- Forget about the past.
- Stop thinking about how Hive is different than any other Blockchain.
- Don't waste your time comparing how the Hive community is above any other.
Downvotes are, and will be a feature we see every day until the end of times on any - or at least most - Frontends built on top of the Hive Blockchain.
Let's get real. Receiving a downvote can make your blood boil. It can make you want to start questioning the downvoter about their reasons. Seeing your pending payout decreased might make you feel as if you are being personally attacked.
Well, stop it with that thinking. I know I've had it. In fact, I probably had those very same thoughts a few minutes ago that I realized I got a $5 downvote (as in, worth of). But instead of giving in to those thoughts, I realized that it is the best chance, at least for me, to start over in Hive and to embrace any upvotes and downvotes I receive. After all, it is what I signed up for.
But see, the thing is, if you post on the Hive Blockchain, you are telling you audience that you welcome their upvotes and, at the same time, whether you like it or not, that you accept their downvotes.
The post payout is not yours until the 7 day payout period is over. In fact, you are not entitled to any post rewards, it is the community who decides if you should get more, less or stay at a specific post payout.
Let's forget about that old thinking of Downvotes are bad and they harm the small users or even better, downvotes hurt the ecosystem and damage the onboarding efforts, hell, I've even heard of a reasoning behind Downvotes are the worst deterrent for user retention.
Well, here's some news. According to me, and several other users who know more than me about economic models, game theory and user interaction, without downvotes inside the community reward pool equation, we would be pretty screwed up as a community.
For as long as Hive partly relies on an inflation based, post rewarding system to ensure that the coin is spread among enough different users, downvotes will be needed.
I'm not going to get into the economics of having an inflation based reward pool, I'm not an expert - I might take a shot at it one day, since I'm using this quarantine to immerse myself in Blockchain code and economic models - so I won't get more into detail about this.
As an alternative, I'll just state the fact that *An inflation based reward pool and thus, downvotes, are not going anywhere in the near future.
It is what it is and instead of arguing against downvotes or making a big deal about it, let's just embrace them and try to get more involved in them; just as we got involved in witness voting matters when we had to, let's do the same and let's get involved in downvoting that what we deemed downvote worthy.
Believe me, there are a lot of posts that deserve a downvote.
In fact, if you think this post is overrated, please downvote it, I promise I won't take it personally. Why should I?
I feel your pain, but we both know downvotes are essential here.
Receiving a downvote should come with a rage comment always 😤 so I at least know why they didn’t like my post 🤣.
This. On Steem I kept getting about 1-3 $0.0X downvotes on every post for a while from the same users (probably were downvote-following some curation trail), and I just ignored them. But if I were to be downvoted from someone who's a 'real user', that is, not following a trail with downvotes, I'd like to get a comment about why they disagree with my post or the rewards of the post.
No rage comments. Just meme comments. (get it?)
I don't get it. 😅
At least I can appreciate the Futurama reference.
Meme --> mean.
😲
You're probably right, it would help digest the downvote if we could get feedback but then again, we don't expect positive comments with an upvote, so why should we with a downvote, so I guess receiving comments is just a plus.
Thanks for the comment by the way!
True. People will continue to upvote/downvote and comment as they please. Most interactions are better than being alone.
I'm not sure about a rage comment, but feedback can certainly be helpful.
Even if I feel strongly about my vote I don't always have enough RC to leave comments explaining myself. Moreover when I do it doesn't seem constructive to leave a comment simply expressing my disdain or approval for the content. It seems like the vote does that already to some degree.
Nonetheless I'm an enormous proponent of well thought out criticism.
If I ever end up downvoting you @daltono, perish the thought, I'll be sure to leave an explanation for your benefit. Notwithstanding my uncanny ability to forget things of course.
Rage comments give me a reason to laugh. You can never have too much laughter 😜
What do you mean you're not sure about a rage comment?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
What's so bad about rage comments?!?! Huh! Huh!
Nothing.
Bad is a conspiracy perpetrated by the conservo-liberal media to encephalon scrub us into hating the god-given chemtrails.
You forgot flouride.
It must be all that stuff in the water, but curiously I can't remember what it's called right now. I think they also put it in toothpaste for some reason.
Mint?
I love rage comments, they spice up things a bit as long as they are not insulting, just letting the rage out :P
Insults are for losers, asshole. HA! You know I'm not being serious.
As i see it, the only problem with downvoting is that asimetry of power between a small guy and a whale. Its even worst than a centralized censorship, just one big guy can a screw many littles without loosing much. But, there should be also a way to destroy attempts to drain the pool reward with spam or other bad practices. Its maybe a necesary tool, but...
Glad to see you here =)
Im preparing my first post!
I don’t like the downvotes, but I do recognize that they are necessary and I’ve used them a couple times.
I downdooted this post for the sole reason that you asked for it. Glad you won’t take it personally. 😛
My Upvote is tiny and my downvote is the same. I follow the @OCD Downvote Trail, to make use of the team effect and they don‘t downvote aTm as far as I can tell.
No, my vote is tiny.
Yours is just small. 🤣
Or maybe yours is tiny and mine is teeny-tiny. 😨
Every bit of SP helps fight abuse!
HP now right?
Encouraging words nonetheless. I appreciate the sentiment.
I was arguing with a friend some days back and we talked about this issue. For sure, you are right, both tools are exceptional, but I will love to see some amendment to the downvote button. If someone click it, it should asked the person if he is ready to downvote the post, then he can go ahead to choose yes or no. I see alot of newbies pressing it without knowing what it is. @anomadsoul
"If someone click it, it should asked the person if he is ready to downvote the post..."
I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree here, unless upvotes also have the same confirmation requirement. Downvotes ought to be just as easy as upvotes, in my humble opinion. While those confirmations could certainly help avoid so called fat finger errors, they can also discourage users from actually fully submitting their vote. Votes are amendable a good number of times if you change your mind after all.
I personally as a newbie was discouraged from downvoting on a number of occasions by required confirmations on other interfaces. It just kinda makes it seem scary to a new user, like you shouldn't be doing it or need some specific justification above and beyond what's required for upvotes.
Stay safe out there, and keep thinking critically!
Downvotes are in themselves not bad but it becomes a questionable tool when it is used to settle personal differences. I approve of downvotes but I kick against it when it is used as a tool of intimidation, oppression, silence, annihilation, etc. When the latter happens, I think there should be an avenue for the persecuted user to cry for help. If that avenue remains unavailable on Hive, I fear that we could have a dog-eat-dog scenario. Cheers!
In my own opinion, downvoting is fine for me as well. I know it can hurt someone's thoughts but this is to make sure for fair claiming rewards. Although others might find it offensive but it's just like in real life. "Not everyone will like you for sure." But forget about that thought. Just telling you that in real life if you have rewards too much but then it's not worth it. You will hear rumours about you. That's why downvote is necessary into our blockchain.
Don't think someone is mad at you. Just think of it that it's the right thing to do for the blockchain and for others.
that's my understanding about it, I'm not sure if I'm correct. lol
There you are! Hi again!
I wholeheartedly support normalization of downvotes!
It's been frustrating to me to see downvotes used pretty much to enhance flame wars in the past. That sort of stuff also did a lot to discourage me from making any in my early days as I didn't want to get caught up in that.
Over time I've learned that downvotes are the first line of defense for our precious reward pool, and one of the essential ways we can help support everyone's rewards in the face of abuse.
Ever since the addition of a separate mana pool for downvotes I've been more keen on using it rather than sort of wasting what I would get by letting it sit at 100%. Especially now with the move to Hive I've been giving out more downvotes. Mostly for what seems like spam to me, but I'm on the lookout for opportunities every time I get online just like for upvotes.
normalized is a great idea.
no way this post deserves a down vote, so many great points and things to think about.
my question is to be normal, what deserves a downvote?
I have my own thoughts of mean, untrue or malicious posts that we do not need here, but that is just my thoughts.
Never bothered that much with downvotes. As you said, they are here and will probably always be. And since posting doesn't pay my bills, downvoting is not an issue for me. Not being a hypocrite, of course it's great to see a good payout in a post, but that's not what keeps me around. So, doubt I'll ever lose time or energy because someone doesn't like what I wrote. 😉
After my experience on Hyperspace (before it shut down) I don't want to join anywhere without downvotes ever again XD
That would be Twinner maybe, he seems to be spending a lot of time hating.
I agree that DVs are essential.
So nice to being seeing Dan DV Cyrstalliu, and that reminds me... I need to go find someone to DV - I was relying on SFG, but that's not up and running yet!
If anyone is serious with this let's start zeroing out the spammers and abusers.
here are a few targets to start with:
crystalliu (200k HP be careful)
autochartist
andreev
You can find possible targets easyly using the new downvote explorer (not everyone getting downvoted once is a worthy target, do your own due dilligence):
https://flags.hivekit.dev/
To me Downvotes are a useful tool and also weapon. In the right hands they can discourage wrong-doers from stealing or worse. In the wrong hands, they can be dangerous. Just like guns, knives, or spoons.
It's how you use it that matters.
I think downvotes work great for the average abusers/spammers. However, there is currently no way to safely downvote posts or comments from any heavily staked abuser without the risk of some form of retaliation in return. This leaves many to not even consider using them, why risk it? There is also no way to help the newcomers and minnows who might (at some point of another) piss off the wrong account and/or say the wrong thing to/about said account in the future and get their account downvoted (for whatever reason) into oblivion/-rep. Maybe an appeals process or some protection mechanism from the revenge-rage/powertrip downvote abuse? Downvotes are ABSOLUTELY necessary, or at least the purpose they are INTENDED to serve is. Downvote abuse/misuse IS a threat to new user adoption, IMO.
Also, are downvotes really the most efficient mechanism for stopping spam? I saw thousands and thousands of comments about re "The Bible" and everyone was downvoting them mainly out of shear annoyance and that didn't stop anything, at all. But we did hurt their rep, woohoo! Yet, they still had stake and could still upvote and profit and spam continously from, however they saw fit. How do we distinguish between what's spam and otherwise "helpful info"? Depends on how much stake comes to 'democratize' the situation, I guess.
I plan on focusing on curating content on Hive. Curation is a mixture of upvoting and downvoting. I will be making more comments in the coming days (and a blog post) to outline my views and my downvote policy, but I've been saying this a lot lately.
We go to social places and social media pages to engage with content and information about things that interest us.
Reddit, Instagram, or Imgur would not be interesting places if all I saw on their front pages were statistics about how many posts were published, how many active users there were, how many new accounts were created, or fifteen different people shouting at me about the fact that some new feature was added a day ago.
I want to see a Hive front page where the most rewarded pages are content, and not content about the platform.
Witnesses and Devs have the DAO / Proposal system / Witness rewards to fund their endeavours.
Content creators have the rewards pool. By planning on down voting content about the platform that isn't content, I'll be supporting every other post on the chain a tiny bit.
I anticipate I'll receive a few "revenge flags", but I'm prepared to be stoic, and stand by my ideals that content creators should be rewarded in a proportionate manner compared to devs, witnesses, and those who write about the platform, who as we saw on Steem, took the majority of the rewards pool, which contributes to the exodus of genuine content creators from the platform, as there is not a return on investment for their labours.
The downvotes are a double-edged weapon In my personal opinion I never liked them and I will not like them, but I understand perfectly well that we need them to eliminate plagiarism and spam. Some people abuse both their positive and negative voting power. I remember very well when I started at steemit that many people were self-votated and abused their voting power and the pool of rewards always went to a certain group of people, then when communities and curators were born things got better in this respect and the rewards were much better distributed.Now, when the downvote was created a war started and that is why I say it is a double-edged weapon, they are good if we use them correctly!
Dear #theycallmedan. We upvoted you because you explain the subject, which distresses many users but does not mean that we embrace the downvotes, hehej
We are Club12
I guess downvotes most of the time is internal fights, sometimes they may go forever, sometimes I would love to downvote some things, but I don't want to make fights with people. I think the best option would be system, when you downvote - you need to make a reason - the decision can't be arbitrary, also the downvote money are taken from downvoters, then they go to some sort of pool. I think downvotes shouldn't be used to make a war, reasoning is important in this case.
Getting a clarifying comment thereafter is more fulfilling as opposed to just the blank downvote which you might not end up knowing what other factors necessitated the downvote.
I see you have 2 downvotes on this blog about downvoting. WTF! It would be nice if the downvoted had to put a comment on why they downvoted.
Hola. Como estas tanto tiempo?
Estoy solo de acuerdo en parte con vos.
Si fuera por esto: "Mientras Hive se base en parte en un sistema de recompensa posterior basado en la inflación para garantizar que la moneda se distribuya entre suficientes usuarios diferentes, se necesitarán votos negativos." estaría de acuerdo con vos. Pero todos sabemos que nunca lo fue ni lo será.
A cuidarse y cuidar a los demás. Hay que respetar la cuarentena.
Saludos y que estes bien