A Suggestion For The @familyprotection Community.
I came across a post from @markwhittam about members of the @familyprotection community who he feels are abusing the system and hashtag that he and @canadian-coconut set up in order to highlight the problems they and many of us see within the Child Protection Services and like organisations around the world.
I'm not the most involved member of the @familyprotection community and believe I've only contributed two posts but I've been a part of the community since it's inception and still remember the thrill of reading about the launch of the initiative for the first time.
I was already a fan of @markwhittam, his family and their Big Green Steem Machine and knew of Marks struggles in childhood at the hands of the 'care' system. I know how passionate and determined he is to help others suffering at the hands of a system that benefits and profits from misery and I'm proud to stand with him as a member of the Family Protection team that represents no more suffering in silence for victims of this system.
What Mark and Linda have done is provide not only an outlet for those who've suffered and continue to suffer to let the world know about their struggles, they've also created a growing, world-wide community of men and women who will stand side by side in defense of one another. They have given us strength in numbers as well as access to help, advice and support from a community who understand the failings of the system and can sympathise or empathise with what we're going through because they've gone through it themselves or know others who have.
Those of you who know me will know that there are a lot of things about steemit that I'm not a fan of but the most positive aspect of the platform that I've seen in my time here has been the @familyprotection initiative. I can't speak highly enough about the need for this initiative or about the man who launched it. As a member of the steemit community, this is the thing I'm most proud of and Mark is definitely one of the members of the community who truly inspire me to better things.
Of late though, there have been some troubling developments regarding the use and abuse of the FP hashtag as well as some dissatisfaction expressed concerning the level of financial support being received by @familyprotection from those whose posts are being supported by the family protection community and account by way of large upvotes.
Mark feels that those who use the hashtag and benefit from upvotes from the @familyprotection account should return some of the liquid rewards they receive to @familyprotection in order to grow the community, increase awareness and ultimately help and support those who are being harassed or dealing with the consequences of interactions with the CPS.
Like Mark, I too think that if you feel strongly enough about your experiences or knowledge of the system and want to help the cause by writing a post and tagging it with #familyprotection, then you should also feel strongly enough to want to contribute a little from the rewards you receive from the @familyprotection community towards achieving the goals mentioned above, especially since the rewards you will likely receive from making such a post and having it upvoted from the main account as well as accounts of the other Family Protection members would be far higher than you could expect from a normal post or the very same post without the use of the hashtag.
While I understand Marks frustration at seeing so many members of the 'community' using the Family Protection cause and hashtag as a means to enrich themselves without any thought of financially supporting the cause that they 'felt so passionately' about writing for in the first place, I don't think it's right to demand that some of the rewards should be donated to @familyprotection. As I commented to Mark a short time ago, I think anyone who takes the time to create a post in support of @familyprotection that is deemed of value should be upvoted and the author should be left to decide themselves whether they'd like to contribute some of their rewards, on top of the contribution they've already made by making the post in the first place. Personally, I think in most cases they should but I don't think it's the right way to go to force people to do what we might feel is the right thing. Which is why I'd like to suggest a little change that I hope might help.
The Family Protection hashtag has served us well for a long time now but I can only imagine that it must be exhausting work having to manually curate so many posts, especially when many of them are not at all relevant and have simply been tagged with our hashtag by someone who has no idea who we are or are fishing for an upvote. I remember Mark mentioning in one of his posts that he is spending eight hours a day working his way through the posts submitted to the hashtag. There has also been some concern about the standard and quality of posts using the hashtag as well.
I know it would be a big step but I suggest we suspend the use of the hashtag and instead request that anyone wanting to share their experiences or knowledge in support of Family Protection should do so by submitting their post in some other way, perhaps to a Family Protection email account. Hopefully this would put off those who at the moment would abuse the use of the hashtag and encourage only serious contributions from those who are actually looking to help. It would also provide a way of screening potential FP posts for quality.
When the @familyprotection team finds a quality submission that supports the cause, it could then be posted via the main @familyprotection account and be upvoted automatically. In this way, the rewards could be split, with the liquid rewards going to the author and the steem being retained by the @familyprotection account. The author could also choose to donate some of the liquid rewards if they choose but I think this would be a much fairer way of doing things overall and one that ensures those who benefit from the FP community also contribute to it.
There will likely be aspects to this suggestion that I haven't considered and it may not be the way to go but I thought I'd share it and find out.
Let me know what you think. :)
(Any and all liquid rewards this post receives will be donated to @familyprotection. )
Hi @tonyr !
Thanks for your thoughts.
The main problem that I see with people emailing us their posts, and having us post on their behalf, is that it would take WAY MORE WORK for me and Mark.
Plus if it is posted from our account, it would appear to be saying that we agree with whatever is written. The nice thing about it appearing under the person's own account, is that they if they are a bit controversial or have some quirky thoughts -- that is fine and it is on them. As long as the story is relevant we can resteem it.
I wouldn't want to be telling people that they have to change their wording before we can post it from our account.
And because people have their own followings outside of our fp followers, the posts are probably getting more views than if they were only posted from the fp account.
As to people being FORCED to donate back to us -- right now nobody can be forced, only encouraged. If they decide after their first payout to not donate back to us, then we can CHOOSE to no longer upvote or resteem their posts. They can not force our vote or resteem either. It is up to both parties to donate, post, vote, or resteem as they see fit.
Mark has simply clarified that we do not feel good about continuing to support posts where the author hasn't given back, and he asked the community what their thoughts were on how to deal with this. When we use up our votes on authors that never give back, then we have less to give out to the authors who do give back. And this GREATLY hinders our long-term goal of saving/investing crypto funds which we will use one day soon for great things!
So it appears that your opinion is that we should keep on upvoting and resteeming, irrelevant of whether they give back or not. Thank-you for your opinion. It does seem to be a minority opinion, but that is okay.
Hi @canadian-coconut.
Thanks for the comment. I take issue with a lot of the points you've mentioned but don't have the time right now to go into detail as to why. I don't think it would be a wise thing either. I just wanted to clarify that my opinion is not that you 'should keep on upvoting and resteeming, irrelevant of whether they give back or not'. I think I made my opinion clear in the post.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
I await the rest of your response, but to be clear, you DID say this:
I just realized too, that I don't know if you are only talking about the @familyprotection account upvoting people, or if you are talking about my personal vote.
I was starting to take offense that you felt you could "take issue" with how Mark or I use our personal votes. But perhaps you are just saying that the actual @familyprotection account should acknowledge people regardless of donation status.
(If you @tonyr perceive this comment to be spam or a scam we will remove it at your request, Every penny we raise will go to helping families in need as all the funds we raise are transparent and accounted for.)
I do agree that it shouldn't be made to feel like it's mandatory to donate back, however, it is also a valid choice of Mark and Linda if they decided not to upvote or resteem if they feel the tag is just being used for gain and/or the information isn't valuable. No one should feel pressured either way or it will just cause resentment.
Having said that, I also appreciate that Mark is explaining why he or Linda might choose not to upvote, because then people will hopefully not take it personally.
You have raised some important points and questions.. And a great opportunity for us to explain what @familyprotection are about and why they are requesting donations.
(note that they do make exceptions when people take the time to get in touch and ask / explain their story)
Mark and Linda both work Full time (and then some) on curating and discussing so many posts and people.. They really work tirelessly to do their best to ensure that authentic people's stories get heard.. They also have help from others including me, and we are on top of the curation. I wouldn't say it is a problem now they have help.
I think Mark and Linda are waiting patiently for the communities system to manifest. This whole approach of sharing rewards was inspired by one of the Steemit developers, and will be much easier to manage once communities does come online to Steemit. From what I understand, it will allow a percentage of rewards to be automatically donated to @familyprotection when they post as part of the group. Once that does happen it will help to prevent the issue of people not donating back.
For now, this is how things are happening, since one of the main objectives of these generous upvotes is to share it back and that is WHY both Mark and Linda and working none stop on this.
There are also many people who don't even understand what @familyprotection is doing, even when we have linked the rules on just about every comment! For anyone reading this, here they are again!
more info: -- https://steemit.com/familyprotection/@markwhittam/before-using-the-familyprotection-tag-please-read-this
Hi Alex. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. Unfortunately I don't have time to respond properly at the moment but there are a number of aspects to your comment that I'm not pleased about and take issue with so will get back to you with a fuller response later.
Cheers
Sure, whenever you have time
This post has been upvoted and resteemed by #thethreehugs. Thank you for your support of @familyprotection!
Hello darling. I would really love it if you meet me in chat when you have a few minutes. I'll keep it up in my browser.
The suggestion that you indicate in my opinion ameritaria more work for them, since they must edit the publications that are sent if necessary, keep track of who will be given the rewards, the amount and then verify that it was indeed that way. My suggestion is that they will talk a little and accept help from members who have shown transparency. In my case, my support has been considerably low, but it is because together with @marynes5 we bring food to street children, that is our way of helping disadvantaged children and our reason to publish with the label.We are two psychologists and we try to give input on it to parents who are going through the separation of their children because of the CPS, I invite you to take a look at our publications