Scorum / abusers

First off credit for this post goes to @Satriotomo and @Talesfrmthecrypt, the former is the one who spotted the behaviour and the latter is the one who informed me regarding it. Now we have all been aware of disagreements regarding flagging concerning the quality of posts and the amount of awards a writer receives before but this sort of behaviour highlighted below takes things to a whole new level and concerns one of the biggest Witness' here selling his vote to a writer. The three users in question are: @muchukunda (buyer of votes who has admitted to doing so from the two below) @stimp1024 (accused seller of vote and top witness) @sahkan (accused seller of vote) For atleast as long as 10 days prior stimp1024 has been fully upvoting, muchukunda's posts. No big deal there, it's up to stimp1024 who he votes for right? Well before that time he had never been voting for muchukunda which again isn't of grave concern to anyone again, except when these transactions were spotted by Satriotomo yesterday: After which I decided to flag at 100% muchukunda's four latest posts. For me buying votes is a step too far on this platform and although there maybe a tiny chance something else was happening this was so blatant. This platform will surely end up like Steemit if this sort of behaviour isn't stamped out because it means anyone writing anything here can start to earn a huge amount of SP. A free for all of poor quality posting and easy earnings undermining the standards of Scorum blogging and the pillaging for the reward pool! Whether muchukunda's articles are quality or not isn't the question, it's the arrangement of buying votes that is rotten. I must admit to see a Witness on this platform and someone holding 150k sp selling his vote to someone is shameful and drags this platform down to a whole new despairing level. Both stimp1024 and sahkhan to a lesser degree (because he only started fully upvoting muchukunda's post around 5 days ago) received SCR from muchukunda yesterday. This coincides with the large amount of upvote's muchukunda has suddenley started to receive from both. Both these users are large holders of SP in the platform. Whilst these holders are fully entitled to upvote who they like, they are not entitled to sell their votes in my view! In all fairness to muchukunda did come and admit he had been buying votes from stimp1024 and sahkhan. I may have considered removing some of the flags except he then had the audacity to request that himself. At first I thought about not writing this up on the platform but then I actually thought to myself, if people are comfortable with openly gaming the system in front of Scorum users, these people therefore leave themselves open to being clearly exposed on the platform! I hope said buyer of votes and said sellers of votes will think twice about doing this sort of thing in the future. After all there will always be someone watching and picking up on a sudden change of events in voting patterns. A Promise From Myself: Happily, I will be conserving some of my SP in the future to deliver a 100% flag for anyone else who dabbles in these sort's of dodgy dealings. Feel free to flag me back if you don't like that fact - I don't really care :) Happy to be a Team Good Witness: Yesterday I joined TeamGood as Witness Number 9. Now I have an extra duty to ensure the platform remains clean from "blatant" wrongdoing's. I won't be here to flag anything subjective, whether I believe in it or not. But I also will continue to flag people I believe are writing low quality posts and earning substantial amounts for it. Yes I am sure people will come at me with accusations of bullying or being insensitive, I welcome such people and their comments, but it won't stop be doing what I feel is right, that's decentralisation baby, many people have a say and can exercise their power to do what they feel is better for the health of this platform! The Next Question I Have that I Will Refrain from Answering Myself: Should a seller of votes on this platform be allowed to be one of the top witnesses of the Scorum blockchain considering this behaviour flies in the face of Scorum's blogging platform and the spirit it was designed in? Whilst your here please take the time to follow these writers, they are great contributors to the platform, most with low amounts of SP. If you are considering upvoting this post, please redirect that vote to one of these four writers: https://scorum.com/en-us/profile/@sandwichbill (fairly new - great writing on Liverpool) https://scorum.com/en-us/scorum/@sport-frei/ - Selflessly curates and fully upvotes new writers on a weekly basis, arguably the best open curator right now on Scorum. Also a tireless contributor of the German blog. https://scorum.com/en-us/profile/@jpm8341 - He's been around a while but his earnings per post are still pretty low, he writes some great cricket pieces and perhaps only behind talesfrmcrypt in terms of his cricket contribution on the platform which is say something! https://scorum.com/en-us/profile/@eoghan.mcmonagle - He doesn't write enough on the platform considering the quality and insight of his work on football. Happily he is starting to earn bigger amounts when he does write but his SP is still very low. He deserves more votes when he does write so atleast follow him.