@whatageek Is that your Cat??

The flagging on here seems to be getting worse! I read trending from time to time and have noticed more and more people flaggin stuff it seems they disagree with.

<blockquote>It is the same with bots. You can fully disagree with bots but it is allowed in the system so why punish those who use them?</blockquote>
Couldnt agree more with this. To many people trying to fight the system - for now the bots are here to stay so why worry about it?

Maybe its just me but Steemit has become a bit negative at the top ... maybe it was always like that though. 

I generally think flagging should only be for scams, spam and plagarism and should actually be encouraged in these cases.

> You can fully disagree with bots but it is allowed in the system so why punish those who use them?

Because paying bullies to take rewards for you cannot be resisted without resorting to something they cant ignore?

Bidbot owners know they arent acting in the interests of the whole, but care more about their roi than the longevity of the platform.
You can bet they take their profits and lock them in just as quick as they can.
Once they are operating on profits, and not principal, they dont give af about steem's long term outlook.

'But the code allows it', smdh.
Yep, and if i kicked every passerby in the shins there isnt any unkicking them, is there?
There is no stopping me by nonviolent means, either.
So, because life allows kicking people in the shins i should be free to continue?

What we need are bots upvoting those that downvote abuse.
@steemflagrewards has a bot that does it, but they dont have enough sp to match the value lost by downvoting.
Even if it returned just 25% of the vote's value that would encourage spam fighting.

It has been proven time and again that positive reinforcements almost always leads to better results. Steemit has great potential and I think it can only be harnessed to its full extent if we allow the people work here with passion rather than fear.

'.........is to stress we need to avoid a site where people are put in a position where they have to post the bare minimum so they avoid a flag....'

This statement is so true. Perhaps we need to be even careful in making sure that we encourage the newbies by comments and perhaps slip in minor comment to let them know that they can make the post even better without the copy and paste content.

Flagging bots is also allowed by the system.

Hello and greetings from Venezuela.
You are right to give these observations to improve the content of the page, so I think that many people do not publish with such care because they are often not rewarded for doing so, I believe that the curators of the page should be agents of motivation and help with their tips and explanatory notes about how to make good content to encourage people to improve every day.

Agreed positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement, there should be a way to punish bad actors and a I think a separate vp bar for flagging would encourage people to flag bad actors more often because it doesn't reduce their rewards or the money they can give to others. 

But in my opinion the focus should be put on rewarding good actors, since people in Steem like gamification, I've thought thinks like positive account modifiers could be created to encourage good behaviors, for example, if you vote on a lot of different accounts instead of self voting, you get a 5% rewards modifier on all the oncoming votes to you too get you extra rewards or you get 10% extra curation for a week and so on, Let's start using the reward pool in different ways to actually reward people. 

The way Steem is set up I feel like everyone is also on eggshells though. No one writes criticism or constructive feedback because they're all paralyzed at the prospect of being flagged.

> When you have a negative system it leads to feelings of stress and unease and as steemit is a fun site that pays, not a job, we need to strive for the latter.

Don't you mean the former?

> I 100% agree with plagiarism and scams. I flagged a post that was trying to phish for people's account info. But beyond that I think we need to be careful.

Perhaps. It's up to a culture to develop, and it already has. Your post here is part of a debate on that culture. It's good that you can do it. You say that bots are allowed, but so are votes, both up and down. That's freedom as far as I can see it.

> Not everyone is a writer or wants to grind on a site that isn't rewarding them. And it is not healthy for the site.

You're right. And shorter posts can be good, though I don't agree with your proposition that shorter posts are of higher quality. However I wouldn't change a thing there. We need the debates, we need the contributions, we need the ability to down vote as well as up.

You don't have any concrete systematic suggestion here. Is there one lurking?

I donot think about it.
Thanks for sharing sir @whatageek.

A system where you can only give flags for max 25% 
but the more flags the post gets
the more % can the next people flag

so when 5 people have already flagged it
the next 5 can flag for like 35-40%

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