Hello to my fellow Hivians!
So I have spent a lot of time recently on understanding downvoting to the best or my ability. A lot of my understanding today comes from feedback from other users.
The main issue I have with downvoting is it takes up way too much of my time.
Rather than getting into the weeds of how I feel about downvotes and how I think they should be used, I am going to explain my new project at a high level and why I am doing it.
First, I want to call out the fact that I am calling it a project. Most projects on HIVE tend to be technical in the sense that there is coding and development work in an IT sense. In my case, my projects rarely include these features, I have done some minor coding in the past but it is not something I am particularly good at. I can understand why people who do coding enjoy it, but right now at this point in my life it is not a skill I have refined.
Second, I would like to talk about the "why?" I am doing this project. I have a limited amount of bandwidth. I do not want to talk to people about downvotes for most of my time on HIVE. I do not want most of my posts on HIVE to be about downvotes. However, it is important, to some extent, I make posts about what I have been doing on HIVE. I think making a blog post so I can talk about what I am doing and people can leave feedback is a really cool thing about HIVE. Each one of my posts is almost like an AMA based on the topic set forth in the post. This is super valuable in my opinion.
I want to spend more time on my TradFi community and I want to spend more time curating. I currently have 2 manual curation projects @tradfi-curator and @gaming-curator. I also curate with my main account. I cannot do all these things and downvote while talking to people about downvotes.
This project will be similar to my @antiabuse1 project. Making accounts is very easy when you have a "decent" amount of HP because you can use RC to get more account tickets. I ended up making 22 antiabuse accounts but most of them did not get used.
I did not like the antiabuse project because the curators were anonymous. Getting downvoted by someone who is anonymous created a situation where I could not speak to why someone was being downvoted.
I also did not like the antiabuse project because there was no form of compensation for the curators. I think it is unreasonable to expect people to do this stuff for free.
This new downvoting project will be similar to antiabuse in the sense that it will curate content. I believe I should get compensated for my HP with curation rewards and I believe the people who actually do the downvoting should get compensated with curation rewards.
This project will be different because I want a place (in the form of a blog post) where people can go to contest their downvote. I also think it will be different because I hope that other people that are not involved in anyway will come and provide feedback as well.
Having a blog post where people can come to handle their downvote disputes on chain has pros and cons.
Pros:
- It will be educational.
- It will be transparent if the disputes are being handled on chain.
- Other people can come to lobby for their friends about the downvotes in question.
- People can lobby for their downvote to be reviewed somewhere else besides the comments section on their blog (leaving a comment when downvoting has a huge con because it has the potential to turn the person's blog into a discussion about downvotes).
Cons:
- It will attract other people who downvote. If a person successfully lobbies for a downvote to be removed by the downvote curators, there is increased risk another stakeholder will see this dispute and disagree with the resolution. These stakeholders might then start downvoting that person.
- The comment section might get so big it is hard to follow.
- People may come here to share things they think should be downvoted.
- If people "loose their cool" during the dispute process they cannot delete what they said (this is one of the benefits of downvoting disputes being handled in discord. I only handle downvote disputes on chain but discord does have a pro in this regard).
My project has other cons but they are mostly financial. People will be earning something by providing this "work." I will get less curation rewards as a biproduct of this.
There are lots of details that still need to be worked out. I am thinking through these things and will be open to feedback:
- How much should someone get paid to work on something like this?
- What type of content is it "ok" to curate? (Will this account curate user content? Will it curate burn posts? Will it curate HBD Stabilizer comments? Will the curation be a hybrid of the other 3 mentioned?)
- What proposals should this project support? (Should it support no proposals? Should it support the return proposal? Should it support HW proposal?
Regardless how this project works out, I will still downvote from time to time using my main account; I just don't want downvoting to be the main thing I do.
Regardless how this project works out, I will not make a DHF proposal for this "project" to get paid by the DHF. I personally support HW proposal but I do not want the responsibility that comes with being paid through the DHF.
Thank you to everyone who has provided so much feedback about downvotes. It has really helped me understand downvotes a lot better.
I will continue to refine the ideas above in the comments below. If people provide feedback, it is usually helpful so I do appreciate it.
Cheers!
Hurt
We had steem flag rewards paying people that downvoted because back then downvoting was done with upvote mana.
After the hardfork to free downvotes it kinda lost its reason.
We lost our dev at the fork to hive, but the project lives on in hive downvote rewards.
The original plan was to reward folks with a token so people could buy the token to support those flagging out of their upvote mana.
So, the best thing I can think of to do is to upvote folks that flag alot.
a payment like tips you mean?
Kinda, good curation is reward pool rewardable, imo.
Good curation means downvoting things that need it.
Tips can be given, that was the design of sfr/hdr.
It is a good idea for sure, even if downvoters don't do that for money, a tip means appreciation and it means that people appreciate your efforts and you aren't alone.
I think I will at least get my @abdelegator account setup to curate downvoters with it. That account was originally to support the antiabuse accounts I made so it makes sense to use the abdelegator.
Might rebrand it though. I can't recall off the top of my head why I used a turkey pfp 🤣
This idea might be much simpler and also more effective. I can curate downvoters and let them do their thing. I like it! I may pivot the project in this direction. Thanks for the advice!
Managing downvotes through this project will really educate us and help us get more out of this tool 👍
I think this could be considered based on the type of posts and certain details related to them, such as the number of words or images used.
That is an interesting comp. I want to avoid paying people to downvote and really just pay them for their time.
Downvoting is super quick if there is no discussion about it. The education part is where I think the value is.
I have said in the past downvotes are used to reallocate the reward pool and are a form of communication.
I would like this to focus more on education so it will lean more heavily on the communication component of downvotes.
I understand. It's mainly about educating and having a clear idea about negative votes. And you're right, it's better to guide and teach so that the project has the desired effect 👍 I think there's a lot of work to be done, but it's worth it.
Because I did the @antiabuse1 project once I do already have some "sweat equity" in this for lack of a better term.
I think the hardest part will be finding good people to run it. I am not in a rush to find those people though. I need to work out the other details first.
I wish it was possible for there not to be a form of compensation but I do not think it is realistic based on how much back and forth usually happens with downvotes.
The important thing is not to rush these decisions. And as you refine the details, valid ideas and options for handling the issue may also arise, such as the exchange of downvotes. Perhaps don't think about how to eliminate it, but rather how to minimize it as much as possible.
For sure! I am going to do my best to avoid analysis paralysis.
I am also going to avoid making the downvote account used really big really fast because that will just be harder on the person(s) running the project.
Anything that helps those who will be managing the project is already a big step forward 💪. Even with the data you have now, you can already start doing some kind of field study and evaluate the work that will need to be implemented, at least at the beginning of the project. Maybe you already have something in place and here I am saying all this 😅
The main issue with this I see is that people will get rewarded for downvoting... It will be their job... If one person doesn't cast some downvotes not because he doesn't have time or forgot to but because he doesn't find anything abusive, he won't get rewarded? So the thing will become "I need to downvote something so hurt sees I'm doing something and I get rewarded"...
The reward should be paid based on the time a person spends for the project and not on the number of casted votes, of course it has to be someone you trust a lot because I can say I did 2 hours while I didn't
This is correct! The compensation CANNOT be associated with numbers of downvotes cast. Also, downvoting itself is VERY fast... It takes like 2 seconds lol.
The hard part of downvoting is the back and forth comments and education component. This project will be focused on the education component.
Large stakeholders will do the reallocation of the reward pool on their own naturally but I think having an educational route for downvotes is a good idea. This idea was inspired by HIVE community feedback and it will continue to be refined based on community feedback.
Also, if it is a "job" for the person I will avoid these people. I want someone who cares to be running the ship. I want to avoid people being compensated that "need" the money. This should be viewed as a HIVE bonus for helping educate people on the platform.
i like that's gonna be educational, of course with some people will be a lost battle but with the majority should be working
that's a good starting point. pick people wisely, humans are always humans
I almost never use downvotes, for a couple of reasons. First, my voting power is pretty low compared to big upvoters like you. And honestly, it takes more time and effort to downvote than to just ignore content I don’t like.
I wish there is a world where everyone could downvote but I do not think that is realistic. Small accounts should do their thing and try to have a good time.
Downvoting is a lot of work when there is education involved but I think education on downvotes is important!
And when you think about it, even the time factor is key when it comes to investing in this project, which involves many details. 👍
Times is an undervalued resource in my opinion! I like where your head is at on this! Glad we met and looking forward to hearing more of your opinions!
Cheers!
With this exchange of opinions and information, I feel like I'm learning about the subject ☺️ So you can count on my support 👍
I do think that a good downvote project will start with the lining up the requirements when a post should be downvoted or not. That will be the most difficult thing to do. There could be plenty of rules, but the more rules the more complex it will become.
Secondly, I do think that it is utmost important that at least once, it is explained to the author why they did ran into a downvote.
I think it is easier to explain what things keep people from being downvoted. The big con for having a list of reasons is many times downvote disputes turn into a battle of wits. So if we have concrete list and it is not followed to a T people will freak out.
There is a lot of nuance to downvoting. I think some form of a list would be good with reasonable caveats.
I do like where your head is at though. This is a complicated topic so I appreciate when people take the time to think it through!
Best of luck! I hope it works out for you! I can't tell the future, but I have a feeling a lot of people are going to get targeted for just being whiners. I guess it might give people a reason to handle their disputes a little better.
That already happens. I think if you did downvoting you would have a different opinion about a lot of this LOL. Also, keep sharing your opinions please. I do not expect people to downvote to be able to have ideas.
I do try to follow your feedback if I can. This project is way for me to keep the dialogue about downvotes open while still giving me time to do other things!
Happy Thursday!
I do downvote, I just have certain criteria that have to be met for me to pull that trigger. That being said, I do have strong opinions about the way people tend to react to downvotes. I would imagine there are a lot of spinning gears to run a project like this.
I stand corrected! Criteria is good!
Lot's of moving pieces for sure. It will be interesting to see which parts of the project will be "hard."
Having a public court in the comments has its risks, like you mentioned, but it’s definitely more Hive-like than handling everything in private Discord channels. It’ll be interesting to see if the community actually uses the dispute thread for learning or just for venting.
I think most of downvoting disputes are 90% venting and 10% learning.
Usually there is a lot of venting first and if the person is willing to adjust the learning happens later.
I think people should be allowed to vent I just wish more people understood that venting on HIVE is not a great practice because it is easy to see what someone originally posted.
The challenge on Hive is that everything is permanent and public, so early venting can easily overshadow the learning that might come later. Ideally, the dispute threads help move things from that initial venting phase toward clearer understanding and adjustment, but that depends a lot on how willing people are to reflect after the first reaction.
You have so many accounts and two communities. Pfff. That is a MASSIVE amount of work!
Am glad you write you want to spend more time on curation, something you already mentioned in another convo indeed. That in itself can also 'cost' a lot of time. Downvoting cost perhaps as much, or even more time, I donno, since I never tried rounds of downvotes, ie discovering posts that should be downvoted (I guess my HP is too limited to be effective, thoiguh each downvote is as you mentioned somewhere else, a signal, and such signals are picked up by those who get such signal)
Regarding compensation. I have no idea. This depends on who will be on the team. Some may do it for free, or for little money. Others may request compensation like they would work IRL and even more. The latter I have seen in our community. You want to seek those who have a heart for HIVE, believe in the project, and seriously want to work on abusive behaviours. Compensation may come in funds coming in directly from you, but you coudl also consider to upvote the 'workers' posts, or a combination of the two.
On curation: I would curate whatever you like and or think is good for HIVE. This may include - sometime - curating for HBD Stabilizer posts, why not? I wouldn't be too strict.
Voting for proposals: Perhaps the abuse-fighting account will not vote for witnesses? Keeps it clean.
I will probably avoid upvotes as a form of compensation. Just makes it more complicated if people complain to do it that way.
I agree with you on the heart for HIVE piece. If people are doing it as an actual job that will be a bad fit. This should just be a HIVE bonus for helping the ecosystem through education.
I mostly care about the education part of downvotes. There are already blacklists run by other folks so this won't be focused on rewards as much as education.
Quick clarification! I do NOT have the hive gaming community I’m just supporting that community with curation because I love gaming!
TradFi is my community though! It’s going well!
I’ll review the rest of what you said but just wanted to clarify that in a comment 🙂
It's an ambitious project. I think it'll require a lot of HP.
Also, you'll have to pay the executioners. I hope you don't pay them with the reward pool using positive votes. Would it be a kind of privately funded Hivewatchers?
I think the project will start small and increase overtime. I’m not sure I’ll ever give it a crazy amount of HP just because the goal would be education over getting people’s posts rewards to zero.
I would NOT pay them with upvotes. I would probably just give them a percentage of curation rewards I get. If I make an account for this and the account is small the curation rewards would be small too so that’s one area I still need to figure out. Curation rewards may not be enough if it’s a small account.
It would be privately funded by me but it won’t be like HW because I won’t have a discord and we won’t have blacklist. Also it won’t be a job as much as something people can help with and get some HIVE for their trouble.
Feel free to provide any feedback on anything else. I appreciate your feedback a lot even if we don’t always agree.
I’m fixing to get some sleep but I’ll be back tomorrow to respond to more comments. Cheers man!
I don't think anyone should be paid for downvoting. It's just another way to use your voting power, and you're already rewarded for using it actively (let's ignore the fact that the current HBD Savings APR rewards passivity more than active curation for now). Besides, the higher stake you have, the more you (likely) care, and the more motivated you are to hit the downvote button once in a while.
I am not a huge fan of upvoting the burn posts, so I only curate user content. I guess it makes more sense with a higher stake though.
I guess supporting the return proposal is a must currently. I do not support HW at this moment, as I believe it does not bring the value it costs us.
Thank you for the feedback!
I think my issue is, I want to still downvote but don’t have the time. I’m not a big fan of the HBD APR being so high. I don’t have a strong opinion about it per se, it just doesn’t really make sense to me. Like I’m not even sure what the APR being that high is supposed to be for. Not saying we should change it either, I just wish someone could explain it to me.
I agree with you to some extent. The problem is, downvoting is a lot of work. And it’s not fun in the same way upvote curating is. If people get paid to upvote curate it makes sense people would get paid to downvote curate.
Either way, thanks again for the feedback and thoughtful response! 🙂
The original stated reason that it went up to 20% was to attract outside investors. I don't think anyone had any idea how to actually make outside investors 1) Be aware of us, and 2) trust us, the hope was just kind of to magically attract investment with a super high APR. I think backing down to 15% was admitting that idea had been a complete failure. Why it's still at 15% and not lower? Many witnesses who once set at 20% have set it way lower now. A few keep it high just to appease the masses who still want it at 20%. The average still works out to 15% for now.
That makes sense. The APR being tied to the witnesses does have that con because people will upvote a witness based on the APR they want. Witnesses want to stay in the top 20 so they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place imo.
If you think that the biggest downvoter here never get paid by no one ...it is a consideration to make.
Wow, you have a lot of work to do! It's great that you understand what a negative vote is; I'd never heard of it until now. I think I'll look into it. I hope everything goes as well as possible in what you're doing.
Thanks! You have a small account so I do not recommend using the DV button 😅
I have tried my best to advocate for DV to be used by everyone but I do not think it is a reasonable expectation based on how everything works on HIVE.
Since I'm still unsure what's best, I won't say anything about whether the DVD is good or bad. Maybe when I'm as old as you, though it'll take me ages to get there. 😀
People have a lot of opinions about downvotes. Staying neutral is a safe bet 😅
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