Some of the more vocal users of the platform have been expressing their disapproval of the implementation of a separate reward pool for comments on the basis that it isn't necessary and the comments do fine as they are. My theory (based on my experience of speaking with users off the blockchain) is that the many users who would benefit from this feature aren't being heard because they simply aren't the blogging type which makes them less vocal.
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Comments have a very different level of visibility and therefore get considerably fewer votes. In the past month only 1% of rewards were paid to commenters. Due to the nature of the N^2 reward curve it means comments are not competing against other comments, but against the top bloggers.
This is an excerpt from the post on the pending Hardfork 17 which proposed an Independent Comment Reward Pool. As said at the time of the post, only 1% of the total post reward pool was going to comments.
The majority of these comment rewards come from commenting on posts of significant importance to a handful of large stakeholders. Therefore, commenters are incentivised to comment mainly on posts where they can catch a whales vote which is only a tiny portion of posts, usually by the same authors.
We feel that engaging more people in discussion and encouraging higher quality comments will make the platform more desirable. While relatively few people want to blog, many more are interested in commenting.
There are only so many people in the world who'd call themselves a "blogger" and despite my participation on steemit I wouldn't be one of them. Despite my efforts, and the efforts of many people I've come to know on steemit I haven't recruited anybody to post as regularly as I do. This is despite a lot of interest by my friends and family members, and of those people who joined but never posted, they just don't know what to write about.
There is a huge demographic of potential STEEM users who are left out of the hype of steemit because of the lack of incentive for curators to vote on comments. There is an opportunity cost to using your (soft) limited voting power for comments instead of posts.
If all comments only have to compete against other comments, then more users can participate and comments can collectively garner a larger percentage of the reward pool.
This opportunity cost would still exist given the above scenario, but it wouldn't matter since there would be a set amount of rewards allocated to comments. This would certainly encourage more comments as well as more valuable comments. In order for people to add more valuable comments they will need to efficiently read and understand the original post, which will drive engagement on the site.
We are proposing that comments be allocated 38% (golden ratio) of the current reward pool and that comments be rewarded on a N log (N) curve with some to-be-determined modifications. This should work to allocate more rewards to those who contribute to discussions and drive community engagement.
Removing curation rewards
The main argument against the above proposal is that without curation rewards for comments, curators will be taking a 38% cut. I can understand the fear behind this argument, with there being only so many reasons to hold Steem Power, and curations rewards being the main incentive.
Personally I see curation rewards as somewhat flawed. Don't get me wrong, I see more reason to keep them than remove them completely, but when I think of curating I think of the job of a "curator" in a gallery or a museum.
Content curation is the collection and sorting of information.
A curator of a gallery or a museum manages the appearance and experience for the audience (visitors) by organising collections of material by giving certain material more visibility than others and creating a layout that can be easily digested by the audience.
When it comes to posts, there is good reason to organise a collection of posts to grant visibility to the ones that either deserve the visibility or would benefit the majority of people by being more visible. Comments on the other hand are nested as replies to a post and though they can be organised within the post, there is far less curation there especially because only a portion of the audience viewed the post, let alone the comments. Comments just aren's curatable in the same way as blog posts.
One of the main problems with curation on steemit is the same authors receiving rewards all the time, which makes it easier for curators to predict where they will gain rewards. If comments were to allocate curation rewards, we could continue to see a trend of popular commenters being rewarded more often than new commenters - who may offer more value and constructive commentary. By removing the curation rewards, we maintain the same opportunity cost of voting for comments, but we also remove the incentive to vote for comments only to gain curation rewards. The curation of comments would therefore be a lot more natural, and only those that were worth the opportunity cost of the vote would gain rewards.
Who would vote?
The removal of curation rewards would affect some users much more than others. The larger stakeholders are the ones who benefit from curation rewards, while smaller stakeholders (minnows) don't really gain curation rewards with so little SP to vote with. For this reason, there is less opportunity cost to a dolphin than there is for a whale, and there is practically no opportunity cost to a minnow for voting for comments.
If these comments had a seperate reward pool, and those with higher SP were less incentivised to vote for comments, then the comment reward pool could be distributed by users who vote for them - which would mostly be minnows! Theoretically, minnows could feel like their vote has a lot more power and that could be extremely encouraging for smaller and newer users. I do not think for a second this would create an incentive to stay with low SP because these minnows would still not gain curation rewards. I think instead, as these users learn to appreciate their power to reward content with their vote, many of them would consider powering up in order to have more influence on the platform.
Potential to expand STEEM outside steemit
Here is the most exciting thing about the Comment Reward Pool proposal. I am unsure about how, but I think there is potential for STEEM comments to be implemented onto websites that are NOT on the STEEM blockchain, such as blogs and blogging platforms. I can't remember where that was talked about before so if somebody could provide a link I would be very grateful.
If bloggers off steemit could implement a STEEM comment thread which displayed the monetary rewards on the comments, this could be a great way to drive people to steemit and put steemit in the view of more people online. This gives us a lot of potential to grow! The only issue would be if those rewards were miniscule, which they are with the current system.
Beta mode is for testing
This post was inspired by another @steemitblog post about changing the reward curve and testing it on the newly allocated comment reward pool. I want to remind people here that steemit.com is still in beta and so is the STEEM blockchain. We are still testing out different variables to figure out what works best, and my confidence in STEEM comes from the developers fearlessness in trying different things. It's only natural for people to become attached to a system that we are used to, but there will be many hard forks along the way and we should all be aware that risks are necessary in this early phase of development.
A lot of food for thought here. Regarding commenting, I think it would be a good idea to have a separate reward pool. Comments are by nature different from full posts, and it absolutely makes sense for them to only be competing against other comments. I'd also like to see separate voting power for comments vs. posts. But at the same time, let's also keep in mind there is more benefit to commenting than just voting rewards. Commenting is the main way that people put themselves out there and get noticed in the community, perhaps even more so than posting as there are a lot more content consumers than creators. Just by commenting thoughtfully, you can pick up followers, and more followers can be far more beneficial in the long run than earning a couple cents for your comment. So I comment as much as I can anyway, without thinking about whether I'm likely to be rewarded for my comment or not.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who is actively trying to improve the content on Steemit. To that effect I created this campaign (please give me feedback, I just want to help):
I will upvote every constructive comment I get on Steemit with 5-10 cents in order to create a WIN-WIN-WIN.
You win by having me upvote and follow you, I win by having great comments and more followers and above all Steemit wins by getting better content.
Read about the rules and conditions here.
Please respond here or on my post with any feedback you have, thanks!
Upvoted and resteemed for a great discussion.
I think this is a really big fallacy in the argument though. The discussion is not really about "is it a good idea to reward comments more?" I think everyone actually agrees that this part is a good idea. The problem is with how it is being accomplished.
I've written elsewhere that I am still undecided on this, so don't take this comment as me saying I am 100% against this change. There are a lot of points in your post that I agree with, and there is a large part of me that thinks it is a good idea to at least try it out. There are definite benefits to the change, and I'm not sure how bad the reasons against it will be in practice. (We can also always roll it back in HF 18 if it is really as bad as everyone says it is.)
The main concerns are that:
I believe that the people who are arguing against the change would just prefer to find a different solution to the problem.
Myself, I don't think it's a violation of kiss because unlike SP and SBD and voting power, it isn't something users have to learn about. If they realise their vote is more powerful on comments than on posts they may question it, but it isn't something you have to understand to avoid mistakes like the Wallet or curation system for example.
As for upvoting yourself with your own accounts, I'm unsure but I think the reward curve they are proposing is meant to somewhat solve that issue.
Oh and thanks so much for the resteem 😃
Any user that is planning to earn curation rewards would. Whether curation rewards are good and bad is a whole separate discussion, but as long as they are part of the platform they are something that users will need to wrap their heads around.
I'm a huge fan of the formula change, but technically it makes the problem of self-voting worse.
Welcome! :)
I hadn't considered users who seek curation rewards because I always consider new users to be minnows who can't gain curation rewards until they power up. But although I had thought that somebody would fully understand the system before investing I have noticed at least one large SP account with very little understanding of the curation system so I guess there is that.
I comment a lot, I have seen a massive drop in rewards for comments, it won't still me from commenting but the incentive was good :)
I'm really not sure what the answers are. I want to see everyone have a chance of rewards, but we don't want to risk making it easier to abuse the system. I think it's partly a matter of choosing to use your votes to reward posts and comments rather than for the curation rewards. I'll certainly vote up comments, even though that doesn't pay anyone much
I would comment but . . .
I agree as rewarding commenting would reward interaction which is part of growth. Growth in value of commenting and interaction. I'm also #20 on the posts list for my comments and if I was more rewarded I might be higher. :)
I don't think it makes very much sense to "reward" comments.
I personally enjoy commenting, and although my own sense of greed would for sure make me personally like having more rewards for commenting, as far as objective functionality goes, I don't think that this would improve Steem very much.
Perhaps modifying how comments currently work could be fine, in order to fine-tune the system, but I don't really think that a person should strive to make a living just from comments. Increasing their payout by some measure, or otherwise tailoring the system to encourage good discussion is reasonable, but I don't think there's enough money flowing into Steemit as a whole to allow comments to take even more from the limited pool.
Of course, if we were to get a bunch of investors to greatly increase the price of Steem, back to $1 or more even, that would completely change things, and I would have to revise my opinion.
I might say, because there are so many comments, but it's expected that everyone would comment, it ends up making payouts remain fair. People who blog still make money, and the same people who blog, can also make money on comments, as well as people who don't blog.
That would end up splitting the payouts greatly between the thousands of comments, versus only hundreds of articles. This could end up good or bad, depending on how much Steem is worth. If the economy here is very generous, and people are able to make decent amounts of money, I think spreading the payouts out between more people would be wise.
But if money is tight, and even bloggers can't make a living here, payouts should tighten to only people producing stories.
I think it could be wise to try running some ideas in a simulator sandbox. All of these options should be tested before implementation, right?
If more people can earn steem I think it is very good for steem. I agree the system needs improvements, and I wait patiently for that as I know that there is a lot to test in this beta phase. As for money going into the system, I'm not sure I know what you mean... STEEM is created by the system, and that happens the same regardless of the price of steem. This has the potential in my opinion to attract investors who could increase the price.
Since steemit is in beta, we are the simulator sandbox. This is the experiment and we are the beta testers. I wouldn't worry too much about the price when it is so early in the experiment. The more people we can distribute steem to, the better opportunity there is for the price of steem to improve.
The money that goes into the system are people willing to spend bitcoins or USD to buy Steem.
If no one wants to buy Steem, then even a million steem will be worthless.
So no matter how fairly it's divided between commenters and bloggers, neither will have much reason to even use Steemit, if they can't take their Steem out of Steem and spend it elsewhere.
Imagine this: The Steem produced on Steemit is for sale. Outside speculators buy as a total, USD $100 per day. This means there is only USD $100 to go around to all the content creators each day. There are 50 people total on Steemit.
If 10 of those people are bloggers, then they can each potentially take home $10 USD , give or take a few, and the commenters, the 40, take maybe $1 USD total.
This means that content creators make the money. Commenters make spare change. $10 USD per blogger is a fine amount to live on, right? That's lots of money per day, in this scenario.
But if we were to divide it equally, and all 50 people make lots of Steem, but there is still only $100 USD going into the system, it means that each person is only taking $2 USD home.
That's not enough to make a living on, which means that bloggers, people who are the ones who are supposed to make the good content upon which to comment, will go home. They don't want to fight over such tiny, spread out scraps.
This is how it would work right? If I'm imagining the wrong idea, let me know, but as it sounds, it sounds like you'd divide up the meager amounts of money flowing in even more than it already is.
This would make Steemit unattractive to serious bloggers.
Unless, like you said, it ends up increasing the people who invest in Steemit.
However, I think that late-game, it will be corporations that buy-in, in order to get people to subtly advertise their products and services. This means that comments won't be as important to the major corporate buy-ins, at least how I see it.
This would prevent them from wanting to buy in, if their buy-in has to be that much more to compete with the share of the reward that goes to commenters. It will take more SP to have influence over individual bloggers, which would reduce the size of major buy-ins, or completely prevent them.
Thanks @beanz. Good read and good info.
My concern initially would be all the sock puppet accounts upvoting comments of selected commentators. However, what might be a saving grace to all this would be:
I think this has the potential to become one of the more viral applications of STEEM. Consider if this could be integrated into a platform like YELP or G2Crowd.
Imagine a restaurateur or a software development company wanted to reward commentators for providing reviews and comments on their customer experiences. Or in lieu of gift cards and rebates, they could provide STEEM rewards. Suddenly something like this causes the perceived value and utility of STEEM to increase. That could be the saving grace and great equalizer.
I would imagine in order to pull something like this off, one would necessarily have to increase the rewards associated with comments. I would hope there is a bold move like this driving this latest upgrade.
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the second half of Feb 18. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $8.35 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Feb 18 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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If daniel larimer thinks its good then its good.
Lol, I tend to agree 😂
I think he wanted to moon bts so that 1 bts would be 100 dollar each, and then some people said that they want to make it better and screwed up. Maybe its only my fantasy but when someone knows how to do it then him.
“Want to reach the moon real quick, with the larimers you stick“
That's a very harmful attitude to have, in regards to any and everything. You should never treat someone like a religious icon who's incapable of making mistakes.
Come on, man. Suicide bombings are done with this same mindset.
I just don't have the understanding what is good or not and trust only the people who made steemit. Also he gave me a donation once which shows that he is a helpful man.
Flagged for being ignorant.
Is it my problem that you have a bad day? no, thanks. Flagging for being ignorant. Then I will flag you for being trigger happy
Feel free. It's your flag to do as you wish. Thinking Dan and team are always right and can do no wrong is dangerous. Think about it.
I already replied to schattenjaeger about your concern:
"I just don't have the understanding what is good or not and trust only the people who made steemit. Also he gave me a donation once which shows that he is a helpful man."
Thanks for teaching me how to think about the topic of the post and post my opinion:
I want more money for comments. To find support for proposals for example. So that people go in a post and have incentive to think about it and write their opinion.
Edit: I wanted to unflag you but it was after payout.
LOL my face is on my account.
I sold my steem at 16c and bought it back at 12c. Bittrex is the exchange.
Are you unaware that these accounts belong to the official exchanges bittrex.com , poloniex.com and the account transfers are used to get users money on and off those exchanges where they can buy / sell / trade cryptocurrencies ...?
You're trying to ration with a slow kid. He doesn't have the brain capacity to understand anything but trolling and acting like a racist. You're better off just flagging the mongol.