When Mistakes Happen

         Hello there again! I guess this will be my last entry for @utopian-io. It has been a pleasure working with @elear and his team. I wish him and the company good luck in their future endeavors.

         In this post, I would like to touch bases on handling mistakes. As one of the admins for @steemflagrewards (SFR), I review the flags cast by our colleagues. One of the most challenging aspect of anti-abuse initiatives is efficiency. In this case, let efficiency equals to speed and accuracy. We will leave other factors out for another time.

         Speed and accuracy can go hand in hand as initiatives try to improve their processes. In reality, in a given workflow, they sometimes have an inverse correlation. If they go for one, the other suffers.

         What happens when a mistake occurs? I would like to showcase a few examples and their resolutions.

Example 1:

         Here, the author in question received flags for bid bot abuse and plagiarism. This post was in Trending when reported to SFR. There was a problem, there was no plagiarism when we found out the images used were from Pixabay.

         Unfortunately, the initial flag contained plagiarism as a keyword. All the following flags then displayed the same claim based on the Flag Trail algorithm. I, for one, am glad SFR no longer uses the repetitive "follow-on" flags when downvoting abuse. It is much cleaner, less bloat, and avoid showing the wrong information multiple times.

         Although the post still fits into SFR's scope of abuse, it was not plagiarism. This was my statement on the matter.

What changed to prevent future incidents?

• Elimination of follow-on flags - would only need to modify two comments: the downvoter and the bot.
• Automatic approval follow-on instances - mods used to have to approve them one by one.
• Less time spent on approval - allowed mods to feel less pressured to get through everything. Pressure opens up opportunities where mods are not spending time to verify claims.

Example 2:

         Sometimes, it is difficult to judge someone's micro blogging. Especially, when they seem to be on a curation trail. When the owner of the account complained, the mods and admins at SFR gathered to discuss the case.

         In the end, we concluded that the Steemian in question was not milking Trevon's curation trail. We also compensated them for the downvotes we cast on their posts. Since it was not possible to reverse the downvotes, I felt that was the most logical approach.

What changed to prevent future incidents?

• Bring the posts in question to discussion in SFR Discord - everyone is free to downvote what they want. But, there needs to be some consensus on when to use our resources.

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         Mistakes can happen, but they also serve as tools to help us improve our workflow. In the case of @steemflagrewards, we do not shy away from our shortcomings, but find ways to rise above them.

         Our scopes are not rigid as the ecosystem evolves. If others have great ideas on how to enhance the operation, we listen. We are not here to eradicate abuse, but to mitigate them. The community needs to step up to protect their vested interests like the Tribes are doing.

         For every case where folks say we are not paying attention to, there is a genuine limit on time and resources. We encourage everyone who wants to see something done contribute to the cause. Or, they can brainstorm ways to make things better.

         Remember, anti-abuse is not the solution to a problem. Anti-abuse is the band-aid that stops the bleeding until you fix the problem. It is there to buy time before things get out of hand.

         That's for now. I will still be writing. Take care, everyone!

         Abuse Series will continue irregardless what happens to Utopian-io.

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