Time for a #SteemitStrike by Content Creators and Daily Users who actually make this Community what it is? Bring your Harpoons, the Whale Flag "Experiment" failed YUGE and here's why.

jlufer (75) · 8 years ago

All the people you know know that my forte is not writing or writing, they also know, how hard I have tried to improve from the first day I came to the platform to this day, I am aware that I have much to Improve and I have shortcomings, to that I attribute to the little payment I have had all this time (This is not a complaint) is a reality that I see every day, but whether or not something won.

Because of my limitations, the work that takes a few hours to me takes me a whole day, the work I went up today titled Organic Food (the Corn) took me three days to do it, I had a low valuation of u $ S 3 dollars and for the negative votes I am $ u 1.00 s.

I live from what genre on the page, at this rate going well could get to collect a lot of wind in favor 30 dollars, who could live with 30 dollars.

Please do not misunderstand is not a complaint, nor am I blaming anyone, I have worked all my life in multinational companies I know how they think, when something you do not like you have to go.

I resigned to Disco Ahold International Holdings with 18 years of antiquity because I did not like the policitas that they had adopted against our same company, the result is of public knowledge to this group of Argentina it acquired the group Cencosud.

I want to say that I love this platform, I dedicate more than 14 hours a day working with all my mistakes, successes and mistakes, I am interacting 14 hours with a lot of people who want good for the platform, do not let this that was Working fine do not do it.

If I am or I am not for steemit it is the same, but the people who are in my situation who work to make money at some point will not interest you, I really do not know what might happen, but I would not want this to come down.

I repeat again is not a complaint, it is only a reflection from my humble situation and position.

You are the ones who know!

José Luis Fernández
Corrientes Argentina

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

@jlufer - firstly, you are a gentleman and I am very respectful of your contribution in many ways to steemit. The reality that the holders of the SP have made enormous gains off the content creation of people like you, Barry and myself is lost on many.
I started a new writing contest this morning 300 votes and $30 - the biggest value on any post I have ever written - not even mine! It is now at $4 because of some silly idea. 1 cent/vote is too much? Beggars in th street are treated better. Meanwhile, look at todays numbers - why are the vote values so low?
Because, I suspect, thee is a post out there somewhere with a low vote count but a HUGE amount of comment votes which we cannot see, of course!
Thee are other goings on but the mess is getting messier despite assurances to the contrary!
Saludos, senor! Un abrazo a usted.

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jlufer (75) · 8 years ago

Thank you very much sir @ebryans, I appreciate and respect your comment
Greetings, have a good night.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

You are so awesome Jose, that is why I named you in my post today and named some of those reasons mi amigo.

God bless ya man!!!!

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Here is a good related post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@neoxian/the-experiment-communication-required-this-is-a-social-platform

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

'You get 3-4 whales that UV your post at limited power..... and you get 5 of the TOP whales all DV you with their massive Steem Power at - 10% and it does not counter the other whale votes, it drives the value of the post and reputations, WAY down further, past the comparable % of other whales.' I know you mean well here but I checked the post in question and your comments are mistaken. You got a whale bot upvote at 70%, followed by downvotes at 10%. The sum of the downvotes was less than the whale bot upvote. You can see the detailed numbers on steemd here

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

Nope.

There is no way the other collective weights of the handful of whale upvotes on THIS post -- let alone all the other ones would ever outweigh the cumulative effects of the massive flagging power of the top 5 accounts of your 5 guys that opted to all flag this on a trail of -10 flags/downvotes man. Sorry, try again.

funny how most of us never hear from you on our posts, despite super hard work, and hours of making good content that actually is helpful and encourages people day in and day out, with thousands of our comments on the blockchain. I said it awhile back.

funny that eh?

Some of us work daily on here I have said to you and others and I mean HARD. Quality community building all to have a whale show up and destroy a post or a reputation with the flick of a button.

I call it reckless at times. Do you create content or anything that builds community or just do drive by flaggings without looking at the complete body of work of users?

Because with your great steem power across many accounts, comes great responsibility.

No community means your investment is in jeopardy and good people are leaving all the time, if you read my post.... or my comments to you in the past.

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3 votes

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

Nope.

Yep. there is, indeed, a way. This is the upvote with rhares:

Created 4,685,180,124,293 70% 2017-03-13T17:03:57

these are the downvotes

smooth -2,526,236,559,393
engagement -1,056,018,820,281
berniesanders -18,446,918,265
thecyclist -613,439,785,434
nextgencrypto -256,547,348,866

the total DV is about -4,469,000,000,000.

Not only that, but because no whales are voting, all the votes you got were more valuable. you did not lose money because of this experiment. The only ones that did are the people who just get whale votes out of the blue.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago

This is correct

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3 votes

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

you want me to go through the math for you... again, did you not notice that your post didnt make less money than usual, despite the downvotes?

Yes, if they had left your post alone, and flagged all the other whale upvoted posts, you would h ave made even more money, but your post made the same amount as it would have it the 'expirement'. had not been running.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I always love hearing from people and every vote and voice counts , I always say that. Not just whales and whatnot.

WE need to have a

#SteemitStrike

I said today. Organize it, stop posting for a week, watch the panic and collapse from all the so called stakeholders, and then they will see what matters...

Content creators and daily posters and community.... it is social media as a platform right afterall?

God bless @ned and @dan / @dantheman but people are ruining what they created and maybe that means some of the early people who got in before Steemit launched and CAN ruin things, just because they can and BOUGHT in, but don't really create content so don't know or care what it is like.

I have also been a COMMUNITY activist of public record for years..... so that is why this and all similar crap on here is really upsetting me, it is killing COMMUNITY ----

looky in side that word and you will find

#Unity

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https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/steemit-people-i-m-thankful-for-mindful-community-engagement-encouragement-e-1-march-12-2017

barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I wrote a community encouragement post today, got 5 or more flags, with massive 10% flags/DV, by the TOP whales, - when 1% would have been fair..... it killed the rep score and payout, and I had a lot of time and thought into it but who cares, about encouraging content right that is then worth $1?

It was a failed experiment and these flags, with no start or end date, or announcement, are driving good people off here daily. Poorly thought out, at best.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

And I said this elsewhere again today, as in other days...

But all the whales already hold a ton of Steem, they are the 1% and 0.05% and all have multiple accounts, so as all their rewards increase, so would all the minnows and dolphins like us who also hold SP -- and always power up --- ironically because we support and believe...

in this "community"
Daily use and posting needs to be rewarded and weight given.
Most whales bought in, think they can do what they want, and never create anything here.
No content, means no community... means no value or ROI for all these flagging investors on a SOCIAL network

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

A strike like this is a good idea, just not for the reason stated. What are you protesting? What do you feel you have lost? The only problem here is you don't understand whats going on.

Yes, you lost whale upvotes. But all the other votes you got increased in value. You broke even... didnt you notice your payouts not going down... and the value of your vote going up?

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freebornangel (73) · 8 years ago

Why is cashout having fewer 0 payouts?
Whale shame?

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dwinblood (73) · 8 years ago

I'm trying a different approach. What if those of us willing to help experiment work with those in power ALL THE WHALES and try to come up with PLANNED things we can try. The problem is that some of us are good at speaking with certain people and not others, but as a group we likely have people that are good go betweens with all of us.

Do I know if it will work?

Have no clue...

But I'm willing to try it before I go negative...

Something like you are saying might be needed, but also consider this, there HAVE been problems and we've been talking about them. At least @abit and @smooth tried to experiment. It won't work as they did it due to cooperation, but perhaps we can make some inroads and make it happen.

This could have worked if they had gotten Ned/Dan to agree to say X amount of days where people with Y amount of Steem Power or higher cannot up vote or down vote enforced by code.

Then there would be no need to counteract anything and it'd be an actual experiment in a controlled fashion.

I did not define X or Y because as I said this is US as a community needing to work with each other and those in power. I have some people in power I don't get along with but most of them I get along fine. I disagree with them at times but we share mutual respect and I can work with that. I also cannot do this alone, and am not trying to be some leader or messiah. I don't actually like that position. I do like to solve problems though. :)

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cassidyandfranks (62) · 8 years ago

All right, man I tried not to get involved in this during my SELF so called 3month probationary period. I find myself drawn to help others who may need it or who are willing to accept my 3cents worth...

Experiment is an experiment.
1 day is 1 day.
1 week is 1 week.

Let's all cool down, we have more pressing concerns to concentrate our energy and efforts this week especially Wednesday. I don't want to start a whole debate here, just my 3cents worth.

Steem on,
Frank

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I am always willing to work with people but things here like I said in the comments, are not working for lots of reasons, and I hate seeing my community destroyed while great great people are hurt, not consulted and clearly marginalized in various ways.

Whales can think they are the only stakeholders.... and they will be mistaken.

The real stakeholders are the community creators, commenters, encouragers, teachers, and regular folks here muddling along from 25 rep up to the 75 rep, grinding, like I said, there is nothing here without the content and the social aspect Dan and Ned built for us.

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

Here is one idea @dwinblood which I believe has some merit.
Firstly, some assumptions: 1. the whales have got us to here and something needs to change with the culture of intra-voting which is the prime culprit.2. We need about 500 people of influence - ie too many for you to keep personal track of (bots aside).
Idea: allow the whales to sell their SP - no waiting time - to existing or non-steemians at a discount (15-30%). Minimum investment $1000. Purchases to be ring-fenced for 18 months to 2 years - cannot be powered down. This applies only to SP. We need no more liquid steem out there - Poloniex and Blocktrades are holding a large bag full.
Limited timeframe - say 6 weeks. All whales allowed to take part apart from steemit. No powering up to sell. All whales in the top 25 must take part - sales go sequentially from number 1 in value down to 25. Other whales may take part from round 3 if we get there.
Voting - max number of votes: 20pp/day - if vote value is under 0.05, you may have 5 double votes and 10 single votes. Min vote power 50% or 25% on a comment.
Social Media might then appear in steemit!

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dwinblood (73) · 8 years ago

It might work, but I personally cannot endorse it. At my core I tend to believe that "good ideas do not require force", so I would not advocate forcing people to do such with their accounts. If you can convince them to do so voluntarily though that is another story. It is a harder and far more challenging task, but it is one I can stand behind. I do not support forced redistribution so it has to be voluntary or I'm not a supporter. Yes, that makes it a lot more difficult to solve, yet I've not seen historical examples where redistribution didn't end up bad in the long run. I am a free market and voluntarist type person. The key is persuading people to try things, and yes it is DAMN hard. Yet, I'm willing to try.

I also am not proposing a GUARANTEED "this will fix it", they are speculations/hypothesis and everyone has one. I am in favor of short term experiments to test the viability of various proposals so we can collect data and see if there is merit to such hypothesis.

I don't think this experiment of @abit and others was a bad idea. It was poorly implemented. If it were done at a code level so no one above certain steem power could up vote or down vote and you ran it for a week or two then that could have yielded some important information.

Yet it has to be controlled for that information to be remotely useful.

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little-peppers (67) · 8 years ago

Barry, I understand your reasons, and you sure stated the intent ahead of time. I will not be joining this effort, but I still hope that it has the effect that you hope for. Best wishes Brother.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

Everyone is fighting, so the absence of content and use, means things will get figured out awful quick. There are lots of ways to handle things, but it like the governance issues with Bitcoin........ Years later, nothing is solved, and the value for everyone is in jeopardy.

Put the politicians on minimum wage, and see how fast things get fixed.

Everyone is currently losing because of all this on here. Talking about everything, is honestly just letting a lot of good people get hurt and leaving.

Is it working so far???

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

I understand - this is a tough one and will be virtually impossible to galvanise the troops. The point is that it has taken this long for more people to recognise the lack of transparency in the system - the whales are making enormously leveraged profits off the content of the likes of us. This whale vote freeze is not happening. I believe there are votes piling onto comments somewhere so that we cannot see them - comments don't get the attention.

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raymonjohnstone (62) · 8 years ago

If this is true, can you provide any evidence? Here is a rewardpool output that makes it look to me like it is not true: banjoBOT - Today at 3:23 AM
Total Reward Fund: 86,042 STEEM (Worth: $6,242 internally; $7,527 on Poloniex)

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

The bit about the profiteering or the bit about voting for comments? The profiteering is just obvious - look at the rewards paid out to date- 1% of all rewards ever distributed have gone to minnows. 99% of all rewards have gone to less than 4% of all steemians. As for the voting on comments - they have displayed their intent to ensure further centralisation of ownership - what I said was that it was being done so that we could not see it - what I have been advocating for quite some time - comment voting is the next abuse of the system!
I am not quite sure what the Reward Fund tells us - another thing I have suggested is that the daily Rewards Pool be published in detail to show percentages as follows: Authors by account, curators by account, witnesses by witness, head office, R&D, investor interest and dividend payments, the bit they never mention etc. To speak of 75/25, author curator is a fanciful ruse!
I am not gunning at steemit, I just wish when people talk of transparency they damn well meant it!

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raymonjohnstone (62) · 8 years ago

Well...uhm technically all of that is published as well as this piece of data that I just posted. And I was refering to your statement about comments, i thought you might have some actual evidence. If you are actually curious about researching these topics ALL information is 100% transparent in that is can be viewed and parsed and exists on the blockchain you can dig into that data with lots of tools https://github.com/SteemData is a particularly good one but steemd.com/@raymonjohnstone does also work as well. I hope this helps.

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

Many thanks for your guidance @raymonjohnstone, your advice certainly does help. As a result, I am following you for your superior IT knowledge. I am not a IT oriented person. I am a business manager - one of the observations of steemit which amazes me is the myriad of data locations and the strange lack of primary User Interface functionality. I do know why it is so, though that reasoning is sadly a negative cause.
Thank you again, I shall try to ascertain how I am to find the data I seek - the votes on comments.

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little-peppers (67) · 8 years ago

Hopefully it'll work out well.

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mindhunter (72) · 8 years ago (edited)

This is your past ... and today it is my present! We must work together to defeat this system!!

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tfeldman (65) · 8 years ago

I just wanted to let people know that a strike could lead to much more abuse. The reward pool will be distributed no matter how many people are on. If only one person posted, they would get the entire reward.

It is an interesting point though that if good writers do leave, the value of steem would go down naturally.I agree with your point here. Negativity brings a negative movement of adoption to the platform. I think a better system would be to have a hard fork that dealt with these issues head on.

Steem is a great place, and I have no intent to leave it. People have the right to vote how they please....whether it hurts their investment or not. I lost 50 dollars on one post because of a downvote. If people voice their opinion, I believe a change that is agreeable to the majority will occur. Don't leave though, that could just mean more money in the power of a smaller number and less distribution of power.

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merej99 (70) · 8 years ago

Thank you @tfeldman - I couldn't have said it better.
I understand Barry's frustration but a boycott is not the way to do it. We need to post more. Be informative and not inciteful. If we actually came together as a community, with the help of our witnesses and maybe some whales, I think we'd have a much better chance of incurring change. Like berniesanders said, "change the code" - the majority of us are happy NOT knowing how all that shizzle works. I just want to CREATE stuff.

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aunt-deb (65) · 8 years ago

The whale don't care whether I post here or not - I'm a minnow, a nithing, and not even a blip on their radar. I've already stated my intent to take a break. I hadn't even thought of how long... just a span of enough duration to make sure the whales had enough of a egofeast that they'd leave us in peace for a while. A week sounds reasonable and measurable if enough folks help.

I will continue to comment and upvote comments. At least maybe there it will help the author.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

you are a great community asset Deb!

and a good friend!!!!

Nobody here can put a DV price on how much you mean collectively to all of us..... and me personally sister.

I hope people are reading this, watching nice people like you walk off...........

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aunt-deb (65) · 8 years ago

Thanks, bud! We'll see how this all shakes out. This whole episode has a bully facet to it and that's one thing I can't abide. I've seen too much of that in too many situations not to recognize it here.

I'm a Taurus. Bullies are my red flag. 'Nuff said.

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ebryans (66) · 8 years ago

Just read your comments about bullying - agreed - and they will not answer the questions - I am following you now and so look forward to your return. A fiend of Mr Dutton is a friend of mine! Don't stay away too long!

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aunt-deb (65) · 8 years ago

Thank you and following in return. I don't think it will take the 'powers that be' very long to figure out a solution. In fact, I've seen several reasonable and workable ideas offered over the course of the day. Hopefully, common sense will prevail.

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henry-gant (57) · 8 years ago

I support you brother! I'm all in. I'm on strike.

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meesterboom (78) · 8 years ago

The problem is that there is a huge amount of greed on this platform. People will not stop posting because they will think that there is more money for them if less people posting. But being a member of a union I certainly get the concept

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I stood my ground, and took a week off but for a couple posts only to Dan himself and related.

I am back. I don't chase money......or suck up to people in power. I am a principled person.

Have a good week my friend.

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https://steemit.com/funny/@theregularguy/here-is-what-it-is-like-when-you-think-you-are-about-to-score-a-big-vote

theregularguy (66) · 8 years ago

I hear you man. But I decided to add a little humor to the situation.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I stood my ground, and took a week off but for a couple posts only to Dan himself and related.

I am back. I don't chase money......or suck up to people in power. I am a principled person.

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jacobts (65) · 8 years ago

Things are calming down. Hope to see your posts again soon. Happy trading to you!

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

I stood my ground, and took a week off but for a couple posts only to Dan himself and related.

I am back. I don't chase money......or suck up to people in power. I am a principled person.

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jacobts (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

Good for you Barry. I wish you the best.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

Good update for people, on my new post today, Charlie Shrem has launched a DASH Crypto to fiat debit/credit card proposal for the masses. It is on my page if you like.

#Liberty

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steemitqa (64) · 8 years ago

You on Steemit.chat ? I got an idea.

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barrydutton (74) · 8 years ago

Catch me there tomorrow if you like, I have to be offline at nite by 10 pm due to my headaches with my injuries from the car running me over. Nite everyone

I spent over 30 mins just now in chat, with one of the key dev's going back and forth and they admitted this was poorly rolled out and communicated to all of us.

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