve#@farhanarojony/re-englishtchrivy-jumping-my-highest-to-grow-my-tallest-during-the-new-year-s-eve-20171231t082354924z
Nice Post sir. I think it's one of the top two flagger-abusers.And it's not transistor.Thanks for sharing.Upvote and resteem done.

After looking at some of the flag wars participents motivations I started writing a set of simple flagging away bots that I thought could attenuate some of the bad sides of flagging by providing simple tools for bringing back the good side of flagging. But boy did it get me in a mess. Ran a one day test using an account with a tiny SP, down-vote get at the lowest level the API would let me get away with. The script ended up doing a total of maybe 100 downvotes with a "combined" strength of less than 0.05 worth of "total" impact. Harmless, right? Well no, my little minimally powered test of an anti proxied-self-vote away bot got me a lot of angry responses indeed. Just look at the comments here on my request to ignore the tiny downvotes. One guy even compared me to the person who invented the H-Bomb . Would really need to do a lot of PR before people realize downvotes aren't a personal attack. But then, some are, for example those that are done in retaliation. Maybe if it would be possible to distinguish between downvotes of posts and downvotes meant only to attenuate high upvotes.

Lol, yeah, that is to be expected with the current culture around downvoting. You are absolutely correct that a lot of training/education is needed.

@timcliff how do you even know when are downvoted I don't understand why it keeps the curation better .content is also a very subjective term don't you think.

If a post or comment is downvoted, it will reduce the rewards. The vote will show up as a - vote in the list of voters. If the payout is reduced below zero, it will hide the comment. There are quite a few examples at the bottom of this post.

steemd.com will also show all the votes on a post or comment, in case it has a lot of votes and the list is too big to show them all.

It keeps curation better because there is less crap to sift through 🙂

Some stuff is subjective, but not all.

This is interesting. I guess I've never thought about flagging being anything but rude, but when you tell it like that it makes a lot more sense. I always considered flagging as being a negative gesture against the author...like they don't deserve up-votes or something. Ok, I can run with this. Personally, I feel that as long as you continue to make great content, you can still make a decent amount from the consistency, not from a one-all.

a very good post
anyone who reads it will like it
I really like your posts
@muhammadkariman