RE: WARLORD DOWNVOTES - The Number One Steemit KILLER
I think this whole notion of equating a downvote in and of itself as an “attack” on or “harm” to another user is, frankly, pretty absurd. That may be how it’s perceived by the receiving user, but that’s not actually what a downvote is.
And we’ve also been hearing that downvotes are “the number one Steemit killer” for nearly two years now, yet the user base continues to grow. (Yes, a lot of users abandon the platform, but that’s mostly due to other factors not related to downvotes.)
I think too many people expect rewards - or a certain amount of rewards - for their content and believe that, if they don’t get that amount, they’re somehow being cheated. Also, a misunderstanding of the system leads them to believe that a downvote is actually “stealing” something that belongs to them, rather than a reallocation of potential rewards that had been temporarily allocated to their post.
That being said, there are some issues with how people use downvotes for personal vendettas but those issues are still mostly with perceptions and feelings and not with the actual purpose or function within the system. In the end, downvotes are necessary to mitigate abuse. But any user can ultimately cast either an upvote or downvote however they wish.
The beauty of the system though is that any user can increase their stake and have a bigger say in how/where rewards are allocated, so any user (or group of users) can increasingly influence/mitigate the effects of both upvotes and downvotes.
Thanks for your comment, @ats-david. I hear what you are saying of the notion of a "downvote" in and of itself being an "attack" or "harm", but let's remember that in this world we live in "perception is everything". This is especially the case in social media, where our input and output is generally limited to words, pics and "reputation numbers" on a screen.
Also, if you've really been hearing it as “the number one Steemit killer” for 2 whole years, I would ask why has it not really been addressed before. Yes, maybe steemit has grown in numbers over that time, but how does it's growth compare to the growth of all the other social media online in the same period, which has really exploded to dominate the bulk of the masses flocking online. I would think that give the fact that one can actually make something out of creating content and posting, that it would have attracted more. And why is it that there are only tens of thousands of active members out of over 900,000 total members? That tells me that something has gone awry to cause 90 - 95% of the members to not be active.
I do get what you mean of the misunderstood belief
I think that misunderstanding is mostly due to the complexities of learning the ropes of how the entire steemit system works. So you really do make a good point there. This has become more clear after a month of being active here that it's not actually the person's money they are giving when they give someone an upvote (or "stealing" in the "perceived" case of a downvote for that matter), but one's share of the "rewords pool", based on how much SP (Steem Power) they have. This is something I don't think can be made too clear to newbies and probably should be a major priority to the steemit community to help them to understand better.
Maybe I did sensationalize things a bit with the title and some of the content, but the primary point of this post really is targeted on how can we as a community mitigate the abuse of the very system designed to keep the abuse in check (i.e. the downvote system).
This is why I just wrote in reply to @guiltyparties: