"Eliminating curation rewards would be saying that curators should perform unpaid labor for the authors and the steem power holders." - @remlaps
There are a lot of reasons not to eliminate curation rewards:
- Curation rewards are currently one of the only reasons to power up / remain powered up.
- There are a huge amount of users that are actively involved in the platform through curation activities (developing bots, curation trails, guilds, manual curation, etc.).
- Curation rewards provides a financial incentive for users to spend a very significant amount of their time discovering good content.
- The goal of the platform is to reward users for their contributions for the platform, and curating is a form of contributing.
- Lots of users find earning curation rewards fun.
To a large extent, we are going to get what we curate. If the stakeholders are allocating a significant amount of rewards to photography, we will attract more photographers. As more photographers are attracted to the rewards, competition will drive higher quality photography. (That's the idea..)
Unfortunately the curation reward system that we have today has been shown to incentivize the wrong type of behavior:
- A large portion of voting is taking place without users even reading or evaluating the content. While bots could be used to perform a lot of automated evaluations of content that would not be easy for humans to do on a large scale, that is not what they are doing today. Most of them are designed to maximize earnings from the curation rewards game.
- Many voters calculate whether they will receive a good curation reward, over whether they 'like' the content.
- Lots of quality engaging content does not receive significant rewards, because it is not expected to receive a lot of votes.
- Established authors who are producing sub-par content still get lots of upvotes, because they are on auto-vote lists and are expected to receive lots of upvotes.
- Very few people vote on comments, because there is no expected curation reward.
Curation rewards are also not very appealing for new users:
- Voting before the first 30 minutes is bad. (Well, sometimes. It depends.) This adds confusion to what would otherwise be a natural/organic process.
- In order to maximize curation rewards, you have to vote on 40 posts per day. Every day. 365 days a year. If you don't, you will be losing a percentage of your stake to the users with auto-upvote bots. (That sounds like a job!)
- The amount that you see in the "Potential Payout" is not the amount that the author gets. It is split 75/25 between the author and curator. Although the author can get more if the curators vote within the first 30 minutes. (You lost me at The amount that you see in the "Potential Payout" is not the amount that the author gets.)
- To earn anything significant from curation rewards, you have to first have a lot of SP. (Wait, I have to give you money in order for me to make money..?)
- Voting on your favorite content is likely not in your best financial interest.
The benefits to removing curation rewards would be:
- It would remove a confusing aspect of the platform that is unappealing to typical new users.
- The decision to upvote would simply be based on what content you liked and wanted to reward.
- The upvotes would primarily be from users who were actively engaged in the platform.
- The motivation to have bots for purposes other than evaluating good content would be greatly diminished.
- Less voting stake would be used, making upvotes from users who do still vote more powerful.
- Regular users' perception of the platform would improve.
But wait, shouldn't curators get paid for their work?
If they do their job well - they will.
The value of SP will come if we can build a platform that attracts and retains billions of users, in a way that keeps them actively engaged in the site. With a large and engaged audience, that gives us the ability to build a revenue model (such as advertisements) on top of those users. That revenue can be turned into passive earnings for all SP holders.
It is up to all of us on Steemit to direct the rewards in a way that is beneficial to the platform, to give us all the best potential for return on our investment.
When you curate, you are participating in the community's decision on how to best allocate our limited rewards pool. By directing the resources towards the things that bring the most value to the platform, we are collectively deciding on what we feel is the most likely to give us the best return on our investment.
It is entirely up to each user how they want to use their votes, but paying them to do so is not necessarily going to incentivize better behavior.
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One thing this debate has revealed to me... is that lots of people seem to think the best way to increase the value of their account... is by behaving in ways that earn them more STEEM rather than by behaving in ways that raise the price of STEEM.
It's like everyone's fighting for a slightly bigger piece of a really small pie, rather than trying to grow the pie. Maybe everyone's just assuming other people will grow it, so they're just jockeying for position. But IMO, this pie could be huge if everyone stopped trying to get more STEEM and started trying to make STEEM more valuable. Even the minnows on this platform right now will be whales over night if Steemit grows to be the size of Reddit or beyond.
Whales wanting more STEEM right now makes no sense to me. Even as a small dolphin... I'd way rather see the price of STEEM increase than see my stake increase. I don't vote for curation rewards. I vote for people who I believe are increasing the value of STEEM... call me crazy lol but that's how I think I'm going to make the most money.
BINGO!
You nailed it.
Some of this is tragedy of the commons. Most of it is simply that most people who participate in any endeavor are short sighted because most people period are short sighted.
Yes or alternately (and I'd argue more correctly since there is no existing resource that is being overgrazed and therefore spoiled; instead this an attempt to build something) a public goods problem. That is addressed by setting things up so that incentives are at least somewhat aligned between short-run individual interests and longer-run social interests. In this case it is very questionable whether the existing system comes even close to that.
Word up !
Comments like this make me dream for an option to... resteem comments! How great would be such a future?
Well said!!
Amen. There a lot of truth in that comment which I think is worthy of its own post.
1000% !!!
Good point 😅
To the point. Great analogy!
well said. I only vote for things I like and don't really think about the curation rewards. I am concerned about the price of Steem continually falling though.
How do we make Steem more valuable? That's the real question. Increasing the user base hasn't seemed to work. I joined when there were 60,000 users and it has doubled since then and still has not increased in value. It will take a lot more users and things to use Steem for to increase the price.
I try. I have original work. One time, one got above $100, getting visibility, setting an example of quality to get rewarded. Then it got flagged for "too high payout" and "not being valuable to Steemit" or some such nonsense... That's while another post that same day by me, was not my original higher quality content, got close to $200, for cannabis.
Next, another time a post on quality important truth, morality, got above $100, that was too much again, knocked down with a flag. Other posts don't get this treatment. I have pulls from the blockchain to prove it.
Then again, another quality post on morality, this time it was at $70, so flag it down to $40. Hehe.
Visibility goes down, and attracting people to do the same is diminished.
I agree with how things should work based on how companies who produce things do succeed, and that is with a recognition of the importance of quality. But some people work against quality, because they don't think there is "quality", or that the content is "not valuable to the platform to attract new users", and other excuses.
So rather than spend time, effort, and creating higher quality original content, why would someone do that when it gets "punished" each time?Other posts, not original, less high quality that I make, can go to those payouts and they don't get flagged. Funny isn't it...
Curation can be free. If you care about the platform, you do it, for whatever content you want to promote. That's how I have done it. I don't look at curation rewards, although at some point I tried to do the 20minute mark thing. Vote for it early, later, whenever you want.
Early helps the author more, but so what if you're later? It shouldn't be about your curation rewards, but about valuing content for content. That's what needs to get into many people's understanding. Bots cant evaluate content for content. Consciousness is required. So what if you only do it at 9pm once a day for everything that day and don't get the curation rewards. Bots can be used to vote for trusted authors, then unvote manually on review once a day, etc. There are indeed better ways to use bots, but I'm still for consciousness being what drives actual social media.
I'm with you with everything you said about curation/voting. Flagging is a separate issue on it's own, which warrants it's own discussion.
The social contract is quite flexible round these parts you know?
The examples you've given are very much determined upon your lens or perception of the world. You say cannabis is less important but a 'quality post on morality' is...
Who's supposed to judge that and give it context?
an expert on morality, ldo (though i do believe krnel is one of the best posters that lives on the front page_
Well that's what I mean. A post written about cannabis and one written about 'quality important truth, morality'.
The whales are mainly dudes that mine crypto currencies.
One likes smoking weed another thinks posts that are more like academic articles are less valuable to mass adoption.
In the same way they make their preferences known through their lens. Krnel makes his perceptions known in this response.
Hows a whale that enjoys smoking a bit of weed going to conform to such highly individualised and personal standards?
I'm not a fan of the 'weed' stuff, but my personal views are that we should find a way to encourage all types of content that are going to bring active and engaged users to the platform.
I don't think the issue is cannabis posts being good or bad.
I think it's that someone actively punished @KrNel by taking away some of his reward for a post that he highly valued. If it had happened to his lower quality post too, there would be less issue, but instead, people are deliberately trying to influence him to post things they want to see, and the form of influence isn't just carrots.
They include a stick, by removing rewards, and the biggest issue is that @KrNel is upset because his most favorite post he wrote got punished, while the lesser post he wrote got rewarded.
This truly irritates a writer, because instead of getting "commission" type influence, where he can choose to either write about his favorite topic, OR a topic he knows will make lots of money, he's instead forced to only write for the money, because people will actively ruin his profits by flagging what he just wants to share with people, despite any potential popularity payout.
I mean, we all know that some types of content won't make much money, but we publish it anyways, just to share the idea. It's fine if it doesn't make lots of money, but when it DOES make money, but someone else feels the need to remove that money, it's just a heartbreaking feeling.
Not of "oh no, I'm sad I don't get money", but a feeling of "This community is broken. Why am I punished for work that people liked and upvoted just because some rich person didn't like it? I deserve the money that people give me via votes."
It's the same as someone ordering food at a restaurant.
If it's good, people will pay for it and tip.
If it's bad, people want their money back. That's fair.
But what's unacceptable is for people to take more money than they spent, robbing the restaurant of money they collected from other patrons.
Same with flagging for these frivolous reasons.
With the current system, there's a big advantage to voting early so as an optimisation problem, this is not going to be the best way and so will not "naturally" attract people. And it's not just about curation rewards, voting early draws more attention to good posts, so helping it snowball. For posts you believe in this is desired.
I'm coming round to this way of thinking and trying to think how bots can fit in better. The argument I make above is not necessarily the best way that Steemit can be, but it makes the most sense with the way it is. A change, probably a fairly core one, is needed to encourage more conscious engagement. That is if it's agreed there's an engagement problem. Some prominent witnesses I spoke to did not think it was 😕
I believe Curation Rewards could exist, but I do think the algorithm has some issues that do incentivize dog piling, finding people that are followed by bots and voting on them whether you read it or not.
In fact, the "shouldn't curators get paid for their work?" Payment can be viewed in several ways. If you are encouraging an author that you really like to produce more content, then their content could almost be viewed as a form of payment.
I do believe there can be a happy medium, but I believe the current algorithm places too much emphasis in such a way they results in dog piling more than quality. Quality still happens, but with bots you end up with people that always get up voted by the same bot. Some of their content likely should not be worth that much. What about the gems out there that are not an established author that are ignored, because your daily bot votes used up how many votes you are going to place for the day?
I look at steemit/busy.org a bit different than a lot of people.
I view my steem power more like the potential guaranteed income I have to purchase goods on steemit for that day. It doesn't actually cost me anything in reality, but it is there for me to spend like a virtual currency.
How do I spend it? I walk into a store full of content, and just like walking into a bookstore, or music store, or any other store I walk PAST the things I don't like, and I vote on the things I do. Me powering up increases my ability to reward content creators I like (posts, and comments) and being able to reward them better means I'll likely get more content I like.
I personally do not use a bot, though I am more than capable of writing one. I actually read the things I up vote. I will occasionally up vote things I may not agree with completely simply due to the sheer effort and thought I can tell the content creator put into the work.
I believe the current curation system has flaws. Yet so does many other things. We are working through those.
I do think that algorithm might be worthy of some tweaking...
Also as far as rewards from curation... Unless you have a substantial amount of steem power those rewards are very very low even with the current system.
https://steemit.com/curation/@sigmajin/an-opponent-of-the-exponent-making-the-case-for-vshare-linearity
Take a look at this, it goes back to some of the stuff we talked about in the downvote thread, and i think its a much more workable solution to curation problems
I am in favor of doing both. (Removing curation rewards, and switching to a more linear rewards formula.)
Obviously, im not. But i will say that even if I were strongly in favor of eliminating curation rewards, i would not be in favor of doing the two simultaneously.
I think that there is a very strong case to be made that a more linear reward distribution formula could fix many of the percieved problems with curation rewards. IMO, we should at least see what effect the changes have before we throw the baby out with the bath water.
I'd go in reverse, removal than adjustments, but I do agree that they shouldn't happen at the same time.
I think the bigger problem isn't how the rewards are distributed, it's the fact the motivation of each voter comes from the desire to earn a reward. It seems almost like a conflict of interest. I want popular/trending content on the site to be elevated because people find it interesting, not because they believe it will provide them with the greatest reward.
When considering the act of voting, you shouldn't be considering yourself, you should be considering only the content on which you're voting.
That's what I believe at least :)
Whatever you think which one is bigger, I think both of them are big problems ;)
Good comment! I just wanted to make the observation that people are going to think of themselves when voting anyways, even if what they are thinking is that they could later be asked to justify the vote because it can be traced back to them.
Well said. I totally agree.
One interesting thing though - technically the current algorithm discourages "dog piling". If you vote on a post that already has a high payout, you get less than if you vote on a post before it receives a high payout.
The problem is probably better described in that it encourages voting behavior based on the predictions of what posts will receive a high payout. In theory this was supposed to be one and the same as "good" content, but in practice these two things have turned out to be different.
I agree with this because it would eliminate the voting on posts that people don't actually read. We want to have this site be a reflection of what people want to engage with. We don't currently have that. The sooner we have a valuable site, the sooner more will flock here. No one is attracted to a place where no one reads the posts. That's absurd.
Thats like agreeing to castration because he peed on the toilet seat.
It's more like halting rewards for those who are paid to piss on the toilet seat :)
Castration would be removing someone's ability to vote.
Analogy fight! :)
well played
I think you are really mischaracterizing. There really is demonstrable evidence that people are voting on posts without reading them, and the main thing that is incentivizing this is curation rewards.
no, it's not.
Craig still buying high and selling low. Nothing new under the sun :)
160% inflation rate
Thank you for leading this discussion. It is very important. We should consider some means of evening things out in terms of the voting power. I don't know if eliminating curation rewards is the best way, but it should be on the table along with any other options. Let's keep this discussion going and moving it forward.
You make lots of valid points here... it's the actual implementation of a fair and balanced curation system that is the hard part. I'm a newbie here, but have been part of dozens of "this kind of gig" since the very first revenue-sharing , user-generated-content sites back in the late 90's (Epinions, Themestream, WrittenByMe, etc) and they almost all fail, mostly for reasons related directly to curation.
So far, what seems to work best (again, hard to implement) is a system that awards the greatest curation influence to those who are the actual "community builders." In other words, those providing consistent high quality content also hold the most influence over curating to ensure that quality content rises to the top, and junk/spam/clickbait sinks into oblivion. Steemit already self-regulates because there are "sliding scale" controls in place... but maybe there also needs to be one that values an "actual eyeballs" upvote higher than a bot upvote.
The other source of many failures seems to be the broad underestimate of the impact of a simple piece of psychology: Human Greed. We worry about trolls, but there's a FAR larger, more pervasive and destructive element out there whom I've come to think of as "Money For Nothing Seekers." They are the ones who respond to someone (well meaning) saying "I am making some extra money social blogging on Steemit" for ALL the wrong reasons... at least "wrong" in terms of community building and creating lasting value and quality. Yes, they exist. Yes, they number in the millions. They can take an unprepared site down in a few months. I think most of us know this, but we tend to sweep the magnitude of their impact under the rug... but that would be a grave mistake, in my opinion.
Anyway, getting back to curation (and keeping in mine the desires for decentralization, support for alt viewpoints and no censorship), it seems important that there be system safeguards that (a) recognize when someone is trying to "game" the system-- most likely through automation-- both on the content and curation sides and (b) uses a sliding scale of sorts to render "useless/empty contributions" less and less valuable and visible.
One final thought, before I end this dissertation... IF the long term roadmap is to create a decentralized alt social network that potentially serves tens of millions, seems that would be hard to accomplish without promoting Steemit to a large audience of "outside eyeballs." That said, I think it would be wise to make sure the internal systems-- rewards, curation, social features-- are rock solid just with the existing user base as it grows slowly and organically, before any sort of large scale appeal goes out there. In other words, don't throw a big party till you're sure you know where to get enough food and beer and tables and tents in case it rains and volunteers to make sure nobody drives home drunk...
@denmarkguy, I could not agree more! Upped your comment for the emergence of commonsense, as rare as rocking horse poo, as I like to articulate.
There was recently a suggestion to increase the value of a captcha verified vote by 10 times and an eyeballed (human) with a comment added by 100 times. Bot votes to stay as they were. The realities of this were horrendous in absolute terms.
Perhaps the converse would work better - a bot vote whether private bot or service bot (doesn't that sound funny to you?) if it can be verified as such could have a value of, say, 2% or 5% or 10% or 20% - I am not qualified to rationalise the exactitudes - thereby giving the real content followers a far higher say in value of content. The bots really do little to enhance any attractiveness of the platform other than 'Games' players but the voting system is clearly a key factor.
The bots may cost money to run - but at the expense of the big picture - they are feeding off the good stuff and are, don't shoot me, acting as parasites.
The problem is that at a blockchain level (where the votes are calculated) there really isn't a way to distinguish between humans and bots.
A capcha system is the only such proposal, but I am not aware of a way to implement one within the blockchain. Plus, even if we could - it would add a mental burden to the act of voting that would be discouraging to a lot of users.
I prefer the elimination of curation rewards, as it essentially eliminates the incentive to use bots in the first place, unless they are the type that can evaluate aspects of post quality (like plagiarism) that are hard for humans to do.
@timcliff I was curious about your thoughts on a guaranteed payout of the curation reward pool (say 50%) for all whales above the arbitrary 250MV, on a prorata basis according to a weighted average of SP held in exchange for voting power eliminatin (like preferred shares). I proposed this to @snowflake earlier and he's not a fan.
My thoughts are:
What are your thoughts?
If you divide the existing curation rewards up across everybody (those curating and those not curating) then those who are actively curating will get less than they are today.
The 250 MV threshold proposal has been put on pause for now, but if we were to go down that path eventually - there is a very complicated equation to solve as far as making there enough incentive for whales to keep the SP above 250 MV powered up (without being able to cuate/vote), without paying them too much at the expense of the network.
If the 250+ users were only getting 50% of the curation rewards and had to give up their influence - they would be incentivized to just use a bunch of accounts < 250 - because they could make more that way and use all of their voting power.
I went through the math on this... i think on the can opener post.
if you found a way to exclude the steemit account (which, i don't take it as a given that you could. Or that TPTB would be cool with it even if it were possible), and you limited it to just 1GV and above whales, you would be able to offer about 50K sp a week divided up among about 150 G vests, which amounts to around 260 SP a week per Gvest if divided porportionally. This amounts to around 2.6% per year non compounding.
That gets cut in half to 1.3% APR if you include the steemit account. I didnt go through and do an exact count, but my spitball guess based on some quick tallying on steemdb is that if you added in all the accounts between 250MV and 1GV as well, you would end up with something like 1.7% apr not including the steemit account and just under 1% including the steemit account.
You have got my vote, not that it counts! I really do appreciate the enormous amount of effort you are putting in to ensure the successful future of steemit.com - I hope that there is apt reward for you! Someone like me asks a question and they do not get a reply for a minnow, they get a reply for a human.
Respect aplenty!
No there isn't
Laugh. True. I was speaking relative to the size active user base. Good point :)
ohai der
Every word there also applies to author rewards. Should we eliminate those too? IMO, Paying someone for their labor means that they should be paid in proportion to the work they do or the value that they add. A generalized reward that's available to every steem holder does not qualify as payment. Lanier addressed this point, too:
Personally, I am an advocate of letting authors set their own curation percentage and use that as another lever in the competition for up-votes. New authors could set their curation percentage high to attract voters. Established authors could throttle it down and keep more for themselves. Although, I imagine that might be difficult to implement with the current blockchain design.
Probably the huge difference is that paying for content drives the quality of content up, as outlined in the photography example in the post. Paying for voting does not drive up the quality of voting, as described in the post.
It's not a bad idea, and one that was brought up during the HF discussion. It would be interesting to see something like this played out, although it would add a lot of complexity to the system. And just stating the obviously (not that it is a horrible thing) but it would essentially be a form of vote buying / bribery.
I'm not totally convinced of that. streemian, steemvoter, and autosteem have enabled hundreds of thousands or millions of votes that would not have been cast otherwise. That probably wouldn't have happened without the incentive that curation rewards provide, and we have no idea what the platform would have been like without them. Also, we have yet to see how things play out in the long term. Many people are still unfamiliar with the rewards rules.
I have thought that it would be interesting to see what happens if bots and guilds all shut down voluntarily at the same time for a couple of days. My guess is that a small number of authors would like it a lot and most would not. I doubt if we'd be able to coordinate that experiment, though.
Maybe. Or maybe it's just an inducement to evaluate a post that a curator might have otherwise ignored. I doubt if many people would intentionally vote on poor quality posts just for a tiny curation reward, especially knowing that it's likely to be a wasted vote because other voters won't do the same. Either way, as long as it's transparent, I don't see it as a problem. The complexity would be my bigger concern, and may well be a "show stopper."
Upvoted for visibility and to reward quality of presentation, not necessarily agreement/endorsement.
Thanks @smooth. As always, your level of caring for the platform and your ability to review the pros and cons of the various changes being proposed is an invaluable contribution!
Yea. Curation does more bad than good and removing it would add value to steem.
What I think should be done though is replace curation rewards with activity rewards or even marketing fund. We need to reward retention and usage.
But I agree full heartedly that the existing system is so bad it should just be abandoned.
I agree with that.. but the problem is, how this would be measured? The thing is, this cannot be automated, because if this will be... then bots will try to do everything to be counted as active user.
IMO true activity is when people are discussing with each other. I would prefer to move all funds from voting rewards to rewards for comments. If users are active in comments, then they will have a possibility to be rewarded for that.
Yea i see your point and concern. I fewl that the curation reward system is trying to solve a problem thats not even a problem. I think we should just do the easy and simple thing and then react if there are problems.
As an example whAtw we need is for people tonshow up
Every day in the site, be active read content, vote and comment. So why not gove rewards for users that show these activities?!?! Yes this can be games by bots. But lets not assume every user is going to abuse until we actually see the abuse be an issue.
Instead we have created a system that incentivices people to vote in a way that completely changes the most important things users are doing: telling the network what they like to a financial game that is best played by an algo/bot.
I would simply give rewards to users that show up daily, vote and comment. But let users comment and vote how they wish.
I wish everyone could see.
Support your favorite witness
There was a compelling vision that was proposed at the beginning of Steemit's creation. The will to bring that vision into fruition has diminished over time for a number of reasons.
Personally, I would like to see the original vision be allowed time, to come into fruition, before we start pruning bits off.
Some of the push for change will come from impatience and the desire for immediate results. We risk diminishing the future value by diminishing the vision now, in that quest for immediacy.
I'm not convinced that the participants of the platform have been given the chance to adapt their way of behaving to match the vision of the platform. As time goes on, I believe that those who are short sighted will depart the platform, and those seeking long term benefits will remain.
We have barely begun that process, given that the hard fork that allowed the power downs and departure from the platform only came into being a short time ago (the project has not even had its first anniversary).
I would counsel patience and forbearance. The vision can be realized. Behaviour can change. It requires time, diligence and perseverance to achieve a long term goal or a grand vision.
There is a very big argument to be had over not throwing the baby out with the bath-water. I hear you on that, and I agree it is important to avoid making that mistake.
[Edit] It is important to distinguish though between allowing things enough time to play out and reach fruition vs. letting go of parts of the platform that are demonstrably not working the way they were intended.
Which of those curation rewards is - is up to you and the other readers :)
As a new user (literally, 20 minutes ago), I find the fact that auto-bots exist kinda defeating the point of an organic user-based feedback approach.
Should I just develop a bot and watch the nickels roll in?
between paying them and not paying them, paying them is more likely to incentivize good behavior. But personally, i don't think there is very much that is going to change voting habits.
For exmaple, this. It will still cost inactive unengaged users who don't want to read little or nothing to use bots. maybe they would use them to auto upvote the largest of the new upvoters, in hopes of getting upvoted themselves if they post occassionally. Maybe a new steem sports like endeavor will come around that will allow them to monetize.
What you don't seem to get is that if there is money involved, people will find a way to get it. If my vote can assign money to everyone but me, im going to find a way to monetize it by voting for someone else.
Im writing up some ideas now that provide a lot of realistic fixes.
From my experience running a consumer review website, I've experienced the opposite. By rewarding users to perform actions you end up with dishonest actions being performed just to earn the reward. Removing (and disallowing) rewards causes interactivity to decrease slightly, but the quality of interaction increases as people are performing the task willingly.
It's sure possible to build some sort of reward system to engage positive behavior, but it's not easy. The current system doesn't do a good job at that.
I look forward to seeing what ideas you come up with!
I agree that this happens very frequently. I think they key is to align the actual easiest/best way to perform the desired behavior with the reward. That is to say, make it inefficient to cheat because doing it the right way is also doing it the best way.
In a way (if i understand correctly, which i probably don't) this is how bitcoin security works. Using your computer power honestly (mining) is more efficient than using it dishonestly (to crack private keys.)
In the case of steemit, the most efficient way to get curation rewards should be to find good content (its a debatable point whether 'good' is the same thing as 'other people will like it' but for the purposes of this reply, assume it is..) i would argue that it is not. RIght now, the besst way to get curation rewards it to front run a whale (or be one)
check my most recent blog post for my ideas on the subject of how to change things so that the best way to get curation rewards is gasp to curate.
Totally. I just don't know how it can be done, and I'm not sure if tweaking the distribution is going to "fix" it. It will most definitely improve the distribution problem, but the fact still remains that people are going to be casting votes simply because they earn a reward for it. The system encourages you to vote ~40 times a day to maximize your reward, without you caring what content it is you're actually voting on.
We don't have a system of discovery that's based on the wisdom of the crowd right now - we have a system that's based on the wisdom of profit.
Changing distribution method to
nand removing curation game things will reduce bot activities as well. But yes I also agree that even though the distribution is fixed, giving financial incentive to "just upvote" will encourage bot running with simpler algorithm.Yep, exactly. I agree that the voting weight proposal (n^2 to n log(n) or something along those lines) is a good idea and solves another aspect of the problem. Curation is creating its own set of problems though, which a change to the voting weight is not going to solve. You very eloquently articulated the main issue that curation rewards created.
It is, by definition in a social system like this. The only way to measure whether "good" content is being rewarded is whether more people (stake-weighted in this case ) like it. There is no "right" opinion on what is actually good (other than mine of course).
Yeah, great post -I can only say, all for one, one for all! Team work makes the dream work - so let us all rock steemit together @timcliff
it was pretty impressive that i called your whole argument before you made it, huh.
Indeed :) It wasn't my only argument though ;)
There is clearly a great deal of the author/curator earning metrics which, for me and I suspect many others, resides in algorithm land. Minute knowledge of the intricacies and resultant strategies adopted are to many, like me, anathema.
All I would observe is that it appears to be at the core of the 'Social Media vs Game Theory' tug-of-war.
Social Media cannot be deemed as 'Social' whilst there are posts with 350 votes and 25 views gaining $340 and there are others with 120 votes with 50 views gaining $1.12 - it just is a nonsense.
It might not be a nonsense if you own four bots with 4 different strategies. It might to the coding genius be considered an artform.
The ramifications, however, are harmful to the overall state of steemia. The ultimate destination on this journey is simply a game of thrones - the tech purity leads to a scenario where content is irrelevant. The whole thing ends up disappearing up its own arse like the Pink Panther with the vacuum cleaner.
The curation problem is a problem which can only be solved by curators. They know the game. They also know the positive effect that it can have and the negative effect it can have. Let them squabble over the way to do it for the enhancement of steemit. If they cannot - they all lose and the system focusses upon content.
Meantime, I just get on and do my thing - write and produce to the best of my ability, hoping that that rare commodity, common sense, emerges.
This scenario is unavoidable when Steemit members have such varying degrees of SteemPower.
IMO, the current Steemit "environment" almost perfectly mirrors reality -- "success" generally hinges on impressing a very small, well endowed, crowd. Furthermore, the system is set up to, in every way, make the game exponentially easier (more profitable) for those who're near the top position, just like how laws/ regulations in the "real-world" are set up to keep the wealthy comfortably outpacing their financial competition (think: tax-breaks/ loopholes), widening the gap more and more over time.
I don't see this as so much of a bad thing as I do another reflection of the human psyche. Game theory is seen everywhere because our psyche treats all "resource dimensions" (the physical, social, cyber, psychological, emotional, etc.) like a game. The goal is always to hoard as much "pleasure resource" as possible for oneself, without causing too much violent reaction (threat) from the competition.
There's always going to be some testing and prodding going on as to where the line is drawn, regarding how much shit the "lower-competition" is willing to put up with, at the cost of propping the "upper-echelons" into more and more excessive riches, before they stop supporting that system, which is, of course, designed and controlled by that elite class.
How much can I get away with? Hoard for myself? That's the nature of the game.
Before I write a word, Thank you for engaging with me in discussion. I thoroughly appreciate and respect your stance and I agree with you - in principle - there is leverage in this life and the game is to learn how to grapple your way up the castle walls to the parapet, at whatever your parapet may be.
My opinions do not carry any personal enmity towards anyone. I do bear some enmity towards the miners' belief that their leveraged value is justified to the tune of over 100,000 times that of another. The enmity is towards the belief, not the miner.
Where this falls down is in the nature of the walls. The parallels with real life end when you see the nature of those walls. Where in life do you see the odds stacked against you by over 100,000 multiple - you don't. You might say that you do ... look at Gates, LeeKaiChing, Mr Zara (name escapes me).
The getting away with stuff is exactly why the price of steem is where it is.
What would you surmise the price of steem might be if the steemit subscribers numbered 100,000? In order to get there, there has to be a few changes. In order to go live and get the 5, 10, 50, 100 million subscribers the system has to change or recognise itself as a hideous feudal system which exploits dreadfully, whilst it is quite happy to accuse Facebook, Twitter and Google for lesser crimes.
Out of rspect I have followed you and look forward to learning from you.
Very well said! This is an excellent characterization :)
That´s actually the point that makes the current eco-system vulnerable. The motivation for voting is not intrinsic but mostly strategic. People don´t actually vote on things they personally like, but things that are supposed to be upvoted by the most powerful.
I wouldn´t support the idea of completely removing curation rewards since (as you perfectly mentioned above) it´s an important financial contribution to people who invest a lot of time to make quality content visible and help their authors in receiving the feedback they deserve. But I like the idea of reviewing the concept in order to re-distribute wealth.
Great points to talk about, thank you. Resteemed
I think it would be wise to address the cause of this voting behavior, rather than removing the rewards system entirely because of the behavior the system encourages.
I absolutely agree on not removing the system entirely. But I support the idea of reviewing it. Because currently we vote on content that
That´s a quite small corridor which leads to rewards-driven voting instead of content-driven voting. If we should address the cause we would need to address our own money-driven behavior, don´t we?
If this system wasn't set up to encourage those problems you mentioned, they would go away and the rest of us could enjoy an audience that gets paid to enjoy content.
Peope are not here for curation rewarda. It is just that the reward system corrupts one of the most important functionalities of a social media network which is voting.
It seems like a lot of people are here to blog in some way, shape or form. These bloggers need an audience. Many bloggers use bots to auto vote, which is fine if they're doing it to support the author's they like and lack the time to do so manually. The blogger is either working on their next presentation or away doing other things.
A proper, fully functional curation reward system marketed to the masses is a great way to encourage an audience to show up and participate. A good incentive.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to repeat much of what I've been saying. If you're curious as to how I feel about it, have a look around the comment section.
Well it´s a dynamic system and we are here to constantly improve it, so let´s just see what we can do to make it even better :)
Steemit can be a very productive round table at times. ...and some days people are getting smashed through tables like wrestlers. That's life.
I think a way we can improve content curation is introducing a sidebar with a live feed of the posts and comments upvoted by the people we follow.
Agreed. I've suggested a tab for that.
지금의 불공평한 보상체계를 그대로두거나 조금 개선하는정도에서 머물고, 큐레이션보상을 제거한다면 스팀은 망합니다. 스팀이 페이스북이나 래딧과 차별화 되는점이 무엇입니까? 저자보상과 큐레이션보상입니다. 후발주자가 선발주자와 경쟁하려면 차별화는 매우중요합니다. 그것을 포기하는것은 망하자는겁니다. 페이스북은 봇이 없습니까?
페이스북은 스팀보다 더 많은 봇이있지만 지구촌 최대의 sns플랫폼입니다.
스팀의 모든문제는 불공정한 보상체계로 인한 보상의 극대화를 위한 보상게임을 유도하는 부분입니다.
Even without curation rewards, there are a lot of differences between Steemit and the other social media sites. For one, as SP holders we essentially have a stake in the platform. If we get to where there are billions of users, and are able to build a revenue model on top of an active user base - that would be HUGE for SP holders. Way more than curation rewards are going to do. And in my opinion, curation rewards are one of the things that are holding us back from getting there.
a new idea just occurred to me while reading here (not mature at any rate):
can we separate the roles of investors/authors/curators?
that is, each account can only be set to one role at a time (but you can change it after a given period), pretty much like choosing professions in games. So we can have specialized investors, authors and curators earning (additional) interests, posting rewards, curating rewards respectively but not at the same time. Then one can focus on only one activity at a time but is free to choose differently in the long run. Steem price will be every class' concern. A curator can still post, but the posting reward will not realize and an author can still vote, but no curating reward (but an author's vote with no financial incentive behind it might carry some good information re the content though).
Interesting idea. For the splitting of author/curator roles - I'm pretty sure that would just force most people to create two separate accounts. As far as splitting investing/curating, it is an option that is on the table.
yeah, indeed. your comment is spot on. multiple account problem seems to get in the way of many potential solutions.
Curation bots are important, but this chart doesn't lie, bots are bringing the price down!! Steem value is decreasing day after day, the only thing that has value is Steem Dolars. If the Steem price continues to go down, it will be irrelevant.
While I think you and I are on the same side of the argument, there are a lot of variables in play. While I agree the current bot/curation problem is contributing, I don't believe it is the sole cause.
Hi @timcliff, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads yesterday and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Cool, thanks!! :)
Why not just take 20-30% of the daily rewards pot and make it a STEEM Power daily interest of sorts. This new, second pot, could be dispersed linearly, at a rate of "x amount" per ever 1000 SP your account holds.
This would eliminate the voting for rewards and we would see more people voting on content they actually enjoy, whilst providing an incentive for investors to hold SP to earn a daily interest.
Accurate voting could maybe help to establish reputation instead, so there is still a reward for that. And to be honest, I feel accurate rewarding sounds more like something that should be associated with rep.
There would probably have to be a little more to it than that, but I just thought of that now and thought I'd share on it in case anyone else feels like building on the concept.
The part about paying SP holders a fixed interest in place of curation rewards is basically what is being proposed.
Reputation based on voting is an interesting idea. I don't know how it could be done though. It seems like a challenging problem to solve.
My apologies, I didn't realise that. I do think it important that it would have to linear though. Otherwise it wouldn't really incentivize buying STEEM and powering up. If you need to have over a million SP to be getting interest worth your investment, which is pretty much how it is with curation at the moment, then I don't think very many would bother to power up.
As for the reputation thing.. My technical knowledge is very limited. I hadn't realised it would be a very difficult task. I thought it would be as simple as changing something in the code from value=STEEM power to value=Reputation.
Lol. This is how little I know of coding. Just felt like sharing an idea that popped into my head.
As far as it being linear, that would be the plan.
Still a cool idea :)
Nice.
There has been quite a lot of great ideas posed recently. I'm rather intrigued and equally excited to see what happens in the near future.
Me too :)
There's already been so much said so I'll just make one point. 😇
Steem(it) is in a unique position in the social network marketplace to try new things and adjust rapidly. In the spirit of experimentation to try and find the best way, I would be in favour of temporarily removing them and seeing how it pans out, with a kind of informally agreed timeline for review.
When most large companies make a change (Facebook, Apple, etc.) make a change there is a oneway conversation, usually without warning. Steemit can leverage the power of the community to make this work. Even if the result has a negative effect, it can be readjusted. There'll probably be moaning about money that got "stolen" as a result, but probably enough people that will be on board to make it work.
😁 👍
That's a great suggestion!
The problem has been known since the beginning of Steemit. Some people thought that the terms "Blockchain" and "algorithms" could solve everything. Math can not yet explain all human behavior.
Such a proposal may perhaps apply to a very small community where it is possible to reach consensus but difficult to apply to a large community within an acceptable time.
Sorry, I'm not sure if I understand your thought. What do you propose?
My very first post on Steemit was titled:
"Proposed Changes to Break One Money Game on Steemit - NO Compensation for Upvoting, YES Compensation to Posts Upvoted".
You raise some great points, and explore the topic more thoroughly than I did. Well done!
Cool, appreciate it :)
resteemed
Well, you've got me thinking... :)
How can i avoid curation reward on my post?
Posted using Partiko Android
It is not possible. I suggest reading the whitepaper.
Haha. My posts dont get upvotes. I get them via bots only. Suppose, if i get my post upvoted after 2 days, then will it be possible? Someone told me curation takes place in first 30 min only
Posted using Partiko Android
There is more info in the FAQ and whitepaper.
Such a horrible idea.
We are the only platform anywhere paying to curate and would be one of a million paying to post.
An even distribution of steem power will solve the bot problem because it won't be possible to front run whales anymore. All these robots are doing is systemimatically front running whales. Fix that and people will be forced to vote. Front running will get difficult as the steem power distribution changes to encompass new types of users.
Why should we overpay for content ?
If you find you can make more money here than other places for posting the same content we are overpaying for content. I fear we are way over paying for content. Pretty few posts are worth more than $20. Especially when the platform has no right to prevent you from copying it to somewhere else.
the only thing useful the platform does is pay people to sort through a bunch of longwinded papers and find the ones worth highlighting.
Crypto is about decentralizing. This is a killer curation ap. Paying people micro payments to curate. Do not stop paying your star employees!
differentiation is the key to a good business model.
We have it don't lose it.
All this said, thanks for raising the issue for discussion. I just feel this would be a huge strategic mistake.
The paying for curation model is really flawed, because in order to get paid you have to both curate and have a bunch of SP first. As an example, I checked your curation rewards over the past week. You've earned 0.135 SP within a week. IDK how active of a curator you are, but that does not seem like very good compensation.
All the while, the real curation rewards are being dominated by bots and users who are voting on stuff for the wrong reasons. It is encouraging bad voting behavior which (IMO) is very damaging to the success of the platform.
This is not really true as we have seen plenty of different models for people to be paid some form of salary, finders fees, profit sharing, enhanced curation rewards by trail mechanics, etc. by stakeholders for actually doing the curation.
It is much like any business where both capital and labor are needed, but they don't necessarily need come from the same person.
Usually when you see an incentive system producing undesired results it is because some aspect of the incentive system is misdesigned for the objectives. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to get rid of it. Another option is to try to improve it.
I am not opposed to that at all. Do you think it could be done?
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking of erasing this because I think I got too fired up.
I haven't used a curation bot. I don't think my curation rewards would be that high because i don't have enough sp and don't vote much anymore but I used to be much more active last summer and fall. Then I would try to get rewards by reading all the new post. I only log in occasionally now. I like monitoring the platform to see what is changing. I usually vote for things I want to see more of, introduce yourself post, and stuff on trending page that i like. I pretty much stopped trying to get rewards . However I do know the initial draw to sign up and the only reason I powered up was the curation aspect.
Simply (and coarsely) speaking, the bot problem is due to "complicated (gamification of curation) unfair (superlinear reward calculation) incentive (curation reward)"
Removing the incentive can abate the bot problem, but I think removing the former two (complicated and unfair) also can reduce the problem significantly. See @sigmajin's post and @ats-david's post for further discussions.
I've said it in a few other places, but I support both ideas of eliminating curation rewards and switching to a more linear rewards calculation. Thanks for sharing @ats-david's post! I'll check it out.
How did these curators get the SP without the curation rewards?
it is not so difficult to write a comment and be rewarded for that.
That's true. Worst case scenario.... People would then seek out those bloggers with enough SP to be able to reward these comments, and the new members would experience an awkward silence. Back to the drawing the board.
buy them. thats how we increase demand. duh.
How do you sell this idea?
Hi there, would you like to purchase some advertisements today? The value of your advertisements will increase over time. Technically, you won't need to participate in curating, other people will, probably, so you can buy this today and hope for the best! What do you say?
exactly.
I guess through the other means of acquiring SP... through content creation or by purchasing Steem, presumably.
Even today with curation rewards, anyone who is earning them is doing so based on a large existing investment in SP. You either have to buy or earn SP first in order to earn anything meaningful from curation rewards.
Many people are earning from these curation rewards. Every member here who has earned rewards for their content did so because there was an incentive for curators to hit the "like" button.
I left this comment on another post and I'll leave it here so people can see what the new plan looks like in the real world.
I've already seen the plan in action. I'm not sure it's a good idea to remove these rewards.
This has been completely lost in the entire debate. Just as there are incentives for posting, there are incentives to vote on posts. The existence of both is what makes the platform work for both groups of users: content creators and content consumers. The elimination of curation rewards tells the consumers that they are not necessary...or that they at least don't deserve to be rewarded for their work on the platform. Instead, they are expected to buy more "influence" so that only the content creators can benefit.
It's just a bad idea that is not based on any actual economic behavior.
One percent of the earnings seen in my wallet have come to me by way of curation rewards. It's not much, but as I climb by creating content, I'm earning the ability to pay back those who have voted for me by voting for their content. New users today also benefit from those of us who have stuck it out trying to make something of this.
There's an incentive in existence that helped push me to succeed. I know the more I put in, the more I'll get out. I viewed my ability to earn higher curation rewards down the road as a way to make up for low creation rewards at the start. A time investment(like any other investment) that finds a way to balance itself out. Without that, should I power down? I'd like to be able to help people with strong voting power. Without curation rewards in the future, it'll take me even longer to get there. They talk about this mountain being steep...now I'm facing a wall.
"Every". I curate. I vote on things I like. Just like I up vote youtube videos, and I up vote reddit posts. What is the incentive there? Oh yeah, it is that thing called telling the content creator you like it an want more. If they make more then that is great.
I don't suddenly think I should magically be paid in currency because I told that person I wanted them to make more content.
The content curation thing here is really alien. It has created an environment where people think they should be financially rewarding for saying they like something.
If not for the fact some people spent a lot of money buying steem power and this really the only way they interact with steemit I'd be fine with seeing curation rewards completely gone.
Why?
You are rewarded the same as anywhere else that hopefully the content creator will make more content.
What the curation rewards DO offer is a way for people who do not feel they are good at making content, or participating in that way some way to still earn from interaction with steemit. THIS is a good reason for curation rewards to exist. Yet are they worth as much as 25% of the work it takes to make the content? Someone who spent steem power to power up so they can do that would likely say "yes, me clicking up vote and potentially awarding you should be worth the hours your spent making your content" especially if that is the only way they interact with steemit/busy.org. Does that mean they are correct? Subjectively yes. Objectively maybe not. I personally think 25% may be a bit higher than it should be, but I'm also okay with leaving it there. I do think the algorithm now encourages dog piling rather than actually voting on the merit of each piece on a case by case basis. Throw in the bots that are designed to maximize the curation reward by predicting authors who always do well, and following dog piles actually dilutes the reward pool. In other words, due to the automatic voting, or voting without reading over simply wanting curation rewards the rewards that can be given out to content and perhaps to new content authors is very much diluted.
This might be addressable by rethinking the curation rewards algorithm.
From the user side, curation rewards are about the only thing that sets Steemit apart from the competition (average users don't "experience decentralization", nor care about it). The other established platforms are better than Steemit, in some cases by light-years, at what sets them apart from the crowd.
Are you suggesting that Steemit stands up to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Medium, YouTube, based only on its content being saved into a block-chain?
Let's not forget, YouTube pays content creators, so Steemit doesn't really set itself apart by rewarding bloggers in Steem. In fact, YouTube's payment system gets the nod from the average user since it pays in fiat, something people generally understand and trust.
Edit
I read the rest of your post to discover that you aren't suggesting to ban curation rewards altogether.
My bad for reacting before I read through your entire post.
Thanks for the edit. I do see some benefits to the idea of curation. I simply think the algorithm doesn't tend to lead to what I believe was the outcome intended. So I do think it needs some adjusting.
As you saw I was only mentioning those other social medias as an explanation that we are PAID for our vote also by hopefully the content creators we like making more content. That may not interest people enough to justify them using Steemit over another platform, but it was me illustrating that there are other factors in the scheme of "payment" or "reward" beyond the pure crypto currency aspect.
I can see you understood this though.
Brutal nesting!
People shouldn't have to change their blogging habits to accommodate a rewards system. These photographers spent hours taking and processing photos. I produce digital art and I often do include some sort of story to go along with the art, but not always. The images take many hours to produce. I see many artists who post a few images of their latest creations and give a few details of their thought process. These people can't be limited or suffer because those seeking rewards are forced to stare at nothing. All this does is create downtime. Steemit isn't about long essays. Even these poets would take a hit. Some of the most popular videos of all time on youtube are seven seconds long. People want creative freedom.
Brutal Nesting 3
Alright, if the curator spends time writing a comment, that helps.
Also, I do have a soft place in my heart for those who use bots for legitimate purposes. Some of my oldest supporters have me on auto, which I appreciate, because they appreciate my work and want to support me. They come back later and read. Some live on the other side of the world. I actually encourage people to do this, whereas I used to be against it. I need to make money, and I don't mind them making money from my product because that's what pays me. I'm back to square one. I don't know what to do or say. If people just voted responsibly, supporting the creators they enjoy and not going for the easy rewards, there wouldn't be a problem. I don't know what to say anymore.
"Every" as in: Not all votes come by way of someone seeking to maximize their reward potential, but anyone who has seen a substantial reward has been struck by those who are seeking curation rewards. That's why views are far lower than votes, every time.
I'm another voter who votes for what they like. My incentive to build up my SP by producing content is so I can give more to the other authors out there. I don't mind at all when some seeking rewards give me a boost, because it all goes back to the community. I can then take my work and get views somewhere else for added exposure and feel comfortable knowing the work was not a waste of time.
Would I prefer to see my rewards for creating increase? Yes. Is the curation reward percentage too high? I'm not sure, so let's talk about something else.
Would more people come to my restaurant for coffee if I offered free refills? Yes. That's an incentive to go there for coffee. Would free refills increase the chances of a customer purchasing a bite to eat... yes. I'm making money, by giving customers a piece of the pie. Soon, more people hear about this free coffee and my restuarant is full. I leave a sign up by the door that says, "Free dessert with the purchase of any meal." Then I find myself making even more money by giving more away. To top that off, the service is getting tipped well because I've created a friendly, giving atmosphere(the comment section after party).
If I received 1000 votes for a dollar each, I'd be fine with taking home $750. I produced something and gave back all at the same time. It feels honest. Maybe the voter voted because they like my stuff. Do the math, they didn't get much if everyone got an equal cut, but it's still something, and it adds up.
I say, leave the curation rewards and remove the methods that cause the problems and kill the audience. My show runs all day, why are people being penalized for showing up early or coming late? There's no time to enjoy the show if you're already late for the next one down the street. Allow curators to relax and enjoy their stay. I'm sure there's a way.
Yes, I'm sorry about my irrational choices of where to respond :(
Simple solution: make the time limit 10 seconds. It should never take less than 10 seconds to look at a photo, especially one that we enjoy to look at, and if it does we only have to suffer mere seconds to put in our 100% vote.
What does this accomplish?
First of all, manual curators are now forced to at least BE where they are voting -- as in, actually looking at the content that they're voting on (no votes without views -- another problem many people have been mentioning). Can you "thumbs-up" a youtube video without opening its link? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, and I think Steemit would benefit by setting up a similar condition to voting for content.
Secondly, bots will be forced into more difficult prioritizing habits, assuming they can cheat the system into detecting an account as viewing a post (this might be a problem if the bot owner also wants to be viewing content on his/her own), they can't lead vote on a post simultaneously with lead voting another post as they can only be accumulating viewing time on one post at a time.
Good response. I do think the biggest problem at the moment is the algorithm. You know what would be really funny is if there was a captcha generated from content actually in the article and you had to answer the captcha to vote. :P
I know that wouldn't go over too well and would add a barrier that would discourage more people from voting, so let's NOT do that. Yet I do think it is amusing and it does show I was thinking a bit outside of the box.
Imagine a tiered curation reward.
A simple upvote click on the feed yields a small reward to the curator. An upvote click after opening the article yields a larger reward. Then, to top it off, a responsible blogger who cares about their readers could give a few worthwhile votes to worthy comments. Triple whammy! Rewarded for actually viewing and expressing their thoughts!
The content creators could create. The curators could curate... and finally, the creators can curate the curators. Everyone wins and it's a perfect world again!
Hooray!
Yes as long as the algorithm does not encourage doing all of those things simply based upon the order you did it in.
Yes, user engagement is so important and something that's sorely lacking throughout most of Steemit. Community is built around fluid communication not by reading static pages and especially not by clicking on an upvote button without taking the time to even open the post.
I've got you on auto-vote, myself. I believe I've been auto-voting you for about 2 weeks now (at 100%) and will likely continue to do so for many months (years?) to come. I really enjoy your stuff, but I must admit that I mostly treat curating like playing the stock market -- "performers" stay in the portfolio...and it kind of pains me to say that because I want to keep supporting the people whom I appreciate and respect, but, I don't know, I guess my greed weighs heavy on me.
I suppose you can't be a top curator without playing along with these type of games, though.
Silence speaks the loudest ;)
...and, suddenly, it seems that I've hijacked this post with the most brutal nesting that's ever been accomplished in all of Steemit's history. As unlikely as it may seem, this was not intentional and I apologize for it... I mean this honestly.
If I'm a performer, I view my curators as investors. I require these investors so I can perform consistently. I like the fact that I'm giving back by producing content...and at the same time, I like to give votes in return. Many who follow get a follow back, so that's who I'm seeing, that's who I'm voting for. You take your piece of the pie, I get it back when I vote. This all seems so damn fair to me. People working together towards a common goal and everyone wins, slowly, but surely.
I started out at the bottom like anyone else starting today. I didn't invest my money, only my time. This mountain isn't that steep, one just needs the proper climbing gear. If you don't have the right tools for the job, it's going to be harder and that's life.
Many of the people who vote for me, majority, they vote because they like my stuff. It's not about rewards but I'm damn happy they get them. That's where I stand on this whole thing. Everyone needs to put their heads together and find ways to fix the abuse, not allow the abusers to ruin it for everyone else.
Peace!
The people who do not 'like' do so because it serves no purpose not because they are not paid to do it.. If a like gave author a few cents a lot more people would use it.
You don't see many people with umbrellas on a sunny day right, now bring in some rain and people will use umbrellas because suddently it has a purpose.
Would more people use umbrellas on a sunny day if you paid them to? I am not sure.. and if they did it would look fake as fuck much like the voting system here.
Exactly. That's why I'm saying if people had an incentive to like or upvote something, they'd do it. Most people on youtube simply forget to hit the button. Would you consistently forget your change at the cash register?
Using an umbrella on a sunny day is stupid, because it's not raining nickels, nor dimes.
My point was that you don't need incentives for people to do thing that have a purpose.
I think my analogy was incorrect which created the confusion.
I should have said : People will use umbrellas on a rainy day regardless if you paid them or not to do it, because it serves a purpose.
If the like button served a purpose there would be no need to pay people to use it.
Snowflake. If people who sit on their butts all day in front of the computer were paid to enjoy their form on entertainment, more people could afford umbrellas.(Just having fun!)
Did you read my restaurant analogy? It's around here somewhere. Those incentives are a proven business model. You're trying to tell me that coupon for a free turkey after purchasing $100 worth of groceries doesn't lure people to the store to spend $100 they may have spent elsewhere or not at all. Incentives work. Yes, people will still buy food, even on rainy days without an umbrella and if that's the case, they may choose the store with the closest parking spot as their incentive to shop there.
I mucked up the nesting... there's a response waiting near by.
Ok so what are you trying to achieve with curation rewards, people curating or people earning more reward? Because your analogy works only for the latter. The free turkey only forces them to buy a specific product ( upvoting a specific post) but it doesn't incentivize them to go to the store to buy food( something they would have done regardless)
I'm suggesting people earn reward by curating and removing the problems that encourage simple upvoting for the sake of reward. I'm suggesting an incentive for people to actually come and see this great community and content within and be rewarded, like everyone else, for taking part.
When I first started here, a culture was brewing. As automation took over, the culture slowly started to die. The incentive should be there. Reward the authors, pay them with this simple click that also pays you! Read what @seablue had to say here. I wholeheartedly agree with what was said there.
How do you remove these problems while keeping curation rewards ? In other words how to incentivize people to vote for quality content instead of high paid content when you have curation rewards?
By being an all around fun person who people want to know and be with.
Also, people should learn to vote responsibly. We can't blame the vehicle for hitting the tree when the driver put it there. You seem to want to cut down all of the trees, instead of educating the masses about the dangers they pose.
It doesn't work like that, if there is an incentive to vote in a specific manner people are going to vote this way.
Those trees you speak of bring nothing positive to the platform so why not cut them all down?
Educating the masses? Ok so there is this feature that you can earn money with if you upvote stuff but be careful, only use it to make little money do not abuse it. Yeah right :)
Majority of the people who vote for me, whether it's automated or manually, enjoy my work. I did something right to get their attention. Now they can't wait to see what I'll do next. I appreciate their efforts. They come to my comment section and we all have a blast. It's a nice yard with a lot of shade. Why do you want to come to my yard and make it ugly? I enjoy giving back to these people.
If there is a specific manner that allows people to vote in a fashion that doesn't seem like it's good for business, make adjustments. If I have a leaky roof, I'll fix it. Replacing a leaky roof before testing to see if it can be fixed is counterproductive.
You keep saying there is specific problem, and I can agree. So why not address that issue? You can see it, you know what it is. If you can pinpoint the problem, a solution shouldn't be too far away.
If incentives don't work, why are saying people are voting in a certain way because there is an incentive to do so. Why not change what is so appealing into something else which is also appealing, while learning from the mistakes in the past...
This is my quote
I am not trying to replace the roof, else I wouldn't have asked you how to repair it...
I've thought about improving curation reward but it's very difficult to incentivize people to vote for what they like instead of what the post will earn.
I don't really see how to improve the current curation rewards system because it is already very good at what its doing and every abuse problem has been thought out, but it is still a burden because the incentives are bad.
At this point the best would just be to give a fixed curation rewards to active voters ( say 30+ vote per day) in proportion to their steem power.
EDIT : Actually even a fixed reward is stupid as it would incentivize bots to vote which means a lot of the stake will be used by bots.
What we want like @timcliff said is a system where real active users are rewarded by having a bigger influence. ( since no more bots will be voting)
What are these rewards worth if everything is set up to vote for a handful of successful creators. One thousand auto voters distributing 40000 votes to the chosen ones based on previous success dictated by the previous round of auto votes. Ignoring the newcomers because there's no profit today while slowing but surely watching their investment diminish and not understanding why. If those abusing the reward system found out they are actually doing more harm to their investment than good, do you think they would change?
They got the memo about easy curation rewards. I don't think they saw the one about where it leads.
Find a way to boost curation rewards on lower reputation accounts as an incentive to change things up from time to time. Make them hunt. As reputation rises, so does SP for that user, curation rewards slowly diminish on high reputation accounts, but those users make up for the losses by being able to earn higher curation rewards due to being well established. People will still vote for higher rep accounts even if the curation rewards are slightly lower. Finding a promising noob is a curation reward in itself, for everyone, right?
That would be one problem with it, aside from the coding end, of course (can it even be accomplished -- I don't know).
One solution, from the content creator's end, is to adapt to the system. In the case of sharing photos, the author could write a few paragraphs detailing a bit of the story around how the picture(s) came to be and/or what the picture(s) means to them, etc. As to the comic, well, maybe this isn't the platform for that, if money is the main incentive? But, again, they could add in other things to lengthen viewing time.
Also, and I know this isn't ideal either, viewers (content curators) may decide to wait out the time limit on a post, out of respect to its quality.
Perhaps something like 1 minute, or even 30 seconds, would work better as the time limit. That way people aren't forced to sit idly on a short-post that they think deserves a 100% upvote and bots can't cast 30 100% upvotes in the span of 10 seconds.
EDIT:
Another possible solution is to set different time limits to different lead-tags. The limit could be set at something like 5 ~ 10 seconds for everything with "photography" as the first tag and vary anywhere from 5 seconds to perhaps several minutes, depending on the average length of other posts under those same tags. But talk about going as far north from K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) as possible! Plus, this type of system might lead to a new way to game -- focus on the small time limit tags.
@snowflake
A few months back I suggested considering "time account spends on X post" as part of the voting calculation.
So the voting calculation could be something like:
(SP of account, factoring in current voting power) * (time spent on X post) * (1/0: upvote or not?) * (voting slider value: this is where we would state whether the read was worth the time spent)
...and we can give every X time interval spent on a post some incremental value of 1, until the time limit is reached (we could settle on 5 minutes, or 300 seconds, as a 100% vote by time and split up the measurement in 5 second intervals, such that spending only 5 seconds viewing an article only casts a 5/300 {1/60} time weighted vote in the above calculation)
This way people are somewhat punished for voting on content that they don't like -- they would have to spend at least 5 minutes with their browser stuck on a post that they don't like (or 10 minutes, or whatever value we determine to be the time limit) in order to cast a 100% vote on it.
If we could somehow code accurate account viewing time per post where the first post opened is the ONLY post on which the time measurement happens (UNTIL that post is voted on or the post is closed out of), then I think we would make gaming curation through bot-voting much more difficult to achieve AND better incentivize voting on things that we like vs. on things that we believe will be popular with others.
So this would reward people based on the time they spent reading it? And you would calculate the average of all people who viewed the post to determine its popularity? Is this correct?
How does this work when a photographer or an artist shares a few images? A comic doesn't take long to read.
Pretty much; but SP value and voting power would still be factored into the total voting weight that each account provides with their viewing time and we get the choice to not upvote and/or vote with the voting slider; thus, everyone still has the choice to vote on that which they think deserves it, but they're punished for 100% voting on content that they don't like, since they're forced to stay on the post until the time limit is reached to give a 100% vote (this limit could be anything, from 1 second to an hour, but 5 minutes seems about right to me since this is the average time that it takes to read your average well-thought out, high effort, post, IMO).
I am still confused about some aspect of your idea. What would a curator have to do to earn the highest possible reward?
How will this prevent bot from gaming the system?
What about shorter post that are quality but take 1 min to read?
How do you even code this at the blockchain level?
Sorry for all the question. Im kind of intringued by your idea but don't fully grasp it .
This is entirely untrue. There are many users who hit the "like" button simply because they like the content and want it to receive rewards. If everyone who was currently clicking the button because of the financial incentive stopped - the same rewards would be distributed to the community. It would just be decided by a different set of users hitting the like button.
So I guess in that case the incentive to hit the like button was because the person liked the content. The rewards are an added incentive and there's nothing wrong with that.
Either way, nobody here gets paid without first giving someone the incentive to vote.
Sorry, but not true if I am understanding you correctly. If nobody was incentivized to vote through curation rewards - people would still vote. I vote all the time, and it has nothing to do with any potential curation rewards.
The amount that the rewards pool will pay out each day is the same regardless of how many people vote. Whoever votes that day are the ones that decide where it goes. It would still all get paid out absent curation rewards.
I vote as much as possible, for only the things I like, provided I see them. Have a look at youtube though, and you'll see how the upvote button gets neglected. Read much of what I said here already. No offense, and with all due respect, kind sir, but I do not feel like talking in circles.
I see how this system works. I see the abusive aspect, and I see the bright side. I'm down the middle. Where I stand, I feel it's best to tackle ways to avoid the wrong and encourage the right while giving curation rewards a chance to breathe and function as intended. Those rewards, if marketed properly and truthfully, could be a great incentive to draw people to the platform. Find a way to reward them for actually engaging, rather than playing the numbers game.
Let's agree to end on that. I agree :)
Sounds bad...But wait...what one have to do to maximize earnings? Well, one have to vote for posts with maximum consensus.
If Bob is voting only for crypto staff, Alice only for recipes, John only for cat pictures and Mary somehow managed to create a post Bob,John,Alice and even never voting Sara couldn't resist to vote for, that would be exactly the post to vote for to get maximized earnings
So, someone operating that tipe of bot actually just sponsoring consensus. Because you can't get curation reward without giving author reward first, right ?
Well, a big question is what do you want to reach consensus on?
Well, any agenda, really)
There's three types of voters.
I don't think the third type is more evil that the first two )
What about consensus on what content is going to add more value to the platform and increase the value of STEEM?
If you want my personal opinion, content on Steemit is not supposed to bring value to the platform, because value is already here, and it's not content, it's technology.
So, author rewards is just some sort of advertising costs.
Among my friends circle I don't really know anybody who would be interested to be paid for blogging, but when I say that recently I made an transfer of 0.1 cent to my friend from another city with no commission my business friends want to know more.
The main reason why even those who already invested some money in Bitcoin are redundant about Steemit is exactly the fact, that investing in Steemit you don't know if the rules would be changed any time...and this discussion about eliminating curation rewards is actually just proving the point.
I disagree about the fact that content is not supposed to bring value to the platform.
I agree about the benefits of the currency completely on its own merits. I think STEEM has BTC beat, except for the level of adoption and use.
Changes to the curation rewards would not be touching the "purely currency" aspects of the coin, but I do agree with the sentiment that making changes to the rules adds a big layer of uncertainty to current and potential future investors.
That said though, I don't think that that reason alone should prevent us from making necessary changes to the blockchain that are going to make it better in the long run at this stage of the game.
Count me out, I'd rather see the problems correct themselves than to appeal to authority and off their heads.
The people making curation awards undesirable are the problem, not the math that lets them do it.
If we rely on authority, rather than community standards, we end up with a community that cheer the bread and circuses just before the collapse of the system.
We got plenty of that IRL, why would we encourage it here?
Better that we disparage those that abuse Steemit just to mine the rewards, than we take a feature that holds much appeal for many people.
Imo,...
This really isn't a matter of appealing to authority. If anything, authority would typically take a position of preserving the status quo. Proposing that we change the rules of the system is not a bad thing if it makes the platform better. Sometimes a system is setup in such a way that it cannot / will not correct itself without some outside intervention.
I'd think that whales down voting your account for mining curation awards would clear up in misconceptions about community standards.
Whales loose out on curation rewards if they downvote a post.
So, do we want whales that help, or farm the system themselves?
Shouldn't they play this role in the ecosystem?
Keeping it safe for the small fry?
Taking out the sharks that game the system?
What do you propose?
Whales downvote abusers.
I think the system works fairly well. It's open to abuse, but we don't want too many restrictions
"Wait, I have to give you money in order for me to make money..?)"
capitalism m8 that is literally the entire economic system
Typically service oriented work (like curation) doesn't require you to give someone money to make money.
When that does happen, it's often considered a ripoff/scam/sketchy.
The concept of "give money to make money" also applies outside of crypto to pyramid schemes, for profit education, certification courses, and software licensing. They all can be extremely shady operations and it's not hard to find someone screaming about how these things are ripoffs.
The "takes money to make money" mentality in the business world does however make a lot of sense when you're talking about capital, equipment, and hiring. But in a situation where it's about "you" making money providing a "service" (in steemit's case, curation) - being forced to buy in before you're rewarded sounds bad. Some people are against this sentiment.
in order for the capitalist to make money it must be done off the work of others..... in our case we provide a service and by the nature of capitalism unless the owners gain absolutely nothing we can not gain everything we create..... which is making money but not much.....
but thats private property
Wait a sec .. who the f is proposing the elimination of curation rewards!?
Well, me. Lol. It is a proposal up for discussion. All it is is discussion at this point though.