A Suggestion For The @familyprotection Community.

I haven't been on much recently for various reasons and popped on quickly tonight to leave a couple of messages on discord as well as have a quick look at my feed to see what was happening.


I came across a post from Hive account@markwhittam about members of the Hive account@familyprotection community who he feels are abusing the system and hashtag that he and Hive account@canadian-coconut set up in order to highlight the problems they and many of us see within the Child Protection Services and like organisations around the world.


I'm not the most involved member of the Hive account@familyprotection community and believe I've only contributed two posts but I've been a part of the community since it's inception and still remember the thrill of reading about the launch of the initiative for the first time.


I was already a fan of Hive account@markwhittam, his family and their Big Green Steem Machine and knew of Marks struggles in childhood at the hands of the 'care' system. I know how passionate and determined he is to help others suffering at the hands of a system that benefits and profits from misery and I'm proud to stand with him as a member of the Family Protection team that represents no more suffering in silence for victims of this system.


What Mark and Linda have done is provide not only an outlet for those who've suffered and continue to suffer to let the world know about their struggles, they've also created a growing, world-wide community of men and women who will stand side by side in defense of one another. They have given us strength in numbers as well as access to help, advice and support from a community who understand the failings of the system and can sympathise or empathise with what we're going through because they've gone through it themselves or know others who have.


Those of you who know me will know that there are a lot of things about steemit that I'm not a fan of but the most positive aspect of the platform that I've seen in my time here has been the Hive account@familyprotection initiative. I can't speak highly enough about the need for this initiative or about the man who launched it. As a member of the steemit community, this is the thing I'm most proud of and Mark is definitely one of the members of the community who truly inspire me to better things.


Of late though, there have been some troubling developments regarding the use and abuse of the FP hashtag as well as some dissatisfaction expressed concerning the level of financial support being received by Hive account@familyprotection from those whose posts are being supported by the family protection community and account by way of large upvotes.


Mark feels that those who use the hashtag and benefit from upvotes from the Hive account@familyprotection account should return some of the liquid rewards they receive to Hive account@familyprotection in order to grow the community, increase awareness and ultimately help and support those who are being harassed or dealing with the consequences of interactions with the CPS.


Like Mark, I too think that if you feel strongly enough about your experiences or knowledge of the system and want to help the cause by writing a post and tagging it with #familyprotection, then you should also feel strongly enough to want to contribute a little from the rewards you receive from the Hive account@familyprotection community towards achieving the goals mentioned above, especially since the rewards you will likely receive from making such a post and having it upvoted from the main account as well as accounts of the other Family Protection members would be far higher than you could expect from a normal post or the very same post without the use of the hashtag.


While I understand Marks frustration at seeing so many members of the 'community' using the Family Protection cause and hashtag as a means to enrich themselves without any thought of financially supporting the cause that they 'felt so passionately' about writing for in the first place, I don't think it's right to demand that some of the rewards should be donated to Hive account@familyprotection. As I commented to Mark a short time ago, I think anyone who takes the time to create a post in support of Hive account@familyprotection that is deemed of value should be upvoted and the author should be left to decide themselves whether they'd like to contribute some of their rewards, on top of the contribution they've already made by making the post in the first place. Personally, I think in most cases they should but I don't think it's the right way to go to force people to do what we might feel is the right thing. Which is why I'd like to suggest a little change that I hope might help.


The Family Protection hashtag has served us well for a long time now but I can only imagine that it must be exhausting work having to manually curate so many posts, especially when many of them are not at all relevant and have simply been tagged with our hashtag by someone who has no idea who we are or are fishing for an upvote. I remember Mark mentioning in one of his posts that he is spending eight hours a day working his way through the posts submitted to the hashtag. There has also been some concern about the standard and quality of posts using the hashtag as well.


I know it would be a big step but I suggest we suspend the use of the hashtag and instead request that anyone wanting to share their experiences or knowledge in support of Family Protection should do so by submitting their post in some other way, perhaps to a Family Protection email account. Hopefully this would put off those who at the moment would abuse the use of the hashtag and encourage only serious contributions from those who are actually looking to help. It would also provide a way of screening potential FP posts for quality.


When the Hive account@familyprotection team finds a quality submission that supports the cause, it could then be posted via the main Hive account@familyprotection account and be upvoted automatically. In this way, the rewards could be split, with the liquid rewards going to the author and the steem being retained by the Hive account@familyprotection account. The author could also choose to donate some of the liquid rewards if they choose but I think this would be a much fairer way of doing things overall and one that ensures those who benefit from the FP community also contribute to it.


There will likely be aspects to this suggestion that I haven't considered and it may not be the way to go but I thought I'd share it and find out.


Let me know what you think. :)


(Any and all liquid rewards this post receives will be donated to Hive account@familyprotection. )