I've been umming and ahhing over whether I should stand as a referee in the upcoming elections. While I like the idea of having a means of cancelling out some the more blatant abuse that takes place on the platform, I'm still torn over having a centralised force removing rewards for some areas that I feel are quite subjective. Still better to try and be a positive influence on an organisation from within and now that the gig is a 2-week affair it means I can opt-in and out as my timetable allows.
Experience Fighting Abuse
It all started here on steemit a couple of years ago where I got involved in trying to make an impact in the ocean of plagiarism that I found when I first arrived here. I did A LOT of reporting to Steemcleaners, acquired the rank of detective on their discord server and to this day I am still one of the all-time top 10 reporters to Steemcleaners despite having spent the best part of a year away from the Steem blockchain.
Still number 9 on the all-time list of abuse fighters! source
Identifying and preventing plagiarism isn't something that I just do on the blockchain. I've worked for over a decade in education and most of that time in Higher Education so I've seen my fair share of people trying to cheat their way to grades they don't deserve in much the same way that some users will look to steal from the reward pool. Those professional skills coupled with experience of the kind of scams and tricks that individuals use to try and cover up their acts on Steem mean that I'm pretty adept at identifying and sourcing plagiarism when I see it.
What I think the referee role should involve
In a nutshell, fighting obvious and quantifiable abuse. I think that any reasonable member of the community would agree that the following are a blight on the platform and drain on the reward pool
- Plagiarism
- Copy & paste
- Comment spam
- Comment farming
- Tag abuse inc. non-sports related content
What I think referees shouldn't be involved in
There are a whole load of very subjective and grey areas of "abuse" that in my opinion should in most instances be avoided by the central referee team. That is not because I might not personally see them as abuse but more because I don't think that you will ever find a community consensus on what for example constitutes a low/high-quality post or what a circle jerk is, etc. etc.
Individual users have been given 2.5 free downvotes to use a day and they should be encouraged to use them to remove rewards on the basis of quality/value as they see fit rather than relying on a central account to modify and censor content for them - if you want that kind of system then go post on Facebook!
Full details of the election can be found here
