@mrwang wrote a post that lead to me writing a post about the down vote (flag) and getting some good feedback. Today @bitcoindoom wrote a response that was well thought out and had a lot of good thought behind it. @dantheman asked me if I would write a followup based upon that post, and the comments and see if my position had changed on the down vote situation.

I was completely willing to write this response. I simply wanted to think about it for awhile before I did so.

In many ways the post did in fact make me consider things in a new perspective. The basic premise is that Game Theory dictates that there needs to be an opposing force to any action or gaming the system and abusing it is inevitable.

Source: giphy.com

The post actually provides very concise and compelling explanations for this. I even think it makes a lot of good points and has a high probability of being true.

If it is true then the fact of the matter would be we need a down vote for more than simply plagiarism, spam, and abuse. I am not 100% sold on this, but I am leaning this way. I'll explain my remaining misgivings towards the end of this post. For now I'd like to focus on the problem. You see there is a perceivable problem. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation so it is possible this problem should not be aimed at the down vote.

My perception of the problem

We have those with steem power that will down vote posts because they believe the post offers nothing of value to steemit, has already been said before, is too highly rewarded, or is something they don't like.

This is not rampant. It is happening though. This can actually drive people away and make some people choose not to use the steemit platform. People making such a choice may not even be the person being flagged. They simply see what looks like a hostile environment. I will note that the people that have expressed this to me do not use reddit for a similar reason.

I believe all of us want steem and steemit to grow.

Source: giphy.com

To do this we ideally should be about inclusiveness. We should welcome people who are interested in a vast array of topics. We should not take it upon ourselves what may or may not have value to other people and down vote such things we deem not worthy. We should express our interest by up voting and supporting the things we like. If maximizing curation is your goal then predicting what will be popular and being one of the early people to up vote it is the key. This has nothing to do with down voting.

The real problem here is not the down voting itself, but the hostile impression, the feeling of attack, and the real obvious loss of potential income if the person that flagged you is powerful.

There is no known way at the moment to programmatically devise an algorithm or system that can protect from all negatives, insure the positives, and be immune to gaming.

If we were to have up votes only then we could have powerful people up voting everything their friends or family wrote to high values regardless of quality, and those friends and family would accumulate power rapidly, and they would join in and do the same. Soon you'd have the power consolidate into a smaller area than it already is.

Right now powerful people can down vote such activities when they are identified.

In my posts I typically advocated for leaving a flag in for abuse, spam, and plagiarism. You cannot battle these things without identifying them. Yet there are other forms of gaming. We need a way to combat them, and we would also be naive if we assumed we know all the methods of gaming this or any system. This means we cannot really create a flag that demands you choose a reason, and be sure we got all of those reasons.

Ideally I'd like to see a flag/down vote that required typing in a REASON for the flag before it is applied. If we had a way to potentially indicate something was a false flag then there should be a way to challenge that flag and if it indeed was false result in cancelling it and potentially a reputation ding.

I don't think most people have problems with flags other than those that are purely subjective and opinion. If there is proof of abuse, spam, plagiarism, or gaming the system I don't believe most people would find fault.

So if we need a down vote. Changing that perception should be the goal. Can we do that by requiring a bit more input accompany a down vote? Can we do that by making attacking/subjective/opinion based down votes potentially be a reputation ding?

Future

The important thing I think we need to keep in mind is our community seems to be largely intelligent and reasonable people. Yet, we are advocating for growth and inclusion. If we are having problems now, what happens when we have swaths of those that see everything as requiring to be politically correct? What happens when a wealthy person buys a bunch of steem power and then just goes crazy down voting like mad?

We are talking about perceived problems in a pretty impressive community. What does that imply when the masses join us here? I'd think the problems would become much bigger.

Thus, if we can find ways to address them now that would indeed be a good thing.

On the flip side if people join in large masses and actually STAY here and use the platform we will likely all be happy regardless.

For me it is about attracting people here, and making it an easy thing for them to decide to stay and participate.

Now that sliver of doubt...

I said I was leaning towards agreeing we need a down vote. I thus, framed most of my post towards trying to point out what the actual problem might be in such a case and simply brainstormed on possible things we could TRY/TEST to combat it.

Source: The Daily Bell

However, I still have one hold out... It is not certain, it is simply a nagging little idea that is bouncing around in the deep recesses of my mind that I haven't either completely identified, or completely squashed.

Game Theory indicates there needs to be an opposing action to stop the gaming. This does not mean that such an opposing action must come in the form of the down vote. That nagging idea is the idea that there may be a different opposing action we could use. I have no clue what that would be, as this is simply a little voice I can barely hear off somewhere in the dungeons of my mind. It may be simply an echo and eventually stop, or perhaps it'll get louder and I'll have a better idea what I am trying to tell myself. ;)

Steem On!