Conflation happens when the identities of two or more concepts sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity, and the differences appear to become lost. In logic, it is the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.
-Wikipedia
Vote Conflation in Steem
The biggest conflation that arises in Steem seems be the nature of the vote.
I think that votes were originally intended to be used to reward good quality content, and to subsequently act as sign-posts to direct the users of the platform towards this. Over time, votes have been used increasingly to reward work that was carried out for the benefit of the Steem blockchain and ecosystem.
These two uses of votes are arguably both quite legitimate, and seem very similar, but because the work is not always present in the content being voted for, the sign-posting element can become an unwanted side-effect of the votes, rather than an additional benefit. A voter may be happy bringing content to prominence so it can gather further financial reward from Steem holders, but they probably don't particularly want it to end up in the trending pages, because it's just not very interesting for most of the potential audience, and especially those without Steem.
The opposite situation also arises. A voter may wish to draw attention to something that they don't want to financially reward. Unless the author opted to 'Decline Payout', they can't do that directly. They would need to make their own post, and link to the content to bring it to prominence.
Some people copy YouTube videos to Steem as a quick/lazy way to monetise other people's work. When a user likes the content, how often do they actually even check that the video channel is associated with the Steem account? I would say that's rare, partly because of how time-consuming it is. So in up-voting, because the video content is good, the voter is rewarding this act of monetising somebody else's work, as well as sign-posting the good content. It could be argued that this is no bad thing if the original author doesn't have a Steem account, but it's certainly very different from rewarding the creator of good original content.
A flag is generally intended to be used to indicate that you disagree with the pending rewards for a post, but it is also often used as a way of retaliating against an account with which another user has a problem. This again conflates the idea of voting against an account with voting against an individual piece of content. This dynamic will usually also fail to serve the purpose of content discovery.
Self-voting is the case whereby voters justify granting themselves 'a return on their investment' either by directly assigning a share of the reward pool to themselves, or by some more elaborate approach that is less obvious to the community. A vote in this form carries yet another meaning under the same action.
So the seemingly simple vote in Steem currently has many connotations which also evolve over time.
Solving Vote Conflation with SMTs
Once the Steem blockchain is ready for the efficient introduction of these new tokens, I think we will be better placed to resolve this sub-optimal situation. Communities will be able imbue their tokens with their own meanings, and if they wish, remove ambiguity about how they are intended to be used.
The distribution of the new tokens will generally not follow the current Steem distribution, and this means that there will be different whales, dolphins and minnows in each community. It seems possible that in some cases the distribution of tokens might be so equal that such stratification isn't even relevant.
Because in some communities it will be possible to vote on a single post with multiple SMTs, we will be able to declare token X as the reward token, and token Y as the promotion token for example. Then for example, a website could construct a 'trending' page based on the assignment of promotion tokens whilst reserving the reward tokens to pay developers for their work.
If my understanding is correct, this could solve a big problem for Steem by eventually replacing the conflated Steem vote.
But wont each SMT app be a ecosystem separated from steem? Take appics for example.
They are creating a New token, and they dont mention the use of STEEM os SBD anywhere.
I believe that Steem will be required to transact on the Steem blockchain. So those creating communities using SMTs will need to hold Steem for this purpose, and this adds demand for Steem. There may be other connections to Steem depending on the specific SMT offerings, and I imagine the main SMT exchange(s) will also be centered around Steem.
Hi @andybets yes I imagine that if we create an ICO with the Steem Blockchain and start spreading our SMTs, in order to have bandwith for the crypto created on the Steem Blockchain, we'll need to hold steem. Is it that way?
Very interesting post!
Regards, @gold84
Thanks. Yes, that's my understanding too :)
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Witnessing an Accident
A Letter to Editor
I am a steemit newbie and so am learning the ropes of this new ecosystem. I found your article very informative. We need more of this kind of information to educate all the new people coming on to the platform. Keep up the good work. I hope you continue writing about these impending changes.
Well, that all sounds amazing... I love all the work that whales have put into the infrastructure and they certainly do deserve to be rewarded for their efforts (either by working, developing, or investing early) but it's often hard to legitimately agree with the autovotes some whales put on particular content.
We all know the struggles and I'd love for SMTs to help solve some of those issues. I don't truly understand the technical side of it, but I'm super excited about a more current distribution of power and rewards.
Very true. When someone says something distasteful, I want to vote it up in order to highlight what someone said but I don't because people will conflate my vote with approval of the statement itself.
There ought to be an approval token, a promotion token, and a reward token, maybe flags for approval tokens for disapproval. There should also be tokens for certain boolean qualities: a spam token, original-work token, N.S.F.W. token, and a tags token.
Yes, I've thought about tokens for everything. It sounds good in principle, but I'm not totally sure that the blockchain will scale well to this number of votes, and also wonder whether enough people would use them.
Practically, I think I also heard that in the proposed SMT scheme, only up to 3 tokens can be selected for a post, and that these are to be chosen by the author of the post.
very different post.
go ahead boss.
Ur post are really great
I'm super excited about a more current distribution of power and rewards.
sounds like a hot mess
Great post very informative thanks for sharing @andybets Followed you
Great post.this post amazing l like vote post most
Because before we don’t understand about vote
Now we understand that what is meaning about vote. Vote is very important for us . thanks for giving this information
It is really helpful post
Good work
Thanks sir for sharing the important post.....
I don't understand what those tokens are for yet. I've seen the teardrop token and this one and I still don't get it. :( Need to read more on it...
I'm a steemit beginner, I'm still studying in this steemit world, and I still do not really understand what's in there.Please knowledge and advice @andybets @good-karma @jesta. And also my other senior in steemit.
I am a steemit newbie and so am learning the ropes of this new ecosystem. I found your article very informative. We need more of this kind of information to educate all the new people coming on to the platform
Steem is the blockchain, Steem is the coin, SteemIt is the Front-end UI, so in a word, Steem Rocks.
Excellent post..this post is inspiration ... it not just a Post ... it’s mean lot of things about vote
Thanks for giving us some experience about vote
Good
And be continued
Waiting for your new post...
I love to see and read your post, greetings share
Up vote and follow me bro plzz, I also voted and followed you
wonderful post but different. I like your post. Thank's for the share.
Genuinely Good work..! ! Thank You for sharing this on steemit!
i love This post
That's really nice post @andybets . i like your What does a vote mean? and how might SMTs help us define them better post. thanks for share the post.
Very different post I believe that Steem will be required to transact on the Steem blockchain
Well, that all sounds amazing... I love all the work that whales have put into the infrastructure and they certainly do deserve to be rewarded for their efforts (either by working, developing, or investing early) but it's often hard to legitimately agree with the autovotes some whales put on particular content.