Apparently there has been a sudden increase in activity in up voting of comments. I have been in favor of this as it encourages discussion, and that discussion makes the platform more attractive, and more attractive brings in more people and engages more people.

Yet I am now seeing from posts and debates raging some of the same old discussions. I actually thought they were improving.

Perhaps they still are and these are just some outliers.

First... I like the idea of voluntarism. I like the idea of people voting how they like. So my goal here will not be to recommend drastic steps that would impact everyone due to the actions of a few. Instead I am going to attempt to reason with people. That doesn't mean I am right, and that you are wrong. If I am wrong feel free to convince me, unless you don't feel it is worth your time.

There are a few things going on I guess now that are stirring things up. Both of them have been encountered at one time or another.

• Down voting stuff due to saying it is over rewarded with the interest in protecting the reward pool.
• Up voting of your own comments to values that are far more than simple visibility would dictate

If the reward pool has been split into two like was the plan then those two things should at least not be tapping into the same pool still. Otherwise there is a lot of hypocrisy in people who down vote over rewarded posts to "protect the reward pool" only to turn around and up vote their own comments. I've only caught one person doing that, but I haven't really been looking and I think that person stopped doing it.

I don't know how pervasive these two things are at this moment.

My interest is in the platform. I want people to make good content. I want people who come here to want to stay here and contribute. I want people to engage in discussion in comments and replies as that is another level of engagement and some people are far more comfortable doing that than making original content.

The people down voting to protect the reward pool claim to be doing so for the good of the platform.

@inertia made an observation that makes me doubt that is true. I do not think it is intentional, but I do think it may not have been completely thought of by everyone. I know I didn't really consider it until now.

The platform can already adjust the distribution of the reward pool. So when you see a potential earning that is the votes of people exercising their steem power and saying "I Like this, please make more content like this" or that is at least how I view it.

As far as reward pool. It will adjust that potential earnings based upon the distribution of the steem power used to up vote.

So if you are truly interested in growing the platform and you want the rewards to be adjusted wouldn't it be better to use a positive approach than a negative one? Go find some post you think is under rewarded and give it a nice up vote. This will add more votes to the reward pool and it will adjust the reward pool.

You will no longer be doing a 100% subjective negative act that usually results in anger or confusion by cancelling out the voting power other people used.

There may be times where there is a very good reason to do this which is why you don't see me asking for a change to the platforms code to stop these negative actions.

Overall I do think the people that are voting like this are in a minority. Some of them are powerful, and they DO think they are helping the platform.

I believe they are harming the platform and they should let the platform adjust the reward pools rather than subjectively choosing targets to steal from. Perhaps they didn't steal from the person with potential earnings, but they did cancel out the vote of the people who liked that content. So did they steal from them? Perhaps they didn't. Can it be perceived as an attack? I believe the resounding answer to that is yes.

If I were to pick an action I believe in my time since July of watching the platform has done more harm than any other it is subjective down voting. It has brought a wealth of negative PR. It has caused people to leave. It has caused some people to look at the platform and say "no way, it's like reddit all over again", because there are a lot of people that don't like the flagging on reddit. Sure it is a big platform. Yet it could be bigger. It may be important to state "This is not reddit" to which I answer Thank ~God(s).

So those protectors of the reward pool with your subjective flagging. Why wouldn't finding a post you think is worthy and up voting it to compete and adjust the reward pool be a good thing instead? A positive thing would surely avoid that nasty negative P.R.

Self-Up Voting

This has been around forever, and some tutorials early on actually recommended up voting your own posts, and comments for visibility. This made sense from the visibility point of view until one considers voting itself. I followed that up-bote my own posts which I learned from an @craig-rant tutorial video back in July. Then I learned about the voting percentage and how I only had so many votes per day until my voting power started decreasing. This meant because I like to talk a lot if I up voted my own stuff it greatly decreased my ability to vote on content of other people that I really like.

Without the content this platform is worthless. If I up vote my own content then how am I encouraging others to grow the platform?

That is why I stopped. Yet I've never been able to reward more than $0.01 for a vote so it was not a big dent I made by changing my habits.

I didn't change the habits for my own selfish interest. I changed it for the platform. Is there still some selfishness there? Sure. If the platform does well and grows then all of our steem power is worth more and it helps us all over the long run.

What if steem power never increases?

Are you getting paid to write content, reply to content, and vote on content? This is a huge deal no matter how much it makes.

Yet if the votes are concentrated on ourselves in a very narcissistic way then that is less encouragement for the creation of content. This can lead to attrition (i.e. more people leaving) and reduced content. Without content this platform is nothing.

If you view this platform as a place which is like a walled room full of mirrors where you can admire your own reflection and get paid for then by all means continue. Yet that didn't turn out too well for narcissus.

Also my post has nothing to do with jealousy. I only care about the platform. I consider people that are doing this to be foolish if they are knowingly hurting the platform. I am not jealous of foolishness. However, it is my hope that this is not the case. It may be simply they haven't considered this perspective, or perhaps they have a logical perspective that makes more sense than my own.

I do know for now we need the flag to protect from a number of things. Yet, this up voting issue didn't really seem to be a truly negative one until now.

Once the reward pool is split (unless it has already happened) what is to stop someone from making a post, adding a bunch of comments to their own post that they treat as updates and up voting ALL of their own comments. That reward pool would be not so pretty then. It also wouldn't really be encouraging any form of positive dialog. I have no doubt there would be negative dialog.

If a program/code change did happen I'd say the easiest thing would be to make it so people can't up vote their own comments. Yet that really accomplishes nothing for all they have to do is create another account and do the exact same activity up voting between their accounts. We have seen this in the past.

In a voluntary society when there are bad actors you don't have to attack them. You can just stop doing business with them. So it doesn't have to be programmatic at all. If people insist on gaming the system, and acting harsh to others then a concerted campaign to pull support from that person might be the only recourse. Purely done by words. In societies that are based on voluntarism this is typically known as being ostracised or shunned. It is negative P.R. as well, and it'd be nice to not have to resort to such things. Many people may think that it wouldn't work because no one would do it to them. They could be absolutely correct. It'd need to be a very compelling reason for people to back such a plan. Such as repeatedly asking people, and calling them on negative acts to only be belittled, or in some cases attacked. If people can be reasoned with then no such things should EVER be necessary. Yet even in ideas such as Anarcho Capitalism the question comes up of what do you do when there are bad actors yet you have the non-aggression principle. The answer there is typically, stop doing business with them.

Steem On!