There have been influence caps on STEEM before. It took the form of "@abit's experiment" or what @dantheman referred to as the "whale truce," as well as this new Anti-Self-Voting notion.
Concerning their intended purpose, these implementations were/are okay because they are enforced entirely off-chain by their own stake.
So when I say that influence caps are dumb, I am only referring to a hypothetical on-chain influence cap that directly affects STEEM POWER.
You see, these off-chain implementations can be circumvented by third parties or other circumstances, in theory. That's a feature, not a bug. And they can be turned off under certain conditions, as we have observed.
Image Source: deviantart.com
Any on-chain influence cap is the doctrine that users have no right to vote for their own sake, that the users' stake and their curation rewards do not belong to them, but belongs to the platform, that the only justification of their existence is their service to the platform, and that the platform may dispose of them in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its collective good.
We are now seeing a new kind of influence cap idea emerging: Anti-Promotion-Bots
It seems like a more focused cap on the surface, but really, it's all the same. As much as @abit (probably) helped the reward pool, I'm delighted it didn't become part of the protocol.
I hope we never hardfork to any on-chain influence cap for STEEM POWER.
Yes, I get it. There are a bunch of examples where lousy content is getting upvotes. But that's always a problem, and we already have tools to deal with it (flags). I don't understand why there's a focus on bad-self-up-votes, though. Bad content is bad content, who cares if it's self-voted?
I also realize that this "problem" supposedly became a big deal because of the move away from quadratic. It opened up more vectors of bad content getting bigger payouts. But it also opened up the possibility of more people casting meaningful flags as well.
Linear is a double-edged sword. Now that more people can affect more rewards, they should also wield flags. But they don't.
Direct Flagging Incentives
So the real problem is that not enough people are casting those flags. They're only upvoting because there's no direct incentive to flag.
Do we need a direct incentive to flag? No. Just like a restaurant owner has no direct incentive to keep their store clean. They get paid to sell items on their menu. There's a direct incentive for that. There is no item on the menu for "clean the bathroom."
I see flagging the same way: you do it because you need to do it.
The people who want to return to quadratic, in reality, they're just saying they don’t want to flag.
I agree and I see inspiration from a great thinker in this post.
Let's fight for reason and the right to choose life.
Wow, you noticed. I guess it wasn't as veiled as I thought.
Interesting post @inertia
As a newb of two weeks I don't profess to understand this completely but I do understand a certain issue with flagging content.
My confidence on Steemit is starting to grow thanks to the fantastic reception I've received already but........ I'm not yet 'part of the furniture' and would feel uneasy at hitting the flag button on any content just yet. One, for the risk of offending someone, and two, the actual consequences of offending someone! I'm unclear on that. If I flag a whale will they bury me in misery?
The guidelines say to flag offensive posts but I'm loathed to label anything offensive just because I deem it so. I understand that common sense is also required but is there such a thing as worldwide common sense? Even languages used becomes a grey area. For example, when visiting Bangkok with my family, it was not unusual to see pretty conservative looking people, of different ages, wearing t-shirts with serious profanity on them.
I care about the long term future of this place and will learn to do what is necessary for its well being. Just don't expect newbs to be instantly understanding or comfortable with it.
Cheers, Gaz.
Yeah, I get that. Here I am, rep 70 telling people to flag away. I remember what it was to feel stress about retaliation flags. But the fact is, that’s survivable if you pick your battles. And rep really is a steemit.com thing, mostly. Other front ends tend not to pay much attention to it.
I guess some people will be more comfortable flagging than others initially as well.
What are the consequences of a lower rep? I thought I read somewhere about posts not being visible to others.
If your rep goes to 0 or -1, your content wont be visible.
A lower rep user, cannot effect the rep of a higher rep user (but their vested SP can take rewards away :) )
Hey @abh12345
Ah. Ok. Thanks for clarifying this.
I try to upvote last of all my own post - just that the steemians who voted last for me received a - in my case a more symbolic - reward for showing me that he likes my peeks @peekbit 😊
Hope that's ok... 😌
yes - that’s always nice and ok...
I flag for the good of the platform. We have to discourage activity that harms it.
I agree with you
So true that bad content is simply bad content - not referring to this post though!
It seems to me they should have landed on something between quadratic and linear. I think Dan the man recommended a log function. I think something like n^1.1 would have done the trick. A self vote is worth less than getting others to agree but if you don’t even think what you write is worth a vote, why write it at all?
It ain't broke, why fix it? Linear isn't broken. Just because people won't flag doesn't mean we should abandon linear. So far, that's the only valid reason I've been presented. Abandon linear so that people with more voting power (but not me) have even more to work with. I don't think we need it if people would just do their job.
And if people won't do their job, that's also no reason to push the work to bigger stakeholders. If they think their job is that worthless, then that should be reflected in the market, which will show how worthless Proof of Brain is on the open market (low STEEM price).
I don't think Proof of Brain is worthless. I think we can get our act together and do our jobs.
Phase 1. Good content: upvote. Bad content: flag. Phase 2. ... Phase 3: Profit.Content, schmontent. There is no scenario wherein Steemit is ubiquitous and usable by normals wherin the majority of content is “quality”. My content is crap to most people I am sure. It certainly is not garnering votes left and right. I post what I would post if I self hosted a blog that nobody would read. Now it is in the blockchain AND there is a somewhat higher chance someone might find it interesting or useful because in addition to being indexed by The Googles there is a built in community base and no php for me to screw with.
I love this... 😊 @peekbit Unfortunately uprooting doesn't work anymore... I'm so sorry @inertia 😔
Now that is good stuff right there. See, I think that is “good” content. My favorite is G+.
Reply for an upvote
You're right. Here in Steemit there are many people who call themselves liberals and anarchists, but at the time of any problem they ask for more regulations.
The owner of the restaurant may not have any direct incentive, but if he does not clean his restaurant nobody will go to that pigsty, in the same way, if we don't clean Steemit, well, it will be boring to browse in a lot of content that we consider trash.
But it is important to clarify that no one, absolutely no one, no whale, should take responsibility for saying which content is of quality and which is not, because that would be an emulation to the regulations of the platform, the main objective of this voluntarist system, is that each of the people can vote and place a flag to what they, personally, consider wrong. The whales must be the first, although not the bosses, to give the flags because the minnows will never have the ability to face a revenge, in addition, the minnows are the ones that have less interest in the progress of Steemit since they are the ones that have less money involved in it.
There are some things that are still off limits. For example, I watch for and point out child predators when they are found. People who are stealing other people's content should also be called out for it, and we should prevent them from profiting from someone else's productivity.
I am sure that there is relatively enough content to put the flag, the goal is to be done individually but by a large number of individuals, because if not, it really does not make sense.
I think if someone invested his own money and upvote himself to help a bit if no whale is upvoting him is ok. The bad think that those bot owners are upvoting them selfs to sell mote votes, the thing that I see here is that bots are supporting bots rigth now and real creator suffer from that is they don't buy an upvote.
Sometimes bots just comment us simple minnows and we can't even flag them because we are afraid or it will not even make the change when they upvote their comments.
About flagging, I think we have to flag spam and those bot's comment, instead of flagging ideas we don't agree with.
I agree with you regarding flagging - flag the spam and people's misuse of the platform. Not the ideas.
Also up-voting one's own comments can be OK.
@inertia powering steem power is not easy to build it soon .I'm working hard from long time but still my Steem Power is down.i don't know what should I do.
But I appreciate your this kind of community support.
A major social problem is equated with the "self-vote" in real life, when people don't apply value in their own creation or idea.
I see where it really is like restaurant owner as far as incentive goes but my question is why do they still use secret shoppers? Perhaps to gather data about the end users experience and affect the location has on the larger entities public image. Those individuals are rewarded for their report in various ways.
Another User suggested that it shouldn't be n^2 but n^1.3 making flags useful but not malicious when used inappropriately.
This post made me wanna flag it, I wonder if it would bother you at all.
We do need some community-minded improvements, not only for investors' interests. If a whale self-votes I lost my vote worth afaik, and it doesn't help me to stay around happily or spread the word about steem. I also don't have enough past experience in here as you do but there is nothing to do in here as a newcomer lately. So how steem userbase will grow while everyone self-votes and bots ruling the community.
Something odd, I've recently closed this tab
https://steemit.com/steem/@l0k1/introducing-smackdown-kitty
Resteemed
hello @inertia can you please help me for setup bot.i am not talking about bidbot.just wanna set a bot which give specifix amount like 2x vote 3x vote in a day on 8 id or for resteem survice
Interesting take on things. I'm enjoying all sides of this conversation as I learn more about Steemit, Steem and the other apps on the platform. I think some of the stuff out there is crap. But I'm more of the type to just ignore it and save my voting power to incentivize the non-crap. If downvoting and flagging were seperate functions, I think I would use both of them more.
Have never thought of flagging that way. Nevertheless, there is still a problem with flags because it starts flagging wars. Flagging is very unusual on Steemit except for content which has been plagiarized or is offensive. Do you think bid-bot-promotion should be flagged as well? Kind of like grumpycat?
I personally think that people don't flag because there is no immediate or predictable incentive.
How would we reward for flagging?
Thoughts:
Would it depend on how many people flagged the same thing? Could it be a value based on the users reputation? Because retaliation flags would offset.
Would it be possible to link a repeat offender (haejin) to a database where you would be rewarded based on your ______
fill in the blankHey @inertia
Some topics here close to my heart at present.
In my opinion and based on experience, self-voting with a low SP holds less value than a well-placed vote on a comment of another users post. This is a message I give out to the 20 minnows I delegate to.
I can see why, especially under current 'market conditions', a larger stakeholder would self-vote and not feel there is any issue with that - others around you can't give you what you can, and many are delegating stake out to robotic voters of unviewed content.
As far as flags go, I feel that many (including me), just haven't got into the mindset of reserving VP each day for this increasingly important part of the Steemit experience. I'm slowly getting over the 'retaliation risk' involved and honestly, most of my flags are directed at users who are either spamming or pumping crap content with bots - both of which are no real financial threat to most regular contributors.
@flagawhale are currently trying to reward flaggers of our most popular analyst, check their wallet for details.
Cheers.
a very great post ... thanks for sharing ... you are very extraordinary @inertia
Reputation is king. I ignored the abusers. Do they negatively affect this platform? Perhaps they do. I don't pay attention to them though. If they are gaming the system, there's not much I can do to stop them.
I would rather have the few abusers than a control system too.
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