Most of the debate and comments occurred after the downvotes, whereby I even considered removing a couple after the amount of engagement it received. The downvotes occurred due to him using an example of someone who in my opinion fairly deserved the downvotes he got, had he used any other examples I may have not downvoted him with both of the accounts I downvoted with.
Your opinion in general is pretty void about downvotes. We've tried for many years not using downvotes for overrewarded content or people straight up abusing the rewardspool with mumbo jumbo such as technical analysis or now anti-vax conspiracies, downvote mana would cost upvote mana and barely anyone would use it back in the day. In the long run all it did was make everyone farm more, vote on friends, vote where they'd maximize the reward allocation to a select few, create backroom deals where they'd get higher curation off-chain kickbacks. It sucked for decentralization of stake and its wide distribution. I realize it may be hard to see where it would lead being new to Hive and not having been around the days when no one used downvotes and what occurred but that's the truth.
Now with linear curve it is even more important that downvotes affect the way we curate and allocate the rewardspool. It's now again easier to give bigger votes to friends, only a select few or willy nilly like some do such as traf and rancho. I've been someone who's been trying for five years now to distribute stake as wide as possible and as fairly as possible and at the same time can attest that most of the content on Hive compared to most other places is overrewarded, complaining about a few downvotes on the top of the top of overrewarded posts is very narrowminded.
I remember your interview with Dan and when you joined and invited a few students over which I personally curated but your concerns over not inviting your students based on downvotes for overrewarded posts makes close to 0 sense to me. I highly doubt they'd be a target of downvotes as I personally focus on those who receive those rancho votes all too often or on content that's not worth it.
I'm not against coming up with better solutions and downvotes certainly aren't the most optimal solution, using tribes to come up with better ways is great but I'm not seeing much of that. The PoB people seem to instead want to use some centralized ways of muting accounts (from their earnings even which is so baffling to me it makes me not want to look into what else they're doing at all, nor have I once posted in there because of that). Come up with better decentralized ways to handle a balanced pool allocation and you'll have my respect and I'm sure that of most Hive stakeholders as well, so much so that Hive would definitely consider implementing the better solution in another hardfork. Until then this is the best way we have and complaining endlessly about it or each scenario in and of itself isn't going to fix anything nor is any of it reward worthy in my opinion.
I think this is the crux of the 'problem' (or, disagreement, if you will).
Those with heavy
Steem/ Hive experience seem to view downvotes as a sacred cow without which the platform would have crashed and burned long ago (and this may quite well be true).As an outsider, I see the potential for downvote abuse and downvote wars as so anathema that I am now reticent to actively bring others on board until a viable alternative is in place.
In my numerous dialogues with @themarkymark about this issue (which we clearly disagree on, but about which we have been able to continue constructively dialoguing), he has stated numerous times that he basically views my concerns as a 'non-issue' (i.e. seeking a solution to a non-existent problem), that downvote abuse is rare, and that the benefits of free downvotes far outweigh the downsides.
I am looking at this from a newcomer's perspective; and I can tell you that what little bit of downvote abuse I have seen has been enough to convince me that my initial bullish view of Hive is perhaps unwarranted. The 'free downvote' represents such a stark potential for abuse of power and for ideological downvote wars and other toxic behavior, that it has seriously caused me to take a step back.
I am actively working with a handful of folks within the PoB tribe because they seem to share a similar ethos and a willingness and desire to experiment and try new ways to solve old problems. If we are successful, then perhaps Hive can adopt some of what we come up with. If not, then I will likely shift my focus away from the social-media aspect of Hive (and probably spend more time delving into SPK and other Layer 2 initiatives).
Not as much of a non-issue just a extremely small and very rare issue. There is 10,000x more upvote abuse happening on a daily basis. Yet almost no one does anything about it.
"Downvote abuse" which happens very infrequently already has a very simple solution. Upvotes! Problem solved. Post rewards are a community effort and no one person has complete say on them. If you disagree with the rewards for a post (too much or too little) you can do something about it. The real problem is rarely does anyone.
Either way, I hear about one or two people being “maliciously downvoted” every 3 months or so. I’m downvoting garbage upvotes on a daily basis for the last 4 years.
Yep it's so small of an issue but people make it a big one because money. People could instead discuss how to counter malicious downvotes and explain why they feel they are malicious instead of giving up on everything Hive is because of a few people in their eyes being unfairly downvoted.
I will tell you now. If I see ANY post down voted to $0 that is not spam, plagiarism, etc. it is noticeable. There is a difference between reducing rewards and removing rewards completely.
I think the $0 for something with a lot of votes is something we want to avoid seeing.
I've seen the up vote abuse as well. That can occur in many places and it definitely occurs with some powerful accounts and always has.
As to your two down votes of my post. I was fine with that. You didn't send me to $0 and ultimately the conversation we had was worth more to me than any amount of money the post may have received.
As to WHY I chose Lucy as I told you. It was the most blatant and obvious example. Anyone could look at it and see it. Yet it wasn't the only example.
That was the reason I chose it. It was undeniable what had been occurring for some time.
Is it rare? To be sent to $0 I hope so. Yet I haven't been back long enough to know. I do see some seemingly bot down voters that latch onto communities and topics they don't like as if they were leeches but they are low power votes and I see them, see who they are, "oh look it's sunsetjesus again" and I shrug and go on with my day.
While I am glad @trostparadox saw value in my post and even you did in hindsight. I did not mind your votes. If I'd been voted to $0 I might have minded but that's about it. It also would have made my own post a good example. :)
It is quite rare and I'm also someone against zero'ing posts and have always been, it's enough to reduce the rewards and fend off the maximizers who previously to this HF would stick on anything getting big votes for the returns. It's especially rare because the person in your example has quite a rare antagonizing, sockpuppet/fake ID history behind him that may cause people to want to zero him out, even if I still don't agree with that as it comes off as personal more than just wanting to reduce rewards to save the rewardspool from it.
It becomes even more rare when people counter the downvotes because they think they were overdone.
I like it when people counter it. I've tried to do so in the past and back when I was a Dolphin on steemit I was powerful enough a few times. Most of the time I was not. :) I was at 25000+ or somewhere around there when I started powering down. That isn't as big a deal here. That number has climbed. Yet it is achievable.
Speaking of the devil Mark here downvoted all my posts to zero and refuses to tell me why. I haven’t had a issues in 4 years mark. Answer me and at least tell me why so I can fix anything misunderstood or fix something I wasn’t aware of. Hive is a home for me. You don’t know what ur doing man. I don’t deserve this @themarkymark now answer me please. Be an adult. You did it again minutes ago so I know you are here. Answer me mark. I’m trying to be civil but you just downvoted a post minutes ago. I’m asking for simple answers please and a way to respectfully dispute whatever this is.
What a waste.
It's not a waste. I still read what you wrote. =p
I meant him saying he's going to leave Hive if his tribe doesn't work out.
Ohh, that makes more sense.
I had just figured that you were annoyed at having wasted your precious time.
Eh I got a lot done today, caught up on some voting, walked for 6kms while TTS listening to a few posts, talked to the dev about further posh improvements and got some hive tweets out. :p
He may not. Words and events can change opinions. You for example taking the time to engage with me with civility and some great thoughts gave me some hope.
Sometimes some words can work magic. Yet we can all also be depressed, frustrated, and angry at certain times.
What will finally make us react, post, take action, etc. That is difficult to know.
By the engagement we had. I do have hope. I've engaged with @smooth before and while I don't always draw the same conclusions as him I do think he has a genuine interest in protecting the platform. Unless he does something blatant (which I've not seen for some time) I usually have a good idea why he is doing it from the perspectives he has shared with me in the past.