I wouldn't mind the experiment, even if it made us lab rats, as long as it was useful.

But, for it to be useful, every whale would need to be involved, and it would need to be over a 48 hour period to account for payout extensions. This is completely unscientific, and we will learn nothing of value from it, so all it is doing is hurting the platform. My post seems to be drawing traffic from YouTube too, and if they had seen a suitable payout they may have considered joining Steemit, now they see 175 likes, and next to no payout, so they will think this site is shit.

abit posted about it, not too long ago, but then downvoted my post and thecryptofiend's that were upvoted by whales long before the experiment was said to have began. 

But, yes, I really think we ought to have been told about something like this in advance. This has likely fucked over quite a few people, and for no good reason as we won't learn shit about what kind of difference would have been made.

I'm with you on that, and I believe steps ought to be taken. I am even putting a lot of work in myself to help Steemit in whatever way I can.

But, every time I try and help with one problem, another one pops up and it's beginning to feel like a game of wack-a-mole. I have sacrificed a lot to do my part for this platform, and even I am beginning to feel that my time would better spent elsewhere. 

I love the idea of Steemit. It was one of the most exciting things I had read about in a long time and I was ecstatic to come and join. But, the concept is infinitely better than the reality, and I think I have been in denial telling myself that I have the power to make things better.

All I see is shit getting worse and half-arsed, spontaneous and illogical attempts to do better.

We really need to communicate with each other a lot more and we might still have a chance to solve some of these issues.

I want to see what happens, under good conditions that provide accurate information.

What will you learn at the end of this experiment? Nothing. If it turns out that the posts with 400+ votes and less than 40% of them by people who viewed the post, we will find out that curation trails have power. Something we already know. But, we won't even know how much, because there has been an imbalance of whale votes and whale flags on posts.

I know that if you took Dan's vote away from my post, and excluded the whale flags, I'd have more than $0.50. And how many others also have inconsistent values on their posts. When you add that all up, I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at a 50% loss in efficacy in regards to the experiment, and so whatever we learn will be up for debate. That's not science at all. That's guess work.

Lol. Some experiment that seems to have entirely no planning gone into it.

I was referring to this post.

https://steemit.com/satire/@son-of-satire/scientists-prove-that-conspiracy-theorists-are-mentally-ill

I'm not typically one to complain, but where is the logic in using four whale flags to neutralize only one whale upvote? If this is really about retaining the purity of the results then efforts should be taken to balance the STEEM power used to downvote posts that have been upvoted by whales. 

I wouldn't mind it if my post was downvoted because someone considered it to be shit. Or even if simply because they did not like me personally. But for my first decent payout in quite some time, which has only been the case because of how much I have spoken out in attempts to help Steemit, to be downvoted four times because it was *too* good, and earned a vote from dan... It's fucking silly. Lol.

Was at 40ish and 5th on the trending list before I noticed the first two flags, that knocked it down to 5 dollars. Then two more came along and knocked it down to $0.47 cents. Lol.

So yes, that is somewhat annoying when taking my recent streak of low rewards, but the rep is probably more of a problem. I didn't actually lose anything with the payout, only had something I was maybe going to get be taken away. But, with the rep, I literally spent my time on writing an article in order to receive a loss.. 

It's not hard getting from 68 to 69 when you have next to no whale support and no curation trail backing regardless of quality.. So, for me to make a post that so many people seem to have loved and then end up on a lower rep then before I started, is really fucking silly.

I also disagree with this reasoning behind flagging, but that's not actually what is going on here right now. It's an experiment to see how things would be if no whale used their votes, but not all the whales are on board. If someone upvotes a post with a lot of weight, the whales who are involved find the post and destroy it to regain "balance." 

I do believe their intent is pure, but their execution is deeply flawed.

I'm with you... I see no point in conducting an experiment under anything but perfect conditions, and these are far from it. 

It's up to you, but you could just save that particular post for a later date if you're worried it might be good enough to get a whale upvote, that would then lead to two, three or four whale downvotes.

No idea when it will end but, the best explanation you're going to get about it will come from @timcliff's most recent post.

Well, why not eh?

You already gave me a higher deduction in reward shares than was received by the whale upvote on my last post that was trending, which has somehow still has managed to garner more views and comments than the current top three trending posts combined.

I'll notify you the next time I make a post so that you can downvote that one way more than it was upvoted too.