Hello Steemians, we want to hear your thoughts on whether we should replace "flags" with "downvotes" on steemit.com, which is why we’d like you to participate in this poll. Specifically we will be changing the icon and some of the verbiage that users see when they click on the icon. This idea has been brought up in the past by community members through various channels. You can view some of that discussion here: Change flag to downvote #2258.
TL;DR
Do you think flags should be changed to downvotes? Leave a comment to this post saying “Yes” if you would like flags changed to downvotes, or leave a comment saying “No” if you would not like flags to be changed to downvotes.
Why?
There are two reasons why we would support this change. First, a “downvote” is more accurate as that is what the action is called on the blockchain level. The reason why Steem has downvotes is to enable the Steem user base to self-regulate and police the distribution of tokens from the rewards pool. If Steem only had upvotes, that would enable people to exploit the rewards pool while leaving other users without the ability to counter that behavior.
Downvotes are a critical function from a game theoretical perspective. Rendering a downvote is technically just a user expressing their opinion that a post is overvalued, but a flag connotes a negative moral or legal judgment about the content. That creates a negative user experience and engenders confusion in the mind of the user with respect to how the protocol functions on a technical level.
The Role of Steemit.com
We believe that part of steemit.com’s function within the ecosystem is to be the most accurate visual representation of the Steem blockchain. Steem can be used to power an infinite variety of applications, but it is for other developers to explore those opportunities. It is our responsibility at Steemit to ensure that users and developers who are new to the ecosystem are introduced to the blockchain in a way that maximizes the odds that they will be able to rapidly acquire a deep understanding of the protocol so that they can come up with new and innovative uses of it.
Communities
The second reason why we would like to experiment with downvotes is because the Communities specification also has a flag component that is effectively identical to the more typical use of that element in other social media applications. Thanks to flexibility of Soft Consensus, flags in Hivemind can be used to satisfy whatever subjective standards a community desires to enforce, freeing downvotes to serve the specific application for which they were intended: regulating the rewards pool.
Dialogue Suggestions
For now, we only plan to replace the flag icon with a downvote icon as a test. We are not making substantial changes to the text used in the dialogue box that appears when you click on the Flag icon, so we would love to read any suggestions you might have for changes to that text in the comments section below.
We want steemit.com to be a great experience for you all, so let us know what you think by completing the poll below.
The Poll
Do you think flags should be changed to downvotes? Leave a comment saying “Yes” if you would like flags changed to downvotes, or leave a comment saying “No” if you would not like flags to be changed to downvotes.
The Steemit Team
Yes
Downvote button next to the upvote one that cannot go below 0 rshares (hide content)
List top votes with downvotes at the bottom. (less visible)
We could extract some very valuable curation from the few downvotes that may occur.
It won't affect the reward distribution or "people exploit the rewards pool" until there are cheaper downvotes implemented in the form of a separate downvote pool that doesn't take from your upvoting power.
https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/improving-negative-curation-a-downvote-button-vs-flag-explained-condenser
If the downvote button is next to the upvote button, then I think it's certain that some of the time (even if it's less than 1% of the time) people will click the wrong button by mistake. I would consider it bad User Interface and Experience design. If the buttons are not at all close to each other, it would be much better.
Each side of the reward amount was suggested.
That's close enough for people to understand they are related.
If it doesn't hide content, how do you deal with people retaliating flags with dick and shit pictures?
The problem on Steemit is not dick and shit pictures - hell, they would be a lot more interesting than 90% of what is being posted now, the problem is that all the real bloggers have been driven off the platform by relentless flagging by hundreds of bots belonging to whales.
It's interesting in a perverse way of to see the controlled upvoting on the comments on this ridiculous "poll" - this really has to be some kind of farce! Does anyone actually think any of this is real? I'd rather look at some dick and shit pictures.
Having this bullshit pinned to my feed as a "featured post" was the final straw that convinced me that Steemit really is all over...
And then seeing that a new downvote button is already there the very next day, on a platform that literally can't fix a major user interface balls up like no longer sorting followed accounts alphabetically, after many months, shows just want a con this "poll" always was.
I have no idea what the aim of Steemit's devious controllers really is, but downvoting and flagging is all about control, censorship, and profiteering. Which is why, like nearly all my Steemit friends, I have quit posting and given up on this platform.
Spam, porn spam, bid bots, plagiarism, and other forms of abuse are rampant nowadays.
Author blacklist options in the interface?
I think steempeak already does this.
That doesn’t solve the problem of the outside world stumbling across a post with 100 images of dicks because I flagged their spam.
If they see it on steempeak, it will.
Is there anything, other than interface blacklists, that can stop it?
It's just a fact of the blockchain until the population of those kind of folks decreases?
Sites have moderators. On Steem that’s the community.
You can argue free speech and allow people to plaster dicks everywhere but is that what we want.
I recently flagged a spammer and he did just that. Posting tons of porn gifs in all my posts. I had a few people ask me if Steem turned into RedTube.
There has to be some way for the community to collectively moderate if we want to be decentralized without authority.
Think about what it makes us look like to the outside world looking in.
I get it, and if your readers use your muting preferences then they will never see them.
Good luck getting stinc to do something like that, though.
They seem to be on the other side from most of us.
You use the flag for that.
If there is still a mechanism for that then I am in agreement.
Speaking of shit, I took a dump in your wallet! Take a trip to the bathroom to claim your worthless SHIT!
Yes and No, depending.
I would like to suggest the flag/down-vote terminology should be implemented according to impact.
Ideally, I think, a change to the underlying APIs would be needed to further untangle the situation according to intent.
terminology is important, but it does not change the ontological state of the world. For the one who suffers from cancer, cancer is cancer. It does not matter to him/her that there is also a benign form. And this network suffers.
ideally, a network consists of users, it derives its value by the number of users or more correctly the number of connections which can be established between nodes. Humans have a sense of fairness and they want fairness.
What's the point in inflating one ideological opinion of a high SP account and force it up on the whole network? One opinion (regardless of the SP) ideally does not matter in a society and if the opinions matters due to an ill algorithm/politics aka. lobbyism, then it hurts the reputation of the network aka. society.
(Im counting down the number of daily active users since months now and it gets lower an lower)
we are a little bit up today @ 3900 Users lel. Subtract the bots, divide by the number of actual subnetworks due to language barriers and apply a network model (e.g. metcalfe) to those and you see that Steem is going to die (or simply look into your feed). When a network reaches a certain threshold, then each node comes to a point where it can't make enough connections to derive any use from the network anymore aka. it becomes a boring and useless platform. It does not matter if the remaining users are "whales" fuck them, really fuck them it would be also in their interest.
Would I prefer to be spanked or beaten?
Well neither actually, which is why I powered down all my Steemit accounts and quit posting.
I wonder if whales will enjoy their public masturbation so much when nobody is watching...
Yes, it's a reasonable change, as long as it doesn't take 6 months to implement and delay other needed work. I'm pretty sure it's just the name of a button on the site.
Exactly.
Also put two button next to each other uparrow and downarrow...
BUt once again - not that it is crucial thing that needs improving at this moment - and all the things we are still waiting.
However keeping it just the same format I don't think will change anything.
Do you think people (small staked one) would actually downvote people with no-content-inside-thepost who self-voted to $50. when their upvote is 0.01... when the same account can destroy everything.
Now interesting thing would be anonymously reporting these posts and abuse to someone other than steemcleaners(with sooo large staked steem that can suppress any abuse) which would be reviewed and taken actions against (keeping the flag hidden above the post) and putting downvote near upvote.
Even better, make both buttons in 5 different styles and colours, to be more inclusive
By the way, something actually important, Log-In via FB, Google, etc...
Just published
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steemlogin/steemlogin-a-new-and-easy-way-to-sign-in-to-steem
This is great. Allowing people to not worry about their keys each time they want to go play a game or make a post is what we need.
That is one more selling point, look, people, it's so easy!
Hey, people, you know, there are two types of rewards, one is for curators and another one is for authors. You know, it was 75/25, but maybe, just maybe, it would be better if it's 50/50, you know. In reality, you will earn, something like a dollar or less, and you will be both author and curator no matter what. But, you know, it's like, you know, super important :D
this is not a selling point
I do see a problem with different colors though, what about the chromatically challenged co-Steemians?
A good point actually, upvote 4 you...
And this is why it should be done by a professional(s) :D
It's not easy at all
lol, 6 months in debate first, then 6 months to get done
This is the most surrealistic posting I have ever encountered on the Steemit platform.
I don't know whether these witness fucktards are serious or just laughing in our face.
i find it interesting how a Yes or No question is answered. Yes button / No button. lol
And what colour should those buttons then be? And what form? Round, or square or rounded? questions, questions, questions...
lol
Except in most cases it doesn't even actually get done in those second 6 months. See SMTs, communities, and most of the other things that were intended to add value. In all fairness if the chain couldn't scale it couldn't scale but supposedly now it can, at least in terms of costs, we will see what they do with that.
It seems like everything takes 6 months (or more) to implement on here...
In Former Yugoslavia, it was called "workers self-governing socialism".
Every factory was governed by common workers.
They were voting about everything, you know, what should be the colour of pencils and simultaneously Top Management stuff.
As you could imagine it was an epic failure
Because common workers know nothing about top management and top managers know nothing about nuts and bolts
Sounds like the book, "Animal Farm." I wonder if the point (really) was to get the workers to mentally invest in their jobs more so they would be okay with working harder.
It's a great question, and not intuitive at all.
Here is the trick, it's hard to work hard. You need to master the craft, you need to learn more, to compete, to be more and more creative.
In that case, some will become the true masters and those will be paid more, those will be wanted more. Those will be at the top.
However, in a system where all the people
areneed to be equal, you must create a different "scoring system".It will not matter if you are the best, but some weird things, such as:
I'm serious about those questions.
Those gatherings of basically incompetent were used to enjoy the easiness of Dani Kruger effect, and "earn points". Just be loud and say that in leaders you trust and that you will never choose another path.
Who the hell is a doctor to tell me about vaccines? Who the hell is an architect to tell me how to build? Who the hell is an engineer to teach me how to make stuff?
Sounds familiar, right?
If there is anything I have learned after being on this planet for 50 years is that one must dig deeper for the "real" information. One will never find it on the propaganda box called the television.
I appreciate your input @alexs1320. I will never know everything, so it is wonderful to hear your perspective. Thank you for taking the time to make such a thoughtful response!
I like to talk to people who spent more time on this planet than me, because the official history is often forgetting one important thing: what was the sentiment?
Do you remember the euphoria from winter 2017, concerning crypto?
Today, there are more ATMs, better regulations, more users, more Apps, but something is missing.
There is no real progress. This is why I believe that this "decentralised, amateur, volunteers" can not work. This is a job for those with 5+ Million power and some Pros. Big contracts with influential people, companies, brands... And maybe, just maybe something could change
Exactly. Then why are we repeating the same terrible ideas here? They know what needs to be done and they should just do it. Steemit.com is a private website, if we don't like it we can move to another app. Simple as that.
Because most of the people know History Channel History a.k.a. "maybe aliens".
We can move to another app. True, and that is what we are doing, Trybe is cool, a similar concept. And there are always FB, Insta, whatever.
The problem is one psychological phenomenon. Once you have invested the time, it's difficult to quit. The same goes for bad job, bad relationship, bad town, car...
Good points.
Yes.
Increasing downvotes is healthy and important for the ecosystem, so much so that I am still a strong proponent of a separate downvote power pool.
I agree with the other comments that downvotes should be more visually similar to upvotes -- it is an important UX decision that will be able to slowly change the culture to be more accepting of downvotes.
The two above changes -- separate downvote power, and equivalent UX design -- would go a long way to better sample both positive and negative feedback on a post and lead to more "fair" rewards.
One consideration would be the continuation of "flag wars" to "downvote wars". I'm not sure the best approach for avoiding this becoming more common (perhaps hiding the list of downvoters from Steemit's UX would help) but with more prevalent downvotes it is likely retaliation will increase. It is a consideration, but the benefits outweigh this concern in my opinion.
Finally, the new communities interface surrounding a new form of "flagging" should be robust. Moderation is very important for social networks, and having robust tools for community leaders to clean their space is a key element for having a good public image and leaving good impressions for newcomers.
"Downvotes are healthy and important for the ecosystem"
They aren't talking about getting rid of them, so arguing for their validity is pointless. You fell for their strawman argument!
The issue at hand is: Is flagging a comment or post exactly the opposite of upvoting it, and should they be considered opposite sides of the same coin by the site and community?
Arguing that flags/downvotes are healthy is pointless. Nobody is saying otherwise. Literally nobody.
"Literally nobody" -- not true, there are many users that argue for an "upvote only" system.
There are also many users who believe that the ratio between upvotes and downvotes should be high (for examples sake, say 90% upvotes 10% downvotes).
I'm not talking at all about their necessity, that's implied, my argument is that the ratio should be increased and more even for a healthier environment (for examples sake, say 75% upvotes, 25% downvotes). This can be achieved in multiple ways, as I explained above, such as removing the social barrier (UX) as well as the technical opportunity cost (downvote power separation).
Literally nobody in this discussion, anyway. Surely there are people who believe almost every possible thing that can be believed. But nobody in this discussion, or here in the post or comments, has that stance. Arguing against it here is silly, and off-topic.
What do you mean by the ratio between upvotes and flags? How could that be enforced, and why would we want to?
actually there are a few comments here referring to exactly that.. and there always is. As many individuals here don’t understand downvotes and why they are important, which is what anyx was pointing out. 🙂
I wasn't even talking about it until you brought it up.
The ratio of upvotes to downvotes means that, either per-user or in aggregate of the whole system, how often is an upvote used relative to a downvote. If its 100%, then only upvotes are used. If its 90%, then for every 9 upvotes there is on average 1 downvote. And so on.
My opinion and argument in both of my comments is that the number of downvotes, relative to upvotes, should be higher (i.e. more downvotes) as it creates a more healthy ecosystem.
I never talked about enforcing -- it's about incentives (or lack there-of). I strongly encourage you to re-read my comments.
Long live the n2!
Yes
Although, I'd really like to have both flags and downvotes. Flag for something inappropriate that should be hidden from Steemit.com and downvotes for posts/comments where I don't agree with the value awarded.
Yes
This a good response. Disagreement and not liking something should not effectively censor it from view. The flag should be used for that. Though there is no real way currently to police improper use of the flag, and I don't expect that would change.
Great feedback! I agree
Thanks! Appreciate the feedback-squared.
Please don't add any functionality that requires more training points.
hey smidge, it's becoming surreal now :-) I think this post will enter the history books of Social Media :-)
Now is a good time to buy this steem shitcoin, smidge. It lays flat on the All Time Low floor gasping for some air. It is now around 6500 Satoshi, just bought a heap of it and then will dump it when it doubles or triples. Easy money :-) And then we can go on trolling here again :-) STEEM has now become so worthless, that if I'd power up, I would become a Steemit "Orca" LOL
I cried. This is the most beautiful comment ever written in internet history.
You have received a negative vote.
Darn, you just ruined this opinion free flag free thread....there's was hope and you just took it away.
Oh sorry about that man. lolz But remember if we want opinions we are not to share them and only write them in diaries.. didn't you hear?
You wont believe who "agrees" with the post in the comments. Crack a beer and enjoy having a look :P
https://steemit.com/notentitledtoshit/@berniesanders/you-want-free-speech-go-write-in-a-diary
Outside of that value coming from abuse of the rewards pool whether you agree or not with what's been written should be limited to commenting your displeasure and a no deduction from rewards down vote. There's a reason they don't let the judge be the jury.
Of course... I personally wouldn't downvote someone because I disagree with their content... I would either comment or ignore the post completely. My position still stands though, the flag should be used for content that shouldn't be seen on Steemit (say something completely plagiarized without sourcing the creator) or a downvote for something I disagree with the value of. If say, a simple low-effort selfie was upvoted to $1000.
I agree with your assessment, I am completely the same way. I either ignore it, decide to leave a comment of disagreement or move on. The problem with the current system is it leaves those with power the absolute right to abuse the platform...I've just come to accept that's the way it is since nothing ever gets done about it. Funny thing is though is that it's usually those with power abusing the platform who will flag someone with less power for doing the exact same thing. (lol) I highly doubt my time spent here will change anything, nor most of those who've also made comments, these things never seem to equate to any meaningful change, just like politics, the power is in the hands of a few and those people will not vote against or change things against their own self interest....even if in the end the end result will be worse.
The best way I'd say, if I had to escape this mess, would be to put a heavier coat of lipstick on the pig, in other words use the flag system for people to flag for abuse that will bring down Steem Cleaners, use the old buddy system on steam cleaners to decide who gets to abuse and who don't (lol, you know, like your own brotherhood of whales...lol) (just the way life is sometimes), in the meantime let people who aren't abusing go at it freely without retribution, let those who earn rewards for comments and post that don't violate terms keep their rewards and let people show their dislike of a comment or post by downvoting it. A lot of times I will click on flagged post just because I want to see who/what/why it got flagged, downvoting may bring my attention to a post just as much as looking at the rewards...I have to admit sometimes I'd rather see why a post is disliked more than liked, the liked post usually are long, drawn out post getting rewarded for something that doesn't interest me at all.
I like this option as well.. it separates the two use cases.
I think it's an excellent idea, because those of us with little SP could use the flag to warn about the abuse of the whales, but if there are only negative votes it would not help.
For example there are many who abuse the pool of rewards with bots and minnows we can not do anything because they return the downvote
Yes, and to take it a step further you need to think about the visual communication of having the flag/downvote in a different place than the upvote button.
This communicates that these actions aren't related and it's inconsistent with every other social platform that has downvotes.
So something like this
This!
The actions aren't related enough to be given equivalent icons in the same spot, though.
Upvotes are used to show agreement with comments and posts. Downvotes are to identify abuse of the system or users. There's a reason they aren't next to each other, and mirror images of each other.
This misunderstanding actually proves my point. What you just said is what their design communicates, but no, they ARE opposite actions, and are NOT meant to show abuse. That's the whole reason this is being brought up.
No, you're re-writing history. That's not true at all.
Flags are to show abuse of the blockchain/website/users. Now they're being morphed into "disagree" or "I feel this post/comment is overvalued".
The term flag is indeed as you defined it, which is why this conversation has been a recurring one in the community, but the technical application on Steem of a flag is LITERALLY the opposite of an upvote. As in it, consumes voting power, and removes a stake weighted amount of Steem, based on voting weight and power.
Typically a flag is a tool to alert site moderators of some sort of abuse so that they can take action. This functionality doesn't exist on Steem as there are no site moderators, and no person has the power to take any action against another user other than a downvote. This change would at least clear up this confusion.
I still doubt people will use them as this is a fundamentally different system, and the things that work on centralized, no money involved systems, just won't work the same here, but it at least make things clearer.
And here I was thinking that flags in Steem just meant: "I hate you."
Great feedback!
Keep both options, downvote & flag
1.What if the downvote could not be larger than the current biggest upvote of the post?
2.and flag should be by default 100% without option to change it
My suggestion was also to keep both but to make the downvote not able to reach below zero or below the amount to hide a comment, (I think -10m rshares)
Can't we discuss the sex of the angels in stead? Seems to make more sense to me.
During the siege of Constantinople in 1453, the Orthodox Byzantines were debating the sex of angels instead of defending the fortress. Thus the failure of the Byzantine world ironically stems from the disengagement of the Church from society and its immediate reality.
http://www.nicodimgallery.com/exhibitions/on-the-sex-of-angels
Sorry... My bad English don't allowed me to understand!
Yeah, because things are not confusing enough.
Just because you don't know who our users are....
They will not understand and they will use the wrong thing.
Can we please make things easy for once?
Bin both and get rid of the clowns who have trashed this platform!
Oh bugger...too late...
I like keeping both. While I would agree that using the downvote is the most logical. Flagging represents a greater escalation in my own mind. One may be used for content the other for behavior.
I think keeping both is a great idea - but would suggest the downvote button not to be next to the upvote so that people can't mistakenly choose the wrong button :)
Reddit style... they don't seem to have problems
Doesn't matter much, but downvotes should have their own punishment pool (reward pool). So downvoting doesn't take from your upvote %
Yes, although I think there are other more important features to implement on the steemit.com website than changing an icon or some terminology.
BTW, do you know about dpoll? Why not use it?
The most important thing that has to be taken care of, is to make Steemit a more friendly place to come to and to understand, because now those in power as well as the user interface are extremely user hostile. You have to be a diehard poster/commenter now, to even stand it a few weeks here as things are now.
No truer words have been spoken, you have to had already earned your blogging battle scars to stay entrenched on this site. My only concerns are will down votes cancel out a up vote?...if they do then what do you do if someone decides they don't like you and stalks your comments/post just to down vote them for no other reason. Can/will down votes be able to be weighted according to SP...meaning someone with more power can just wipe out your total up votes?...if so nothing really changes, people can still be retaliatory out of spite instead of out of concern for the content produced and they will still be able to run over to your blog and retaliate some more. Though some probably think people don't think about that but they do. I did exactly that last week when I wrote a post and I didn't know how it'd be taken so I waited two more days for another post to clear that had earned a few pennies before posting the current post.
This place could literally be a blast if people didn't fear, say, getting in on a Bernie knock out drag out, it's be great, fun, fun, fun....but the fear factor exist of being squashed so people don't do it. Whatever is decided the fear of striking at profit (up votes, post rewards) has to be eliminated, the only time people should be losing rewards here would be out of abuse of the platform/reward pool.
Just to give people a good idea of the kind of fear that exist on this site the person behind the drama token offered twenty steam for the best article that could start some drama....and literally got crickets for a response, I think one person wrote something and even that was questionable if it was even dramatic.
The fear factor, the totalitarianism has to cease to exist and open debate left to flourish, once you establish that the site will flourish.
So Yes I am in if the only thing left hurting is one's feelings you don't agree with them.
"The most important thing that has to be taken care of, is to make Steemit a more friendly place to come to and to understand"
Whoa, hahaha, yeah right! Wouldn't that be nice?
Many questioned the use of dpoll in the community election, and stated it should have been just done through comments. I think it’s one of those “you can’t please everyone” situations.
Possibly they aren’t looking for “consensus” but rather feedback?
feedback is also alright :-) Here is a good example from @stateofthedapps.
Because an interface could simply parse the comments and display the result based on SP owned
Hey, thanks for mentioning dPoll.
dPoll is a solution to get that kind of feedbacks, but not the perfect solution. In order to create a poll at dPoll right now, you need to use the Steemconnect. (which requires Active key sent to Steemconnect at first login.)
I can understand having sensitive accounts (like @steemitblog) makes the dPoll a no-go at the moment.
Steemconnect related concerns raised multiple times before. We're trying to address the situation by making SC as an optional authentication method. Voting via Keychain/3rd party transactions was the first step and already deployed a couple of weeks ago.
This exactly right. Dpoll and SteemConnect are both awesome, but we have to be extra careful. Thanks for understanding!
This is something I fully understand too. Looking forward to see dPoll being fully Keychain compatible.
If only a yes or no is accepted, I'll vote Yes.
But here's another idea, why not have both then use analytics and see which one users will most likely use?
I just think that there has to be a difference in functionality or use for each one. Like flags should be anonimous? I'm not sure. And flags should be reported or sent to a third party and then this 3rd party (@steemcleaners perhaps) will be the one who will take action on the report or flag.
I'm just concerned of the flag wars I heard that happened before.
Many times. Very negative user experience. Especially since not all participants are equal in such a war.
Yes
As much as we have listened to people complain about being flagged it's about time.
That or emotions like Facebook would be wise as well. Though, id make it so users can set what %'s the emotions have. Say an angry face is worth -50% upvote or smoke coming out ears is 100%.
Regardless users are going to complain, the better option is to keep flags but for steemits benefit to log abusers. So, id say keep flags and add downvotes.
Yes.
To go a bit further, flags and downvotes should be two separate things. Flags should be for abuses/violations of steemit.com rules whereas downvotes should be for disagreement of rewards.
So are you saying that Steemit.com should have moderators and control the content posted on the site?
Well yes, Steemit.com is a private website. Just like they took the blog down of that hacker group a few months back. Content stays on the blockchain but steemit.com is a for profit website and the sooner it is run like one the sooner we all benefit.
Communities should have moderators yes and there should be a way to reward community members for their contributions to that community. What we have now is a giant mess of nothing. There is no value here for other people to consume. Zero.
Communities and their moderators will solve this issue though, Steemit Inc should not be set to moderate the interface too much unless it has to do with drastic things as you mentioned.
Communities can censor what they like to improve their users experience. Having multiple communities with multiple moderators all with different styles of moderation will help balance it all. Communities will be a game changer for sure 🙂
Agreed. But, where are they?
Hivemind ✅ - done
MIRA - Almost done
Then communities.
Hivemind allows more changes to the font end to be done without a fork.. MIRA will lower the costs of running a full node which will be needed to run dApps. Communities are next on their roadmap I’ve seen.. nothing happens as quick as we want here and development was stalled for a bit there, but it seems to be back on track. Hopefully it continues 🙂
Well that is good to know, actually. Have you spoken to Ned recently?
It already does.
lol, you can say that again, they just are known by other titles.
Eheheeheh! 🙃 😂
It doesn't.
Edit: Well yes it seems to have.
Well, then I guess this happened by accident:
Interesting, it seems something has changed while I haven't been using Steemit anymore.
No, it hasn’t.. Steemit.com is owned by a private company and has to follow rules sometimes. The darkoverloard was doing things that would have put them in legal trouble and they made the decision to remove it from their interface. Others don’t have to as they are not in the same legal jurisdiction and of course nothing is removed from the chain.
They have also removed spam accounts from the interface that can still be viewed elsewhere.
People just like to use this one example to somehow back up their censorship claims.. when all they mean are downvotes, as they have not been removed from the interface, clearly. 🙂
Yes.
Remove the dialog altogether for downvotes as they relate to users expressing an opinion about the reward pool. Alternately, replace with a brief explanation about how the reward pool works (upvotes minus downvotes as a measurement of stakeholder consensus) which should appear once for each user.
For 'flags' as a Communities feature, community managers should be able to customize the text.
Great suggestion. The text is incorrect as is....
Yes, encouraging downvotes would be a great way to regulate the "trending" sections. And it could make bidbots unprofitable for low-quality posts.
I doubt it... everyone can use flag for the same thing today.
Indeed.
However, there are two problems, which won't be solved by changing the name from "flag" to "downvote":
Yes
While I believe the reluctance to use downvotes is mostly due to economic rather than a UI reasons, I'd support any move to promote their use, however minor, like this one.
Overall, we're currently in a state where voting rewards are being used as staking returns through either bid botting or self voting. This is completely undermining the content discovery ability of this platform and is predominantly due to misaligned economic incentives.
While UI changes are welcome, I believe they'll make very little difference on their own. Having a certain amount of free downvotes (like 25% of upvotes) and bringing up curation rewards will likely remedy a lot of the economic problems and allow people to use their votes to actually reward content they find appealing. A tiny amount of superlinear can also help force all potentially profitable voting behavior into the light and prevent profitable micro spamming.
Long live the n2!
n^2 is far too extreme and opens the system to abuse in other ways
but I believe a slight amount of superlinear would be better than linear
every measure has trade offs, the idea is to use a combination of very modest measures that compliment each other that represent the least set of trade offs required to obtain a working economy
I sure liked the n2 when the whale experiment kicked in, before that it sucked.
I still think a 500mv community enforced soft cap on the n2 brings in the masses.
30 or 40 people making worthwhile money won't cut it.
We got to spread the coin farther.
Abusing us with the ninjamine is real classy, imo.
i agree the post experiment econ was the best, although it wasn't ideal either, as this level of superlinear heavily rewarded collusive vote stacking on certain posts
it was also expensive for abit and smooth running the experiment
i believe with something like n^1.2 or 1.3 up until a certain point, and then linear from there, we could enjoy pretty much all the advantages of n^2 with very little of the disadvantages
in addition, i think a non trivial amount of free downvotes is a must (although 100% is far too much, i think 25% of upvotes is more than sufficient)
increasing curation will further close the gap between voting for legitimately good posts from others and just directly shoving the vote rewards back into your own pocket (which would be much harder with slight superlinear and some free downvotes)
@steemflagrewards has a bot that automates downvotes, if that was modified to include everybody with 1mv or more to enforce the softcap then it wouldn't have to fall totally on the whales.
Bringing back the 4 post soft cap on rewards would cut abuse some.
So would doubling votes to 20.
What do you think of giving curation to downvotes?
Just mirror upvotes.
All good ideas, know any coders?
the experiment partially worked only because the economy was at its infancy and people weren't bothered/sophisticated in trying to get around it
these days, with delegation and whatnot, it's trivially easy to split your stake under multiple accounts and circumvent the measures you suggested
i haven't seen a better set of ideas than higher curation, moderate free downvotes and slight superlinear. I can't think of any obvious ways it can be abused. It does mean we have to accept some of the negatives that come with it like less author rewards (which is a big deal assuming now the econ works and authors aren't just the stakeholders but good content creators), higher toxicity through more downvotes, and somewhat inequality through superlinear.
the idea is to minimize their negative effects while still having enough of these measures to get a working economy.
Yes 100%. Downvote means the opposite of upvote. Flag means the content is not appropriate for the current community / user interface.
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Totally agree with @yabapmatt. Flag should be to report someone for abuse or something like that and should effect reputation. Downvote just means you don't like the post and shouldn't damage reputation.
Should it damage post rewards though? If so that's terrible for people who post unpopular opinions but aren't breaking any rules.
Posted using Partiko Android
This is exactly how the Steem reward system is meant to work. Rewards are crowdsourced, meaning it's up to the stakeholders to determine what rewards each post should earn. No posts are entitled to any rewards, there's is no objective measure of quality that determines a post's rewards. If you post something unpopular, then the crowd will likely decide that it should not be rewarded.
No one can take away your ability to post it, but the rewards are up to Steem stakeholders to allocate in any way they see fit based on their stake.
From what I understand of it, the current flag system is to remove rewards from things like spam and plagiarized content, not content you find displeasing. For example, say you have someone posting quality right wing political content and they are voted to nothing because people with opposing opinions want to protest it. From my understanding of Steems rules, this isn't how it's supposed to work. Am I wrong or misunderstanding something?
Steem, the blockchain, has no "rules" around when or why to upvote or downvote content. It is very simply a stake-weighted crowdsourcing system for rewarding content.
The reason you and many other people are confused or have misunderstandings about that is likely from the fact that steemit.com uses the term flag instead of downvote and has added their own list of "acceptable" reasons for doing so.
Ah, I see. That would make sense.
Disagreement on rewards is the only thing you could argue in your positions favor. However, I interpret that to mean low-quality/low-effort content with big payouts, not disagreements.
yeah, that is a good point, that and I didn't think about what would happen if curation trails down voted. I don't know, I guess that is why they are polling, for ideas... I do feel another option needs to be available though, thinking of adoption and those coming from mainstream social media will know upvote, downvote, and flag, because that is basically standard across social platforms. But I guess someone would need to get all that figured out how the economy around it would work.
yes
totally agree to this opinion!
Couldn't agree more
Yes.
Yes.
If your are going to change the culture then down votes can't be punitive. It's as plain and simple as that. Nothing changes without freedom of speech, the ship will continue to sink if down votes can be used like flagging.
Freedom of speech is alive and well.. you seem to not have a full understanding of how blockchains work or why downvotes are needed in a reward society.
Sure they are abused, which is unfortunate .. but they are needed.
Downvotes are needed to make sure the ship sinks.
The way it's set up now does't work out well so that argument fails you. Come back when you have an excuse that will actually work.
Works great actually, no excuse needed.
You are the one over there at corporate, you are the one going down with the ship, you don't see me baling water. Narcissism seems to run deep in the current over there, it's been the fact you'd rather paint the color of the ship then put any positive regard into what people are saying as to why this site is losing momentum.
That’s just comical. Try again 😂
What reasons do you believe they are needed for?
I agree they are needed but only for downvoting stolen content, abusive behaviour to others on the platform and misinformation that could be harmful if people were to believe it.
I downvoted someone who stole my content on here, but I think that's it. I may have done the other two but I don't remember by now.
I don't believe in flagging people due to disagreement etc, but the reasons given above are reasons to downvote / flag. I'm not sure if we will agree on the reasons you feel it is needed or not, since I don't yet know what those reasons are.
Ganging up on someone and downvoting their every post and not giving them a chance to redeem themselves in your eyes for whatever pissed you off though is a shitty thing that people do on here though and I 100% disagree with that. Each post should be an individual post and someone's time on here shouldn't be completely ruined because of a mistake they made. That's shit.
No
it's not a new thing that makes steem stronger it's just changing the name from flag to down vote BUT if you guys are going to do that please don't put the downvote button beside upvote button because a lot of people will click the wrong button like if someone wanna upvote he/she will click downvote by wrong and vice versa :)
peace.
They need to be placed on the same level and no warning, You can remove and change your vote many times.
it can be that you able to change it in a few minutes until it registered in the blockchain
but I don't think we need it
Very good suggestion.
even if you click flag now, you get the wawning that you are about to FLAG the post/comment and you need to confirm it...
so accidental downvotes wouldn't happen - unless your steemfriend just hates you for getting bigger rewards than he/she is.
I think flagging and downvoting being separate is a great idea. Like downvoting a youtube video just because it sucks is different than hitting the "report video" because the video has like animal abuse or something.
How about you fix that stupid fucking ad that drops down at the top of the page and obscures obscures everyone's profile and hides the follow button.
If i had an Apple Pencil I would screenshot and draw what I recommend but pretty much a red downvote button to the right of the pending payout amount.
YES !
Having UPvote and DOWNvote is way more recognizable in comparison with the UPVOTE + FLAG ! as illustrated below
VS
Yes
The term flag is closer in meaning to "report" while the effect of the action is more like a downvote. Change the words and icons.
Posted using Partiko Android
There must be NO flags or downvotes. If you want to live in peace you need no spears. If you give people spears - they will poke each other "in a name of greater good". And than a flag war begins.
For what?
If you don't like something - just ignore it. If no one can hurt you, you need no means to hurt others yourself.
Flags must be abandoned. You can do so much more if there is no violence in system is possible by design.
I think that you have more important things to do on Steem, instead of dealing with such trivia at this moment.
P.S. Both, flags and downvotes are needed
Both? Really? Ironically, you make this issue seem less trivial with this comment.
The censorship that flagging allows is destroying this platform, I'd call that pretty crucial not trivial.
....I don't know exactly where your going with that as in what defines censorship differently here there other blog sites....the censorship here isn't that your post won't show up or the inconvenience that people will have to click on "show items" to see a post, censorship here is a fear element not a physical one but a mental one.
Hello,
You can call it how you want:
FLAG or DOWNVOTE
It's absolutely UNSOCIAL‼️
WHY?
because of the system of steem.
A user with high voting power can flag or downvote a smaller users account to zero.
Many people left Steemit because of that already or stopped posting.
So don't think about how to call it, think about to remove it.
Have a good day
Tom
Posted using Partiko Android
And now all the witness degenerates keep their mouth shut.
HAd the same thoughts.
What about those "flamig-pools" like camillesteemer and his retarded friends?
They flag down like crazy. So I think if they were more powerful they would have the potential to ruin a lot here on steemit.
Neither does camillesteemer have any power to be regarded relevant nor is that bot flagging that aggressive as you try to say.
Each of us is looking away from accounts like mepatriot. Why are we doing so?
I feel any flag bringing to our minds that some people's ideas of free speech really is a threat to society is more than deserved.
Only way to remove downvotes successfully is to remove the value of upvotes. How many pushing for removal of “downvotes” would approve of that? You cannot have one without the other in a reward society like this.
There needs to be a cultural change and would hopefully lead to less abuse... or more people standing up to counter “abuse”.
Also, one downvote shouldn’t turn someone into a victim who now rages about being censored and abused.. change the culture, fix the issue in my opinion.
I was an advocate for no downvote for a long time. The problem is that opens the door to gaming the system worse than it already is. Those with high power can purely up vote and collude to only put increasing amounts of the reward pool to themselves and their friends. They can up vote stuff with very little effort put into it but pay it out huge sums. Without a down vote there is no way to counter this.
The problem is that this is truly decentralized. There is no police force that can stop abuse. Even hidden posts are still visible on the blockchain if you use a different concentrator (website/app).
So while I don't like what the FLAG (currently) does. I have not thought of a way to get rid of it that won't open the door to more extreme abuses. This is the only reason I don't advocate it's removal.
I do think those that abuse it and use it to censor and oppress should be discouraged somehow and there are some groups that try to do that.
There must come a cap on max voting power - I would prefer max 1000 SP voting power. That way the whales automatically dissapear.
That would work... though it would remove some incentive to invest and accumulate more steem power. Though it may be worth the trade off.
Should a doorknob on a burning building be wiped with Windex or Mr.Proper?
*Hint: who cares
best answer to this insulting post by @steemitblog
Thanks man. Check my new answer on this page, with the link to something great that was just made
Damn, I really want a resteem option for comments as next inconcequential UI enhancement right now. Brilliant 🤣
Yes
[YES]
Yes
Yes. I support the change from 'flag' to 'downvote'.
Yes.
Since downvote is the exact opposite of upvote it would make sense to use these consistently. Flagging is a different action than upvoting, it seems now, while in fact a downvote and an upvote are the same, just expressing a different feeling.
Implementing this would only make sense if it's also implemented visually: by showing that it's 'the opposite of the same action' by placing upvote/downvote next to each other - instead if in two different locations, which suggests it's a totally different action.
Yes. Downvotes are meant to be used to regulate rewards. Having them as a separate flag gives the impression that they are to be used only in extreme situations where abuse exists. Flags were never meant to be seen as bad, they were supposed to be a natural part of reward distribution in the ecosystem.
Too late; I'm powering down. As a paying customer I will not put up with the infinite power of a sociopath with a large wallet to wipe out everything that I worked for days to create. Yep, it takes 2 days to make a halfway decent music video and a split second to wipe it. Do what you want, and thanks for a very unpleasant experience on Steemit. Although I didn't come here as an investor, I came looking for an alternative platform and was willing to pay to use it, I am leaving as one. You'll not get another drop of sweat from me, ..ever.
Good bye and good luck.
Yes and no.
The downvote/flag process should be reviewed. Right now, if you have a lot of SP you can downvote anyone you want even if they don't deserve it. This happens a lot. So much abuse. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
We don't care about the names.
You can do the same in opposite direction if your VP is sufficient.
There's no censorship on Steemit? Only in theory!
Yup, I agree with @d0zer on this one.
So much abuse?
BTW you deserved that one.
What do you mean with "BTW you deserved that one." ?
Flag didn't register. fixed
Why was that necessary?
ETC
Both Needed !
Do Something Goooooood for Steem ♨ !
Posted using Partiko Android
Yes, making them a dislike/downvote will make them feel more natural and less of a big deal as a flag may suggest from our use with other platforms.
Posted using Partiko iOS
So you're basically just putting lipstick on the pig?
You're just changing the name and not the actual functionality of a flag/downvote it sounds like to me. So all the negativity is still going to be there because most people don't flag to counter an "abuse" of the reward pool. 99% of flags are used to punish so called bad behavior like spam or plagiarism.
Also flagging is used as a form of censorship by punishing posts that some may deem inappropriate or offensive by taking away some or all of the monetary gains from that post in an effort to discourge that person from posting more "offensive" things in the future.
I get that countering the abuse of the reward pool is an important issue but I see abuse of the pool going like crazy now with the use of upvote bots. So is it really doing what it was designed to do? I don't think so.
I would personally like to see fagging removed completely from the code or at least the monetary impact and if things get out of hang with reward pool abuse than add it back in but I think the community would be a much happier place without flagging and all the drama it causes.
If 99% of flags were being used to punish so called bad behavior then why is it that you see so much bad behavior still existing among those with the most power?
I am totally with you as to if this is just putting lip stick on a pig, if a downvote can cancel out a upvote all they are going to be doing in the long run is enabling a lot more people to be punitive toward each other if they want based on opinion not abuse.
I agree whales can get away with more and that's one of the reasons I think flagging hurts the platform more than helps it.
...sometimes it doesn't even have to be whales it can just be someone with a bit more power. Being a blogger for years I was quite shocked when I first came on here thinking this was a open debatable platform of opinions only to be told to f off and if I came back I wouldn't like what was going to happen to me. Once, with a woman who is a reporter who has a blog on here no less, after giving my opinion she just replied I was a joke and flagged me. lol.
If the monetary impact was removed from flags, what would your suggestion be to deal with a plagiarized post that has a sizeable payout?
I've seen people make a lot of money plagiarizing articles and once they get outted the upvoting stops and they abandon the account. This all happens with no flags being given out.
If you see an article that is plagiarized, report it to steemcleaners. Not only will they flag it (if need be) you'll get some tiny reward as well for reporting it.
Honestly I think flagging should be an option used for abuse that people can tag that will bring the attention of Steem Cleaners down upon the post. They can view it and determine the action that needs to be taken/addressed. I think it will stop the abuse of flagging people just because they don't like what's said versus the post being abusive, and encourage those with lower sp to flag abuse, right now low sp holders flagging a post really doesn't do anything and most won't take the time to contact steem cleaners to report the abuse.
But steemcleaners are just regular users too, if you remove the monetary impact of the flag then they wouldn't have the ability to remove any rewards.
I was trying to say they probably would be the best way to deal with what post get flagged and/or determining who they should bring in to deal with bot abuse like what markymark does.
Well said!
Yes
How About Upvotes & Downvotes,then Replace Flags with Report? Report for inappropriate content that can be manually moderated by your team & taken down if need be? Either way, if Downvotes will still affect Reputation then there's no use, just same old shit just a different name. Flagging accounts to oblivion is in a way censorship cause it hides away the affected Account's content, Which is not fair, Which would make Steemite no better than mainstream media in that regard. Maybe downvotes should ONLY affect the rewards and not the Reputation.
Report: that really makes good sense. Downvoting is stealing. The poster has made an effort to create a post and when someone like a big whale dislikes hit, he can rob all the rewards, even if the poster has had hundreds of small rewards from small fish. There should come a voting power cap, like 1000 SP max. then there would no longer be whales and no need for greed.
Flags should be used for abuse/plagiarism/disagreement on rewards, when a flag is used it takes away monetary value from a post or comment.
Downvotes should be used on "disliking a post" to show that you don't agree with it/don't like it/whatever, but it doesn't take away any value from the post itself.
Just because I disagree with someone doesn't mean I want to take value away from their content.
I would have a different proposal: have a single sliding bar for voting, with 0 on the middle, -100 on the left and +100 on the right. How would you like this?
Posted using Partiko Android
didn't read
why do you give a shit now
anyways, shalom
Because the ship is sinking.
No
The flag distinguishes Steemit from other social networks. On other social networks, "dislikes" by merely expressing displeasure. But the "Flag" of the Steemit is much more. "Flag" is an educational element for the new Steemians.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yeah, as in it's my way or the highway. You must like reading repetitive comments of agreement all day.
Negative curation should work as a mirror image of upvoting.
Each valued equally in the math.
Downvoting should be eligible for curation rewards, too.
How that is plotted in the math needs some discussion, but all this hate directed at negativity really needs to stop.
Dissent is essential to finding the truth.
Why should fake positive curation get rewarded when real negative curation gets stiffed?
Just the change proposed by the post is pointless.
Those that complain will just use whichever term is suitable.
Yes.
It took more than two years but it's about time users could redistribute rewards from an overvalued post without miscommunicating an attack on the author.
No.
Oversimplifying the flag system into "downvotes" is unnecessary and will produce unwanted effects.
Flagging a post or comment is done for specific reasons, and should be a very rare occurrence. People upvote sometimes just to show agreement. Changing the flag system to "downvotes" would encourage those people (a majority of the users) to use them to show disagreement.
Currently, we tend to show disagreement by commenting and laying out our thoughts. With the proposed change, many people will skip commenting on things they disagree with (after all, that will just get you downvoted), in favour of just leaving a downvote.
Flagging is for inappropriate content, direct attacks, and not too much else. We shouldn't encourage overuse of that by calling them "downvotes" and changing the warning popup.
We couldn't agree more, @Drutter. Thank you for saying something. Our hearts sunk when we found out. Remember when youtube went from a 5-star rating system and then just the more abused, dichotomous thumbs up or down? Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding that it's different: how many downvotes are going to be thrown around now compared to how often posts were flagged in the past? We rarely and appropriately used the flag system, and it worked, was a good system. Is Steemit becoming an Animal Farm?!
I think I should be able to read a well-written original article which content I really liked, but where if I find it over-valued by the current number of upvotes I should be able to downvote it for no other reasons than to tune down the end rewards to a level I agree with. Then leave a positive reply to engage with the content.
One man's junk is another mans treasure, it shouldn't be up to you or anyone else to determine the value outside of not up voting. With all the bots running around on here and the ass kissers it wouldn't take long for a down vote that subtracts value to be used in the same way as a flag, it will even increase the amount of people who will be able to use it that way. For the platform to grow the punitive edge has to go.
Introducing downvotes next to upvotes should be accompanied by introducing a separate free downvote pool so that everyone can downvote without using their upvote mana.
Thus we could easily downvote obvious vote trading and also content promoted with bid bots that is not good.
They are never going to implement something that will harm bid bot use; those bots are mainly run by and making a bundle for those who hold the power.
It seems like you're kidding, your position is that ridiculous to me. But since you appear to be serious, I don't know what to do except shake my head.
I would give a big fat 'NO'.
To my mind a flag should only be applied when someone is posting outright illegal subject matter. It should not be about one's opinion of what constitutes a valuable post. There are individuals on here that I would never upvote because I do not personally enjoy what they produce. There are even times I find what they do to be offensive. But I also know that my opinion is not flawless and I should not rule the world or steem with it.
I was remarking to a friend from another social media site today, that steemit does not suffer from trolls the same way his said platform does. That is because the flag is effective, the way it is. Changing flags to downvotes would probably encourage people to use it. They would see it as an opportunity to express their opinions and that is is, in my opinion, what the comment section is for. The flag button should only be used in extreme situations. We should be encouraging people to support other bloggers and not downvote those we disagree with or even worse are jealous of because they have received a large payout.
Now that steemit is a monetized platform through ads. We want to encourage the folks on here to come back and come back often. You do not want them chased off by downvotes.
Generally speaking, a blogger receives upvotes because of two reasons. They have paid for promotional bots, which must maintain steem power to be of any use, or they have networked and produced in a sustained and positive manner. Either way, they are supporting the ecosystem that is steem and neither way should they be punished for it.
Nice commentary.