Wow, quite in depth there @aggroed. I knew HF 19 was coming but didn't realise quite how much of a big change this will have. You are very right, we get questions every day in the Discord chat about low payouts for very good posts. There is only so much as a minnow that we can do other than resteem their post in the hopes that it will get more exposure and hopefully a small percentage of an upvote from a whale for them.
If you are correct in your assessment then I am worried for a lot of newer members: there just won't be the incentive to keep going for them. I will stick it out regardless - while important the monetary rewards are secondary to the community I have surrounded myself with and the community you introduced me to.
I hope you are wrong, for their sakes.
I encourage you to make a weekly post about underappreciated/underrated posts. I will happily follow you and evaluate your picks myself and vote up the good stuff.
Thank you! Excellent idea! I will keep you appraised
I'll probably upvote your "underappreciated post summary" post too
Wow, thank you. I will get right on it and let you know!
<3
This 'sticking it out' is fine - until a fair competitor comes along. Steemit is only a vibrant community at present because no such competing platform exists. When it does, Steemit will no longer be a vibrant community, because people seek fairness.
It isn't so much the money, as you point out. It's fairness. I'm not here for money, but to post in a community that doesn't censor posts like Youtube, and Facebook, etc., do.
But the unfair distribution has made money an issue for me, when money just wasn't before.
Yes, I was thinking this too. It seems as a great idea of rewarding people for creating content and for interacting with it but what is the point of rewards if it is not distributed correctly/fairly?! I Think a lot of people are looking for new and different concepts than the usual money making giants of Facebook or YouTube and replacing them with fair systems. Maybe Steemit wasn't intended to be like that.
I might get the wrong impression, I'm only new here, I don't even understand all these terms: whales, dolphins, minnows and the rest. So I'm here to learn more and see where it goes.
I've only been here a month, so there is much yet I don't understand, but the terms you mention refer to the size of the bankroll of the account. Minnows have more than $1000 or so, Dolphins ten times that, and Whales more than $50k. Which makes me plankton at <$100 =p.
One thing I can point out is that of the rewards you can see you are getting for the comment I am replying to, my vote is worth less than $.10. A dolphin, or whale with a lower weighted vote, has upvoted your comment.
HF19 really seems to have made things better, but I haven't yet seen the data on author rewards, which is the majority of rewards. Before the fork, 1% of accounts received 99% of author rewards. Even just an order of magnitude greater spread wouldn't completely create a fair playing field, but it would show a dramatic improvement.
There will be some tendency of rewards to be preferentially concentrated, as content is variable in quality, topic, and based on personal and familial relationships. No algorithm will create a perfect 'communist' distribution, because voting should create a meritocracy, and the people voting will differentiate between content based on merit.
I do know things are better now, except that downvotes are still impacting some people whose content is being reward deprived by parties able to do so (whales) for personal reasons, and this issue hasn't been much addressed in the Hard Fork.
While there is a fairness issue, which is magnified in the perceptions of most people, the fact of rewards being distributed at all is a qualitative change from other platforms. This is markedly demonstrated by the scarcity of trolls, because trolls don't get upvoted, and do get downvoted.
Even folks who are generally unconcerned with the pursuit of wealth don't see much point in deliberately avoiding it, which is what trolling effectively is going to achieve on Steemit. One of the things I love most about Steemit is that the quality of discourse is radically different from other platforms, and I think this is the reason.
It is that difference in quality of communications that most inspires hope in me for Steemit to become more than just a yakbox, but a means of political decision making. I feel that all the pieces are available on Steemit, and just waiting for someone to figger out how to assemble them right.
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
Thanks for your reply.
The bad news is, with little analysis, aggroed prediction is more likely leaning towards being right. The change isn't big but what it shows is HF19 isn't a well thought-out upgrade or one with hidden agendas or on lacking vision or does not help the sustainable growth of the platform and its community. please note: My opinion is based on very little knowledge and understanding of how this actually works** It won't be long though before I figure a lot of it out and will then beable to make a more meaningful contribution.