Most would be familiar with how @steemcleaners and @steemflagrewards cover antiabuse efforts all over the blockchain. Their scope of combating abuse gives them understandable fame especially among the abusers they crossed. But people seem to forget that by the grace of these organization’s collective stake and efforts do they have an impact on the blockchain. In that sense, anyone or any organization willing to start their antiabuse campaign can enter the scene with enough resources and committed workforce.
@ntopaz is an art platform built on the steem blockchain. It’s another frontend of the blockchain where artists could share their works and add value to the blockchain. Though this is the main selling point of the platform, the other side includes a constant regulation of what is tolerable within it.
“#art” is one of the most often abused tags in the blockchain. There are countless art posts published on the blockchain since it launched that lumps into the abuse category. Any abuse fighters (people that care enough to do some negative curation) has seen their fair share of this type of abuse regularly if not daily.
The way Ntopaz handles abuse is a different case and will be explained below. It has its own sets of problems unique to its platform. A good example are cases where artists sharing their works that may not be their best efforts to date have yet to be tolerated long term. The platform welcomes artists willing to share their works and not necessarily be a professional at their craft. But it is expected that these artists post some reasonable quality content expected by the platform.
You don’t get that type of concern in other frontends of the blockchain where even low effort posts are tolerated unless they come across as spam n nature.
Summary of the Post:
Background of the types of abuse committed on the @ntopaz platform
The Coordinator Role
The Maintenance Work
Artisteem was the first name used by @ntopaz when it was marketing its Frontend since September 2018. Back then, it used an autovoting feature that anything tagged as #artisteem would get an autoupvote worth 1 SBD. It was serendipity that I came across the platform. I was out hunting art plagiarism posts when I followed on an unfamiliar tag. Can you imagine the horror of numerous low quality posts or plagiarized post s receiving 1 SBD upvote constantly?
Well, imagine the tag’s trending page littered with these posts. Some posts aren’t even art, to begin with. I later found out that multiple accounts were created to milk these autoupvotes. As I dived deep into the rabbit hole, I realized there was no manual curation happening at all. The only requirement to get an upvote having the “art” post published through their frontend.
I had some reports filed to steemcleaners. Some reports were processed, but most posts were just low quality pictures that these did not deserve the rewards compared to artists that actually took a lot of time to create their art works. I brought this up at @steemflagrewards and coordinated with @naturicia.
The short version of the story was us having in contact with the owners, and a discord server was put up. This was the initial phase of keeping the platform organized. @naturicia suggested the creation of the Coordinator Role and Curator Role to serve specific functions. The curator role is self explanatory, so we will be focusing on the Coordinator Role.
To make it clear, it was unintentional for the voting system in place to support abuse as far as I know. Its goal was to make the tag valuable enough to convince people to use it often. This only proves that nothing should be left care free even in a decentralized system because of the shared reward pool we all earn from. Looking back at those days and how the platform is doing, I can say there are marked changes in the curation process, and well deserved authors get rewarded.
Coordinators adhere to the current Policies used by the platform at the time of this writing. We enforce those guidelines within our scope.
Most of the time, it would be just orientation and reminding people about the guidelines. But if there is gross misconduct or abuse, one can go immediate to inactivation for seven days (no posting for seven days). It is a case to case basis.
1st offense are usually warnings given to users. Everyone can make some beginner mistakes when getting acquainted with the platform. To date, the only experience when we had to perma ban a user on their first offense was due to negative behavior towards the moderator’s intervention. It would have been a case easily pardonable, but that user kept posting low quality and insincere art works. They had to be gone.
The perma ban is only suited for the 4th offense. Getting inactivated from the platform isn’t a reason to stop posting and trying to build a reputation again. Curators don’t count mistake but look at your works as it is. If the artist prefers not to post after being inactivated temporarily, it’s their choice, but we keep the doors open. The only time when this option is not accessible is when the user is blacklisted, and most of the time they deserve it.
We deal with antiabuse internally we base our judgement on a user’s behavior and conduct within the platform. If these users committed plagiarism outside the platform, then ntopaz will not act on it, our scope is within what happens in our turf. We can deactivate the account temporarily and remove the vote as a means to enforce the rules.
Why does the platform not actively downvote users even if the offenses are proven? It’s not within the Ntopaz philosophy to punish artists. Yes, even artists that previously committed fraud can be pardoned as long as they do not repeat the same mistakes. We are not snipers waiting for people to do wrong nor do we tolerate abuse when it happens in our turf. We give plenty of chances for abusers to change for the better.
What if they don’t change? We keep the algorithm in dealing with abuse in place. They will not get an upvote, they will get inactivated, and will find out they are wasting their time bothering. On my part, I go ahead and file some reports to steemcleaners or steemflagrewards if I’m in the mood to go the extra mile.
Why the limited scope? Why not use that power to also go out there and support all artists in the blockchain? Or fight abuse outside the platform? We only have a limited amount of voting power to go around. The platform has been acquiring new names recently and a lot of promising artists too. We’d rather support the ones that add value to the platform.
The amount of SP Ntopaz has at the moment came from the pocket of the company owners. Not entirely dependent on external delegations unlike other well supported projects of STINC. Anyone can do whatever they want on the blockchain with their stake, and Ntopaz chose to build value on it’s platform with their stake.
Routine surveillance and verifying are the usual tasks Coordinator’s do. Each week, a new set of names from the outside and inside the blockchain come and sometimes raises doubts when there is an existing art posted from another social media site. It can’t be helped to find occasional vote farming posts trying to game the voting system, but we do our best to solve whatever problems we encounter.
Given that the platform is built on the same blockchain, it would come as no surprise when we occasionally have @steemcleaners and @steemflagrewards intervene on some abuse posts found. Which is completely fine with us. As far as catching these cases, there is no conflict of interest. We all share the same goal: to make sure that abusers do not get rewards they do not deserve.
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Hi @adamada,
We are certainly grateful that @ntopaz has taken steps against abuse within their community and that you and @naturicia were able to help get that ball rolling.
It is also great to get that additional glimpse into the internal process for educating users and dealing with abusers. I had somewhat of an idea but not in detail.
It is also helpful to have that flexibility in the response to address the issue contextually. Let's just say some need a little "extra attention" ex. 🚩🚩🚩
I appreciate you providing us this detailed write up as well as your continuous contributions to antiabuse efforts on the platform.
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Yeah, @naturicia was MVP. Handling most of the complicated stuff. Anyone can tell ntopaz living up to expectations but it's the users who populate the platform that gives it shape. We had a dramatic drop on multiple accounts using the tag for vote farming and low user retention for people that post low quality content because there's no room for that. But of course most people can see some mistakes with a magnifier. No need to please everyone.
Thank you for your review, @anthonyadavisii! Keep up the good work!
Hmmm may ganyan pala. Ok n ako s Steemit. Hehe.
Posted using Partiko Android
Try mo lang girl, baka sulit rin pag post mo basta ok yung art :D
Pulling @ntopaz from the muck that they were in was no easy task. I think you and @naturicia are not praised enough for going in almost blind and trying to organize a community that seemed to lack directions.
Obviously, it is far from perfect, but it is making progress.
It is good to know that other communities have standards that they expect their members or participants to follow.
Hope life has been treating you well. Are you still exploring your artistic talents with your limited spare time in the medical field?
Would you believe I'm currently in the hospital typing this message while doing my daily duties? I freed up some of the busy days but only did as far as reduce half the daily grind. I'm working on skeleton shift now so I got no idea if how am I supposed to manage multiple patients with serious head injuries at the ER if that happens within the next 15 hours.
On the side note, I'm doodling some stuff for a game I'm working on that would be based on the blockchain. Whether it will see public eyes or not, no idea. I'm just building the art behind the game. :D
Sounds like you have figured out a way to juggle your time.
Congratulations @adamada !
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Adamada from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
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Very educating post @adamada, i also learned a bit about @ntopaz's history through it:)
As an artist posting at the platform i could not fully understand the role of the Coordinator. Only after taking the role of the Curator and start seeing the work behind the scenes that i realised all the hard work that was taking place. In my opinion it is the most important role and a necessity for a platform like nTopaz or any other platform that will come. Your hard work set a foundation for the future:)
There's another task that about the coordinator that is difficult to apply. Becoming an influencer and marketer for the platform. But I'd rather keep doing what I do for now until I see the prevalent problems become seldom. Thank you for your time :D
pensé que el post estaba en español, el traductor de google a veces me sorprende jejeje.
Buena información de como funciona la plataforma, gracias por apoyarnos :D