Summary
We've seen many changes and new behaviours lately on Steemit. While some can be considered as good (eg growth of number of users, growth of number of posts), others can be bad for Steemit to grow and enjoy a long future ahead of us.
In this post, I propose a potential solution to determine what is good but more importantly what is not good behaviour, and how we can take measures against such behaviour. My proposal is based on consensus and collective efforts instead of individual efforts.
Based on one of the potential issues we may have to deal with as a collective - the self-voting and self-curating culture that is being created as we speak - I try and voice my thoughts on what is 'good' and what is 'not so good'.
I like this post to be a starting point for community wide discussions around the topics of:
- what we want to achieve with Steemit;
- how we think we need to progress to achieve what we want and
- what solutions we should implement to address all those things that (we think) will seriously harm whatever we collectively want to achieve.
Introduction
With the rollout of the last hardfork (HF19: software update of Steem and Steemit) all of us got 4 times more voting power. At the same time, we also got more balanced vote contributions into the system by the introduction of an equal valuation of Steem Power wrt post rewards regardless of being a whale or a mini minnow (you can read more about this here).
The question is: Did these changes contribute to a better community or not?
The answer is not simple I think.
What we've seen since the last hardfork is an increase of Self Voting.
Is that Bad? Is that Good?
The following topics I address in the remainder of the post:
- Self Vote Our Own Post - Good or Bad?
- Self Vote Our Own Comment - Good or Bad?
- Self Curation - Good or Bad?
- Disable Self Voting - Good or Bad?
- What Shall be Next?
- Proposal: a Community Controlled Committee & Enforcement Body
- End Words: The Beginning
Self Vote Our Own Posts - Good or Bad?
The Steemit User Interface (UI) provides a checkbox to self-vote a new post; This essentially promotes self-voting of a newly created post. Although I didn't analyse data on this topic, I believe many of us use this checkbox and upvote our own posts automatically.
I do not see any harm in doing so, since most of us produce not that many new posts a day, 1 maybe 2 or maximum 3. When voting for our own posts with 100% power, and publishing 1 post per day, every one of us has 9 100% votes left for curation of posts and comments from other authors. That is 90%; a good value! Even when posting 2 posts a day, this leaves 8 100% votes available to give to others in the community; Not bad at all in my honest opinion!
Self Vote Our Own Comments - Good or Bad?
In principle, everyone can vote for whatever he or she likes, even our own comments. Although there is nothing against upvoting our own comments, it can be argued why such self-voting is not helping the community.
For sure we have users who self-vote their own comments, and at the same time vote also for other authors comments. When things are in balance, I would say: "Why Not", especially when the comment is a quality and relevant comment and may even took quite a bit of time to create.
However, we also have users in our community who upvote their own comments, whilst not upvoting the post and/or comment they generated their comment for. Some of our community members may upvote the parent comment, but with (much) lower vote power than they give their own comment. This is a culture that I do not like and in the longer run will harm the community more than it will do good.
Before someone start screaming at me: Yes, I also upvoted a couple of my own comments with 100% vote power. In my defence - or better said - to explain why I did that: At those times, I was super frustrated about how the community started to act. I discovered some big fish giving themselves 100s of dollars per comment worth of self-votes, with multiple of those comments to a single post, a post they created themselves. That made me angry and resulted in casting some 100% votes to my own posts. As a far as I remember this happened at two occasions since HF19 got into effect. But to be honest; It didn't feel right at all, so I stopped self-voting my own comments after I got my act together.
Self Curation - Good or Bad?
Recent development in our community offers us the ability to self-curate posts and comments and get (seemingly) good rewards in return. With that I don't mean the self-voting for your own posts and comments, but the use of one or multiple of the new services around allowing us to either get their upvotes for free (such as @minnowsupportproject) or paid (such as 
I really have nothing against these services. As a matter of fact, I admire those who came up with these ideas, business cases and implementations. It shows good entrepreneurship! Salute to all those who implement and run their own (little) business here at Steemit!
I tested quite a bit with
Last weekend I was trying out the new
I also tested quite a bit with the @minnowsupportproject (MSP) service and that one seems to give some interesting rewards (from 1$ to 3$ per request) and it is one of the few services available on Steemit that is free of charge.
Until last weekend, I thought all these services would only vote for Posts, but I noticed these services can also be called in for Comments. I discovered one of my own posts got the support of MSP on a comment published by the user itself to support his/her own comment. The discovery of this event, triggered me to write this post!
Although I have used all the mentioned services on my own posts, I start to think: "What the Hell is this Self-Curation About?" and "Where will this Self-Curation lead to?". I personally think that self curation may harm the community much more than it does good!
I cannot promise I'll never use any of the self-curation services anymore. But I can tell you that the feeling I get using these services is getting worse, the more I use them! But I have my days with negative feeling about what is happening in the community; Those days that you think: "Am I the stupid one in the community with idealistic views and opinions, while everyone else - so it seems - is acting in their own self-interest and don't care how their actions will effect the community on the long term (if any?)?". I'm sure those days I'll still experience and on such days, I may go with the flow and get as much as I can! BUT, I would really love it when I can start controlling myself in such situations, and be more the idealistic community member, rather than the one with the super sort term focus and take whatever I can taken.
Disable Self Voting - Good or Bad?
From different community members, I read the plans for the future to remove the possibility for self-voting posts and comments. While this seems to be a good way to stop self-voting, I am not in favour of this at all.
Not allowing self-voting, will not prevent users from self-curation and using these 3rd party services. And what about those users who have multiple account? And what about all these new agreements - that can be made in or outside Steemit - between community members to vote for each other’s posts? All these arrangement can be supported by all the new services to rent delegation power for a period.
Removing self-voting ability, will for sure increase the number of services and deals to get to indirect self-votes. Therefore, it will not solve the 'problem' of self-voting.
What Shall be Next?
I think we all shall start to think about what we want Steemit to be, how we want to be part of this growing community, if we want the community to survive and stay in the market for a long time to come, how we think a community will work in the longer run!
When we form our own opinions on these matters, I suggest we start communicating this with each other and at the same time we may give our suggestions how we want and/or can control those events that are not in line with our own thoughts.
We have the Flag feature to downvote any post or comment that we may not like. But a lot of 'Time' and 'Steem Power' is required for downvoting to be effective and we do not have that many community members with AND a lot of Steem Power AND a lot of time available. Therefore, we must combine our efforts!
Proposal
Community Controlled Committee & Enforcement Body
I propose we start a collective, community regulated committee with a strong arm to take measures against whatever we as a community decide to be wrong. Such committee and strong arm will be based on what we as a community decide for. Anything that we as the community think is wrong, shall be taken onboard by this committee and they shall lead the process and activities required to come to proper measurements.
I for sure do not have all the answers; However, I try to start a discussion with you all on how we can and shall move forward. Below I list some of the ideas that crossed my mind and may support you in thinking along with me and start discussing the general topic "How Do We Want to Progress our Community?"
- Committee members shall be voted for by the community
- What we think is 'right' or 'wrong', shall be defined and voted for by the community
- What measurements we take shall be voted for by the community
- What processes are put in place shall be voted for by the community
- How these processes are put in place shall be voted for by the community
- Everything done by the Committee and Strong Arm shall be 100% transparent and all actions shall be recorded and published at some place we can access easily
- We may need a notice board in our User Interface (UI), a special channel, a special button that takes us to all relevant information
- We need a 'referendum' system in which we can ask the community for some idea or rule to vote for, including the ability for all of us to cast our votes
- We for sure need support of Whales to give the Strong Arm the power for effective Flagging
- We may need anonymous Flagging
- We for sure need a good number of community members to help uncover anything that we collectively define as "not wanted"
- We for sure need to build in a mechanisms for anybody to have the opportunity to explain him/herself when such member is suspected of some wrong doing - Maybe valid reasons exists for some behaviour that in fact is wrong, but in reality, is right
I'm sure we need more than the above, or less if the community thinks so. I'm really interested in learning from you what your thoughts are!
End Words: The Beginning
For sure I do not have the answers, I only know that when we do want a community that prospers; That has a long time in front of us; We must create a kind of culture that supports such outlook. The culture that we seem to be creating now, does not support a long future for Steemit, I'm afraid. I also know that without collaboration, and consensus, we will continue like we are handling things now and in the end, does more harm than good!
For sure, not everything can be solved by technology. And when something seems to be solved by technology, other forms of abuse are made possible again. Therefore, it is my strong believe we need humans involved to create a culture that will give us good cards to survive as a community in the longer run.
I really would like to read/hear from you what your thoughts are! What your views are to all the things addressed in this post! And in any ideas, you may have how to move forward.
I'm also very much ok when you think my views and ideas are totally rubbish! Please let me know as well!
Also let me know when you are not in favour of or do not want to contribute to a community that will be here for a long time to come; Fair enough if you think like that.
Most important is: Whatever your thoughts are; Whatever ideas you have; Don't keep them for yourself, but share them with the community. That is the only way to figure out collective goals. The only way to create a community. The only way to reach consensus. The only way to implement changes.
