On the issue of Steem Voting, as in how users allocate the Steem rewards pool using upvotes and downvotes, which of the following statements is closer to your view?
- Voting should be accountable. If a user votes in a way which is deemed anti-social, they should expect penalty.
- Voting freely should be a fundamental right for Steem Power holders. Users should be able to vote according to their own conscience without being penalized for how they vote.
Answer here: http://www.strawpoll.me/11965002/r, discuss in comments.
Freedom of expression is important. If people fear being penalised for their views they simply will not express them. If socially unacceptable views are expressed they will not be upvoted. That is its own penalty.
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I think there might be some confusion here. The poll is about accountability for how you vote (how you allocate the Steem rewards pool using upvotes and downvotes) rather than about being accountability for expressing your views in comments. Please correct me if I misunderstood.
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I understood it more like @coldmonkey was expressing it. Maybe the post should have the vote ideas fleshed out a little more.
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What is "a way which is deemed anti-social"? Who deems? How do we define anti-social?
My understanding is that Steemit is designed to deal with the problem of accountability automatically. Voting effect is proportional to Steem Power, which one can only get by buying in with money or time. While whales have a big effect, their effect is supposed to be potentially mitigated by the number of minnows, dolphins, etc. When excersizing the limited power any one account does have, the idea is that this is mitigated by the Steem users self interest in preserving the value of their investment by going by best practices. Indeed, unless buying in with money, the journey to getting Steem Power by writing popular content or witnessing (also only effective for popular Steemians, because of witness voting) is one which educates them on the "consensus" etiquette, i.e. behaving in a way acceptable to most.
Even though I object to it, what I would suggest is that instead of using trying to use technological methods to deal with those you consider anti-social, and thus appeal to the authority of the system, you should appeal to the conscience of others and use social methods, such as shaming, etc. that have worked well to control groups of people for millennia. The book So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson is a good investigation of this phenomenan in modern times.
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Deemed anti-social by the collective of stakeholders* in the Steem ecosystem. The other stakeholders get to determine what is anti-social, but in terms of the definition I would use the first one you get from Google:
* Or alternatively users rather than stakeholders, but Steem is very much focused on stakeholder governance moreso than user governance as of now.
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That's no less ambiguous! I guess the point here is that explicitly arriving at that is difficult and probably wouldn't fit well here. Arriving at it indirectly, via the use of some tool would fit better, but we already have flagging for that.
It looks like you're proposing soft flagging here. I don't think it's needed. 😐 😑
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I'm not proposing anything. I'm asking a question about values/ideals, to see where the community stands.
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In any case, I suggest you read "Voting on Distribution of Currency" on page 16 of the Steem White Paper, it's all about this.
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I have tried to differentiate the two choices, but as I understand it they are actually identical. The freedom to downvote in no.2 will lead to the consensus-democracy of no. 1
I will in general lean towards the opinion that you should not be allowed to downvote others except in case of fraud, plagiarism and spam. Flagging as revenge for example leads to flagwars that look like the blood-revenge-system, and even the ancient Greek realised that it only lead to regression and destruction. But without any real central authority that abide to rules instead of feelings you will get in this situation.
I have helped out in the steemabuse channel and the steemcleaners team have a high awareness of justice which I appreciate. So having a kind of volunteer police and then choice no. 2 would be the best solution in my opinion.
Hope I understood you right...
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The question is whether or not other users should hold you accountable for your votes. The two choices are mutually exclusive. You can't both be penalized for voting badly while also being free to vote exactly according to your conscience. Receiving a penalty for how you vote means that votes are not free (as in free speech, not free beer).
Your answer seems to indicate that you favor the first choice. The phrase "not be allowed to downvote except in cases X, Y and Z" makes no sense in the context of the second choice but fits well with the first. Your votes are not free if you're only allowed to use them in certain cases.
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I find it a bit hard to understand this. When should a user be offended by another users vote? As I see it only when he downvotes you or somebody else that you feel should not be downvoted. Does the second choice indicate that downvote should be removed?
As for the phrase you quote, it is simply a paraphrase of what it says when you downvote somebody. I guess that this objective rule is there to secure the website Steemit.com from lawsuits.
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Have you never seen an abusive upvote or downvote? Abuse is subjective, but I would say there have been some fairly clear cut cases. For example when @rafken started downvoting random users posts, regardless of their content, causing a number of new user's posts to be hidden on the site. There have been many discussions about the impact of various whale votes when other people felt they have been used irresponsibly (pretty much every whale gets this, but I can specifically think of incidents relating to @ned, @berniesanders, @blocktrades, @steemed). Upvoting a scam or known catfish to the front page would also be abusive, or downvoting a comment because it contains evidence contradicting your own post.
I'm asking about receiving penalty for your votes, not removal of votes. I deliberately didn't define what that penalty would be, as it could come in many forms, and whether or not such penalties should happen is more important than the nature of the penalty.
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OK, I should have written: When should a user be offended by another users upvote? But yes, voting for a plagiarised post could of course be seen as abusive - or more like - dangerous for the whole network, as you can sue a website.
About the penalty, I think it is very hard to introduce any other than a downvote as the system is now. Steemcleaners have no other way of penalty for example. So when I ask: Does the second choice indicate that downvote should be removed? I mean the possibility for downvoting altogether. It would effectively remove the possibility for any penalty at all, and that would be a liability for the network as a whole, for the reason I have stated above (lawsuits etc.) On the other hand it would be free speech in the extreme :)
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I would see removing the downvote as anti free speech. An upvote is an expression of support for a particular reward proposal (post payout). A downvote is an expression of opposition to the same. Allowing expression of support while disallowing expression of opposition is against the spirit of free speech.
There are many ways to penalize someone for their behaviour, downvoting is just one way which happens to be a quite efficient one when that behaviour is involved in the post itself. It's a pretty poor one for almost every other case, for example downvotes are a poor way to penalize someone else's vote at present, as there are all kinds of complications which arise when you try to do that.
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