On the Need of Downvotes & their Negative Consequences
While I've been using downvotes somewhat sparingly in the past couple of weeks, I do want to write about my thoughts on them.
On the one hand, they are an extraordinary tool to combat abuse and for the platform to self-govern itself.
As an example: the community on Steem decided that it would not accept promotion abusers to continue the way they did over the past years, resulting in huge changes across the platform.
On the other hand, downvotes are gamified actions with negative feedback loops, resulting in possible higher toxic behaviour than on any other social media.
The only example that I know of, where downvotes exist is Reddit. However, on reddit you're only "losing" visibility & possible karma, which in comparison to the real currency STEEM is more than worthless.
And there is most likely a good reason why nearly every social network only allows the user to like/upvote other content. It's simply a positive feedback loop, which is important in attracting millions of users. However, none of those social networks is actually handing out real money.
Which is why I currently come to the conclusion, that while downvotes are not entirely positive and have the capability to weaken the growth of Steem, they surely are needed in a system where rewards are given away from a shared resource pool.
And the best way we can soften the negative consequences is to give people more than enough possible reward pools they can tap into, without forcing them towards a global one. (You could see this as a clash of cultures and why it's important that people have the freedom to choose what they want to believe in, in their own countries. If they disagree with those believes, they can either introduce change or travel somewhere else)
Luckily, we're already well on our way for this vision to come into fruition as SMTs are nearly ready for prime-time.
What's your opinion on downvotes and do you share my thoughts on them? Let me know in the comments below.
Wolf
You, my friend have zero credibility, which is why you get my 100% downvote on this totally overvalued post. I encourage everyone else to grow a pair and do the same!
Firstly, I have posts for which YOU happily SOLD me the votes via your @smartsteem market and then proceeded to downvote these very posts. You can't have it both ways, buddy! Until today, I put this down to an unfortunate oversight, until I saw the rewards for this post.
You awarded yourself a generous 100% vote worth 4.868 STU plus another 40% worth 4.819 STU from the @smartsteem account. On a post with few words describing very little original thought and no new information. That, my friend, is the definition of reward pool rape.
I have adjusted my witness vote accordingly.
haha, you're one salty guy. Fix your attitude and get some perspective, as you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm glad you found it amusing enough to see the necessity to hide my comment. Very disappointing. I'm not so sure if I'm the one who needs to fix their attitude.
I only now stumbled upon this post @therealwolf, and decided to give a reply.
SMTs could be a solution, but not if STEEM remains being minted via Proof of Brain. The problem is clear from the behavior we see with SCOT projects. Everyone ultimately keeps comparing their tribe tokens to STEEM and how they can leverage their tribe tokens to obtain more STEEM.
SMTs will only continue doing the same thing. These tokens will be designed for projects to obtain SP delegations or STEEM conversions as SCOT projects are doing now, and the holders of these SMTs will most likely be hoping to just convert them to STEEM eventually. A lot of these new tokens are focused on finding a way to get more STEEM.
Why is that a problem? The biggest problem on Steem is the fact that communities like Actifit are sharing a reward pool with a community like STEM. Its really not fair to either community for that to happen. And SMTs don't solve that problem if these SMT communities are really out to earn more STEEM rewards.
This is why STEEM needs to become neutral. It should cover witness incentives and continue to provide interest to those that remain powered up. In fact, we could drastically drop the inflation rate by removing author rewards, moving all curator rewards over to vesting interest and reducing witness rewards by a lot. Why reduce witness rewards? We need witness rewards to be enough to incentivize people to be witnesses, but if its too large they will gradually have enough SP to keep themselves in a top spot, which is bad.
If 99% of inflation went to powered up STEEM holders and 1% went to the witnesses, we could have a secure voting system for selecting witnesses, as well as big incentives to people to keep their STEEM powered up. If inflation is too small it would appeal to the Austrian economist, but it would not actually provide an incentive to remain powered up. 5% inflation might be ideal because this is the ROI traders hope to earn on trading, which might mean they will prefer to keep their STEEM locked up so that they can keep making near 5% plus whatever they can get from RC delegation.
I strongly resonate with the above excerpt. Also, I think it's important to note that people who purchased Steem on the market provided a service to the crypto in propping up its value. If they stay powered up, that's a HODL which serves to maintain or stabilize Steem's value. Additionally, the GUI, at one point had a tickbox to self vote. So if someone purchased Steem for the higher vote value to increase their own post's visibility then getting dinged for reward disputes because their post has a value of a box of pop tarts as opposed to a can of soda might be enough to cause them to power down and dump to the market. I say live and let live, communist wonderlands don't attract big money anyhow.
MAYBE? keep the 50/50 split because it appeals to people's self-interest first and then motivates them to curate at the same time. The ninja miners should know if they want in for the long haul or not. If they do, they won't self vote non-quality content at 100%. If they don't, they should sell. However, if they as uberwhales maximize off the reward pool, then they potentially forfeit the future value of Steem for more worthless tokens. I'm in favor of self-autonomy, nobody came to decentralized social media blockchain for blockchain cops engaging in civil asset forfeiture. If the abuse is so bad, why not just fix the rate-limited voting if that's what's broken. After all, the whitepaper does say that it's a "major part" of minimizing abuse. If it's such a major part, tweak those numbers and let the code do the policing.
How about a condenser only change to lead by example. With Reddit like buttons detached from blockchain functions. They allow one vote per IP address and per post up or down. Call it up sorting and down sorting. Remove the flag and call the upvote a tip jar. Then you read a post. If you like, give it a tip and up sort. If you dislike it, down sort. People en masse might go to trending every day just to fix it, and with equal votes, there is going to be a greater success than we have now. I don't like to do people harm, therefore I am far more likely to down sort than I am to downvote. I could see benefit in casting an opinion without influencing rewards. Some might even up sort without rewarding if they think the post already has enough value.
downvoting is a necessary tools needed for the steem blockchain to scale, just look at the price of whaleshares (WLS) after removing downvoting the price crashed and it now has circle vote sharing, its needs to curb spamming and reward pool rapping. it you want to get move voice buy more steem so u can use it anyway way you like
Exactly. Whaleshares is a prime example on what not to do.
Bad Idea and just brings negative energy to our community. We could keep it for the good reason but then need Steemit inc with the biggest account to have a review board or something to combat the ones in wars for no reason but jealousy. One thing I dont think people realize is that the downvote created tons of Spam accounts and that is far worse than what's going on... These accounts with 15 SP, although dont hurt because no power but we created more spam and accounts that need to go to real users..... It is what it is, I have no control over it...
Posted using Partiko Android
Which is why I made the point on having smaller reward pools via SMTs instead of one global one, as it’s easier to govern it. Especially if a SMT starts their journey with a statement on how they will deal with downvote abuse, etc
"the community decided"? Really? Or just a few guys with enough power?
If it becomes better or not is not the point. This simply needs other solution but one guy playing executor and only legitimation "he can".
downvotes are really, really demotivating and I know a shitload of people stopped posting because of them.
If one does not like an account: MUTE IT. it is simple. There might also be technical solutions to block all the bots and automatic upvotes. Yes they are annoying but everybody must have the option to decide on his own.
Who else is supposed to bring change? People generally act as if power is somehow a bad thing. But the truth is: power is a universally neutral force. Whether it’s good or bad lies in the subjective view of the individual.
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I believe that the downvoting phenomena that we encounter at the moment will slowly but surely make tons of people leave steem. It creates a lot of frustration and anger. It is not really about what is right or wrong. It's rather the image and the feeling people have here on steem that suffers. What I like(d) about steem was that it is so much warmer and more positive than facebook or other social medias. The downvoting even if it might seem necessary in economical terms, tends to kill this atmosphere and I find it deplorable.
Yes yes, but what’s the alternative? You can’t have a reward pool without downvotes. You could argue similarly that life with death is meaningless, but in actuality death is the reason why life has value.
Every system and solution has its pro and cons .... nothing ideal... you just mentioned some of the pro and the cons ....
We should also have in mind that what is happening here is totaly new .... for the first time in human history we have a dislike with financial implication .... discovering new teritories.
Youtube also has 'dislikes'. There are a few other forums not worth mentioning that use a downvote system as well.
I believe if platforms like Facebook and Twitter normalized downvotes long ago, there would be far less online social media heat. They can't downvote on Facebook, but the toxic element is still there, with words. Some spend days arguing, for nothing. "Likes" are a form of reward. They move words up and down. In the response section you'll often find trolls. If people think downvotes are toxic, they need to go look at how truly toxic those other places are, then maybe start comparing.
Right, I forgot YouTube. But the difference there again, same with Reddit, is that votes and downvotes are only triggering an emotional response without any real implications. Actually, downvotes on YouTube aren’t that bad as they still help a video to trend. On Steem in comparison, downvotes will help you to not trend and are removing monetary rewards from your posts, which increases the negative energy you get from receiving downvotes even further.
On the other side of the coin, a paid upvote creates those same negative vibes, because they act much like downvotes, ensuring others do not trend and removing potential visibility and potential rewards from others. One downvote creates negative energy for one individual. One paid upvote creates negative energy for many individuals. I'm so glad, for the most part, we can put that all behind us. In reality, today's downvotes aren't creating any more negative energy than what was here in the past, those receiving them are just throwing more tantrums and some retaliate. The folks impacted by the negative consequences of paid votes simply left.