RE: To vote yourself up, or not to vote yourself up, that's the question.
You're right... Glad you wrote. Notice I did say botty friends because some of these bots are indeed healthy for the system even if people take time to warm up and learn about them. :)
I often hear the term Sybil, but I'd like to define it for our readers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
@arhag is correct. Humans can want things, but sockpuppets and bots will usually find away around the system. So if you implement changes, you better be sure it passes the Sybil test... (Otherwise you could be jumping out of one fire, and into a nastier fire instead)
I especially like this part:
It would help if the UI separated out displaying downvotes for the purposes of too high rewards from the more menacing flag which could be reserved as a symbol for downvotes given for reasons involving fraud, scams, plagiarism, and/or hate speech.
I would love to see that in place.
Seconding this idea of "downvotes" being separate from flags. Maybe downvotes would be half-power flags or something?
IT's tough though, there are times when I wanna downvote something but I feel really awkward about sticking my neck out and looking like a jerk.
Great post BTW - not something I think about too much. My general strategy is to upvote my own original posts, but not comments - which means I'm only giving myself about 2 upvotes per day.
Problem with down votes is, that it ends up being a tit for tat. I as a minnow, down voted a popular article from a whale, so he picked my best article and slugged me. He lost a tiny fraction off is $1000+ article, while I lost a huge bite from my $100 one.
Ya!! I would not have the balls to flag a whale. Sorry that happened to you.
Tit for tat is childish in my opinion and bullying should not be tolerated. Might does not make it right.
Sure, but it does not stop it happening, right or wrong.
No, but as a society, if we all agree on certain etiquette or rules and someone breaks those rules, then as a group, that person is chastised. If (and that's a big IF) we can ever get everyone to agree, then things get solved.
I did see that applied to one of the Steemit scammers that had his post flagged out of existence.
Unfortunately, there are always a few that attempt to gain an upper hand by less-than-honorable-means. As long as there are consequences, it is possible to somewhat control things. That's what makes society a society. At least in my own definition for 'society' (which is people living in harmony with one another).