Dear SportsTalkSocial Members

in #abuse5 years ago

I would like to discuss and present to you a problem which I can see affecting the growth of our community.

Firstly, it is not my wish to be someone who wishes to manage / control how our community acts, nor do I wish to produce this content over writing sports related articles.

However, for our community to grow and have solid roots from the start, we need to discuss and potentially take action when we see misconduct in our ranks.


Pending Reward Management

On sportstalksocial.com, we are each given one full and 'free' downvote each day. This means that we can reduce the pending rewards of a piece of content without reducing our 'SPORTS' voting power.

Abuse, as defined by clicking the downvote icon on the website is defined as:



It is down to the individual to decide if what they see falls into any of the above categories - your vote, either up or down, is solely your choice.

With that said, I would like to give you a short list of links which in my opinion can be classified as falling into at least one of the points in the image above:

link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link
link

Each of the links point to a short comment, 'hi', 'hello', etc, which have pending rewards I feel are too high. Personally, I think that the above is the equivalent of doing something like this:


1.gif

If you have time today, would you take a look at some of these links and if you feel that these potential rewards are undeserved, use your free downvote to remove some of the pending reward?

On some links, you will see a comment from myself which provides a reason behind the downvote:



Sadly, the list above is only the tip of the iceberg and I am hoping that a moderator account will be used to find and help remove rewards with are undeserved.




Questions

Do you feel that a list of posts/comments which can no longer be rewarded via an upvote (older than 4 days), but can have the pending reward reduced should be released each day so that community members can easily check for potential abuse?

Do you feel that a moderator account should be used to reduce the type of potential rewards in the links above?

What else should moderators or communities members look for with regards to abuse?


Finally

It is possible for the sportstalksocial management to ban a user completely from the site. I would like to think that a decision to do this would not be taken lightly, but I wish to make members aware that it is possible.


Thank you for your time, enjoy watching one of the major events taking place today!

Asher

Sort:  

Sorry I was a bit late to the party. Just dropped a full downvote on them all.
If you, as an old and very trusted Steemie wanted to set up a Sportscleaners account, I would happily delegate 10 or 20K to it. If we could get maybe 10 plus nice people here to do the same, you could have a 200K Pot to use for downvoting.
These farming circles are only going to become a bigger and bigger problem for the next few weeks while the token numbers settle down a bit.
Also a coincidence some of these posts are also in Turkish and tagged TR as was the two accounts I pulled yesterday?

No worries, there are a lot more coming for sure.

Probably not a coincidence with the TR. :/

I think there is a mod account waiting to break into action and it could well be letting the community figure out what's cool or not first.

Downvoted all of them and the one I added. Total bullshit and I don't care about my VP anymore.

lol my steem vp is down to 37% from voting on sports and leo tribes. now im starting to prop it up by buying more steem hahaha

Lol. You are lucky to be able to do that. I don't care anymore as a few days of a few good downvotes and hopefully it will stop. I am glad you are here as this place needs a bit of help.

michealb.sports required?!

Thanks for helping out here :)

I joined you

Thanks @flipstar. I am hoping by the end of today it will be sorted.

Others have joined in, but for me the display on the payout for that comment is incorrect?

I don't think so as another one slipped through the cracks a day ago.

I don't think so as
Another one slipped through the
Cracks a day ago.

                 - cryptoandcoffee


I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

I know your intention is good but it seems like the solution we're thinking can be like a two-edge sword. It has good and bad effect to the community as a whole. Do we really think that the platform can attract a lot of investors if they know that their potential profit can be downvoted? In some worst cases, others are just tripping those with smaller staked amounts. I totally agree that we need to keep the community clean and avoid abuse as much as possible but we should also be careful what we wish for. I'm hoping that downvote feature won't be used as form of bullying in the future. It would a waste if that happens.

It certainly no intention of mine to bully anyone, and from what I've seen in the #sportstalk tag there has been none of that so far.

Do we really think that the platform can attract a lot of investors if they know that their potential profit can be downvoted?

I would hope that more investors would arrive if they could see that blatant abuse was not tolerated and thus their 'profit' by curating and creating solid content would be higher.

Good call,
from their reputation you can tell they are not here to help.
We should watch closely for these invadors.
Keep on postin

Yes the reputation is a good indication, and the 21 upvotes on each of them too.

Community on the lookout :)

went and downvoted the first 3.

Nice :) I have brought the hammer out on 13 so far, but it's a hopeless task without more involved.

Part of the issue is time to find and locate potential abuse but I see Patrick has linked a spreadsheet in this post

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lSxM3VK_VvhdfDRLUbP_PTueOE7LxHhy6F4edQN_nsk/edit#gid=1904657324

will have a look. you said post payout after 4 days. just realized the top 3 where 5 days?

Post pays out after 7 but can no longer earn upvotes after 4, giving 3 full days to manage the potential reward with a downvote.

99% sure :)

I have left a comment. As above, it is down to community members to decide if this falls into the category of abuse.

I will check on the content later today.

I still think the sportstalk team has to orgatize a control group, delegate a certain amount of toekn for the downvote, create an official server to give the possibility of defense, create a team similar to @jaguar-force, I don't like to destroy , I prefer to build but if needed I am willing to help the platform.

I believe this will come soon enough, and think that everyone would prefer to build rather than go seeking undeserving content.

Agreed in all aspects - joining in downvoting too.

Great :) I'm glad that others agree this isn't the right way to go about things.

I think the 50-50 helps for such cases but we will never totally get rid of all these abusers in total but as long as the community / tribe is relatively small we should do all we can!

While the community is small it's easier to manage, but the hope is that as it grows there is still an eye on abuse.

Resteemed of course too!

Cheers!

Yep - agreed again. A free downvote is cool as well! I hope there are not adventourous investor whales coming here, push millions and then curate like asses - that could eb dangerous

I hope there are not adventurous investor whales coming here, push millions and then curate like asses

Yeah!

Sadly I cant buy the book and try to protect, but together as a group it's possible :)

Just tagged you in a comment - I love avid posters but some simply post too much - I added a fair "warning" incl. offer to help by you and myself :-).

Yeah Gina told me about it and I left a note. 24 posts he's put out today - that is a lot!

The community is small enough to be able to find the good content and I think if they posted one decent piece a day it would earn more than banging out tens of shorties.

Absolutely agree - hence not sure the guys have a similar thinking on it

I was genuinely about to write a very similar post but thought I better check the trending/hot sections to see if someone had already done it.

I have been noticing a few accounts spamming comments already with things like "Hello!", "Yep", "Hi" and it's really annoying.

We need to act as a community moderation team in this regard and all do our bit to censor/devalue these posts.

We need to act as a community moderation team in this regard and all do our bit to censor/devalue these posts.

Exactly that. A team effort and with a little help from information finders I think we have a chance to set the precedent early.

Will join downvoting - question, a free downvote here is still reducing the VP on Steem right?

If you are using the same account yes. I have moved my SPORTS to this account. It is now possible to delegate SPORTS to another account if you are already powered up.

ok, too many accounts to manage, downvoted two of them, will do some more later with another account. Thanks for the heads-up

Thanks for helping out :)

Welcome - is there any list of abusers I can join daily to downvote? @abh12345.sports

@sportsmod

They are downvoting with a lot of VP at present, but more eyes would likely be a help.

Cheers mate - I will follow them and see what I can do with my limitted power there

my dearest pleasure!

Good work.

We might need better curating! It would take a lot of time to read through many postings, which is not an easy job. You have put your valuable time to make this possible. Thanks. Today, I got rid of some of the participants on my SPORTS white list because of some posts that could be seen as abuse. It is very hard to monitor.

Meanwhile, we have to think about how to reward newcomers who are willing to participate in this community. Without be rewarded, it would be hard for them to keep on. I am trying to list some of the newcomers on my SPORTS white list, but it is time-consuming. Still, I feel I need to do it. Not only is it important to reward high-quality postings but also we need to make all participants feel welcomed. It is my personal opinion.

Thanks for putting your effort into it. We will keep discussing many issues needed our attention. :D

Better curation is one thing for sure, and help in unearthing this type of content would certainly be of use.

I do try to spend much of my time on the 'New' tab, while the community is still small and offer votes out to a lot of different authors.

I think they are more likely to stick around if they see content reward consistently, which also involves little/no rewards.

Cheers :)

Well said.

Happy to downvote this kind of abuse or delegate to a central pool of SP with established community criteria for what constitutes abuse in order to prevent it happening long term

Cheers.

A central pool is an option but i think in the first instance it's down to individuals to work on the criteria and to act in unison on what it considered abuse. Folks will see it differently, and that's fine I guess. One word comments with 21 upvotes though, i think we can all agree that ain't right!

This is wonderful beginning. Those examples that you have are clearly mind blowing. I understand that there are some who puts so much effort in creating their original content, others such as myself tend to share videos via dtube, news via dlike and sometimes during my free time creates my own posts as well however the ones that you've linked above is way getting overboard. I can't believe that a simple "Hi" deserves a reward of 5k Sports. That's just unacceptable so I dropped it down with a beautiful downvote. I'll now be utilizing this "FREE" downvote on a regular basis.

Thanks very much @akilie1029. I think sharing video content with your own story and feelings is fine. Upvoting short comments not so much, we don't need so much of that. Cheers :)

I totally agree to that, I do upvote those who are dropping comments on my posts but of course on a small percentage but enough to show gratitude for them taking time to read my post and even drop a comment. But as what I've seen in those links, those really doesn't deserve those rewards. During my free time I'll also try to come up with a list of such abusers.

Despite all the good reasons for downvoting posts or comments, don't we think that upvoting quality content should be a priority?

I have seen plenty of posts that imo deserve a significant upvote but don't get any. If we support those, especially in the early stages of establishment, the long-term impact will be far greater.

I also question the mob/crowd tactics. Is it fair to flag up people and ask others to downvote? It may be straightforward in some cases, but in others, who knows? The examples listed are blatant (and justified), but not all I them may be.

It makes more sense to me to have a cleaning service (as proposed) that can downvote on posts in a transparent way. This will only be fair if it is driven by the community and has transparency. That would also allow for an educational element (I believe in educating members first before handing out punishment) that would retain community members (by being welcoming) and improve quality overall. The SteemStem community is a nice example I think.

Anyways, these are my 2 cents. In short, I support action on bad actors but we may have to organise ourselves to ensure fairness and positivity.

Hi @p-sycophant

Yes i understand your points and would much prefer to spend my time seeking good content to support over finding blatant abuse.

In theory, a downvote raises the value of ever other reward that is pending payout. Solid content can be missed, but reducing rewards on abuse is kind of like an upvote to everything else, and this could be really noticeable if a lot of pending reward was removed from undeserving content.

I hope that 'mob tactics' don't come into play, i guess part of it is that the larger accounts are somewhat in tune with what is unacceptable, and that everyone should try to avoid taking without adding value.

It makes more sense to me to have a cleaning service (as proposed) that can downvote on posts in a transparent way.

I believe this is coming, but as it is not here just yet and rewards are already leaking out to blatant abuse, I don't think we should sit by and watch. I expect a Discord channel or a daily report will appear soon enough.

Thanks for your input,

Asher

as already indicated to @cryptoandcoffee, it would be useful to create an account to report abuses or a channel on Discord where you can report misconduct such as those reported by you.

Posted using Partiko Android

Yes I agree. A report issued by a moderator account to the chain would be good I think.

A discord channel to report sounds like a good plan.

Seems all these comments now are edited to "delete or Del" - is that something they did or a central community source?

Definitely something they did. A guilty conscience perhaps?

Can I talk about my amateur golf escapades there or do you glassify golf as a game more suitable for gg? Off topic posters deserve downvotes

Posted using Partiko Android

I quite like a bit of golf :)

Any sport is fair game!

We must protect our chain and stake from those suckers! Thanks for the heads up mate!

Absolutely! The good times will not last long if people taking as much as possible, with as little effort as possible.

Just joined Sportstalk. I have seen platforms curbing this behavior early and preventing these abusers from becoming a minnow that snowballs into dolphins status. I won't flag blindly of course but I will be helping yall out :).

I think starting as you mean to go on is the best way to approach blatant abuse. Glad to have you on-board :)

Thank you kindly. I am really liking the atmosphere yall have built I plan on bringing more game devs onto here. A united front and what not against abuse. People creating original content because its actually their games haha.

I've seen a few sports games related posts - I'm a long time player of Championship/Football Manager and think I'll have to write up regarding my 25+ year addiction to that one at some point!

Just seen you've piled in with around 150k SPORTS off the bat, nice!

Haha, sharp eye there sir. I saw a void that needed to be filled. A nerdy esports guy who can onboard influencers, streamers, gamers and has his own sports/crypto podcast to boot. I sometimes feel like a D&D character where they spun a wheel and wrote down attributes from there.

Oh and I will roast a spammer like they're made of marshmellows.

Steem in general is in real need of people who can on-board influencers who can pass the good message on further and so I'm interested to see on what you can do here.

Sometimes I think I was born 10 years too early for gaming - there has been some real perks for gamers via twitch etc over the last decade or so. However, that would mean I missed games of the 80's and early 90's and I don't think I'd swap those years for anything!

I really agree to downvote people cheating, this step I value is very good and also right.

Right on :)

Very good initiative!
4 days ago i add my first post on SportsTalkSocial: NBA Loyalty and how it Completely lost it's Value! (i did not add a link because i did not want to be consider as spam)... and i worked on this post couple of good hours and did not receive not even one vote. Anyway i don't understand how those posts can get votes?!?
I think the idea of ban a user completely from the site is an excellent one... and it will be very beneficiary in the long run!

Hi @georgemales

Basketball isn't my sport as I am British and do not know anything about this sport :)

I think banning users will be rare and only in extreme cases.

Hi @abh12345
I have a lot of British friends who are watching NBA and basketball in general so i don't think it's a matter of Geo-location as it's a matter of taste. Since you add the "Hand of God" from 1986 World Cup i assume you love football :)
I remember last year @steemhunt added bans for 2 weeks or one month depending of the case as one point was a lot of abuse on their platform. So depending of the case that particular member could not use the platform. Maybe a completely ban it's to much but one with a time frame it's more appropriate...

Athletico 3.15 Beverley

Missed it - 2nd though.

Not backed one yet, they are waiting for me ;)

I am new and not really sure what this all means but it sounds like a good idea to have people to review posts to make sure that the Trending has good articles to read.

I joined and downvoted all of them, I have to buy more token and delegate them to this account for more punishment xD

Good stuff! :D

Excellent review @abh12345.sports, I looked at your links to spam comments and noticed a strange tendency that all the enhancements in these comments make the same accounts, it looks like a voting farm!

Thank you :)

Yes I suspect a voting farm also, I hope we can work together to control abuse here.

That can only be possible with the help of community coming along a great platform this is time to make it even better : )

Congratulations @abh12345.sports! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You distributed more than 500 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 600 upvotes.

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To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

I'm glad you moved this topic. If everyone will watch the sportstalk tag, we will be good curators themselves. I joining.

Hi Asher! I've been traveling for the last 10 days and had just a few minutes a day for blockchain, that's why I'm late with my comment.
It's very sad to see what's happening here. Looks like money brings out the worst of people. I hope these people are going to understand what's the right thing to do.
You're doing a great job as always. Keep it up 😉