Preparing the Flagging System for Network Effect / Critical Mass

So I have to say, after the amount of messages/engangement/support my ideas received since my last post I am actually pretty excited and optimistic for the future of steemit for the first time in a while.

I was contacted by @r0nd0n and @freezepeach (his anti-censorship account) for my thoughts on flagging.

---

First thing I would say:
You should not have to flag in order to quickly display a negative opinion of a post
Emojis would work, or a disagree button of some sort. Downvote implies taking away rewards/number of upvotes but if there is no negative penalty applied and perhaps just a score on the other side (70up/15down) then yes a downvote.

---

I initially thought the issue was 2 people in a flagging war and unhappy with the current system so I wrote this with that in mind but it applies.

I have more advanced systems in mind but it would take a while to implement them onto steemit, if even possible currently.

FLAGGING WARS

Problems:

-Some of these flagging wars go back pretty far and need decent research and time.

-Huge whale crushing a minnows free speech for instance.

-Spam bot/Stolen Content/Obvious scam accounts

Solution:

Right now what do I think could be done?

If I was steemit I would put together a team of 5 to 7 people - the trick is as always finding the most uncorrupted individuals not beholden to anyone.

An example is the people on reddit that have solved crimes out of pure boredom and interest in finding truth.

Identify good people that have the steem network's success in their best interest and enjoy researching, have them mediate.

FLAG TEAMS

This "Flags Team" of 3-5-7 (scaling w approximate bad actor/flagging war numbers) would be delegated a certain amount of SP from the steemit fund with the main purpose of mediating the flag wars (provide fairness) and supporting the fight against clearly identified spammer's/scammer's that are resistent to normal flagging.

Doing in-depth research as to why one is occurring, identifing if there are bad actors or if it was a misunderstanding.

Then presenting their findings in a weekly summary with the goal of funding the team something like $1k for each member per month to start - run that for a few months - see how the situation changes and pivot as necessary.

(Anyone interested in filling this position or that likes this idea should drop a comment below to start some consensus)

Community guidelines should be voted on put in to place with clear rules like :

DO NOT post:
"please follow for follow"
"hi I like this please follow back"

I realize these are probably already in place but they arn't being followed so they arn't initiative enough.

Even more ideal. @krytonika, recently suggested an animated video series on the basics of steemit. The community rules should be ones of the first videos.
https://steemit.com/steem-dev/@krytonika/re-netuoso-help-me-come-up-with-ideas-to-create-online-lessons-from-2017722t3356900z-20170722t090419376z

If i was writing/directing this I would actually design it in such a way that it's a 20-30 minute video giving a thorough understanding of Steemit that can also be cut into 10-20 individual parts that make sense out of context. This really should be done by another team put together by steemit.

---

More info on the bots:

Does anyone have any numbers on how much money the spam bots have earned since the begging of steemit? I remember I heard of one making $200k?

I would need more info on the economics to give better input but I would say it crucial to have system in place ready to start identifying and dealing with the negative before anytime of critical mass starts happening.

For instance this gets a little tricky when you have apparently good spam bots with well laid out gamified spam posts that I feel do make new people feel more welcome and add value to the network:

The name though has risk of earning a high reputation and running a large scam. So I would also personally advise them to clearly distinguish they are not part of the official steemit team or something along those lines.

---

Consensus

Steemit needs to start establishing and more clearly organising a number of teams to deal with upcoming issues.

Right now as I look across the steemit platform I see a number of clicks each basically competing with each other to out grow and hold more power as quickly as possible. This is a race to the bottom
STEEM needs consensus, or it remains essentially a bunch of different networks of individuals competing for the title (power) of the steem network.

Would love all your thoughts.

-Bless

@firepower
@ned