Why I Flag ozchartart
We recently ran some statistics and found that @ozchartart was the number one blogger by author rewards in the past month. Every single day he posts 3 or 4 times and every single time he posted he would get $70 to $120 per post totaling over $300 per day. This is far more than any other blogger.
What is more, I have reason to believe that @ozchartart is a friend of some of the major whales who up vote his posts. What is telling is that it isn't @ozchartart who is acting out by flagging every single one of my comments into oblivion, it is the whale(s) that vote for him.
Content Quality and Value
This is a very subjective issue when voting on an individual post. When in doubt I tend to let things slide because I recognize that other people may value things differently than me. Every unique post deserves some time in the sun.
The problem I have with @ozchartart is that he has been producing the same content for almost 6 months and prior to my flagging attempts was pulling in more money each month than anyone else. I ignored his posts because they had the "appearance of substance" due to length, images, etc. I also figured there was some good trading discussion stimulated by it.
A closer look at Content
After a while I grew tired of scrolling past his posts multiple times per day every day. He was dominating the trending page. So I decided to dig deeper. What I discovered is that 95% of every post could be completely automated. The 5% that couldn't be automated involved one paragraph describing a chart and drawing a few unlabeled lines. As a programmer I also know that much the remaining 5% were text descriptions were formulaic, meaning that a computer could generate the text and simply substitute in different numbers on different days. Even the charts could be automatically annotated by software simply by looking at the data. All told, it would be a trivial computer science project to replace 99% of the content.
Relative Value to Other Content
In my humble opinion, almost every single post and comment on the site represented more real value than @ozchartart was providing. A down vote on this content is just a shortcut for up voting everything else. In terms of time, energy, and proof-of-engagement every comment longer than a few sentences is of higher value.
Double Standards
Some whales have frequently flagged high profile bloggers such as myself, @dollarvigilante and even @krnel. The justification for their flags were that "they posted too much and got too many votes". It is clear that they feel justified in periodically voting against these legitimate posts containing much more involved content.
My response to such criticism was to decline payout on the majority of my posts. I respectfully request that @ozchartart do the same.
Coordinated Campaign of Sock Puppets
Many people may not realize it, but one of the whales supporting @ozchartart, is and has been troll from the very beginning. He is prone to outbursts and rage flagging legitimate content. Many have witnessed his childish antics in slack and other places.
I have been tolerating his behavior because he is a whale. In my opinion he has proven himself to be a bad whale. A whale who profiting by promoting @ozchartart and who is selling out.
Propose a Truce
I will no longer flag @ozchartart if other whales stop up voting for him. I think we are civilized enough to agree to disagree on this particular issue.
Censorship!!
The trolls and spammers are always the first to cry censorship. They will say outrageous things in order to defend their gravy train. I have no problem with his "content" and would never dream of flagging it if it declined rewards. What we have here is a legitimate difference of opinion between two whales.
When we both express our contrary opinions on a particular piece of content things are fair. What is not acceptable is to take this disagreement outside the voting booth and start throwing a tantrum by flagging my comments that weren't even getting any meaningful payout. Whether you believe @ozchartart adds or removes value, it is clear that burying my actual comments is abusive and taking value away from the platform.
Conclusion
Steem is a platform where everyone gets to vote their stake. We know that there are people who will attempt to gain every advantage if it profits them, even at the expense of the whole. They will claim that I am the one attempting to game the rules to secure an even larger stake for me and my friends, but this is mere projection. I created Steem to give it away. I designed a system to intentionally include as many people as possible. I have no need for more stake and am actively giving away much of the STEEM I do have to fund development and free account signups.
Lets not make this about any individual post. Lets look at the past 6 months of unchallenged milking of the platform. Leaving these actions unchallenged will only make the abusers stronger.
Hopefully we can move on to more productive activity.
Your entire attitude including your unproven and unprovable accusations of "collusive" whales and abusive behavior is dysfunctional and harmful.
You would be more honest in simply stating that you do not like the content, or that you do not like anyone (other than you?) to make more than $X. By attempting to defend your actions by making accusations which you can not prove and which are certainly, at a minimum, not as true or clear as you make them out to be, you simply damage your own credibility.
I've voted for @ozchartart's posts (in part because of your flags) and I can tell you that I'm not part of any collusion. No one other than me has any influence whatsoever on my votes. Since I have done so @ozchartart has personally reached out to me to thank me which has encouraged me to continue supporting his work. (I had no contact with him prior to this.)
Why should I reject that friendly approach by @ozchartart, and instead side with a power-hungry dictator who wants to throw a legitimate contributor under the bus in order to propose a truce that is only made necessary by his personal inability to cultivate a positive working relationship with the other major stakeholders and instead prefers to assign himself as the having the authority to label good and "bad whales"?
Good then please give back the hundred thousand dollars or more worth of both liquid rewards and stake that you received in post rewards via "collusive voting" of yourself, your co-workers and employees, and others with whom you have a close relationship. Burning would be an effective approach. Please do not claim to be unaware that this was occurring since I commented on it at the time, repeatedly.
@smooth! You have brought enough trouble to this platform as it is. I am ashamed of you and I think you should be ashamed of yourself too the way you have mistreated new and investing users. How many hundred accounts have you flagged to oblivion since you mined your stake early? Shameful, @smooth - shameful!
Please be more polite, it is better to kill with kindness than use harsh language. The value of your point gets lost and you give your opponents argument greater strength even if you are right.
ok, @dantheman :)
Nice response!
Good Point & Well Said!
I fully agree!
Dan, off subject, completely, but if you aren't busy this Saturday and want to hang out a bit, you are more than welcome to stop in at the Ozark Area Steemit Meetup if you can make it to Springield, MO. Figured I'd mention it anyway. Thanks!
A devil's advocate is always a welcome balance of power, telling people to STFU always only begs the next logical question...
I think you and Dan are delusional. You believe you are great visionaries and creators. But the simple fact is your efforts failed to fix the SBD to 1 USD (even with the endless pockets of Steemit account)... and now you believe you have done it by your "system design". The truth of the matter is - SD is worth $1.00 now mostly due to @smooths single handed sacrifice to enforce the peg (and him being ready to take any losses if need be). You and everybody else should be thankful to him till the end of your life... he is saving your bad product and putting tons of money in your pockets. Why he does it, I have no clue even before this tasteless comment of yours... I know I would have left you, you bunch of clueless idiots, long time ago...long ago with a nice stash. But he stays....you should starts thanking him any second you have a chance from now till Steem is alive.
Probably none other than a maybe a few (certainly not hundreds) clear spam/scam accounts, and occasionally blatantly abusive posts or comments similar to yours. I also have flagged over-rewarded posts, including dan's, but not "to oblivion". You perhaps have me confused with someone else.
If what Dan said was true 3 to 4 posts per day receiving the highest payout, and not much new per post then why are you not flagging these "over-rewarded posts". Keep in mind I don't like the flag at all for anything other than abuse, spam, and plagiarism. So am not defending either you or Dan for your subjective stance on what is over rewarded. I am simply pointing out your hypocrisy with this particular response. I was following Ozchart and I up voted his material from time to time (not always) and I only partially benefitted from it as I'm not really a trader. Yet I can see that the analysis Dan gave was likely pretty accurate as he is not the only person to say it before now. I know there is a paragraph and usually a video linked (Lot's of Ozzy/Sabbath) yet based upon your statement that certainly does not warrant being the highest rewarded poster on the site.
Your response seems more a personal thing than actually being logically based around your claims. If you were accurately following the "flagged over-rewarded" posts then why were you not working with Dan?
EDIT: And I did not agree with you being told STFU. From my experience such things never convince anyone of the intended goal.
It is possible in time I may have, as I have downvoted other sorts of posts I've seen as overrewarded and not bringing sufficient value. I only started voting for them because I do not support Dan's approach at all.
But after having done so and being personally approached by @ozchartart to express his appreciation I do not regret it. It also suggests to me another theory on this matter, which is simply that @ozchartart is getting the votes because he is good at networking and building positive relationships, which is very much part of what makes social networks function. Dan should try it instead of going off and alienating nearly all of the largest stakeholders and labeling them as "bad whales"
You cannot say that it is acceptable for you to downvote @krnel's post because you feel it was overvalued, but it's not okay for @dan to downvote @ozchartart's post for the same reason.
If you think that @dan is setting a bad example then you should set a better one.
I am hearing that @ozchartart has flagged and gone after other people trying to make their own charts. At the moment this is hearsay, and may not be accurate. It is something to keep an eye out for.
As to Dan's approach. I don't really see it as any different than the approach other whales have been using on smaller guys. They are big enough to squash the things they subjectively think are over valued, or of no value, or don't like.
They are too powerful for anyone to really just shrug it off.
So as far as Dan's actions... it looks to me like the same thing, he just is currently more powerful than the people that have been saying it is OKAY to do this when they do it.
Also. You really need to consider how you are harping on how much steem power Dan has. He and Ned created the platform. If anyone logically should be an early Whale they definitely should be.
Right now unless Bernie changes his approach I am glad someone like Dan has power. I'd rather not see posts down voted for the reasons this one was, and the reason any one else does for an overvalued post. Yet it is easy to game the system.
And Bernie voting up his own comments to $8+ using two whale accounts kind of defeats the purpose of returning value to the pool.
You did not do such a thing that I am aware of. I'd actually be pretty surprised at such an action from you.
I can't reply to your comment below and it is tedious to keep scrolling back and forth to read what your wrote (a good number of apparently separate points) and reply to it so I will agree to disagree on many points. Certainly not everything everyone does on this platform is something that others support, and that applies equally to Dan or to me. My view is that the founders have a special and unique role due to their visibility, implied authority, and other factors. Again you may disagree, and in the end it is only my opinion, nothing more.
EDIT 2: @whatsup I can't reply because of depth (can't wait until that is fixed!). There is a huge difference between a duplicate link post for the same link, and just generally competing on posting charts, as is vaguely alleged. But I don't know what actually did or did not happen there.
EDIT: I certainly don't like the idea of someone flagging other legitimate posts that compete with them and it isn't something I would support. You should not interpret any favorable comments I've made about @ozchartart based on a single conversation with him as endorsement of everything he does or has done (assuming this is actually true).
Yeah. You and I agree/disagree from time to time, but as you've told me you prefer people being honest with you. This is why I still respect you and take the time to have dialog with you.
One thing you had me thinking of. You said you up voted it and @ozchartart reached out to you and seemed sincere in his thanks so it made you feel better about your decision.
I can relate to that on an emotional level. I get it. It feels good to be appreciated and I have no doubt he did/does appreciate your action.
Yet, that does not mean what he is doing deserves these rewards. Con Men and Women can be really nice too. That's an important trait.
I am not saying @ozchartart is such a person. They built the posts, so I do not think that is the case at all. I will say if that is where the highest amount of rewards have been going to then looking at the posts if I were the type to down vote things I believe are over valued I'd be flagging these posts now. That is not me though as you know, so I will not.
LOL - it wouldn't matter anyway. If I did it he might lose $0.01 payout if I was lucky. ;)
You flagged @timbo 's post for competing with Joseph's post LAST week.
You are a psychopath who routinely makes physical threats towards others. No one should listen to you.
Why are you using Dan Larimers name? Are you planning to SCAM people with Private Messages in the future from fake @Danlarimer to noobs?
I RED FLAG YOUR ACCOUNT! @danlarimer - Accounts like yours are evil.
I must say... a fake account comes out like that in regards to a post exposing possible fraudulent behavior within a certain "circle of whales" is something I find very interesting.
word of advice... nows not a good time to let that rogue AKA @Danlarimer account run it's mouth the way it just did.. IF that rogue account is affiliated with this "suspicious" network... IJS
I'm confused by the above account, @dantheman is this one of yours? I've never seen it before.
That account is not mine, it is someone attempting to impersonate me.
It's confusing, seriously @dantheman unless this dude has Dan Larimer on his drivers license, he should be modded into oblivion because that's just not cool at all. Wish @anyx could set @cheetah to hunt and follow accounts like that, it's dangerous to the community as a whole.
I don't believe it is. The account was used once before in a context where it was more clear that it was being in from a perspective of criticism and not impersonation, and in that case it didn't bother me. In context here, it is inappropriate and misleading.
I disagre on both counts.
If you look at the account's comments, I highly doubt it.
It would be bad news if the account had millions of SP. Luckily it only has about 9 SP. Likely not a threat.
Really smooth? You downvote to oblivion tdv and hide his posts and then you are coming here to tell us that you are against downvoting ozchartat? Shame on you and only shame smooth, If this is not HYPOCRISY i don't know what it is! , I have nothing else to say!
That is not what I wrote and in another comment I acknowledged that I might very well have downvoted him at some point. When you are actually reading what I wrote and responding to it rather than distorting it, I'd be happy to discuss it with you further.
Note that I decline payouts these days.
Yes, you started doing that after the rewards had already dropped by 90%+.
It isn't too late to burn the rewards you received from 'collusive whale voting'
Does it matter if the rewards have dropped? Surely it is the same amount of vests one receives from an upvote, regardless of the current price of steem? So if @dantheman had been accepting payouts, their lower value now would represent a much larger value in future once the price of STEEM rises.
I'm no expert, but that makes sense to me. If I'm wrong, please clarify how it works.
[nested reply]
I don't think it makes sense to back and forth on whether the price of steem might rise. We probably agree on that.
Nevertheless it doesn't change the fact that Dan was perfectly comfortable receiving, and not declining, rewards from just the same form of affinity voting that he labels here as collusive bad whales (and which was pointed out repeatedly as such by myself and others), and that he did so at a time when the financial benefit to him was a lot larger than the financial sacrifice he makes now by declining.
His approach of taking advantage of the system rules when it greatly benefited him but then attacking and vilifying others based on suspicions of doing the same thing, and adding labeling and name calling on top of that is incredibly harmful.
What I'm saying is that taking a share of the reward pool when the price of STEEM is very high and everyone is getting something is expected. Declining it when the reward pool is low is in my opinion admirable.
It is 5.32am where I am and I'm getting very tired, so I'm going to go to sleep. I'm happy to discuss this in greater detail when my brain is working at full capacity. Good night.
Perhaps there is a notable difference between the "environment" which Dan was allegedly "gaming" the system and today's environment?
Now that steemit has gained some footing, in terms of user adoption and blockchain/ platform growth, perhaps it behooves the whales to stop with their abusing of the system and/or hypocritical ways. In other words, equal actions between past and present may still equate to far more amplified consequences in the present condition(s) of Steem/ Steemit.
I think it's time to forgive and forget past actions and focus on the present. Good things can happen from here, if we approach the current circumstances with a clear mind. The majority of our collective focus should be aimed at how to grow our collective network that is Steemit/ Busy/ etc.
Fruitless arguments are a waste of intelligence and, with that, potential, IMO.
Mostly you are wrong because there is no guarantee that STEEM will rise. It could rise, it could fall, or it could stay the same. The most sensible unbiased analysis uses the current price at the time of the action being taken.
There are other factors that are related to that or not to varying degrees such as the rewards having been cashed out at higher prices (and could, theoretically be used to buy much more stake now), the rewards in STEEM/VESTS being cut by about 40% in HF16. The stake share of rewards declining over time due to hyperinflation and the VESTS exchange rate, there being much more competition from high quality/earning posters now, and probably others.
Nevertheless, even if I were to accept what you say, how does declining reward now turn back the clock on six months of not declining them while receiving votes from 'collusive whales' of the population I described? I don't believe it does. Only returning those rewards would.
I had thought you seemed very intelligent based on my previous reads of your comments, but this comment seems to suggest otherwise. Whether the price of STEEM does rise or not is irrelevant.
The fact is, it might.
That is enough of a reason for someone to choose to receive payout, on the off chance that the vests they receive today might one day be worth 1000X more in future.
There is no potential risk of loss, so there is no need for a sensible unbiased analysis. We are not trading cryptocurrency here.
I feel that @dan's choice to decline payout seems to be a genuine attempt not to subtract money from a reward pool that is already very low. But, if you can tell me another reason why he would do such a thing, I am all ears.
So you believe that ozchartart's posts are quality and not botty/spammy/fakish? I have had ozchartart's posts in my list of auto upvotes on my steemvoter account for a while and now I am wondering whether or not I should remove him...
edit: Or are you making the point that even if it is fairly automated botty posts he should still have the right to post them and is deserving of payouts?
No, I really have no opinion on it because I'm not a chartist. I however, don't think that accusations of abuse should be made just because someone doesn't like his work or his type of work.
I can tell you that in my personal conversation with him @ozchartart seemed like a sincere contributor who values his work and who truly believes that people who follow his work also value it. IMO, one of the founders of the platform attacking him from a position of explicit and implicit authority is not the right approach, regardless of whether we think his chart analysis is accurate or not. It will likely, as similar actions have in the past, drive away yet another (at least up until now) sincere and devoted contributor and supporter of Steem. Not the way to build a community.
I could not agree more with this sentiment.
I followed it for a week before the first time I flagged it, a couple of weeks ago. It rarely had 4 or 5 views before making over $50 from automatic voters.
@whatup I support however you want to vote on it. My posts get quite a bit of instant voting from automatic voters as do dan's and many others. In fact for a while even my comments were getting a whole bunch of automatic votes, though whatever bot(s) were doing that seem to have stopped. It's hardly unique to @ozchartart; and is simply the nature of the platform. (Lot of automatic bot votes happen on reddit too btw.)
I have never considered investing in Reddit.
I think I agree because even if his posts are mostly cut and past/automated I enjoy looking at the charts he posts because I don't have to go and look them up myself. The content may not be very in depth but it has been useful for me.
Right. It's like a financial news letter/ radio-/tv- station. While most of us may not enjoy it, there still might be some value in it.
While that may be true, is that slight convenience worth $300.00 in Steem earnings from the daily reward pool?
Now, consider that people, like myself (whom also happens to be a chartist), will put in just as much time/ effort, perhaps even much more (if his posts are mostly automated), and get something like a 10 ~ 20 cent payout. I'm not going to take the stance that it's unfair, whatever that word means, but I do think that this can lead to some user retention issues, now and in the future.
I think it behooves the whales/ guilds to "spread around the love" a bit within the various tags and sub-tags, if only to show a little appreciation of hard work. People like to feel loved/ appreciated. One upvote can go a long ways. Similarly too many upvotes towards a single user can send a bad message to the overlooked/ underappreciated.
To stick to this @ozchartart example, I've already seen many better chartists (IMO, of course) stop posting their works here on steemit, presumably because they get very little rewards (cents) for high-dollar efforts. Then I look at @ozchartart's works, with its very basic technical-analysis profile (not that there's anything wrong with keeping to the basics, but obviously not a lot of time is put into it), and it consistently earns $80+.
So, we have high dollar efforts receiving cents, and cents efforts receiving high dollars. Is that good for the platform?
...be honest with yourself now.
Do we really want only one chartist to dominate earnings day over day, week over week, month over month, therefore losing a lot of real talent in that area from Steemit, likely for good?
It should be fairly obvious that Steemit's best chance for success is to spread rewards between the upper talents of their respective "fields" not to pick one cash cow out of each of them at the exclusion of all the rest.
may I ask how the repetitive chart posting is more interesting and "steemit material" then krnels post from a few days ago?
I don't post either but I think there's a deeper element to consider in krnels post vs nerd stats and data
if it's auto upvote related then I retract my question
I actually addressed that in response to a comment on one of @krnel's posts. It addresses a larger, broader, and proven market. People like to trade and that includes paying attention to market reports and chart analysis. Not everyone likes that but it is far, far larger draw than long-form philosophy. Nor did I repeatedly and relentlessly downvote every single @krnel post and do so with multiple accounts..
Now I'm not here to shill for @ozchartart. Frankly his content isn't my thing and that's not why I am against what Dan has been doing and the way Dan justifies his actions.
I haven't started posting yet, but I think when I post some long form philosophy I'll promise a chart at the end, and of course a photo of a kitten.
Edit; Not to get a lot of votes, but to prevent down votes or flags.
2nd edit; (because of 6 post down)
As reply to @mrwang
Well it's a little joke but.... to be fair.
I could just as well turn the sentence around. Like this.
I haven't started posting yet, but I think when I post some charts I'll promise some long form philosophy at the end, and of course a photo of a kitten.
But I guess that what started as a joke ends up being booooooooooring philosophy ;)
aww, lmao... @wordsword that's hilarious.
@smooth gotcha
Did you have a similar personal conversation with @krnel? (and the 200+ readers of his content?)
I don't see why you think Dan should take responsibility for user retention and you shouldn't. He may be a bigger fish than you and he may be a co founder, but that's irrelevant to the fact that your interests should be aligned since you are both heavily invested.
No, but he is welcome to reach out to me as @ozchartart did (as is anyone)
Dan can do what he wants. I'm expressing my opinion on it.
I'm not employed by Steem/Steemit in any manner, with the possible exception of running a witness node (arguably whether that constitutes being 'employed'). This is not my job and i'm not "responsible" for anything about it. I'm a stakeholder, investor, and a user. Trying to equate my role with that of a founder and lead developer is nonsensical. Yes we are both large-ish stakeholders but the similarity begins and ends there.
For the responsibility you refuse to take I would argue that nobody should be voting for you as witness.
I wouldn't suggest noone should vote for you as of yet, and I still do even though I made the decission a long time ago and have little influence.
But I would agree that with being a witness comes, and should in my opinion come an even greater, social responsibility.
I personally always suggest noone should vote for anyone who'm they disagree with on what they themselves consider important issues, no matter if they are directly related to technicalities such as running a node or not.
Quality is subjective. They are easy to digest and I use them to show new investors when they have questions about how to price steem.
@ozchartart's posts help me sell steem and steemit to people who otherwise would not be interested. It's your decision on whether or not that report, automated or not is worth your upvote. It is mine on days I'm looking at it. Then again I don't have anyone on autovote either.
Some whales have this on autovote and vote for multiple charts every single day. There is no way a serious trader needs those 3 or 4 posts, each day.
Agreed, but it's the way our system works. Trending authors trend, because curation rewards exist. If you know that whales are going to vote something you'd have to be acting in an irrational manner not to vote with the whales and to do so before the whales.
Whales for the most part don't have a lot of time to curate by hand so some accounts are on auto upvote.
There is no problem with this because it's by design.
However if there were no curation rewards, then this would not be as much of a problem.
It is exactly the reason, I would not invest nor bring anyone I know here.
@williambanks I'm sorry, but they've been being flagged for months and you only noticed yesterday... Very few people even noticed even when they remained on the trending page AFTER flagging. Barely anybody showed interest because nobody noticed because practically nobody retains value from those 4 time daily posts.
[the other reply to a different comment I guess before an edit]
Why? I have not autoupvoted ozchartart, nor anyone else for quite some time.
If you like his posts, fine, if you don't like his posts that's fine too. No one is forcing you to support them with autovotes. Your call.
Up to the voters (including you).
"Why? I have not autoupvoted ozchartart, nor anyone else for quite some time."
Just for the sake of supporting him and my own curation rewards.
"If you like his posts, fine, if you don't like his posts that's fine too. No one is forcing you to support the."
I mean I'm wondering if the posts are willfully misleading people or something. For example tricking people into pumping or dumping coins at a loss.
I don't think anyone has even alleged that.
As a professional trader I agree with your interpretation. It's easy to get fooled into thinking people that talk about technical analysis in the markets have some kind of 'magic pill' or 'secret sauce'. Then assigning responsibility and authority to them.
As you stated, much of it can be automated and what is not automated in the case of ozchart is merely a recollection of price movements and unexplained lines without context. It's not analysis.
This is the exact same reason why I keep my own technical analysis to myself. It's no magic pill, it's my own opinion, and it makes no sense trying to explain what I see when I look at a chart, a chart that has zero predictability. If I were to express any analysis, it would be fundamental analysis (news, events, developments, etc), because you're stating the facts rather than speculation.
It is just a plain ole' chart that anyone who is trading should know how to create. Can you picture a trader waiting around for this chart to come out so he can trade. SMH. Either people haven't traded or.... I don't even know what else to say, this is so silly.
Let's not overstate it, now. If you know that it has zero predictability, wouldn't it make you a fool to use it?
Technical analysis is statistical analysis of price patterns. We will find with enough research that certain price set-ups and/or patterns provide specific odds of "success", whatever parameter we assign to that word.
The problem is that a lot of people want the "holy grail signal" that has a 100% success rate, while the best signals are more in the 55 ~ 60% range. Thus, reward/ risk profile is mostly what determines trading success.
Thanks. Your display of strong leadership has made me bullish on the platform again. A bit late, but I am getting some more STEEM now.
Thank you for speaking up against the whale collusion that many of us have recognized, and not only on this one account. And when the bad behavior of whales gets exposed, some people can't handle the negative and conflict and try to make people who speak up look like the bad guys for pointing out issues. If people want "community" and "unity", issues need to be made more public so that things get resolved. Trying to spin things around as if the people who bring up issues are the problem is indeed projection.
But, of course, it isn't "whale collusion" when the same whales repeatedly vote for your posts, right?
Or are you going to suggest that you got that 74 rep from minnow votes?
I work to put out content that people HONESTLY evaluate. Not constantly upvoted for my content regardless of what is there (some people do, and that's a max payout of $5-6 on autovoters alone). You know you're lying when you said what you just said. You're just trying to spread lies and see how many fools buy into it.
You're such a deceiver. Get a clue, but you can't it seems. You willfully refuse to look at things honestly and see the difference. It's just idiocy of thinking someone get's voted on, not for quality content that is evaluated, no, just assume it has nothing to do with content that people actually value since it is HQ content... no, keep denying reality, be a fool, and say that someone only gets upvoted because whales are colluded to upvote their HQ or interesting material that isn't repetitive crap charts.
But you go ahead and vote on the same shit charts each day, with all your buddies to pump crap to the top, with higher rewards than most people, but hey don't flag that crap because you're making curation rewards from it, flag the guy who puts out HQ work that can change the world, and for the first time gets his HQ work on the top 7 trending and a payout over 100$ for the HQ work. Yeah, that's worthless junk, better flag that. You're a hypocrite, a liar, a deceiver, and it's a joke that people don't see through your bs.
It's wrong we see only black and white.... It is wrong to put labels on people like bad and good.... We have all or good and bad moments... I like to see the glass half full... I like to focus on the good things both have brought to the community.... Are you aware for example that one of hundreds of @smooth contributions is about $17K for busy project(I will not mention other initiatives since it is easy for an above average IQ person to make a basic investigation and find out)
PS note that I am too in general against "flagging"
If you are going to make false accusations and talk about "spreading lies" while doing exactly that, and generally respond disrespectfully to contrary opinions, that only gives me another reason to conclude that your content (along with your behavior), is not a valuable contribution, but I already largely believe that so it isn't a large leap.
Part of health is healthy white blood cells! Hopefully I don't have to explain the analogy, in this context.
Thank you for posting @dantheman.
Your objective and reasoned approach will hopefully bring in many readers. Your explanation is appreciated...though one is not required....which makes it all the more welcome.
If one may add to the dialogue...it did seem that @ozchartart was bringing to the platform content not found elsewhere....however just as @steemsports ran too many posts so it seems that @ozchartart was doing it as well in a different way with repetitive content.
Your post has been given a hearing and the information assessed.
The trouble for members of Steemit who make little to nothing from their posts....is that the idea of using ones vote to upvote the higher reward posts in order to increase their own reward is a way of making ones time on Steemit worthwhile until ones own posts gain a viewership. However looking under the hood is never pretty and for this bleujay thanks you. Truth is harsh....it takes a leader with moral courage to put it out there and let the people decide.
Your post the other day Blogging for Money...is the view taken by bleujay in that this is a long term endeavor which requires the 3D's of success..Desire...Dedication...and Determination.
Wishing you all the best.
By no means does ozchart deserve the amounts he's currently getting. These posts take under 10 mins to make at maximun and require a little thought, close to none really. Other traders would agree, I'm quite sure. I've considered flagging themselves weeks before but I was afraid to receive flagging in revenge as Dan is now and let's be real my vote has 0 effect. People can still find the charts.
... That is another problem with the current system
I find it extremely hard to believe you hadn't thought about this kinda thing when Steemit was being developed.
A quick look shows everyone it's all about selling steem. You want to avoid being flagged, buy more steem. You get attacked, buy more steem and flag back.
Perhaps you shouldn't have sold so much steem yourself. I hear there is still some for sale though.
Seriously, do away with the damn flag system and put fourth a group of admins, paid admins; to deal with the garbage...
I did see this problem coming and when I suggested a proposed solution (vote negation) it was rejected by the very whale(s) who are acting out today. With vote negation it is possible to let the two disagreeing parties "stand down" and leave the voting to everyone else.
People were concerned that this would lead to "hard feelings" and a new kind of "abuse". I still stand by vote negation, but obviously it takes a vote war to get some people to see the problems I saw 6 months ago.
@dantheman Negation would be promise breaking for this platform. It's literally blocking a person from excerising the only promise made by this platform, i.e. you can buy and exercise influence.
A much simpler solution would be split out downvoting and flagging and make both require a comment explaining why.
If you did this there would be no problem here.
"I'm downvoting this because it is redundant, low quality and does not deserve the fraction of the limited reward pool it has earned. By downvoting this I am redistributing the pool to others."
That's all flaggin is in this case right? A redistribution of someone else's earnings to those who may be more deserving, needy or whatever but lower profile?
I mean seriously, would @ozchartart forgo payment for a day if he knew it would help @deviedev get her little sister out of jail?
https://steemit.com/life/@deviedev/jenny-jump-up-is-in-trouble
I know I would.
Point is, keep doing what you're doing but take a second to explain why, each time.
You can always go into the chamber and change the "N SQUARED" curve to not approach infinity so fast
to bring a little mortality to the current STEEM god population.
This would be the single thing that would drastically improve steemit.
Fair enough.
Now the problem is going to be even harder to deal with. You have accounts powering up that never intend to make a post or comment in an attempt to shield themselves. Everyday steemians have no defense against this and seeing it happen is a strong deterrent to investing .
Once content is here that "powers that be" want silenced it will be no problem at all to power up the largest whale ever known. Remember, the Clinton's have over 7000 youtube accounts backed by Soros money.
This ain't the BBS days of trolling Dan, these people are well paid and far beyond petty whale wars we see today..
Steem on..
I have also been making the case of the need to counterbalance voting power. There is some very sound game theory regrading the need for tit-for-tat reward/punishment.
Well, I feel confident you can find a solution. I am just not as confident it will be accepted by the community.
We're all in this together now, but some are way deeper than others :)
Thanks for your attention.
There could be a community service sort of thing, where users can vote on disputed flags for very small STEEM rewards. Once a certain amount of people have reviewed the decision and found a 75% favour in one way or another, then the damages(payout and rep deduction) could be applied--if the flag was agreed upon that is. If a flag is overturned, there could also be some sort of penalty, applied to the one who produced the flag-- for example, the weight of the flag is reversed and applied to them. This would discourage people from flagging for insignificant reasons.
There would be no way to abuse this because the whales could not use bots to manipulate the results.
There may have to be a lot more users before that could be implemented however.
Thats not a solution. The solution is what youre doing right now -- downvoting crap sockpuppet accounts when they make crap, overrewarded posts. IMO, its long overdue.
The system already provides a means to negate a vote that you disagree with. Casting a vote in the opposite direction.The vote negation thing, IMO, was a cop out. It was a way to downvote bad content without having to sign your name to a downvote.
It was also potentially hugely abusable. What happens when the guy you describe as prone to tantrums decides he doesnt like someone so he's going to take away their vote (which he can do, if theyre a non-ninja, with just a small sub account that he doesnt use anyway)
part of being a leader is coming to terms with the notion that sometimes, maybe even often, youre going to make a call that some people don't like. And youre going to get called a shithead.
This would completely undermine the whole concept of a decentralised blockchain as well as stakeholder governance. I would be completely out, as (I imagine) would many others who support Steem for the philosophical ideals it represents.
Yes, that would be a complete disaster.
Disagree.
Can you elaborate on that?
I'd rather not ;)
...but here it goes, I don't think that it would be a complete disaster.
Your comment didn't elaborate on how it would be a complete disaster, so I really have no basis for counter-argument.
I simply fail to see how it would be a disaster and, as you offered up nothing as an example of how/why it would be, I see no reason to build up a case, so to speak.
So what?
We're after the masses, not you and the few others whom share your ideals.
If we lose one for every 100 that we gain, it's a win.
You're in the wrong project if you think Steem is just about mass appeal. It is about reshaping the world.
You may wish that it is so, but I don't buy it.
Money is almost always the root motivator and I wouldn't bet against it here, regardless of what various people claim to be the true motivator.
Without decentralization there is no money. Might as well invest in liberty dollars.
[nested reply]
I don't care about ideals or definitions of "money" versus "currencies".
All I care about is keeping the wealth that I've accrued and these "liberty dollars" have done a fine job of holding their value long enough for me to do just that. Furthermore, I see no law of physics that states decentralization of X as a necessary mainstay. As, during every period of man, the best bet is to diversify investments, because there's no knowing what the collective greed of humanity and its systems will allow to transpire.
If, for example, all the world's governments were to decide to make investing in crypto-currencies illegal, then I, personally, wouldn't want to be one to challenge their authority - call me a coward, if you want, but I value my life outside of bars.
As an investor this doesn't sound bad to me.
Maybe not for the small few, certainly not good for the masses.
It's like being sued by Bill Gates, do you A. Run out and hire a good lawyer? or B settle ASAP ?
No one in their right mind wants to jump in a whale war from scratch, you wouldn't either if you had to buy steem @ $.015
It would lead to large demand and price increases for STEEM. Even as a small investor you would enormously benefit from the resulting price increases.
This is not entirely hypothetical; apparently similar things have happened in games where spending money gives you an advantage leading to an "arms race" and very large revenues for the game.
Socially it may not be the best thing for the site but as an investor (of any size) that kind of demand would be nothing short of wonderful.
...until it starts to effect (affect?) you directly.
Having a whale "follow-flag" (I love to coin terms) you, as a dolphin (or less) is analogous to a strongman competitor, or professional MMA fighter, bullying your average man, of average build/ fighting ability. True, these "victims" have the choice to train and/or hit the weight rooms to place themselves closer to par, but everyone and their mothers know that there's less than a snowball's chance in hell that equality (of competition) will ever be achieved, regardless of his/her motivations or efforts.
But we're missing something here on Steemit, which the "real-world" analogy has - the victim can call the police to handle the bullying. Follow-flag dolphin, on the other hand, is shit out of luck.
Apparently this precedent exists and has led to high demand in some MMOGs. So I simply do not rule out the possibility it could lead to high demand and large price increases here, and if so that is definitely something that investors would like. Remember investors are not necessarily posting on the site at all, so need not be combatants in the flag fight you describe. The role of investing is distinct from the role of social platform user (though of course there is overlap as well). I'm not claiming necessarily that it would happen.
Hmm.
Well, if most of the social platform users tag out from Steemit, due to these (hypothetical) malicious flaggings, then there's nothing to invest in other than what essentially amounts to "vaporware" (no real value).
I think it's clearly a key to keep the majority of the social user-base happy, no?
EDIT addition:
Also, I'm not convinced that what works in MMOGs will correspond one to one with what people will support when they have thousands of dollars at stake and real flesh to protect.
I'm not even claiming that it works in MMOGs (consistently at least). It was pointed out to me that it does happen in some cases, so I commented that if it did happen here it would be good for investors.
I'd also note that it is very speculative at this point what will build a user base that is significantly above zero (on the scale of successful online social platforms) as well as what would keep such a user base happy. This has not been demonstrated at all.
Competing with established platforms that are more specialized to the task of focusing strictly on user experience is not an easy task. Steem/it needs to focus on and somehow exploit its unique advantages. In a big way.
I agree with your point of view @dantheman. Thing that I disliked about ozchart is that he only shares the overview or basics of the market and I think what people need is more technical stuff that they can believe and can do further predictions. Being an intermediate trader I feel that ozchart need to do add some more details like RSIs, Chart patterns, volume, trend, possible ways the trade can go and other technical stuff!
Just a short thought on this:
It's good that whales think and act differently. There is less chance for collusions if the whales don't like each other's decisions.