A referral program wouldn't make the system more gameable than it currently is.
Someone could create multiple accounts all linked to his main account, but then if he wants to earn 1% from each account he will have to post a lot from all these accounts. Basically he could just post from his main account or even create sockpuppets to post and that would be the same. There is more incentives to post your content from your main account to build up a reputation than posting all your content from different accounts anyway.
It will create new fights I am sure
What kind of fights? please elaborate..
Exactly, thanks brother for clarifying idea on other comments! I think, once it is designed properly, educating people on how it works should be easy...Referral design in post still require few things to be fully functional :)
Fingers crossed @snowflake - another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels? It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote - if whales have agreed to do so. User can delegate / lend their SP now to various sub accounts so it is not too obvious. That would not even be gaming the system as it is allowed via rules but people will see and recognise and a fight might start - however the community has the chance to handle such instance too (in theory).
But what is gaming the system? Wikipedia says:
Gaming the system (also referred to as gaming the rules, bending the rules, abusing the system, cheating the system, milking the system, playing the system, or working the system) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.
I do hope people will play fair and the community is ruling it by themselves - saw similar things happening on other platforms which resulted in favorism battles and marked the end of some platforms - Thanks fro commenting @snowflake
The system that I envision is not MLM, it is a simple referral system where you earn from users that you have invited. So it's one level. You won't earn rewards from users invited by your own referred users. In such scheme you have to take a bigger and bigger percentage on new users to reward all intermediaries, this is really bad.
The best is to have a simple one level referral system where new users have the same chance to earn reward by inviting new users.
You don't need whale support to incentivize youtubers with a referral program.
Imagine a youtuber with more than 100k subs. This person post his invite link on youtube and promote steemit. He will probably get at least a thousands people join steemit.
Now let's take a conservative number here, say the average person earn $1 per day from posting reward, so all of them combined earn $1000 per day. That means this youtuber will earn $10 per day or $300 per month just for having posted a link on youtube.
Once someone found the site what is to stop them from making their own new account that gets 100 percent of the reward?
The referral program could be invite only. That would make it even more attractive to marketers
One level is good and I agree - the other point I might need to elaborate a bit more - let me think and try to explain in proper Englisch, my brain is too germanised still @snowflake - bear with me - just need to do my tax today but revert back :-)