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RE: Screw Malicious Flagging: 1 Flag Vs 130+ Votes
This post was creative and very funny. There is NO WAY that it should have been downvoted. I was vey much pro-haejin camp but now that they are acting in the same way at the B.S. camp I'm backing away. The fault is the system which allows this abuse. Its been tested and the faults highlighted and a redesign is urgently needed.
Flagging should be completely removed. It's not actually effective and causes too much damage. A punishment system doesn't really jive with a "free" and "uncensored" and "decentralized" network anyway.
"decentralized" means there won't be rules to ensure things are "free" or "uncensored", no less fair.
Downvotes are vital to the algorithm that determines how valuable the community as a whole (including each member with their own stake in the platform), deem a specific post.
If you click the flag button, what's the very first reason it gives for potentially flagging a post? "Disagreement with rewards"
This means anyone, for any reason, can upvote or downvote a post. Flags should not be "completely removed"
He said it!
You're my hero.
Or flagging / downvote should cost like on StackOverflow. If you downvote on StackOverflow both the person downvoting and the person being downvotes loose reputation.
As a result you only downvote if the post is so bad that your are prepared to pay the price of the downvote. It still happens because some postings are that bad.
not a bad idea, this is a creative solution to downvotes, even if they cost 10% it would mean something
Just because a subset are hate flagging doesn't mean there isn't a useful purpose for proper flagging. Please, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The only use I can see for flagging is vengeance and retribution. Not exactly the most cherished virtues. If anything it's a band-aid, not a cure.
There may be a good purpose for flagging but in a decentralized blockchain based social media you either have all kinds of flagging or no flags at all. I can write up a program and flag every post that is earning more than say $100 or any criteria the software can detect. Perhaps detect the user's skin color and flag everyone with black skin. That's possible.
If there was a platform like Steem without flagging, I would switch so fast.
You could attach a price tag to downvoting. Then people need to consider: Is the post that bad that I want to pay the price of downvoting.
This was my first thought as well. However imagine someone posted a video of something horrific - a snuff video or child abuse or something. Should there really be a cost associated with flagging that? Is Steemit so inherently a-moral that it wouldn’t put these activities on the same level as any old post or comment you don’t care for, if we made them all cost the same to downvote? I’m still very new here, so I’m not really sure how it all works. It seems like there are lots of people who haven’t been here a long time and know all the lingo and games, but for newbs it’s not really obvious at all.
But those examples are the kind of post where I expect almost everybody being prepared to pay the price of a downvote.
Those examples are so horrid that I expect those with multiple accounts to downvote with every account. No matter the price.
Also the cost of downvote should be in relation to the gain on upvote. A Plankton should be paying far less for the downvote then a wale. That is the only way this idea would work.
Hmm yeah, I guess I'm still too new at all of this to have any real sense for the dynamics, or economics. :D
@tarquinmaine
YESSSS!!!!!!
The simple solution is to change the reward weight to: votingPower * sqrt(SP) so that SP doesn't have a linear effect.
I would even go for a logarithmic weight.
That will not work. If SP has sqrt voting power then anyone can increase their power by about 41% by simply splitting their SP into two accounts, and increase it even more by splitting into more accounts. Only the most aggressive value maximizers (which overlaps somewhat, but not entirely, with abusers) would do this, leaving casual users with even less power.
Having three accounts and doing everything the same on all three accounts is a lot of extra work.
Also it would reduce your author rewards. You can curate three or more times, you can't author three or more times.
I think most people won't bother splitting accounts.
You're probably right, most people won't bother, but abusers trying to maximize their profits certainly will. Which means more voting influence and ultimately more rewards will go to those who game the system, and less to the typical or casual users who don't. There are already bot herders with thousands of accounts. It isn't hard to manage a few more.
BTW, splitting up SP does not hurt author rewards. SP has no influence on author rewards at all unless you self-vote, which can still be done easily by having all of the accounts vote for the posts.
abusers arent most people and for them the extra effort is nothing
I was thinking about this. The Sqrt needs to be applied to the total SP for a post and not individual votes. That is,
Sqrt(v1*sp1 + v2*sp2 + v3*sp3...)and notSqrt(v1*sp1) + Sqrt(v2*sp2) + Sqrt(v3*sp3)When it is applied to the total, the splitting of votes doesn't matter to the payout.
True, however this still rewards splitting votes across posts. How does that matter? This would give far more rewards to self voting, and now self-voters would post more times with smaller votes on each for a larger total reward. Not only does that increase overall reward for gaming the system (and therefore less for everyone else) but it would incentivize posting more spam, low value comments, etc.
That's a great point. But I beleive that can be solved too by the same method. When you calculate the reward for a user, you calculate the total steempower incident on that user across all posts, and then apply
sqrt()on it, instead of calculating for each post separately.I'm not sure what you mean by incident on that user across all posts, but if I understand correctly then the abusers can create many new accounts and have each one only post once (per period). There won't be anything to combine across posts with only one post per account. This is even worse than just spamming because all those new accounts impose overhead too.
There are other implementation issues with this such as the computaitonal overhead of aggregating, the fact that the posts aren't paid at the same time, etc. But those aren't worth getting into because any attempt to impose sublinearity when there is no mechanism to force users to keep their stake in a nice bundle where it can be counted (and therefore penalized) is pointless. And even if it were, It is also very questionable from the perspective of STEEM value whether it makes sense to introduce a strong incentive for anyone who already holds STEEM to sell it and reduce the incentive for anyone who already has some STEEM to buy more. That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. The whole premise is looking at things too myopically from the point of view of voting 'fairness' (questionable to me as "one SP, one vote" is also 'fair' in a lot of ways) and losing sight of the fact that everything rests on top of investors attaching a high value to STEEM. If that isn't the case then voting means nothing because you will be voting on nothing but crumbs.
@tarquinmaine I agree, I think flag weight should be calculated on a percentage vs positive votes, and not take into account SP.
How would you deal with multiaccounts then?
It's doesn't not does it take into account bot votes or otherwise inorganic voting. This idea would not work in practice.
Ya, why can't the system simply put a formula taking into the ratio of positive vs negative votes, multiply by the SP of the voter. So if that's only 1 negative vote out of the eventual 100 positive ones, then the SP is 1/100 of the voter. Or else simply just put a limit of the maximum SP one can downvote for a post, regardless of how much SP he has.
because that would let people cheat by smurfing, you cant pit 100 small votes against a major shareholder flagging, the flagger made a big investment in steem and has a right to use each inidividual share freely
Many are saying so but I am of a different opinion. Within a state there should apply rules valid for everybody, rich or poor. To be rich doesn't give you the right to punish or suppress anybody who is poor just for fun for example. The same should apply for the Steemit platform where I think should be implemented some (software) rules to prevent that big accounts damage smaller accounts in an arbitrary way. I have nothing against investors to earn money (actually I am an investor myself), but I am against arbitrary flags or flags with the only intention to damage a certain user.
Furthermore it is true that (money) investors invested money, but it is also true that many other people invested for example much time or thoughts with the aim to improve Steemit. Money isn't everything which counts, and in addition I think that if we are able to create a platform where people like to stay and post and don't feel threatened by arbitrary flags, in the long run that will actually lead to an increase of the STEEM price (and thus would help the investors, too).
I agree!
on steem you can gather riches by taking part even if you are poor, and grow your share in voting
money isn't everything on steem, but share holders decide where the dividends should get spent on, and everyone is a shareholder including you :), its not such a bad system once you aclimate your personal reservations about it.
The problem is if a bigger account randomly (for example because of a different opinion concerning any topic) decides to flag all posts of a smaller account and prevent him from earning anything. Then that has nothing to do with quality of his articles or with preventing spam or plagiarism, but is nothing else than personal hostility.
When talking about Steemit we often hear the word 'censorship-free', but in reality real discussions between bigger and smaller accounts aren't often taking place because the smaller ones fear to get flagged if they defend their point of views too persistently.
What would you think if I decide to flag all your articles from now on? Would you really say to yourself "OK, @jaki01 is the bigger stake holder, he should do whatever he likes with his money which includes flagging me."?
Yes it is a good idea not to interfere too much with the big investors since they own lots of voting shares, it might cause you to have to create a new account to continue making money or square things up with the person who owns a lot more of the network than you do. He has a right to vote for dividends not to reach you, he owns voting shares after all. You can also have voting shares all you need to do is keep posting or invest.
Just remember that if an investor votes for rewards not to pay out for you that voting shares get used to do that, voting shares need to be used for what you believe should be rewarded and not rewarded on steem, its voting, you are indicating that some people have more power than you to vote, yes they do, you can gain more power to vote too.
I know that. Did you actually check my Steem power? ... I am not really a beginner here anymore ... :-) (And that's not the only account I am using ...) I am not complaining because of my own rewards.
In theory everybody can invest himself to have more influence here ... in theory ... in reality, not.
I think small accounts should be protected against an arbitrary use of flags. I guess we have to agree to disagree here ...
It's right
Peoples are more creative and having more brainstorming ideas.
Hello Tarquin. THanks for the support.
There are some people with some pretty interesting ideas to improve things around here already.
Cheers
I personally feel this is more of an attitude change needed to be honest @tarquinmaine . However fool proof we can keep improving the system, if the human nature does not change, Steemit will one day turn into FB / an authoritarian or dictatorship run platform controlled by the system.
Hence, no more transparency, no more freedom of speech either.
I am not for the flagging wars, but at least this system is still simple enough to see who are the good hard working people and at the same time transparent to see how ugly offenders are.
(responding to you and @themarkymark 's conversation)
@tarquinmaine it has become a trend of flagging with obvious intentions,
major actions needs to be taken for this.
writing a post is not at all an easy task....flagging is
... Yes... The flagging is being abused like crazy so needs to be redesigned from the top
plsce bro vote me