Vybrainium Moderation

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to present a policy draft to the Hive community. The Verify Your Brain tribe wishes to communicate developing policies on abuse mitigation and reporting. The VYB Moderation policy presented today is a draft of the Anti-Abuse Team guidance we expect to follow for the foreseeable future. The article will be a living document and adjusted based on community input and lessons learned. We desire community engagement to ensure that this policy fulfills both the admin team and community needs to sustain and expand the platform.

We would like your input, opinions, and advise. What works? What doesn't? How can we improve? I only ask that you be professional in your commentary.

Prologue

We invest in one thing to enhance something else. Athletes invest time and energy to reach ever-greater heights of physical prowess. Students can also spend their time and energy to raise their intellectual aptitudes. The paths may be different, but the end goal is always the same: End up better than where you started.

The Hive blockchain provides an investment opportunity for people with one or many goals to achieve something more significant. For Hive to operate successfully, however, it requires certain behaviors from the community. There are rules we need to follow to protect what we have.

Verify Your Brain (VYB)

The Verify Your Brain tribe (VYB) provides a subjective-DV free tribe that, like Proof of Brain, caters to the needs of every content creator. Do you want to write about finances, art, music, STEM, or fiction? No problem! In this layer-2 tribe, you can't just remove rewards based upon opinion. However, like any investment, it still requires protection.

The typical means of moderating the blogosphere don't all apply to VYB. Using a DV merely marks the article. There is no financial impact at this time. VYB, instead, will utilize the tribal mute function to moderate its platform.

Tribe MUTE Function

All layer-2 tribes possess the ability to mute an article or author. The tribe using the mute function only affects that tribe. Enabling the tribe-specific mute function enacts the following actions:

• Article Mute: The community mutes the author's article. The mute denies the author and voters all article rewards.
• Author Mute: The community mutes the author. The tribe denies all rewards to the author. The author's comments and articles will be invisible to the tribe.

There is a stigma associated with the downvote and its relationship to censorship. Rest assured that the use of the mute function IS censorship. So, what do we do with this knowledge? How can we protect the community against fraud and improper use of the mute function?

It is with these questions I recall @themarkymark's article on risks with Hive-Engine tribes. While he spoke at length about tribe financial risks, I was focused upon how a tribe might employ moderation.

Moderation Purpose

Moderation protects the community from abusive behaviors related to both upvotes and downvotes.

• Abusive Upvoting (AUV): Scammers can act to defraud the platform within its very boundaries.
  • They can work to abuse the upvote (UV) system to gain wealth that people would otherwise have to work hard to receive.
  • There are many ways this can occur, and moderation is one process to mitigate their behaviors.
  • Moderation within the VYB tribe works to mitigate those abuses defined by Hive-Downvote-Rewards group founded by @anthonyadavisii.
  • AUVs occur far more frequently than ADVs.
• Abusive Downvoting (ADV):
  • Downvotes (DV) could become abusive when people continually downvote each other without reason or justification.
• Cross-Layer Moderation
  • Verify Your Brain is a layer-2 tribe interwoven within the Hive Blockchain.
  • Actions taken on layer-1 against a content creator may apply to layer-2 following evaluation.
  • The tribe may report actions taken on layer-2 to appropriate layer-1 regulators for additional corrective actions.

Many scenarios exist that point towards abusive behaviors. We could probably write several volumes about the topic. The point of this article isn't to discuss them all but instead to present how we plan to manage moderation within the Verify Your Brain tribe.

Moderation Group

Team Setup

Moderating tribe activities requires a team of individuals dedicated to monitoring abusive practices within the tribe. Ideally, we would like to have a group of 5 individuals working at various times to monitor VYB activities and mitigate any abusive behaviors.

Potential Moderators

If anyone is interested in fulfilling such a role in the community, please don't hesitate to contact @scholaris.

Moderators would:

• Assist in developing a moderating schedule where they would agree to spend a portion of their time reviewing content.
• Document the articles they reviewed in a typical online application such as Google Sheets.
• Receive compensation in the form of a POB and/or VYB delegation for their work. The delegation would be active whenever they are assigned and fulfilling a "moderator" role.

Implementing Mute Functions

Application of the mute function occurs with justification and confirmation. In essence, we would utilize the mute feature similarly to how I currently issue downvotes within the Proof of Brain tribe:

• The author receives a notification of the violation (on the author OR article).
• The violation is reported to another moderator or regulatory group (i.e., HDR or HW, etc.) to confirm that the accused behavior qualifies as 'abuse'.
• The mute is issued against the article and/or author as follows:
  • Plagiarized articles, or those falling under Plagiarism.org's guidance, will receive a mute.
  • Trolling/spam/No content/phishing articles will receive a mute.
  • NSFW/violent articles will receive a mute.
  • Multiple violations by the same author (including alt accounts) will have a mute applied to that author's account and alt accounts.
• The community will receive reporting on mute actions regularly.
• The tribe administration team will post regular reports on mute actions.

Mute Period

• The length of a mute will increase depending upon the number of violations that occur.
  • One Week
  • One Month
  • Indefinite
• Articles found to be in violation of stated guidelines will be muted indefinitely unless the content creator takes prompt remedial action.

Past Payout

• The mute function also allows the tribe to take action against plagiarized, or other abusive, articles that are past the 7-day payout (to a degree).
• Content past the 7-day payout that gets missed by the moderation team may have a mute action applied against the content creator's account and their alt accounts.
• Under this situation the actions discussed in the "Implementing Mute Functions" section shall be applied.

Mute Exceptions

We cannot predict every scenario possible regarding abuse on the Hive platform. A MUTE might not be issued in some cases if the author responds promptly and corrects the issue.

• These cases would only occur if the author responds promptly.
• If the author is away from the blockchain for personal reasons, the communication of tribe MUTE actions would serve as a means to reach out to the author affected.

In other cases, a mute may be applied immediately for abusive actions reported by layer-1 regulators.

• The tribe administration shall notify the community of mutes that occur within the VYB tribe.
• Communications should occur within one week of applying mute actions against a content creator or their content.

Communications Matrix

Based upon interactions with the Hive and Proof of Brain communities, regular communications on moderator activities within the VYB tribe appears necessary. To maintain awareness within the tribe, the following communication activities, at a minimum, should occur:

Mute Appeals

Appeals are available to the content creator to appeal a decision of a MUTE action. Content creators wishing to appeal may do so as follows:

• Contact the moderation team via discord, or published article, to request an appeal of a given MUTE action.
  • If the tribe mutes an author, you can tag @scholaris in your article.
  • State the reason for your mute as you understand it.
  • State the reason why the tribe should remove the mute.
  • Engage with the moderation team on what you can do to prevent future MUTE actions.

I want content creators to have this opportunity in most cases. I think this is important to address. If you have any comments on this area, please let me know.

Community Engagement

Community engagement within any community isn't merely desired, it is required to sustain the environment and facilitate its expansion. The success of both the Proof of Brain and Verify Your Brain tribes depends upon honest and open conversations within the community.

Please do not hesitate to comment on your position concerning these proposed guidelines. Only with your engagement in this community can we improve our policies.

In Closing

Like curation, the moderation of tribe activities seeks to level the playing field. The Verify Your Brain tribe, like POB, aims to ensure people receive as fair treatment as possible during their activities. The moderation policy presented in this article represents the tribe's commitment to protecting the platform, its content creators, and investors.

Thanks to the community for reading along with this article. I look forward to providing more in the future. Thank you for reading and following throughout my Hive journey.

Thanks also to @trostparadox and @calumam for the opportunity to assist in developing this new tribe. I am grateful for the opportunity.