Idea For Upvotes & Downvotes
I suggest the stake based upvote & downvote system on Steem should be as impersonal as possible.
One-way Steem can shift the mindset from personal to impersonal stake voting is with a name-change of the current staked based voting system we know as "upvote" & "downvote."
We can change the current system names from:
Upvote to "Reward" (with quick grandparent proof description in a popup when hovered over)
Downvote to "Redistribute" (with a recycle icon that you click)
Putting a positive spin on something that can easily be perceived as bad can help the sentiment on Steem. Some Steemians do not understand that downvotes cause rewards to go back into the reward pool, make it unmistakable that they get redistributed back to the reward pool to be recycled for future reward distribution.
The term downvotes, when combined with reward disagreement, can create a powerful misconception that brings the maximum pain to the end-user. Most people take staked weighted downvotes as the downvoters think "I do not like you, and I am taking your money!".
With icons labeled, Reward & Redistribute, with adequate grandparent level explanation, it is possible to separate the stigma of emotional downvoting and make it less personal and more business.
Culturally, we equate the term downvote to mean "personally not to like something"; I do not downvote on Steem because I dislike people's work, I downvote because of reward pool abuse. When you think about it, the downvote feature is something we use to police the platform, not express distaste.
Downvotes = Investment Protection
The second part of this post is something I think Steem can benefit from to further remove emotion when distributing inflation to authors by giving users a clear separate emotional outlet. - The separate emotional outlet for users could be non-stake based upvotes and downvotes (IE. likes/dislikes on YouTube.) - We can rename upvote & downvote to "Like & Dislike."
I know people will say, "bots can just manipulate the like/dislike system." And sure, they can, and they can and do all the time on every social network there is. When bots manipulate likes upwards, people can still dislike and vice-versa. Vote manipulation in this day and age is easy to spot and backfires if the goal was to bring credibility to the post.
On Steem some actions cost resource credits. New stake-less accounts get treated like second-hand citizens without even the basic rights granted to them by all other sites. Give resourceless accounts (thinking light wallets in the future) as many features as possible by giving them access to all the free actions available on the Steem blockchain. Give people the legacy experience as a base entry.
As an example, in the future someone with a light wallet strongly disagrees with a post, well they can at least give a dislike, and that gives them some feeling of vindication. It is all anyone gets on any other site. I look at it as a funnel; if a user is mad and they go to retaliate, they see a dislike button, that would be their first course of action.
Have any suggestions other than Reward & Redistribute? Leave a comment with your opinion below.
Most social media sites don't even allow a 'dislike' button because it's 'too negative' - I think redistribution next to 'rewarding' is actually a great idea, not only because it sounds less negative (and yes negativity/punishment will always trigger people), but I like it even more for the education that it will bring to the community.
As I would love to see STEEM as THE blockchain that onboards crypto-noobs I believe we could really distinguish our chain if we found a way to put tiny bits of education throughout our UI/UX.
Downvoting is already better than flagging in terms of neutralising the term (down is just the opposite of up), so after that was implemented I stopped thinking about it. But this brings a new perspective and there must be many other minor tweaks we can make that will help people understand the idea behind Steem and it's functionalities better.
Why should a thing which is (sometimes) negative not sound negative? :)
I like honesty.
Actually, I am not against renaming a flag a downvote or a downvote a redistribute, but I think in the end that's cosmetics only, and we are not discussing about the main problem here, which is that quite a percentage of flags is not given to prevent spam or plagiarism or also to redistribute rewards but just because of different opinions, personal animosities or just for fun.
For example for quite a while every single comment of @valued-customer got flagged automatically by a whale. That had nothing to do with discovering value or preventing spam (actually the whale added a spam comment under every flagged comment). And that's just one example among many.
Too many people left or even didn't/don't/won't join STEEM because of omnipresent flag abuse (just recently a potential investor from Switzerland told me he saw all these flaggs, even under official Steemitblog posts, and thus won't buy STEEM for sure).
We Steemians are so accustomed to this that sometimes we aren't aware anymore how devastating the impression for people outside of our microcosm is ...
Therefore I plead for a committee of elected users with some delegated Steem power from Steemit, Inc., which could decide (in case someone complains) if flags are justified or not, and if "yes" just counter them with upvotes.
In addition, accounts who repeatedly misuse flags in an abusive way (instead using them against spam, plagiarism etc.) could be flagged, as well, after a decision of that committee.
nailed it! and with each behaviour change tweak hardfork you dent that image even more, you'll never get top flight bloggers here while they have the fear of god about the flagging wars.
I very honestly think that if we explained downvoting/redistributing better we wouldn't see so much retribution :-) Now people take it way too personal, believing 'their (!) money' has been 'taken away' and they start doing crazy stuff because they're so angry.
I'd like to think that the Tribes are solving this in part :-) Better trending pages and overall better categorized content. Not perfect yet, but getting there.
I'm not against some sort of committee where one can apply for 'rage flags' or 'revenge flags' or overall undeserved flags. Heck, @theycallmedan has offered to do this before with @curatorhulk, but I'm sort of assuming it wasn't used that much.
Interesting :-) And thanks for discussing!
I think there are different kinds of flags.
Actually they can make sense, and I guess you are adressing these kinds of flags which you think shouldn't be taken personal. Right, I agree that there need not always be a personal aspect when flagging someone.
Then there is no reasonable reaction than taking these flags the way they are intended: personal.
It is really difficult to convince investors of investing in STEEM. And I doubt that enough people will invest in all these hundreds of different tokens (without noteworthy value) as long as STEEM(it) doesen't work. I think people from outside the cryptoverse just have not enough time and interest to check all the different tribes. They want to see STEEM work - but just lets wait and see ...
The stake should come from Steemit, Inc.. One cannot expect from a single individual to sacrifice his time and money for doing that alone (and also deciding alone which flags to counter or not).
I think it should be an elected committee ot trustworthy Steemians, like you for example. :)
You are very welcome, thank you too! :)
While this is true, flags do counter the influence and outlays of the upvoters who sought to allocate rewards. I am actually far more irritated when I see my upvotes countered by flags than when I see flags on my posts and comments. I spend my actual VP on my upvotes, and I do not on my posts, so flags actually cost me my stake when countering my upvotes.
Not my theoretical rewards. My actual stake.
Thanks!
I strongly disagree with this. Bernie was involved in a flagwar (surprise!) with @fulltimegeek, and now Steemit is censoring all FTG's accounts. This indicates to me that ninjaminer Bernie has some sway with Stinc, and such an elected body being dependent on Stinc stake would not be likely to counter Bernie.
Nothing is stopping users from electing and delegating to such a flag review board right now, although such a board would have insufficient SP to counter whale flags nominally. I have also been flagged by Stinc devs in the past, so have more evidence to align Bernie's interests with theirs.
tl;dr evidence aligns Bernie's interests with Stinc's, and expecting Stinc SP to counter Bernie's seems naive.
Thanks!
Steemit, Inc. should only delegate the SP, but of course not influence the decisions of the elected committee (elected by the community, not by Steemit, Inc.).
Of course that should be made clear before, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.
Also the criteria of how to elect the committee needed much fine tuning. One could for example think about conditions like that every voter should be on STEEM for at least some weeks and had published some posts to prevent multi account voting. All that wouldn't be easy at all but worth a try ...
I just don't think that's possible. I am unable to recall an example of folks providing funding without having influence on how it's spent, other than taxpayers, and that's because we're just extorted.
Nevertheless, that would be my suggestion (Steemit, Inc. contributes only the SP, and the community elects an independant committee).
If Steemit, Inc. would agree to doing that, is another question of course ... :)
I agree with you.
No matter how you call it, it is the same and negative.
I don't like the flagging and I also do not like cheetah's comment 'this person... if this is a mistake contact via discord'. Cheetah does not check out each content just an account. If you flag/downvote give a reason and make it possible to undo it if you are mistaken.
Steemit already has a bad name and it is not really getting better.
It will never be the site @soyrosa is hoping for. Too much happened and the scammers and 'bad boys' will stay.
Most people do not read here, comment, I wonder if they invest time to find out if a post is plagiarism. That really takes time. Many people have more as 5 accounts on different sites and are not using the same username everywhere.
Good discussion, good points to think over brought up.
💕
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Actually, I am still here, because I see much potential in STEEM. The idea of a censorship free, blockchain based social media site, where, in addition, people have the chance to earn some money, is just great.
But you are right, there are also many unsolved problems for now (and I admit not being really 'happy' about the fact of having lost quite some money by my 'STEEM adventure' during the last one and a half year!).
I hope that in the end optimists like @soyrosa and @theycallmedan will be right and STEEM becomes a huge success.
Concerning @cheetah, this bot plays an important role in detecting plagiarism. However, I also would prefer if its owner replied directly under the comments in case someone complains about (possibly) wrong accusations.
Ya, good idea with the sprinkles of education on Steem UIs. It is easy to take for granted how what is seemingly easy to most Steemians, is alien to most non-Steemians.
R&R sounds very diplomatic and takes the edge off the term "downvote" I could get behind that. Redistribute would need to have a hover explainer telling grandma
By pressing this button you will influence X rewards to be removed from this content and sent back to the pool for redistribution.Using the word
contentbecause it is agnostic to comment or post type.An emoji layer as well would be good as mentioned already in this thread. I could put the crying with laughter face but not necessarily choose to remove rewards.
I think people would still consider a 'redistribution' a slight regardless of what you call it. It's still 'taking money' from them.
Good point. If people understand better how the system works, and know it is being redistributed, I think they will feel less slight. I've asked about ten random Steemians who post from time to time about how upvotes and downvotes work, and half of them thought it was like a tipping system and had no idea how the reward pool worked. So to those people, when you downvote and take the money, they don't understand why, if they knew more about how the reward pool worked, it would make more sense. I think it is a case of not understanding and feeling attacked personally.
The problem is that too often people are attacked personally here. As described above I think that's actually the main problem.
Apart from that, yes, why not call a flag (a downvote) "redistribute" to make clear what technically happens? I am not against your suggestion.
One matter that is not much considered in these perambulations is that flags return stake to the pool. Whales extract the vast majority of the rewards from the pool due to stake weighting. Returning rewards via flags to the pool that whales have missed out on extracting allows them another run at extracting those rewards.
This creates an economic incentive for flags. EIP will make this much stronger, as 25% of VP will be allocated for free flags. This eliminates the expense of flagging, and the vast majority of SP, and thus VP, inures to whales.
EIP is a terrible exacerbation of the worst problems Steem is facing, and the downvote pool is probably the most powerful economic negative impact that will be effected. Not one aspect of HF21 will encourage capital gains, and every part of it will encourage extraction of value before Steem price can reflect it.
The market is pricing in HF21 now, and that is why Steem price is falling, market cap is declining, and user retention is getting worse. Nonetheless, implementation of HF21 will make this much worse, very quickly IMHO. If it does not, I will have been proved wrong. I will be happy to eat my words, because I want very much for Steem to succeed.
If those three metrics decline precipitously upon implementation of HF21, I will be proved right. Then we will have a choice: either keep killing Steem by encouraging profiteering, or reverse course, and begin encouraging capital gains, ,and thereby investors.
I have posted on ways to do that. It's not rocket science, and I'll be glad to reiterate mechanisms that discourage profiteering and encourage investing for capital gains as needed.
I also doubt that HF 21 will be the big success everybody hopes (and most believe). However, now as it is decided, I want it to come as fast as possible to see what its real consequences are.
I hope it will be a positive surprise, even if in many earlier discussions I expressed my concerns.
That's actually a brilliant way to frame it. Taking a 'negative' emotion and showing how it benefits everyone when it's redistributed.
Great 'rebranding' of the button for sure.
This is a UI/UX feature to be implemented by companies leveraging STEEM as they please. I'd say worth a try.
Good idea, R&R, Reward & Redistribute :)
I like it. Make me think more about where rewards will get redistributed to.
Brilliant. Love it. Sign me up.
We could also do emotion-based voting as facebook uses. Then have users list there percents for emotions that are predetermined in setting and something along those lines. That way users determine what their votes mean to them and what emotions they want.
Someone could put a happy face and still give a negative vote value.
How about downvoting bernie or haejin?
I target trending page abuse. The curve in the EIP helps target abusive self voters, my hope is that will take care of that type of abuse.
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You talked about the reward pool, not trending page.
Like noone uses steemit anymore.. trending page is unimportant