Almost 1 month of #thunderdome

I want to reflect briefly on the small project I started with @tarazkp, as we approach the 1 month mark: the #thunderdome chat room on Steemit.chat

What started as a hypothetical situation became a reality on 17th October when we created the #thunderdome chat room (thanks to @pfunk for setting that up 👍). That's literally all we did, added the notes and had some chat with people about it 😁

The idea was simple - a place to link drop your post where you will be be either up voted or down voted depending on the perceived quality of your post by chat room members. But wait, isn't that the usually way of things on Steemit?

It turns out that no, it's not really, as least in the down vote option. Room members are encouraged to definitely vote either way, and follow their own judgement. The idea is not so much that Steemit ought to be like this (or should it?) but more that if you believe enough in the quality of your own post that you'll take the risk of actually asking people to vote on it, and accept the down vote if that's they way it's seen.

Hence the name and subtitle: TWO OPTIONS ENTER - ONE OPTION LEAVES!!! ⚔️

The results so far

We started off with a few people who came thanks to @tarazkp 's post on it and a broadcast over general chat rooms. Initially there were questions about what constitutes quality, asking for / suggesting guidelines, how much percentage to vote, etc., which we refused to provide a definite answer for. The idea is simple and we didn't overcomplicate it. Just vote as you wish, but do vote.

Over the weeks I've voted on nearly every post posted to the room, and exercized the freedom to give a few down votes too. I have been contacted privately several times by posters who's posts I down voted, all of them polite, asking why? I found this very interesting.

One even asked immediately if it was a mistake. But I didn't give anyone a reason because it is implicit: I didn't think the post was quality. I didn't want to provide any more detail than that because if it's truly an open vote then the vote is enough.

Y u downvote bro?

People are often asked to justify their down votes, which on Steemit double as flags, as I'm sure you know. There are 4 "official" reasons to flag (it's a flag as far as the steemit.com UI indicates) according to Steemit Inc.:

1. Disagreement on rewards
2. Fraud or Plagiarism
3. Hate Speech or Internet Trolling
4. Intentional miss-categorized content or Spam

"Not quality" is not a reason, and I don't think is implied by point 1, because point 1 describes disagreeing with existing high payouts, possibly based on the content quality but not first and foremost considering the content quality.

It makes me wonder how the flag / down vote can be justified as being part of game theory and via the "crabs in a bucket" concept, with the supposed goal of the platform being to get quality posts (even if that just works out to be what's popular) if it is not officially endorsed by the UI and thus by the Steemit Inc., the guys promoting and maintaining the blockchain code as well as the UI.

If you can't force people to ONLY down vote / flag for abuse then it doesn't simply serve that purpose. It's the expression of any negative sentiment. Sometimes it can be targeted and personal. Sometimes it's for legit abuse. Sometimes it's because of quality.

My interactions with the post authors of the view posts I did down vote / flag show me that this has really been taken on board by the community (I mean I already knew this, remember the whale experiment? 😅). Down votes for "quality disagreement" is not well liked.

Just don't vote!

The voting practice endorsed by Steemit Inc. and adopted by most is this:

1. Up vote what you like
2. Don't vote for anything else except,
3. If you think a post is "abusive" you can down vote / flag (but there may be consequences)

During my 10 or 11 months here I've debated a lot about the place of down voting / flagging, coming to the conclusion that it's ultimately a matter of conscience. I has been freeing to express directly my disagreement with quality within this experiment and I hope it has been of some worth to the posters. Mainly I hope they didn't take it personally or as an attack.

A few people did leave the room after some down votes came their way. The cut and dry up or down is not for everyone, and after this almost month long experiment I don't think I'd advocate it for widespread use.

But still I think there's a place for somewhere like the #thunderdome where you can ask for honest appraisal and throw caution to the wind as a content creator. I think some of the members have gotten a lot out of the experience. I certainly have, I've met some new people and discovered some new talented writers, poets, photographers and illustrators.

Come on in ... if you dare 👻

This is a call for people to come in! It's a link drop so chit chat will be deleted, repeated chit chatters will be muted. But drop your posts and see how they fare. You might learn something and we all might learn something from you, from actually reading and thinking about your posts.

Final note

#thunderdome is a "flash project", something created really quickly with not much set up to test out an idea. It will get shut down at some point, and probably sooner rather than later. We need ideas to be tested and then to iterate based on findings.

If you like this concept then do one too and tag with #flashproject ✊😎