Downvoted For Travel?

12:17 PM - Hive Blog

My brother @rsarnold316 traveled to Honduras and posted about it. You @livinguktaiwan muted it and lied by saying it has nothing to do with travel because it was also about ministry and teaching English. That is a limited perspective on what travel is.

What is Travel to You?

I am deeply discouraged by how you view travel to mean only if the person is trying to not have a vacation in some foreign country. I see travel as any time you simply go somewhere. I will be posting on my blog about how sad I am regarding people like you who try so hard to limit what it means to travel.

New to Hive Blog

Also, my brother is new to Hive Blog. So, you are discouraging him from being part of your community or group.

Vietnam Venture

I was living in Vietnam for five years. By your own standards, I would be disqualified from sharing my photos of the pictures of the waterfalls in Dalat City in Vietnam and the list goes on and on.

Adventures in Hawaii

I would love to share my trip and adventures in Hawaii. But you would probably say that does not count since I was working with The Salvation Army while I was living in Hawaii. I strongly disagree with you and I am encouraging people to stay away from this community for being closed minded regarding what it means to travel. I thought this was a welcoming group but I guessed wrongly.

More On This

The newest post of my brother regarding his travel to Honduras was downvoted in a community on Hive Blog which was all about travel. The account who downvoted the post said the post had nothing to do with travel. I'm guessing it was because the post had an emphasis on how my brother teaches English to little boys and girls in Honduras. So, I guess, according to that travel group, if you help people while you travel the world, that does not count, that is not really travel. You cannot travel to also do ministry while you travel, no multitasking allowed. So, that post had around 5 photos of my brothers "TRAVEL" in Honduras and yet it was downvoted as it had, according to that person, @livinguktaiwan#6787, and I quote, "Hi there, please note this is a travel related community, we'd love to see your post if you want to share your travels around Honduras. However, if you're post is related to other topics, it would be more suited to those relevant communities. Thanks." That is a direct quote. This account is saying the problem is that the post relates to other things. However, to be frank, that is the paradox of life as all things relate to all things. It is a logical infallacy to even attempt to isolate and take things out of context to say something has to somehow NOT relate to other things at the same time. The post does relate to different topics as most things do in life. For example, a man can relate to the topics of being a husband, father, son, and friend all at the same time because that dude may be all four things at the same time. My brother literally took trips to travel to Honduras. He went back and forth from America to Honduras several times. My brother was born in America in 1982 in Oregon. My brother is American. My brother is NOT from Honduras. But his wife is. Maybe that account conflated my brother with his wife. I grew up with my brother in the 1990s in Forest Grove. My brother has a post all about his trip or trips or specifically "TRAVEL" in a foreign country. And that is not TRAVEL? A group about TRAVEL? I will be sharing this on my blog.

So, if I took a photo of me and the people I met in Vietnam, I would be downvoted?

What is the criteria?

What is travel?

Did I not travel to Vietnam?

Can I not post about my travel to Vietnam?

But if I said I also taught English in Vietnam, then what?

My brother mentioned the same thing that he taught English in Honduras, what is the difference?

Missionaries CANNOT travel?

Teachers CANNOT travel?

Which activities are NOT allowed when you do travel?

Where do you draw the line between travel which is not considered to be travel and travel which is to be considered as real tourist-style vague-life-perspective California Dreaming & Surfing Travel?

I can ask these questions all day, don't get me started.

If I travel but have a HIDDEN AGENDA, then it is NOT travel?

If I travel but made money while I travel, that is not travel?

So, you are saying travel posts have to describe specific details?

So, you are saying Travel Posts is a specific type of GENRE?

In other words, a Travel Post is a type of LITERATURE with certain expected formula of what must be written?

Sounds extremely specific.

Based on what I saw of what other people post, I doubt all the other posts meet all the requirements of the specific recipe.

I didn't realize the travel group was extremely specific

If you travel and accidentally taught English while off on your vacation, your holiday, does that magically turn your travel into not travel because you broke the sacred rules of what it means to travel?

I understand that a poem and a rap song needs a rhyme and likewise for this specific group, there are extremely specific requirements likewise. I didn't realize their rules would be that strict and closed-minded.

I would change the name of that group from Have You Been Here to Have You Pinned Here.

@Wes Philbin#5391, I looked at the other psots and thought I saw a pattern of what is allowed and what is not allowed in that group and was surprised to see I was unable to see the patterns.

This encourages people new to Hive Blog not to post due to crazy rules.

And that is what I am preparing to write about in a new post.

Friday, I made a Hive Blog account for my brother, I am trying to teach him how to use it.

@thekittygirl#7285, the biggest concern I have was that @livinguktaiwan#6787 did NOT mention how the post was not posted from Pinmapple and instead went on to say you cannot post about travel if you talk specifically about non-approved Travel Activities. That was my concern regarding the actual comment on that post, I came here to address the comment itself.

Not everybody does that when they post about travel.

I've read many travel posts which didn't answer all of your questions.

Not every person is an expert at knowing exactly what to say in each post to fit in imaginary genre as if we were all stuck in a Creative Writing class in college.

If the post sucked that bad, why not simply ignore it?

The photos showed what type people were in Honduras as you can see.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

I would love to go to church and have the pastor talk about money.

I like unexpected things.

That is why people love Simon Cowell of American Idol, if he was a pastor he probably would talk about banking for an hour and I would love it, he was full of surprises.

That is why we watch movies to be surprised.

@riverflows#4691, if I was @livinguktaiwan#6787, I would have said future posts will be downvoted, this is your last warning. That is what police officers do sometimes.

It is not about emotions, feelings.

Don't be scared of hurting people's feelings so they have to crawl back into safe spaces.

The problem is not so much the words as it is the downvote.

The words are fine.

The action is what I am questioning.

I am not here to talk about the suggestion.

I have no problem with the suggestion.

My concern is with how rules are enforced.

Specifically relating to downvotes.

Which is connected to ongoing debates regarding downvotes which goes back many years now, at least to 2017 for me.

My main purpose of sharing this downvote here is to let people know what happened and to let we the people decide their thoughts relating to a specific downvote action whether right or wrong, I wanted to raise awareness to the action and to let people do as they please with this example of a downvote, I am using this specific downvote as an example, an illustration of an ongoing debate among many people for many years, this is not just about one downvote from this specific post.

@riverflows#4691, I agree that downvotes has a time and a place like spanking a kid might, not to say you should or should not hit a child, but a downvote might be in some ways like beating children.

Should we really downvote people who just joined Hive Blog a week ago or should we give new users and tadpoles a month of grace and forgiveness?

@Wes Philbin#5391, regardless of whether a particular post is downvoted or muted, it still hides the content in a similar fashion as a downvote would to force a person to click the SHOW button to see the content.

It's too bad a muted post in a group cannot be divorced to survive outside of the community without the downvote or mute which buffers the content or hides the content.

What is low ratings if not a downvote? Does a mute equate to low ratings as well?

Technically, the post has a manual pin as it says Honduras. It's too bad the group requires a certain type of pin which comes from the Pinmapple app, it is almost like requiring that your Twitter account has a blue check-mark or else you must be fake news kind of thing, meaning I find the specific pin requirement which can be met through other means outside of Pinmapple to be unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worse.

Being Sad

Why are you so sad today?

My brother joined Hive Blog a few days ago but then his post about travel in a travel community was downvoted or muted for not being about travel. Well, the post talked about how he was teaching English and doing church ministry in Honduras. So, he was told the post didn't meet specific Travel Genre requirements. I encourage people to give people who are new to Hive Blog some grace and forgiveness for their first month on Hive Blog. Give the new user a warning like police officers do sometimes.

It is only considered not travel in a sense that a poem might not be considered to be a rap song.

Imagine watching a RomCom, that a romance Comedy, and then saying this is not romance because it is comedy.

Sometimes, genres can be a mix of other genres.

Christians are itches, let's throw them into prison. I'm a Christian. I must be a monster.

Why is it even possible to post in that community via the Hive Blog app when it is specific forbidden to do so?

Can the web technicians not disable that on the Hive Blog app?

But the post did talk about Honduras but the problem is that it did not specifically say what you wanted it to say, it was not specific enough.

People who are new to Hive Blog are not given training wheels.

She should have asked for the content to be edited in order to meet the subjective standards of whatever travel means. Again, that is subjective like art is. She could have given a warning instead. Also, the post could have been ignored. If a person doesn't receive enough upvotes for a post, that would have told the person, "I probably shouldn't do that again." Right or wrong, silence can often get the message across a lot better. I've been reading travel blogs and meeting with expats in Vietnam going back to 2012. From my experience both online and offline, there has been a wide variety of travel related blogs and websites meaning it depends on the specific travel groups and communities and how they want to go about defining what a travel-related blog post is and is not. Sadly for this particular group, there was no specific check-off list detailing the exact requirements of how many words were required, how many photos were required, which topics could not be even mentioned in the post at all, which links and photos could not be included, which specific travel activities would have to be talked about and focused upon. The group didn't say what percentage of the post had to detail things relating to the people, the food, the dates, the hotels, specific places, specific activities. Therefore, it was left to generalized interpretation of how a post is to be prioritized, that is how much of a post is to be devoted to which specific aspects of a trip. When you travel, you can travel for business or for pleasure. Travel can include all aspects of commuting. People travel for work. The post about Honduras was partly a vacation. The post was a summary of several different trips going back over ten years. The post began mentioning specifics about 2018 but the whole story started in 2007 specifically and in some cases before that even. The post had an emphasis on the specific flavor of the type of travel it represented.

She said it didn't meet the requirements of her travel community. But the rules don't specify in clear enough terms meaning it is up to generalized creative interpretation according to the wide variety of travel blogs and websites from a wide variety of expats and others who I've been interviewing and following offline in Vietnam and online as well going back to 2012.

The group should have a check-off list of requirements.

My advice would be that they make the rules clear.

A muted community post which was reblogged or resteemed appears gray, the photo hidden, as if it was downvoted, that is what I see via the Hive Blog and it appears normal via PeakD and Eccency. My question would be if the Hive Blog developers know this, if they had it designed to gray out muted posts. If this is how they wanted it, that is their prerogative. People should let them know this if they don't already know about this.

How many are Repeat Offenders?

07:05 PM - Hive Comment

How many are Repeat Offenders? My advice would be to give new users a warning for their first incorrect post and simply mute them for additional incorrect posts. On top of that, you could simply mute older accounts. Say, an account that is at least a week or older. Don't warn them even for their first incorrect article. But I would give a person who is new to Hive Blog some forgiveness, some grace. However, at the same time, this post didn't break the rules apart from it not having an automated pin via the Pinmapple as it does have a manual pin called words which says it is Honduras. Moreover, an automated pin could mean some kind of geo-tracking which may have violated the 4th amendment in the American constitution regarding privacy rights which big tech violates. So, forcing people to be tracked is almost as bad as letting the Chinese Social Credit Score dominate your soul. I am writing a post about this as we speak. I can talk all day about twenty or more related matters connected to all of these things and more, to be continued, thank you for reading, thank you for watching, I'm the one and only Oatmeal Joey Arnold of Oregon 1985.

The post did not really violate the rules of this group apart from abnormal interpretation of the rules via reading between the lines to create a specific paradigm. Also, requiring geo-tracking via their app could be against the 4th amendment of America's constitution relating to privacy. And the list goes on on and on, I can talk all day about these things. And I'm writing a post about it right now.

Freeze Peach

I would love to ask Information War @informationwar and Freeze Peach @freezepeach for their thoughts on the matter.