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Make Downvotes Great Again?

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2 months ago6 min read

Your downvote is invited!

On downvoting and curation

Downvoting is a tricky thing. My opinion is that a downvote-free system should be possible and would be preferable (for example). However, my opinion is also that we don't currently have such a system.

The problem of curation is the problem of accurately ranking/appraising a post's value. When we get it wrong, that damages the blockchain's credibility and (presumably) the value of STEEM. (IMO) This means that overvalued posts are as much of a problem to the ecosystem and the value of STEEM as undervalued posts. It's two sides of the same coin.

But, we have seen in the past that heavy downvoting in order to regulate overvaluations leads to retaliation, disappointment, and a lot of fear among blockchain participants. In recent years, this problem is complicated by a number of high-value investors who specifically depend on the existence of overvalued posts for their ROI.

As a result of these negative aspects and investment use cases, I think that most of us are not using any/all of our downvote resources in our curation activities.

So, the question is, how do we make use of the regulatory power of the downvote without harming investors and without instilling fear among blockchain participants?

^{Pixabay license from geralt}

The concept

Some years ago, when the account was still active, I remember that @personz had posted something about a telegram/discord chat group where he was a member.

In this chat group, participants were invited to post links to their articles for the attention of curators. There was a catch, however. Posting your link in this chat came with conditions.

Specifically, group members understood that when a link was posted there, all group members were going to respond in one of two ways: upvote or downvote.

The idea, as I understood and remember it, was that under those conditions someone is only going to submit their link if they're fairly sure that the post is something that people are going to like.

I have no idea where this chat group was, but I assume that it's no longer active. Also, I personally don't use discord or telegram applications because I think the applications are bloated and I don't like the way that they intrude into all aspects of my device. Finally, I am not a fan of "out of band" solutions to Steem problems. I think, whenever possible, Steem problems should be solved inside the Steem ecosystem.

However, I thought at the time and still think now that the idea of seeking guaranteed votes (up or down) was a really good one from the perspective of incubating content that will attract eyeballs to the ecosystem.

The possibilities

Some time ago, it occurred to me that a Steem community could be created for the same purpose. I didn't write about it at the time, though, because proposing a community implies the need for admins, moderators, and membership-related activities, and I don't have time to get into those activities.

Recently, though @the-gorilla reminded me that communities are less effective than tags for SEO. After that, it occurred to me that maybe we could implement the upvote/downvote game at a specific tag. For example, maybe we could call it "Running #thegauntlet"?

All we would need is an understanding that anyone posting using the agreed tag (in tag#2-5) is signaling their belief to curators that this post is of sufficient to quality to upvote, and at the same time requesting a downvote if the curator disagrees - or if the curator thinks that the current valuation is too high. In other words, the author is specifically requesting an accurate appraisal, not just an upvote.

Then, people could use the tag with a post on their own blog or in any community. If it works as theorized, to promote attractive content, this could be used in conjunction with relevant first-tags in order to enhance Steemit's SEO, and it could be used in communities to attract subscribers and participation.

Objections

This suggestion dodges most of the past problems with downvoting because it's easy for an author to avoid the downvotes. Just don't use the tag. The people who are using the tag are precisely the ones who believe that their content can withstand some extra scrutiny.

The main challenge I see is that we would need enough curators to monitor the tag and to vote one way or the other on every post they see. Once again, we start out with a "herding cats" problem. If enough curators don't participate, there will be no incentive for authors to participate. Extending on that, Steemit might also need to adjust their downvoting rules to enable participation by their community curation teams.

Another objection might be that the overvalued content will still be out there. This is true, but at least we can hope to cultivate more attractive content that would offset it in our search rankings. Further, as attractive content expands, that should reduce the ability to profiteer from overvalued content. I've said this many times, but it's still true: audience + rewards is more valuable than rewards alone. If we succeed at delivering an audience for content creators, the audience-driven creators should be able to outcompete the creators who are seeking rewards alone.