My horrible first experience with Steemit & ideas on how to fix it.
My first experience with Steemit has turned into an interesting and somewhat annoying example of the beta status of the platform. This is a look at what happened and my thoughts on changing the experience to help avoid scaring away new authors in the future.
My First Experience Writing For Steemit
I've been with Steemit as a reader since launch. I setup a wallet a while back and simply perused the articles and have followed the huge growth as more people continue to gravitate to the platform. In the meantime, I had recently launched a traditional magazine style blog called Lisk Nation, focused on reporting news and writing articles about the Lisk Platform. After giving it much thought, I decided to take the plunge and move my efforts on Lisk Nation to instead just be me, writing as myself, with Steemit as a platform for reaching more people as an experiment in branding my writing to myself, rather than some kind of magazine or outside entity.
The decision took a lot of thought but I was primed and ready to go. This morning I sat down and I created an introduction post describing everything above, my decision to move and why, and a introduction to myself. I knew I wouldn't immediately get a ton of followers or huge up-votes, but I was hoping to at least see a few people comment, maybe welcome me to the platform, and see a few of the Lisk community giving me their thoughts on the move.
Unfortunately, it took a turn.
Shortly after posting, I went back as any anxious blogger would, to see if anyone had commented. I was greeted with a warning stating that my blog post had been hidden due to a low rating. I have to say, I was immediately shocked and questioned my decision and almost walked away from the platform straight away. After calming down and looking into it a little bit, the entire thing happened because one guy (@r4fken) managed to flag my new post right after I posted it.
Not for any particular reason from what I can tell, he runs some things he calls the daily downvote and it looks like he randomly downvotes posts. Maybe it is a form of Steemit trolling that has developed, or maybe he had a valid reason and just isn't telling me (I asked in the comments), but either way, it was a very discouraging and negative experience, all stemming from one individual and just 1 apparently randomly chosen flagging.
This experience has the potential to scare away new authors and I think we need to propose possible methods or work-arounds to keep others from having the experience I had. The truth is, many new authors or bloggers might just walk away after their first post under the circumstances laid out above.
Let's Talk Solutions
I don't believe in bringing up problems without offering solutions. I would like to discuss a few potential fixes that we might be able to implement to discourage trolling random posts.
1. Allow new authors a grace period on their first post. This would be a period of let's say 12 hours, on a new account, where even if down-voted, they wouldn't be immediately removed or grayed out from the listings. A threshold could be set where this would be negated, for instance, if someone were down-voted 10 times on their first post in the first 12 hours, they would still be grayed out.
2. Set a threshold irregardless of the # of posts someone has. Give everyone a small benefit of the doubt and rather than allow 1 person with significant voting weight (I'm not sure if it was due to his weight or simply that I had 1 flag and no up-votes yet, I will look more into the rules) to ruin their day, require a vote threshold of 3 or 5 flags / down-votes before a post gets the warning message. Make it a # of votes, not a specific amount of weight (if that is how it is currently setup).
3. Don't gray out or warn against posts, let the reader decide. A more simple solution would be to just show a # of up-votes and a number of down-votes or flags on each post and allow the readers to decide whether or not they still want to click it. No warnings or artificial protections, assume we are adults and can decide for ourselves. I don't think the coddling is really necessary and believe this to be a better solution.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, users are smart. If you curate the lists and trending posts based on number of up-votes and the "new" list is the only place showing all posts, users can determine for themselves what they want to read. My first experience with Steemit wasn't a great one and I almost walked away on post #1. I think we can negate this factor and make it less harmful to new authors by implementing one of the suggestions above, or maybe a combination of them.
Do you have an additional idea I didn't think of? Do you think I'm a crybaby and the current system is fine? Let me know in the comments, I'll check back and respond as soon as I see your comments!
Great post. I wish more people would take such a rational, thought out view of deeply negative emotional experiences. I've seen other reports about negative things this user has done and hopefully the network is responding to the point where their reputation will go down enough to not allow this in the future (already, we see some of that happening here). Lower reputations can't impact higher reputations, but unfortunately, new users start at 0 (though it's displayed as a 25, I think).
I like some aspects of your proposals, but:
It's not just about that. Some people have been massively abused and it's important to flag those accounts quickly to limit the harm they can do to others (eventually their comments are hidden by default). I think a balance is needed where if things like this happen right away to new accounts, they have a quick and simply process to appeal the situation and it's made very clear to them they are innocent until proven guilty. I'm also hopeful network forces will naturally discourage the type of flagging you saw. I'm going to give you a follow because I really respect your attitude in responding to this and for looking for futures. I think Steemit can use a lot more people like you here.
Thanks for the thoughtful response and kind words. I will have to get more well versed on some of the other abuses and loopholes in the Steemit system. With anything like this, there are bound to be people who abuse it early on. It reminds me of when Ultima Online first came out something like 25 years ago and people who just resurrect other players simply to be able to kill them again to the point where new players got so frustrated they quit the game outright.
I think there is definitely a middle ground solution that can help curb this experience (although I'm not sure if I was just unlucky or if it is a common occurrence). Thanks for your thoughts on the issue and for your support on a personal level. It is much appreciated!
That @lukestokes is good people.
Sorry about your initial experience. Hopefully we'll avoid the part where people use a rock to glitch out pathfinding, walk through a walls of your house, and loot all your chests :)
I do hope you'll stick around, I've been following lisk for a while now and would love to see more thoughts on where it's heading. If you still want to run lisknation.com, and use steem, I may be working on just the tool you need ;)
I'm glad you stuck around, too. My very first day on Steemit (a month ago tomorrow!), a high rep member flagged one of my comments on his post. It wasn't a spam comment. It was lengthy and detailed, and complimented his post and the ideas behind it. I replied back, asking why he flagged it, but he didn't answer me. I just assumed it was because he didn't want a new user commenting on his post for some reason.
After being upset and annoyed for a few days, during which time I kept reading, commenting, and posting anyway, I got over it, and kept Steeming on. It hasn't happened again, so far. I still wonder why he did it, though. I'm just not upset by it anymore. I've had far more positive experiences by sticking around here than that one negative one. If I'd given up the first day because of it, I'd have missed out on all the good things on Steemit.
You've got my follow, and my upvote. :)
I once accidentally flagged someone touching my screen wrong. :) Gald you stuck it out.
Indeed...
I have no idea what Lisk is but fuck @r4fken. I upvoted all three of your posts at 100% and followed you to make sure you don't get this treatment in the future (well to offset it if you do).
Oh and welcome to Steemit, most of us are really cool and helpful.
I am trying to have a positive impact on Steemit and bring in new users so I hope you don't mind. #payitforward!
[Crowdfunding] Steem.Gifts and Steem.Market need Steemians help to become a reality!
I think a reasonable way to prevent this is to use the voters record to determine whether their vote should hide a post.
That is to say, lets say voter X has a record of flagging posts which eventually end up visible (presumably because the community wants to see them and has voted accordingly)... this users downvote should count (like every vote should count) in the distribution or rewards, but should be ignored when the UI trys to figure out when to display posts.
If it turns out the user was right, then eventually others will see the bad post flag it, and it will disappear. If it turns out the user was wrong (as his history leads us to believe he will be) then he won't have been able to inflict the temporary harm of hiding a post that was otherwise worthy until others could come along and unhide it.
In addition to this, this would be a reasonable and workable deterrant to irresponsible flagging, which has perennially had everyones panties in a bunch. You could set up a system such that if XX pervcent of the posts someone flags end up visible by their 1 day payout, that users flag would no longer be able to hide a post or comment.
Just a spit ball idea, but IMO the number should probably be between 50 and 75%.
Just a thought.
Thank you for your response and for taking the time to think about solutions! I think your idea is a really positive way of looking at it and might help to curb the random down-voting, while also still keeping spammers off the site (many of my solutions might make spam easier).
Is there an official process for submitting ideas to the Steemit team?
If you're a programming type (which you seem to be from your other posts) i think your best bet might be on github. Im not entirely sure how that works though.
BTW, i don't think any of your three ideas would work as written.
The problem with this is that there are a lot of accounts created just to spam. Yes, it would help people like you, but it would for every matthewDC, there would be 500 people spamming 40 streaming links each.
The problem with this is that nothing that works through an absolute number of flags/votes is ever going to fly. Everything has to be weighted in SP, and regardless of what someone thinks of the user who flagged you (he has made many regrettable decisions), 3000SP is too much to ignore completely.
The problem with this is the level of noise it would entail. There are a lot of spammers just looking to "get lucky" with a repost or a link. You have to keep in mind that for every good post you would preserve this way, there are X number of spam posts that you would also preserve. X is probably bigger than you think now, and will only grow as the platform becomes more successful (if, in fact, that is what happens)
Thanks for the constructive feedback. A lot of you probably have more experience with the inner workings of the network and exactly how steem power works right now, so I was hoping for this type of conversation. I'm still wrapping my head around how some of the influence is calculated.
Part of the issue is, I don't think I was quite aware of the amount of spam the system has been seeing. From the comments here, it sounds like it has been a real issue. I've seen the streaming links for football games and have to admit, it IS pretty annoying. So I wouldn't want any changes that would make it more enticing for them to stick around and bring their friends.
Thanks for reading and for sharing your honest opinion. It's helping me to learn more about the climate here and some of the issues.
As an epilouge to this post, it looks like your intro post that initially got flagged got some positive attention, too. I thought it was the type of thing that would catch the eye of some of the founders, so i spent 5 bucks to put it in promoted (which may or may not have been the reason a couple whales noticed it).
I dont think youre being a crybaby. I like that you've taken a mature position and are explaining what happened and possible solutions, rather than just trashing steem and threatening to leave (which ive seen many times). In my opinion there are some issues with your proposed solutions relating to new users and spam accounts, where giving a grace period may increase spam on the site. But regardless if that's the case or not, how users perceive their first posting on steemit is really important to ongoing user engagement. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading and for your comments! I agree that spam is definitely something that needs to be watched. I think this is why maybe a hybrid case where if a new account or person racks up a # of flags (i.e. 3 or 5 flags) prior to getting any up-votes, then they could still be marked. You could then have an issue with someone having multiple accounts and still doing multiple flags just to harm others, but maybe it would become tedious enough to not be worth it. These were just initial thoughts or solutions to bring attention to what I see as a potential issue, but maybe we can come up with something better as a group. Thanks again for reading!
Please never say irregardless again. It's not a word. I wouldn't down vote you for it but many would. Regardless is what you're looking for. :)
You're right. Its like he's speaking a whole nother language. (CWIDT?)
Thank you for the heads-up! I wrote that in one sitting and didn't do any editing . I will make sure to do a quick once-over next time before posting. I agree that irregardless isn't technically a word and regardless would have been a better choice!
On that note, I had mentioned in one of my other posts that I couldn't find a preview mode anywhere when writing new posts. Typically I would do a preview and re-read the article and look for errors and formatting issues. Do you know if this is something they have planned for a future release or that I might have just missed?
Thanks for your comment and for reading!
the preview is under the post button. It's dynamic and not a great way to do it IMO, but that's the way it works.... If you get the Grammarly plugin, it pops up a preview pane for you to do editing proofing in.
irregardless
Wow, I'm not sure how I missed that one. Thanks!
no downvoting this time! :)
Great to hear from you even after horrible experience.
I feel you have much to contribute. Fingers crossed!
Thanks for the support! It makes me feel very positive about being here and contributing to the community and environment!
I can feel that :)
Sorry you had to go through that. I really respect the approach that you took to handle it. I haven't dealt with the person you mentioned before directly myself, but I have heard a lot of other users complaining about the same user.
The solutions you are proposing are good ideas, but unfortunately I don't think they will end up being implemented. The reason is because for every 1 bad type of user like the one you reported, there are thousands of spammy and harrasive users looking to get their posts/comments seen.
The way the system is designed, new users that sign up and do spammy/harrasive things should get flagged and hidden as quickly as possible to minimize the harm they do to the users/community.
The real problem is that we have users like this (with a non-negative reputation) that are abusing the system and down-voting posts like yours for no legitimate reason. The 'longer term' solution to this is these types of people should get downvoted/flagged themselves, which will make their comments and votes hidden and worthless - thus negating the negative user.
Unfortunately though there is still some time where a user like this can do damage before the community notices and flags him. I think the best solution that we have for this right now, is hope that other users who this happens to are as mature as you, and handle it in such a way that lets the community respond and address the situation.
Thanks for the response and the support!
I'm still learning a lot about the underlying network and digesting the entirety of the whitepaper is taking longer than I anticipated. Is the system set up in a way that a user's influence is based more on their personal rating, or their Steem Power? For instance, can a new account come in, buy a significant amount of Steem Power and then immediately have enough influence to do this type of downvoting? Or does their personal rating outweigh their SP?
Thanks again for your response!
That's a great question. I'm not an expert, but I will give you my understanding - which should hopefully be pretty close.
When you upvote/downvote, there are two things it affects:
-The payout of the post
-The reputation of the poster
The payout of the post is entirely based off of your SP. If you buy more SP, you will be able to affect the payout more.
The reputation of the poster is entirely based off of your reputation (I think). To affect the person's reputation score, you need a higher reputation.
As far as when you down-vote to the point that it becomes marked as spam / hidden - basically it is when the payout amount is negative. This means that SP is what you want to be able to have this control. If for example you got a ton of flags from users with low SP, and one user with high SP upvoted your post, then your post would not be marked as spam. If 10 people voted it up though, and someone with high SP flagged you - then it could cause it to go negative and be hidden / marked as a spam post.
Hope this helps. I apologize if anything I am saying here is not accurate, but I am pretty sure it is right. I know the community is working on a FAQ/wiki project, so hopefully within the next few months we will have these types of questions answered.
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Thanks for the comment! I wonder how many others have been through this? From the comments, it sounds like the community has a strong system in place to police itself, some bad actors just manage to slip through the cracks. I'm glad I posted my experience and brought attention to it, but it seems like changing it based on some of my recommendations might cause more trouble and make it easier for spammers to monopolize the system. Glad you stuck around after your bad experience as well! I think the community here is a real asset and helps make up for the quirks or bugs that still exist.