guy came crying to me in my dms about how cruel i'm being by downvoting someone who hasn't responded to anyone since summer 2024 because apparently I should know they may have anxiety and depression which is causing them to not respond to anyone yet post daily for 30-40 hive.
Had to block him when he admitted he was guessing and wasn't even sure what exactly the cause is.
It's kind of crazy the lengths people go to stigmatize downvotes and demonize downvoters.
I did say on another post the other day the worst thing about downvoting is how demonized it is. It should be no big deal. I didn't look into the details but generally I do agree, if someone can be finding the time to post especially daily it's not really on to not interact
What's important is that someone's willing to white knight and come up with excuses as to why they may not reply to anyone and make you feel like shit about it.
I need a break from this place
It's a thankless task mostly defending the chain from extractors and all the other bad actors. I have felt it a bit myself in the past.
Just keep doing what you do 😃
i'm starting to understand why marky never discusses his downvotes
Yeah, it's understandable!
I came to you to let you know some information about I person I had gained from reading their blogs for many years. I was definitely not crying lol. I was the exact opposite. I was pretty angry. Because of that, I swore and did not keep the conversation logical enough. For that I was 100% wrong and a apologize. That was super counterproductive and I wish I had remained calm. My intention was to ask you to look at the history of a person. My goal was to let you know about the person in hopes you would see there might be a different kind of value there. We were looking at the situation from two different points of view. I saw the emotional point of view. You saw the logical. I was hoping to show the two could both be true.
I don't know this person but I have a lot of empathy for a person going through what she is. I don't need to know a person to have empathy. We were both guessing about a person's motives. I was guessing there was not an ill intent of their actions based on following their blog for many years.
I did not attempt to demonize or stigmatize you. I meant to explain a point of view on this specific instance.
A point I was trying to make is that there may be a reason a person is not responding. You seem to assume she is not responding because she does not care about the community. That is a guess. I was just pointing out that there may be another reason. A person with anxiety and depression may not make comments or respond because they are mentally or emotionally unable to do so. It might be that she is already at her limit by posting her journal. That is my guess. I prefer to think the best of people.
It is not about the author, the only thing about the author is her lack of responses which may drive away consumers thus her content isn't getting consumed so it shouldn't be as valued as it is being by blind autovotes. It is more about the upvoter continuing to reward such lack of activities/consumption.
If no one read your posts or for a long time there was close to no proof that anyone did, you as well as me in that scenario should get their rewards adjusted if we're riding along on massive autovotes as we are. That is how the system is meant to work and why there is 25% of downvote mana compared to upvote mana among many other usecases.
I can understand your perspective and I do feel bad about this example, but we can't be bending over backwards to justify the lack of certain users activities like this and what it means for their perceived value on the blockchain.
I get it. I've just been rooting for this person for a long time and I think I got a little over-protective of her. But I do wonder if there is some hidden value here. We have been struggling to bring in an audience for years. I think it would be cool if there were a way for people to share their journals here and for others to consume them. Something like "I'm going through a divorce, is there someone journaling on hive about it that can help me not feel alone". I don't think that would be the main purpose but it could be cool to have a "journal room" or something... if we can ever get that big. But I guess we still need to find the way to bring a big audience of content consumers. I thought it would be video games, sports, or humor but that hasn't worked yet. For me, while we are figuring out how to bring in content consumers, I just want to encourage as many good people as possible. I don't want to scare any good people away. All of these problems we are arguing about now will seem trivial if we can actual get masses of content consumers.
Upon reflection, what I wish I had done was to simply provide you with another possible perspective and then let you choose what you wanted to do. After all, I'm not sure which of our guesses is correct. I could be completely wrong.
Sorry for not doing that and for my emotional words.
I guess I just got emotional thinking about a person who is struggling so much and wishing there were something I could do to help them. I think I thought that by encouraging you to let up, I was actually doing something to help her.
But there was actually something better I could do. I reached out to her to praise her for her bravery. I wish I would have done that from the start.
I'm sorry about the negative interaction but through it I was inspired to actually do something that I hope is productive.
That's okay, we're human after all, you weren't the only one being emotional. To me these examples seemed like some of the worst ones I've been able to find/have been reported to me, i.e. they were straightforward examples of needing their rewards adjusted. I'm not someone who's petty about rewards in general or think it makes a big difference if we use downvotes more often, but I figured doing something about the worst cases would be considered okay only to find opposition there as well.
I'm gonna focus on the other things taking most of my time for now
either way, maybe a good thing i'm focusing my curation elsewhere for now.