Meow. Here's a story.
@trafalgar is one of Steem's larger investors that actually bought into Steem with their own money. Maybe about 600,000 Steem Power in bulk when they started off a user like the rest of us, testing Steem as a social content platform. You can't get more skin-in-the-game than that.
They have been complaining about Steem's voting problem ever since figuring out Steem's sad state of affairs, which is where we are nearly at now when more and more users start clawing back most of their votes which is not quite social. The symptoms of it are all around us. Regardless, they've even created pure self-voting accounts to join the race to keep up and ironically, adding more to the problem.
"As I've argued before, this is not a problem of individual misbehavior or bad culture or inability to discover good content or bad ui etc. We've just got a flawed economic system that provides the very action we don't want with the highest rewards."
"And realizing the fact that if all the stakeholders behaved contrary to their direct economic interest it'll be better for everyone including themselves is not a solution. No individual stakeholder can entirely trust the voluntary generosity of other stakeholders. And the only way to defend your own stake is to contribute to the very behavior that's making it worse for everyone."
It's clear they don't like doing it, and would rather much prefer the economic incentives change so that they could start voting more on other better contributors besides themselves. It's just common sense. In all likelihood, there are certainly many users out there that contribute to the platform more than ourselves.
Why focus on being a social content platform?
Given that Steemit is unlike Reddit with its novel use of currency, we can expect that it’s also unlikely to function close to the social content platform that we know and love. It's somewhat a different beast. But we’d want to follow a proven path and evolve from there. It’s a sound strategy.
But what use will a Reddit-like platform have anyway if it distributes currency? Well, it maintains an engaged community, a community that gets paid for their contributions. So unlike Reddit, Steemit could sustain and grow autonomously with its own community and economy, thereby becoming a blockchain of opportunity of sorts.
But for this to happen, the money aspect really has to be managed to at least maintain some form of Redditness - a social content platform that works.
So with Steemit, are influential voters voting others more freely than themselves, given there's money involved? At the time of writing, it has been proven that it's an activity that's reducing over time under Steem's current economy.
This is why we need to understand the counter-productive activities that arise when money is involved in such a platform so that we can begin tame its side effects via economic designs to actually enable a social content platform. To do that, we would need to minimise the trolley problem in design as presented in my previous post.
There is no problem with profit-maximisation.
The problem is really just the abysmal alignment of incentives that is turning Steem into an economy that rewards the most counter-productive elements of the platform more than it should. Nudge profit-maximisation into a direction that benefits the platform instead.
It has all been reasoned out very well, in my opinion. Here's what @trafalgar mentioned recently:-
"I still believe with the right economic adjustments, we can make desirable behavior provide competitive or even superior returns to the problematic profit maximization behavior we have currently. Something like 50% curation, modest superlinear (which would incidentally solve most of the spam problems we currently have as well) and increased downvote incentives would be a good rough guide."
As simple as that. For the meatier version of @trafalgar's reasoning, check out this link: https://steemit.com/steem/@kevinwong/time-to-wake-up-and-fix-steem-s-voting-problem#@trafalgar/re-kevinwong-time-to-wake-up-and-fix-steem-s-voting-problem-20180525t145649133z.
It also pays to note that he's not the only one. Many have complained along the same lines for a much longer time, like @ats-david.
Never been so flabbergasted.
So I'm quite surprised when I found out almost no developers and top witnesses were taking @trafalgar's suggestion seriously as they seem to have rambled on about it for the past year. You're getting actual feedback from the wiseguy who's exploiting the bejeezus out of your system in broad daylight (albeit in good taste when compared to others, in my opinion), have decent suggestions to improve things, and nobody's feeling the urgency in doing something about what he's saying?
They and many others have been giving feedback that Steem's economy is currently paying out $1000 everytime people take a dump on the streets, yet somehow the focus is on building skyscrapers to attract tourists to shitcity 2020?
Don't get us wrong, we love SMTs and all those wonderful ideas that are coming in and inspiring people the world over. Even I'm working to get app developers into the idea of SMTs. But @trafalgar's suggestion is something that seems to require the least effort with a very high chance of immediate improvements. It's so bleeding obvious and non-trivial once you think about it. Why not try?
Steem is a lot of things.
But first and foremost, it functions best and may have the best chances for mainstream adoption through its social content platform. Steemit has been slipping off the web ranking over the past year because it's just not working out at the moment. Anti-social activities are now getting the highest rewards.. on this platform that could very well be popular if it's actually works like a social content platform.
We've tried n2, we've tried linear. Now it's time to try something in-between, along with some minor tweaks derived from the input of dedicated and experienced users. Minimise the trolley problem. Tame the counter-productive side-effects of money in order to produce the world's best incentivised blockchain-based public content platform.
Planet Steem may have been orbiting too close or too far away from the Sun all these while. Let's continue to look for the region where it'll flourish.
Image source: https://ourplnt.com/nasa-announces-10-new-earth-sized-planets-orbiting-in-habitable-zone/habitable-zone/
cc: @ned, @andrarchy, @gtg, @jesta, @roelandp, @timcliff, @good-karma, @ausbitbank, @thecryptodrive, @someguy123, @aggroed, @clayop, @lukestokes, @smooth, @netuoso, @blocktrades, @anyx, @jerrybanfield, @curie, @pharesim, @followbtcnews, @xeldal, @pfunk, etc.
We're convinced that this is the best move for Steem at the moment. It'll be a huge mistake to just leave this unattended until SMTs and communities. The problem will still linger around.
Let's do something about it.
Resteem and upvote this burger!
(Or post up your own opinion burger)
(I'm seriously getting sick of rambling)
So cute
I feel like these discussions, while good and healthy, will quickly become largely irrelevant and overall frame Steem in an unsustainable way, leading us to address the wrong problems!
No matter how we incentivize these ROI maximizing whales to curate better or worse, the average user will not notice one bit of difference when Steem is at any sort of reasonable scale.
Let's say in the next few years Steem hits 25 million users. Great, but that still is only a tiny fraction of the bigger players. The Steem blockchain is currently dishing out roughly 25 million Steem a year in rewards. Even if everyone earns identically in a wonderfully balanced and sharing society... we all earn 1 Steem a year. Of course, this won't happen. Serious content creators, businesses, celebrities, etc. will of course outperform and we'll fall into much more of a Pareto distribution. Your average run of the mill Steemian will probably earn .1 to .2 Steem a year. If some misbehaving whales knock that down to .09 or .18 how much will it really matter? Will appreciating Steem price help save the minnow morale? No. Lets say the 25x growth in our user base brings on a 100x multiple in our price and we're at $300 per Steem! Your average user is still making $30-$60 per year. We cannot make rewards for average users our main message and reason for being or Steem will fail.
I grind my teeth as I see the countless posts being bandied about at this early stage, complaining about the seemingly small rewards , as I feel like the amounts anyone is seeing now will seem like a fortune in the months and years to come!
Steem needs to be framed as the incredible tool that it is. A one stop setup for businesses and creators for extremely frictionless and cost effective financial transactions, marketing, social media, crowdfunding, etc. In the end we're going to need people to be here just because they want to be here... not for rewards distribution. And those people will follow the content that they want to see.
I'm also curious to see the evolution and impact of a system like SMTs. New niche specific whales will be created and average users will have much more opportunity of feeling engaged and valued as they earn recognition and rewards in a focused community and area of interest that they really care about.
The ROI maximizing habits we see at this small scale will also cease to be as effective with growth. It really is short sighted both for Steem as a whole, but also directly for the people engaging in it right now. Sure, users may feel like they are maximizing their stake, but the ways they are doing it will lead to them not being able to outperform their own stake. I firmly believe that someone who wields stake wisely to build an active, supportive, organic community around themselves will outperform the ROI of a dedicated self voter or bot delegator any day, and this will become much more apparent the more people we have involved. Accounts focused solely on immediate ROI also tend to comparatively weaken over time, as they are more inclined to power down and cash out some earnings. Their quest for raw ROI already shows they have the mentality of a Steem earner, and not a Steem owner.
In a nutshell, I don't see the current economics as overly limiting or negative. There is no solution for the drastically increasing scarcity of Steem and at full scale the vast majority of Steem users will have relatively low value accounts regardless of the voting behavior of a handful of todays current whales.
Thanks, but I'm puzzled by your response. There's a problem that needs to be fixed now, which is the misalignment of incentives. Whether relevant or not next 5 years, it doesn't matter. Some superintelligent AI might even take over the world tomorrow.
Minnows or whales or giraffes, doesn't matter. What matters is to have an economy that is rewarding desirable behaviour, probably equally as much as the worst, if we're to be pessimistic. Now the gap is in the region of 600-1000% (I'm a normal user that curates, but I'm earning 600-1000% less than if I just sell my votes?)
I actually agree with most of what you have to say, but that's far in the future with the maturity of SMTs and all the skyscrapers that go with it. The goal of having a reliable focus now on the proven model of social media is the most beneficial move. Steemit and other Steem-based platforms could be leveraged, and I think most are underestimating web rankings and what they do for projects like this.
Also, 1 million engaged and satisfied users / investors / whatnot is way better than 25 million users under the current economic circumstances which rewards the most counter-productive behaviours for the network..
I don't think this focus will address the wrong problems. Sure not everybody is gonna get Steemed up, it's just the nature of any social networks. It really doesn't matter if there are a lot of people just earning 60-100 or whatever, the point is to have people actually earning through proof-of-brain, which at least require a form of curation (which is simply not voting for the self because it's the equivalent of no work. but we don't ban self-voting, we just remove the trolley problem so voting however one wants is more or less the same outcome).
Seriously I dunno why you're trying to brush off the issue when there's good evidence and reasoning lol. I think it's an entirely fixable issue at almost no risk, except to bidbotters maybe. So they'll need to shift to something that actually does some work instead of zero work.Regardless, they'll still exist, it's just that buyers would have to take more risk.
Agreed. People will come for the community and discover new things and do new stuff and figure out what Steem is for themselves anyway. But the chances fall off when there's utter looting going around. Also just saw the comment about celebs endorsing. Totally, it'll be the smartest move, especially once this problem gets fixed.
I do understand your point of view, but perhaps I'm just not optimistic on the ability to figure an ultimate ROI formula that incentivizes good behavior. I feel like cultural change and UI improvement is more important going forward.
Maybe I'm just missing how some of these suggested changes even work to properly address the issue at hand. In my mind, most folks who earn via vote selling are doing so by delegating power to a service that then pays them a percentage of their earning in turn. These voting bots are then dominating curation rewards as well, and under an increase in curation % will adjust by passing on more of that profit back to their delegators, thus keeping vote selling in equilibrium with actual curation.
And it doesn't seemingly do anything to address multi account abuses. Any kind of collusive voting ring will see no impact to their activity as it'll just shift which account involved gets the ill gotten gains. Likewise pure self voters remain unaffected as it'll still be more profitable for them to vote themselves as gaining the curation reward and the creation reward is better than just curating.
Maybe my thinking is off on some of these points, so please feel free to correct or hit me with some examples, but overall, I believe that whatever math we do, there'll be follow up math to determine the best way to game the system. Even with changes to make rewards non linear again it'll still be a solvable problem for ROI maximalists resulting in regular users still not getting curated. Voting trails would simply return in force to pile on predetermined posts at the most mathematically beneficial time to maximize rewards. For a small segment of the population, proof of brain will always end at the point the numbers are crunched and the bot is programmed.
All that being said, I don't think it's hopeless to expect changes and better things for Steem. But that kind of gets me back to my thought that some of these discussions may take us off course. For example, I firmly believe the best way to undercut the voting bots is to replace and improve the existing inbuilt promoted & advertising system. A well implemented and working system would give people a choice, and go a long way toward undercutting the profitability of vote selling services and improving content discovery, as well as bringing users a secondary revenue stream that would actually be valued based on their genuine audience size & engagement, rather than the amount of Steem Power they currently hold.
Perhaps I favor a more bottom up approach, rather than top down. I'm kind of working off the assumption that the "power users" are going to find ultimate ROI at the expense of the spirit of proof of brain no matter what. On the flip side, the vast majority of average users don't even fully grasp the mechanics of the rewards system as is, but they're the mass consumer feeding the vote buying industry because they see no alternative. They're the ones whose behavior can most be changed to improve the platform. Peer to peer advertising programs, public education about the importance of powering up and exercising your votes, and perhaps on the technical side continuing to look at the problem of the "dust threshold" taking away voting power of the smaller users. I just find things like this as being more important and productive than trying to calculate a new rewards formula that will maybe improve the voting patterns of a couple dozen individuals.
that's like saying we would literally push our nose up Zuckerburg's face same way Spiegel did with Snapchat. if that is so then a hell lot of work will be inputed into this platform. off the top of my head, i think the fastest way to achieve this is by luring CELEBRITIES of all walks of life away but most especially those from the entertainment industry.
is there really any other way of triggering up such mass adoption?
does history have any record of mass adoption that didnt end up through the Entertainment industry?
I see that as the most probable path too. I get excited whenever I see someone I recognize has joined the platform. There’s a growing core of actors, musicians, writers, directors & artists that I hope are poised to build more serious momentum.
But I think once communities and a bit more polish to usability (and of course registration) are added, there is an unbeatable value proposition. Right now people come to Steem and alter their behavior to chase rewards. I think soon the available tools and projects built on Steem will make it easier for people to cross over and continue doing exactly what they’re doing. And if SMTs perform well and development grows easier, the end result is people won’t even have to cross over because Steem will come to them. As an artist, I fantasize about a scenario where a site like DeviantArt integrates a Steem backend. Totally doable as a project like BeScouted has already demonstrated. I would jump for joy as 26 million new artists were suddenly on the blockchain. Scenarios like that can feasibly penetrate across every category of online community that exists now.
Meanwhile, down in the three- and four-digit accounts, we're finally developing multiple independent systems where dolphins and minnows are helping each other and driving collective growth. We're developing high-value, externally-appealing content, onboarding a bunch of incredibly-talented new users in non-cryptocurrency topics, and making sure they're financially and socially rewarded enough to stay. The concept of cooperation among an expanding middle class is gaining traction.
Basically everything linear rewards promised is starting to happen. Our share of the rewards pool is small but it's growing and if things stay as they are it will continue to grow. I'm not convinced that's true under your plan.
There's a double economy on Steemit and I appreciate that yours is both much larger and pretty much a mess. But we're making actual progress down here and if you give us time we'll reshape the face of things.
I understand there's this value adding layer that's going on all over. But are they going to provide 600-1000% returns more than if I just self-vote and vote trade all the time? If this layer can inch things closer to just a mere 50-100%, then maybe a revolution will begin.
Basically, come up with something that even the likes of @freedom @trafalgar and @haejin will act for the greater good. To make this happen, voting has to be almost synonymous with acting for direct self-interest as well. Learning from them, I think we can come up with a better kind of money that really flows around. I don't think any "layers" will change the core condition. But for sure I think they'll be massively useful when circumstances are right. Hence this proposal.
Thank you very much for contributing to the platform, although please note that you're funnelling in and maintaining users in a place where the incentives are totally out of whack. You can literally see the most braindead behaviour getting the highest rewards. Steem's economy is now paying people $1000 everytime they take a dump.. and there's really nothing to stop it.
Hopefully the proposal gets taken seriously so that builders like you wouldn't be working against highly unfavourable circumstances in the future. Which projects are you working on by the way?
You seem to think I'm here looking for your support. I'm not. I'm here asking you to leave us alone. Go ahead and have your huge ROI. That's fine. Just don't prevent hundreds of people from helping each other in hopes of forcing a few users you dislike to begrudgingly do something they don't have any interest in.
If you would like to support the building community, I'll offer you something you can do for free: make some curation posts. Find 3-5 posts you like and write about why. Or pick a user you think is doing good work and write about why. Self-vote and vote-trade your post into trending and take your profit. You have a huge audience and you could make a difference without ever passing down a cent.
50% curation and superlinearity of rewards are even-more-highly-unfavorable circumstances for us than the existing ones even if they actually do what you think they will. They raise the minimum effective buyin, which is already way too high. They result in everyone relying on the regular support of ~150 whales who you've forced to show up rather than being able to build a larger community of people who are actively, personally interested in helping each other succeed. Which is the real long-term value here. Under the current circumstance we have enough voting value to drive the growth of that community and inspire more users to participate. Under superlinear everyone trying to do that would need a consistent whale. And there aren't enough whales to do that sustainably, even if you could control them all.
Find a system that allows builders to help other builders and it will be worth thinking about. Hyperbolic rewards would be better than superlinear ones: make it easier to go from 500->5000 and 5000->50,000 than it is to go from 500,000->600,000, instead of the other way around. Find a way to allow more people who aren't crypto millionaires to buy into the system and be effective. That's the support we need. We don't need whale votes, we need to not need whale votes.
I see some promise in the algorithm @t3ran13 uses if you'd like a place to start. (That's not a project I'm involved in, I just thought it was cool. I literally have no idea who that user is.)
thx)
Nope, I wasn't thinking you're here looking for support. I was just replying plainly. Personally, I think your all suggestions would work against the platform, especially hyperbolic curve. But that's only my take on it. I've been supporting various communities the past 2 years and have been losing out on that big ROI, hence my complaint about it recently. Many more will just start selling their votes and do nothing. Thanks for the recommendation about @tran13's algo, by the way, will check it out :)
To be clear, I'm not advocating for a hyperbolic curve. I think it might be better for the platform itself but switching to it would definitely crash the price of Steem, and it probably couldn't be done effectively anyway. I just think superlinear is even worse.
I hope you don't think my suggestion of you making curation posts is bad for the platform. If you listen to any of this I hope it's that paragraph.
It's a good suggestion and I'll consider it, although in general I wouldn't wanna pump out posts like a tv series and would prefer to write my own stuff when I have the time and support through votes. I get that it helps parts of the community though. The problem with the current economy is that it wouldn't help as much as before. I remember a time before linear when good contributions were likely to get more attention, and now it's just too spread out. I think you may be underestimating the side-effects pure linear has. Sure it provides full individual autonomy across the board, but it's at the expense of something else, hence my suggestion for a slight superlinear to have any semblance of collective work.
Is it linear rewards, or making the minnows matter in the math?
That was being accomplished by the whale experiment just as well, except without all the selfvoting/vote selling incentives
As long as the massive accounts make being here unattractive to the newbs, the newbs wont hang out irregardless of any curves.
Linear rewards are making minnows matter in the math.
It's true that if the whales were to sit on their SP and not vote it then things would be a lot better for everyone else. The only problem with this is it's a completely insane thing to do, because staking has a time cost. Why would you stake SP and not use it?
Alternately they could all power down and hold Steem in hopes that it would go up in value as the rewards were distributed without them. That's only slightly less insane, and it has a pretty big Prisoner's Dilemma attached to it, because it drastically increases the self-voting rewards of any whale who chooses to stay. Not to mention we'd see even more volatility and downward movement in the price as they could choose to get out whenever they wanted.
Or they could power down and sell their Steem, which makes more sense for them, and we'd all get a lot more Steem out of the rewards pool but it wouldn't be worth anything.
None of these are good plans.
If enough of the big whales really felt the platform was better under the Whale Experiment and wanted to replicate it I suppose they could just start using their full power to flag other whale votes indiscriminately. I don't think that's a good plan either but it makes more mathematical sense, if not social sense.
In any case going to superlinear rewards is the exact opposite of the Whale Experiment. If you want to replicate that in the code you'd want extreme hyperbolic or even parabolic rewards. (And you'd have to find a way to prevent whales from just making a hundred dolphin accounts.)
So, buying btc, eth, or any other coin and holding is insane?
Yes, steem allows roi by being active, but if whales are destroying the interest of others in playing along by doing so, that is insane.
Mass adoption is the main goal, is it not?
Nobody likes that the massive accounts suck the air out of the room, they dont like the pay to play, nor the people doing it.
Those massive accounts need to wake up to the fact that they are best served by mass adoption even if that means not maximizing roi under the rules.
When tens of thousands of minnows start to buy 20usd a week in stake the whales benefit the most, that isnt going to happen while they are making the game unattractive to those specific players.
Why would small investors invest if it all goes to the massive accounts and they have no hope of making roi, themselves?
Let alone in large numbers.
Making 100 dolphin accounts would be fine if they didnt selfvote or circlejerk, if it spread the rewards farther, that would be a good thing.
I thought spreading sp came with a cost under nonlinear rewards?
Even if the massive accounts sold every last steem, they could only do so to willing buyers who could then start building what steem could be with out the massive accounts greedy grubbing it to the detriment of everybody else.
Committing to holding anything for 13 weeks without receiving anything in return for that commitment would be insane, yes.
The main thing preventing minnows from doing that isn't that whales are circle-jerking, it's that 20 USD doesn't buy them any noticeable amount of effectiveness. That's probably the biggest problem for mass adoption on an influx-of-money level.
This isn't happening. My ROI is ridiculous and I spend a lot of time and money I don't have to on community-building.
The effect of the whale experiment was somewhat close to approximating a linear or mild superlinear curve because it stopped votes that pushed the curve into its wildly superlinear portion.
I was all in on that after i saw what it gave my vote after a few days.
Once i saw that it was the mined stake that was the problem, and not the design, i flip flopped really quick.
I guess delegation put an end run on it?
Delegation has certainly perpetuated the top keeping as much control as possible.
Rather than spread it out, they want to keep up the pyramid.
Can't really blame them, we are playing crapitalism, but it slows down the change that is coming.
I'm glad to see more and more posts about this topic, @kevinwong. Sometimes it feels like no one is listening, simply because no one appears to be talking! It's so important that users from brand new minnows all the way up to long term investors provide their feedback and their experiences to be considered in however we move forward. Seeing big accounts start talking about the culture and the necessary behavioral shifts is awesome, because we're starting to see followers who had previously not weighed in joining the conversation. Posts like this one are valuable, because it's opening up debate and discussion to audiences who may not have participated before, and that's a good thing for a solution that is well rounded for everyone involved in this blockchain.
There has absolutely been a solution suggested that has included modest super linear rewards, 50% curation, and a separate downvote pool. There have also been counterpoints with ideas like an adjustable curation rewards rate that begins at a 50% default, but can be adjusted by the author. I think, overall, that almost everyone is waking up to the fact that some changes are necessary. We have to keep these conversations lively and representative, because content producers, curators, developers, and investors all have valid viewpoints that are interconnected in how we approach addressing the issues we have now.
This is part technological, and part societal. Any code changes made need to drive the behavior we want to see on the platform, and the behavior that we value on the platform needs to be examined to inform our decisions on the technological development.
Appreciate the response @followbtcnews. I think I'm learning about the process a lot since I've never put up any serious complaint before until I started to be convinced that this is a fixable problem, and a problem that has been plaguing the platform.
Glad to hear that, I may been ignorant about what goes on between witness and dev talks. Now my biggest worry is, are there any "protocols" between devs and witnesses in trying to converge on a solution? It seems to be a problem that has been left hanging for too long..
Lots of great thoughts here, Kevin. Many of them have been discussed at length, and I do think we’re moving towards more consensus through these continued discussions. I don’t know if we’re there yet.
While you and I might say, “Yes, we need a separate downvote rewards pool to encourage effective protection of the rewards pool,” some people are arguing to remove flags and downvotes all together because they’ve been so abused by retaliatory flagging by large SP accounts. If flags can’t be countered in the last 12 hours before payout, and we start rewarding flagging directly (instead of the current indirect reward of protecting your overall, long-term investment), will we create new problems with more people leaving and complaining about being “censored” because “their” rewards were “taken” from them? Many people don’t understand potential payouts or what true censorship is. We have education work to do there.
I think some changes to the reward curve to give a little extra rewards for pile on voting could be healthy and Dan talked about his concerns over linear rewards early on. That said, I also remember when so many people got absolutely nothing for their content and how linear rewards enabled them to get something, even without a trending post. Maybe a small change could be made here for a set period of time and then reevaluate.
I’m very interested in the 50% curation, but I’m also concerned it’s just funneling more rewards to those who already have a lot of Steem Power. Unless we adjust how curation rewards work, those with little Steem Power would earn very little rewards via curation so how will they ever get ahead, even if their content is great and begins to get voted on? I think some will complain the rich will just get richer if too much of the rewards focus on curation which goes mostly to those who already have Steem Power. Maybe it will incentivize more people to invest in Steem?
Part of me still thinks the problems here are psychological. If huge whales are trying to extract too much value instead of using the value they already have to protect and grow the collaborative commons we have here, then they essentially destroy their own provisions. If, instead, they thought in terms of rational, long term value creation (instead of irrational, short-term value extraction), we might all benefit more.
I know many disagree with me here and think it’s just about adjusting what systems are in place that people can exploit. Maybe they are right. I still think much of the value we see here is because of people who choose not to exploit, even if given the opportunity to do so.
Updated, added more counter-arguments:
I agree with most of what you're saying.I think this is a non-problem. All SP users would want to accumulate anyway, so why does it make a difference with a lot of SP? The rich will surely get richer regardless, if they don't waste their potential. The problem is getting voter's self-maximisation actions align with the behaviour that ought to be rewarded on the platform, which is curation / distribution / supporting curation services. The action has to be almost synonymous with SP accumulation, it's not a bad thing. I think with this, even the likes of @freedom, @haejin, @trafalgar will start to use their votes for the greater good.
They can work for curation groups like @curie which has already established a decent workflow that adds to the platform that can be replicated. Also, with a curation economy actually going on, more valuable contributions will likely get rewarded.
Re: about flags:-
Reddit has downvotes even for the end of retaliation, by the way. It's something users will need to adapt to. It's likely a feature that adds more to the platform rather than the other way around, imo.
This part I'll be disagreeing. Technology leads society leads technology, ad infinitum. The tech is making those being "rational" lose out too much, it's hard to tell people to change and there are no signs of users following what is considered the better course of action for the long-term. So the tech needs to enable profit-maximisation behaviour in better directions, which I think could be fixed as per the proposal. I think traf's explanations are very good here and it actually changed my mind. Like if Steem's econs is actually the equivalent of flying too close or too far away from the sun, then we're just fighting against all odds to make things work. Traf may not be making such an irrational move after all, since it's a problem that will likely be woken up to and addressed eventually at some point for a good dump, if the platform is still in public interest..
This is right of course, but doesn't address the problem. They're absolutely right.. what you've just said is almost equivalent as saying "it's okay, leak Steem's treasury to the worst behaviours on the platform.. it's okay, we moral upstanding people will take the hit until they go away.. somehow.."
Again, those taking a stand is currently getting "taxed" by the worst behaviours on the platform. On equal grounds, if SP accumulation points per month for those taking a stand and actually contributing to the network is only +100 points / month, while those exploiting are getting +1000 points / month. In 10 months, the difference is 9000 points. This is the chasm we're facing at the moment.. and good news is that it can likely be fixed, as proposed.
I also like the "flying too close to the sun" analogy. You make a lot of great points here, and I agree with them all. I do think value creation should be the focus AND those with a disproportionate amount of STEEM should individually restrain themselves from extracting too much value. This is the part that causes problems from a mentality standpoint. If the largest whales were to take the lion-share of curation rewards under a new economic system, we'd have the same problem again, just a different flavor. I agree, things can be improved, but there will always be "the problem" of wealth extraction until we think in terms of a collaborative commons and not in terms of a staking coin for maximizing wealth extraction.
Some more thoughts on this (which I think you've already seen): An Argument for Long-Term Rational Self-Interest Versus Short-Term Irrational Value Extraction. When people say no one is taking steps to add value instead of extracting value, I point to my wallet and say, "Really? No one?" I think many are, they just do it quietly. I'm happy with the amount of value provided to me via STEEM, and I don't need to use bidbots or self-voting to extract further value. That said, I also agree more can and should be done to protect the commons and disincentivize others from extracting too much from it.
Thanks for the response! Yup we're converging on something here @lukestokes :).
Now we're seeing value adding services popping up all over Steem. Their existence will likely have a much higher chance of greatly accelerating improvements on the network if those with a disproportionate amount of STEEM find a great reason to use them. The best bet is to encourage that action is the have a result that doesn't lose out in the order of 600-1000% compared to self-voting/vote-trading. 300% may still be too much of a difference to trigger a new behavioural equilibrium, a mere 50-100% difference in results may be possible for the revolution that we need. The problem is that value-adding endeavours are falling back by the order of 600-1000% difference.
I understand that we can promote the culture, but there are others that just want to maximise anyway. The wide gap is causing more and more to join the race, "succumb to the dark side". If the gap is not as wide, maybe it'll be more bearable for most users to do it for the greater good, so to speak. I suspect maybe you aren't "feeling it" because you're a top witness :D it's a different kind of skin-in-the-game..
Check out this video, it's very interesting, showing the difference between aspirations and actions..
Finally, in a voice that might get listened to,...
It's a mistake. The economy has to be designed in such a way that it levels the profitability between vote trading and curation activities, which bridges the gap and has the effect of individuals distributing while at the same time sufficiently accumulating SP.
Or, the community could enforce its own standards.
I think its better that we control ourselves rather than appeal to authority to do it for us.
(If it was up to me the bots would require rewards to be declined.)
The community can't really enforce its own standards given the current economic rules. This is grossly unfair and unsustainable.
For example, during the whale experiment abit and I were using our valuable vote power primarily to downvote non-complying whales, while others including other whales were using their vote power to earn rewards (as long as they stayed below the whale experiment limit). Abit and I were happy to do that for a while in the name of an experiment but would we continue to do it for years? Forever? I think not.
We never asked for one, but I think it is telling that we never received a single donation or even a token of thanks for that experiment.
Everyone wants a better Steem, but few are individually willing to pay for it.
The economic changes are needed to create a fair and sustainable way to accomplish this. Community enforcing its own rules without the right economic structure behind it isn't that.
This! 🙌
Good summary of the individualist responsibility / culture point of view. I think point of view contrasts with the view which places overarching systematic incentives at the core of positive behavior problems.
I lean to the latter. The incentives work whether or not you're aware of them or even factor them into your decisions because the create the outcomes and everyone responds to outcomes. This is where @tcpolymath gets it wrong too. Individual people "feel" the systematic incentives even if they are not aware of it. Rewards subtly (and not so subtly) affect what people determine is cogent to do.
I also think your analysis is wrong here:
It is not necessarily irrational to extract value in the short term, especially when you factor in the unknowable future, difficulty in coordinating among large stakeholders (ref prisoners dilemma), and so on. Changing the rewards structure is I think a good attempt to offset the unknowns and paranoia which is akin to FOMO.
You are both right and wrong imho. If the vast majority of people acted according to that principal it would work. However bringing that mindset about is about as likely as bringing about world peace, most people agree it is a good thing to aim for but it is never going to happen. Human nature just doesn't allow for it, no matter how much people think it should.
No system is perfect, there will always be bad actors but I have to agree with the OP, the key is to align financial incentives with desired behavior.
In trying to achieve that aim, I wouldn't get too caught up in "the rich get richer" mantra. It will happen or they will take their investment elsewhere and everyone will lose. So long as the poor can make enough to make their time worthwhile the platform will work and the cream will rise to the top or reasonably close to it at least.
Make no mistake, it will happen here or elsewhere but if it happens elsewhere this platform will go the way of myspace or bebo and become a footnote in the history of blockchain. It's just a question of when, not if.
I agree the whales could invest their stake in growth rather than quick profit, but maybe some don't see a future for this platform. I really hope it has one and we don't lose this opportunity.
That's my fear exactly. A whale is basically an investor. Short or long term. If the mass is choosing short term there must be sufficient reason to do so.
I think this is a very good point: "If, instead, they thought in terms of rational, long term value creation (instead of irrational, short-term value extraction), we might all benefit more."
But the sentiment seems to be - someone else is abusing the reward pool so why shouldn't I do that as well ? You wouldn't want to loose out right ?
The whole idea of Steemit is to cut out the third party - greedy people like Mark zuckerberg - and we as a whole get to share the rewards of the value we create as a community. But that should also mean that we all take role as leaders. It is sad to see that it seems like we are in the end being just as greedy as any other and just like in Facebook just a few really benefit who are at the top.
On the other hand I don't have upvotes that would be worth 10 of dollars each so it's not easy to say what I would do if I had that kind of Steem Power.
Either way, I think 50 percent curation seems like a good option to try. But I think more importantly people have to think of their own social compasses instead of looking at what others do
Helo @lukestokes
Thanks for stopping by to offer your thoughts on this important subject matter.
I guess you vividly captured my mind here. If the system is skewed to put the rich guys perpetually at advantage, this could cause a lot of middle guys and new guys to leave.
Whatever the case, I guess steemit team and top witnesses will do what's best for us all.
@eurogee of @euronation community
The incentives are already good enough. All shareholders already understands that this is in their best interest to protect Steem blockchain from spam and abuse.
The problem is not with lack of incentives, but with to strong disincentives.
People are afraid of revenge when it comes to flagging. This is simple as that. Therefore we need a way, to allow them flag content responsibly without a fear of being flagged-back
That is not a primary goal of my upcomming project "Wise" (code name: SmartVotes), but it will also allow stronger accounts, to delegate flagging and delegate decision making to smaller accounts.
I think this may cause that owners of smaller accounts will become a little bit more brave.
More details about the project... soon :)
I've been really excited about this project since we first discussed it at a dinner table in Lisbon. :)
The whale experiment made the minnows matter in the math minus the abusive selfvoting/vote selling incentives.
We are doing better because the massive accounts cant suck it all up anymore, not because they recognized the flaw in their plans to grab all the loot they can while they can.
It wont matter what the reward curve is as long as the massive accounts make the place unattractive to the newbs.
Those massive accounts are going to have to keep their greedy grubbies out of the rewards pool and simply ride the price rollercoaster.
IMO.
yeah, I think there's some value to be said for those with the wealth just not being greedy.
Its true, 40% of sp that could vote doesnt.
I just got a comment that the three day average was down close to 30%, too.
The outlier i still see is @dimimp listed in steem reports as todays biggest voter with a selfvote of 143265.
I dont know if that is rshares, mvests, or what, but looking in his wallet he doesnt have ~5x the sp of haejin, but he is listed as making a vote nearly 5x the the size of the selfvote king.
That doesnt add up.
What gives?
That other comment may not make sense unless you put it in the context of my last post.
I was thinking it was odd that you would comment on one of my crap posts.
Now that i have the context correct let me say:
As long as they make the game unattractive to everybody except themselves, what do they expect?
Hi @lukestokes ! Do you also believe that with SMTs and the type of airdrop that @steemhunt created will change the game entirely? Many individual accounts will stay with low SP due to the reason people will start delegating SP to Dapps that will be airdropping their SMTs. This will end up the Steem Blockchain with high power to Dapps that will give ROI to its users in different ways, like Steem and their own SMT.
I believe that will change Steem for good.
By the way, if you get the chance to review the post I made about registration for eosDAC and EOS, your feedback is well appreciated!
Regards, @gold84
Until SMTs launch, it's hard to say what will happen.
Thanks @lukestokes for your feedback!
Regards, @gold84
Bidbots are anti-social. Those are advertisers selling "visibility" while in reality; the operators and all those who delegate their SP to the bidbot are being paid to look away.
This was once called the "attention economy" and people are constantly talking about how the bidbots are becoming a problem; and nobody is paying attention to them.
These people cannot socialize with robots. They want actual eyes on their work, not 1000 eyes concentrated into one vote that isn't even worth the stated value beside their post. People have $50 worth of rewards next to their post and they don't even earn it. A massive portion of the reward pool dished out daily doesn't even go to these members who have it placed beside their work.
Hardly anyone is coming around to talk to them. The money seems fake and so do many of the members leaving comments. The actual feeling of being "rewarded" goes far beyond money and many of these people are being robbed of that experience. That experience existed at one time, before bidbots, and I know that because I was here enjoying it. I witnessed the negative anti-social impact of these bidbots since their inception and every step along the way.
That actual feeling of being rewarded and appreciated was one of the main contributing factors that kept me around for so long and I am damn lucky to still be one who gets to experience it to this day. That took hard work and dedication to maintain but many of these other members are not being afforded the same opportunities and ladder to climb. Many got duped into thinking this place was about easy money, they seem to think all they have to do is post and purchase their rewards to win, and they don't even give themselves a chance to learn about how hard work and dedication is a requirement if one wishes to succeed here. They get stuck between a rock and hard place and the anti-social elements caused mainly by these bidbots do not provide them with the incentive to stick around. They're performing in front of empty seats; and the audience that didn't even show up is earning more than the performer.
I politely disagree when you state bidbots are not a problem. They are a problem, but not the only problem. Maybe your cheeseburger will help. I hope everyone can put their heads together, combine everything we've learned here on Steemit so far through trial and error, and come to some sort of healthy solution that of course not everyone will agree with; but hopefully at least steer us all in the right direction.
You're right, it was part of the title I forgot to remove. Bidbots are a symptom of the dysfunctional economy. What I really meant was paying to get higher ranking like advertising. Now it's an issue because the cost is covered by the inflation, and even worse, with potential profit as well so it's at the expense of the network. Which all could likely be remedied as per proposal. Can't tell people to stop using or operating the bidbots, but the econs will find a new equilibrium that'll make curation groups more favourable, I think :)
Yesterday I've heard about some idea from @noisy ("Wise") that brings some voting automation that empowers humans. Well... I guess he needs to clarify his idea and do that in English but that is a promising. (Tagging him to bring it to this thread).
Oh thanks @gtg :) I've spoken to @noisy about it. It's not automation as in bots, but an easy to use service for linking up voters and niche curators I think.
For one I think it's a great and useful idea, but it won't meet its potential until a fundamental change in Steem's economy as per the proposal above. Vote trading services are at the moment 6-8x more profitable than curation services, easily. Left unfixed, people are just going to see the exploiters outpace them exponentially over time. Just too much of a sacrifice for SP delegators wanting to use it for the greater good. The gap needs to be closed in, for a new behavioural equilibrium to take place. Only then will only curation services like what @noisy is trying to do accelerate the platform's improvement..
I see now, you edited that portion out. They call it advertising. Mainstream media caught wind of our "advertising" and one of the first things they asked about was the obvious low quality paid programming style spam on our trending page. All that money that went to "advertising" shot us all in the foot.
The advertisers can have their money as well. Simply mark the posts using bots as advertisements, take them off the trending page and place them in the promoted tab. Then those who want to spend money on advertising can then pay ME, the content producer, to place a banner on my blog that leads to their promotion. Something logical like that works and there are far more winners. We see it on Youtube working great, daily.
I do see the potential there as well.
Great solution you've just proferred regarding bidbots, @nonameslefttouse.
I was a bit embarassed when the Bloomberg interviwer asked Ned Scott about how Steemit Inc. intends to solve the current problems of crappy content on the the trending page. Hopefully, most of the solutions would be considered by steem witnesses and core team members of Steemit Inc. for implementation soon.
@maryfavour.
Steemit was mentioned on the Joe Rogan Podcast as well and while watching on Youtube, I saw our trending page; along with over 1 million other viewers. We dodged a bullet that day. The content at the top was genuine and respectable. Two days before that podcast, the content was complete trash that involved members bickering and acting extremely unprofessional. Joe Rogan is a comedian and had he seen the trolling, there's no way he would have been able to resist making a few jokes.
This publicity is important. We need to get it right. We live in a time when cryptocurrency ads are being banned everywhere. One simple loophole to get around that censorship is to advertise Steemit, with no mention of cryptocurrency or any of the other wording they've deemed unfit for advertising such as "profit". That gives the STEEM blockchain another distinct advantage over all of the others; but not if people continue to fail at taking Steemit's potential seriously.
Or, the bots could require rewards be declined.
The posts still trend, the bots charge at least what they would have gotten in curation, and impact on the pool ends.
You know what? I'm done talking about it, once and for all. None of these problems are my fault. People have been offering up suggestions and solutions for over 6 months. Thousands have left since then. Their work, the visibility they gained after putting in the work for over year; it's gone. Talking is pointless.
Im there, too.
I almost packed it in last week, myself.
But then i remembered that abandoning the field of play is in their interests.
The greedy bastards win if i do that.
So, still here and as vocal as ever.
I got kicked out of two discords for my heresy of declined rewards.
I share the same opinion with you @nonameslefttouse on bidbots.
I joined last July and there were no bidbots and Steemit was awesome and i would feel good when people interact with my posts!
I could really feel rewarded for my content and btw its an awesome experience,however little the money besides the post was.
You could know a real human being read,upvoted and commented on your post,i felt encouraged.
The actual feeling if being rewarded is really now being missed by the new people as you say.
Its really rewarding to start from zero and grow on Steemit,make 10 posts and earn a combined zero,work harder and earn as you grow on the platform!
I have a challenge with the new people i bring to Steemit in Uganda(i am a Steemit promoter).
Whenever i tell them of the organic way of growth of commenting and starting small,most of them do not want to believe.
In fact am shocked when many ask me about Bid-Bots! I tell them to try as much as possible to grow organically as it is more rewarding than getting votes on a post which are all bidbots!
Anyway many people here are for the money(which is okay),but to me and may be others,we feel happpy when real people read and comment on our posts.
I also like the idea of 50/50 payment....it will make more people start reading and discovering more great content.
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This is quite informative. I just got enlightened reading this
I agree with the bulk of this except for one thing which I think it's truly broken and that is the curation system.
Back when we first started it did work as a way for good manual curators to try and find new and interesting content. Now though it is merely a pile on to posters who get good rewards.
Increasing it to 50 would exacerbate this I feel. People would still pile on to the posts they think will earn biggest rewards. Because they see the dollar signs of the big money.
And I know that the biggest curation rewards go to those posts that are discovered when they have little rewards already but it just doesn't seem to work out like people care about that now.
It's a tricky one. I think a slightly super linear approach to rewards would be good but that gives me the fear that the people who use multiple bid bots for their posts would abuse that as it were to then make a proper killing on their promoted posts.
Abuse will happen anyway, but point is good behaviours shouldn't be completely left in the dust. Moving away from linear also means posts would need to have votes congregated, so it's manageable. Under linear, the abuse is spread out and distributed widely.
Yeah, I'm with you. Something being done is better than nothing. Some right out of the box nonsense would be good :0)
I really loved your post. 😍😍
Thanks for sharing
You are welcome
Please keep rambling Kevin! I honestly feel that you are leading the charge on this issue. You have my full support and resteems.
I agree completely, in fact I was reading one of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters and it had a point that related directly to Steem. He says, paraphrased: "We view it as less risky to find businesses with excellent management and fundamentals, and much more risky to find businesses that align with future trends and markets."
Right now Steem and SMTs are fully aligned with, as you say, "building skyscrapers to attract tourists to shitcity 2020", but we lack the excellent management and fundamentals.
I can't lie, I'm diversifying my energy a bit. I want to see Steem succeed but I view it as an increasingly risky investment of time / money / energy.
I think the team is improving and getting more streamlined after the new CTO came in. Decentralisation problems.. lol
There's so much good discussion in this thread I feel like I'm not qualified and my opinions dont matter. But fuck it, I feel that we need basic non-tech idiots like me joining the discussion too.
Let's just say that HF19 has morphed into a shitshow..
I dont see why these suggestions be implemented in the upcoming hardforks "just to see how it'll work out". We've already done it with HF19. Steem as a blockchain is plausibly still far too problematic for mass adoption.
While i think it'll never be fixed, we still should find a way to play around with the parameters and see what works in the real world situation (aka tested by the users instead of discussed hypothetically by smart people).
Overall i give an "aye" to your suggestions, if it means a damn thing.
I think it's worth trying something in-between. I suspect an overarching economy has a lot to do with psychology and human behaviour, and I think its effects are great underestimated. It sets the culture. With linear, it's basically a tragedy of the commons when every individual is allowed full freedom so to speak. It detracts from society. A social content platform needs some collectivity, hence the suggestion to move away from linear, even if a little. n^2 was too much of a sacrifice of individual autonomy.
"tragedy of the commons" is exactly what steem is right now. at this rate its gonna get run to the ground before too long and becomes a "zero trxn fee hedging asset" excuse of a coin by traders.
Cant say anything else other than i fully agree with your points.
I didn't realise @trafalgar has returned. He was probably the first user (after sweetssj who everyone is probably greeted with) whos posts I genuinely enjoyed. I only knew he went away from a while but its great he is back.
What impact do you think a sublinear growth model would have? The thought of superlinear rewards just brings to mind people like kingscrown reasserting their control on steemit and many people to become instenviced to start posting about crypto as it was the most rewarded tag at the time.
Despite the fact times have changed people still feel like they have the need to talk about relevant subjects such as crypto with the obvious goal to earn money and not post in something they may truly be passionate in such as philosophy as I do.
With the present implementation, 100s and 100s of users have less power than 1 person with tons of STEEM POWER. this is often the opposite of the preferred behaviour. the perfect scenario is that 100s of individuals are exptected to be far more reliable in curating content properly than simply 1 person.
Rather than the burden of curating falling on the shoulders of purely @kevinwong should there be an inbuilt system on steem where the community can vote for curators and those who are voted can be awarded SP via delegations from steemit. I don't know how possible this would be but I guess one source this could come from is instead of giving each new person 15 SP in delegation it can turn to a curation system.
50% curation would be amazing but I feel more and more people are in these voting rings automated by bots as well as you have all these bid bots poisoning the economy. However if the curations are (more) equally spread amount the curators it will act less of an incentive for those with massive amounts of SP. IT'S SO HARD TO FIND THE RIGHT BALANCE! Arggghhhhhh haha
Despite the fact you usually have whales creating this curation groups and incubating communities you rarely find a place in where people who share the same interests can discuss. You can argue tags bind and bring people together but I can't wait until the hivemind communities become a reality where I can find a place where I am no longer feel disconnected from people.
This is one among the main obstacles to beat. though it's presently not the worst, there's plenty that could be improved. The user interface for steemit.com specifically could use plenty of upgrades. Extensive, straightforward to access help and ideally extensive video tutorials ought to be out there too at some purpose.
Then the largest problem: the difficulty of cryptocurrencies. This technology is so new that it's not anywhere close to user friendly enough to succeed in mass adoption. Imagine having to show your mom how to exchange STEEM into Bitcoin and then into fiat. The procedure is cumbersome and there's an oversized potential for errors.
Steemit is in its infancy and it has a long way to go but first we do need to find our goldilocks zone in terms of steemit economics. Why are we so greedy :(
There are lots of types of behaviour on Steemit and people will come up with more as it grows. I doubt there's any single algorithm that's ideal. I'm just wondering if it's possible to have one that adapts automatically. So if too much rewards were going to a few accounts it would adjust the reward curve and/or the curation percentage to swing it back to a more even distribution. I've no idea how this would work, but if vote buying was less attractive then less people would do it and then it could change again. I guess it's a little like a central bank trying to control inflation with the tools they have. I'm no economist.
People will always be looking for ways to play the system to their advantage.
Agree on last sentence, but we can’t have an economy that leaves the best behaviours in the dust. For curation services to be favoured more than bid bots, it has to be more or less equally profitable. Even just 50% less than bidbots might trigger a new behavioural equilibrium. 600%-800% difference just wont cut it no matter how good curation services are in making the platform work as intended..
Sounds like communism
In a good way or a bad way?
Bad... Hahaha
Well I'm not a fan of rampant capitalism. No system is perfect. Steemit has a form of democracy with the witnesses, but the whales have the most influence. I use my small stake to push things where I think they should go. I see so much potential to do good, but some will just take.
Nature already solved this for us. Building up relationships and big networks is more powerful than the influence of a few successful. That will say it's fine with them being big and powerful. The middle class needs to focus on growing their group. The Minnows needs to focus on building their group. 100 Minnows that support eachother daily is more powerful than 1 whale. If they are in a constant selfless mode they will not have time to focus on other things going on. 1 person is still just 1 person. Humans are way more powerful than any other thing on the planet.
The balance of power on Steemit is slowly shifting, but a whale with 100k SP can do more than 1000 minnows with 15.
Humans consider themselves all powerful, but we still struggle to deal with what nature can throw at us and we're our own worst enemy.
I fully agree with you
Ned and witness seem full
Thanks for your support @slowwalker. I'll try my best to get the discussion going and come to a more satisfactory solution. Hope you are doing well!
Steem definitely needs to fix its incentive alignment, there's probably one fix out there that will propel Steem out of the stratosphere, developers just need to be brave enough to experiment...
We just need net positive feedback loops happening. This is the proposal. Now it's just net negative feedback loops. It's wasting its potential.
I'm not totally sure if I understand you correctly. The number one fix should be the economy, right?
I would say the number one fix is to do something about the inability of Steemit Inc and/or witnesses to change anything at all. It seems they just can't change something. Or it goes very slowly.
If I'm right about the fact they can't change and solve things, then that might just be because of the decentralized part of Steem. That makes it very difficult to even communicate. And quite a miracle to have 20+ witnesses on the same line.
Do you think these witnesses have contact with each other?
Yes, having ways of communication is important. Not only between witnesses but also witnesses and Steemit Inc. as well as witnesses and community (staying in touch of the reality).
Changing is easy, especially that we have a great governance system (DPoS).
Changing to a better solution (while being 100% sure about that) is a different story.
Your answer is a bit cryptical. First because I don't know anything about IT and coding. So I don't know what DPoS means. Most likely not even if I search it via Google.
And second because I don't see a clear yes or no to the question of there is any communication between witnesses right now?
Yes.
I'm sorry for not being clear. I assumed that it's obvious if I say that something is important thing to do then I care to do it and actually do it :-)
No problem and thanks for the clarification. Can I somewhere read the outcome of the witness conversations?
I really have no idea. I assumed that I've voted on the smart guys to be smart about things. Just a content creator here lol. Seems like nobody's trying to converge on a solution, when there's already so much noise being made for the past year about this very problem. In the end, we can say it's DPOS and all, but all it really needs is some decision from the helm at this point.
as far as I know (being a new witness with @swisswitness) there is a line of communication between the top 20 and steemit inc. They do have to agree on certain points and implement code changes as well. And there does seem to be some talk between them as well. If they actually agree or just agree to disagree is not known to me.
Maybe i will get in the top 20 someday in the future and be able to let you know :-)
(runs of to get more witness votes)
all the best :) i'll check out what swisswitness does - thanks for dropping by. i think top 20 witnesses are just rolling with the punches. i don't think there's any consensus on the formalisms involved since such a complain hasn't been addressed for such a long time..
I understand that we are a decentralized platform but there should be some form of regulation built in. These top 20 have a big responsibility and if everyone just goes and does what he wants without any thought or research (not saying they do) or even without some form of communication then this is not good for the platform.
There should be at least a form of discussion and consensus afterwards
i can see you are already voting for 30 witnesses and they seem balanced out between top 20 and others (which I find cool),but if you decide you are not happy with one then we would be honored to get a slot, if not, then fine as well. Its good to be considered in the first place :-)
I think attracting new investors is very important for Steem economy. Therefore, I agree with you. There aren't that many new investors coming to Steemit, the whales are either pre-mined their SP or very early adaptors here.
As always, @kevinwong, thanks, for your concern & being proactive.
Respect to @trafalgar, for putting his money where his mouth is. I, too, have skin-in-the-game & not just because I’ve invested my paltry earnings into buying steempower (admittedly, far far less than trafalgar).
But, by posting daily on this platform, I’m investing time and energy and not seeking publication, elsewhere, such as journals or magazines that I’ve previously published in.
I believe conscious effort is never wasted & hope Steemit pulls through!
Hi @kevinwong
I am one of the older steemians on this platform, however, I never invested any of my own money into steem, I just reinvested my earnings. The posts I write receive around 100 votes (although I have about 3500 followers) and earn around $4.00, of which about $2.00 is from my own voting. I write between 1 and 2 posts a day, and I think I have the longest running series on steemit. I don't write mainstream posts, as I mostly write on religion and beer (strange combination). As you can see that if I don't vote for myself I will not earn much. I believe that the buying of votes should however be stopped, as this is against content receiving votes on merit. (I see people who just joined in this month, with almost no followers on the trending pages, with mostly bot votes) I also don't think curation rewards should be coupled to the payout of the post, as this makes people to vote for traditionally high earning authors, thus just running after the crowd, like sheep. For me to do well on curation, I should not support new people, but should just follow the trending people. Perhaps there could be a different way of rewarding curation.
Thank you for your posts on this subject, I hope things will improve, I still love the platform!!
I have to say that you are right in everything you have said and what you are saying @trafalga but many times for some it is more important to get votes for the reward to continue growing as Social Palataforma which is a great Steemit project as such, here What is there is to seek to grow as a platform always seeking to improve what is wrong and not fall into that of I AM BETTER THAN SOMEONE ELSE because sometimes that happens here, I would like to contribute greatly on this platform as far as I can help, I'm just a violinist but I can have great ideas and as I said in a comment between Steemit not to earn money but to meet more people and know my work, sometimes that goal is not achieved by the amount of bot they make a good content is not in trend, and that you have to study it much better, hopefully and the creator of Steemit knows about me so I can also give ideas to improve the platform much more and make it an utility for the talent that is here because there is really a lot of talent that is still hidden but thanks to certain contests that are given here they have been able to know and that is pleasant. Greetings and very good content I like to read you
Thank you @kkarenmp. Have fun :)
If a minus 50% curation rule would apply also to self voters, we would definetly be motivated to be generous, making no difference if we self vote or vote others. Earning by helping sounds great. Loosing by helping not so much.
Steemit is just an amazing social media-like platform and its community is fast growing overtime. There's really a lot of things in steemit and we have a bright future in here compared to other platform like of that such as reddit. The more we engaged and take part of the exciting community of steemit, the more we grow in abundance. Just keep on steeming. :)
I agree to some certain extent, but you're missing the point of the post.
Thanks very much for continuing to draw attention to this issue. I think the concept of steemit is fantastic, but the average experience for a new user is somewhat disheartening. I have seen people put a lot of effort into several posts, get almost 0 recognition or reward, and then disappear. If there was more curation going on, there would be more chance of them getting a few dollars worth of encouragement to continue. As you have been saying the incentives for this kind of curation is not quite there at the moment.
yeah best behaviours are not rewarded anywhere near the worst.
Really glad to see this retarded narrative continue. Is it so hard to actually give me credit for being on top of this mess for over a year now (and for being proven right time and again) without continually labeling me in an attempt to diminish my relevant contributions to the ongoing discussions?
And you guys wonder why I see many of you as irritating douchebags most of the time and treat you accordingly?
You could just as easily have written:
Enjoy the rewards for saying the same shit I’ve been saying since last spring...but have been labeled and vilified for...by the same people now raking in rewards for being extremely tardy parrots...and who are magically not “toxic.”
Funny how that works.
Sorry about that. I was just checking back in a post I wrote a month ago and noticed your comment that you were talking about your predicament that way, so I was just continuing that vein of humour. I guess it’s not funny. It certainly wasn’t an attempt to undermine you.
Anyway as for whatever you have brought up in the past on the same matter, I personally just wasn’t in the same wavelength and was never on that ball. And I don’t think I’ve even spoken against it or debated before since it wasn’t a topic that even bothered me until recent months.
Being called toxic should be considered a badge of honour here. Besides, it wouldn't be a good idea to poison a well and then drink from it, so I think his tongue may have been in cheek.
Many nice thoughts you have but main Steem problem is that we have some too powerful users. Like in a real world, when there is disbalance of power many problems are there. I think that we need to have SP limit, I will have article about that...
SP limit is communism. It doesn't work. Doesn't inspire. It's a horrible idea.
More to the point, it can't be affective because people will just use more than one account.
That is correct!!
No it is not communism. Even when you play video game like WOW, there is maximum level that you can reach. Without power ballance we will fail. I would limit SP but you could buy as much STEEM as you want...
But there is no max level in life.
Of course that there is. There are limitations everywhere around us and not without reason...
To get back to the first point. How would you like to limit SP in more deeper terms? So I can understand it in more depth. For me it's clear that a middle class here can greatly make things more awesome. But I do not believe we need to limit anything like SP for that to happen.
This can be discussed of course but 100000SP should be max in my opinion. It is more than enough and STEEM should be with no limit.Even if someone can manage to have multiple accounts it is still not same like now when few persons can torture others that we are seeing now...
I do like the idea of a 50/50 split, but then we would see more users curating their own content and own comments. I mean, it is worth a try, because right now it is not working.
How long does it take for something like this to be implemented? Are there ways where we can test two different versions at the same time? Something that sites like facebook and reddit already do. They have several working versions of their platform going on at the same time and they decided which to implement after collecting data from the sort of experiment? I'm not sure if this is possible on the blockchain without a hardfork, but it would be worth a try if it is possible.
you said it yourself... blockchain technology. scaling on blockchain is a very hard and arduous process because the tech is built in a way that you shoudnt be altering it anyhow you see fit. and to alter it, you have to get everyone (witnesses) to agree and should they do, go back to the beginning to start re-editing codes? something within those lines.
like lukestokes said, education about how this beast works is also very important.
SMT tokens will probably be the best way to test things like this. Creators of individual Smart Media Tokens will be able to set that token's specific parameters, like rate of inflation, distribution percentages, rewards curve, etc. We could see tons of variations and get a feel for what works and what doesn't in short order.
I have a very important question concerning the topic that you have mentioned here: Why the hamburger moves away from me when I unfocus my eyes? Hamburger come back!!!
I totally agree that we need to try something new viz rewards.
Nice anaology
Good choice of words, especially 'tourists'.
haha much of what i wrote is thanks to traf and his memes.
Hey @kevinwong...
Love the points here, but hmmm the cats. I prefer dogs any day.
Maybe you are also telling an indirect message about the autonomous, indifference and non-loyal nature of a cat. :)
Cheers mate!
Interesting stuff. Will have to read a few times to grasp the fullness of what is talked about here. thanks for sharing @kevinwong
No problem, enjoy! Tell me what you think later :)
@kevinwong maybe you can help me... I don't understand the animosity from people like you towards people like @ats-david and @schattenjaeger. I don't get out much but when I do, it's to the #price channel and they've been
bitchingexpressing their unhappiness about these exact same things since time immemorial. How come it's cool for you and your crew to say it but not them? I'm sincerely asking. Thanks!I wasn't in tune and have never spoken against any discussion regarding the matter, because I just wasn't bothered about it.
I think it's not the right question to ask me, because I'm not the one who decides what's cool or not. Like I've said before, I don't think I've ever even participated in any discussion about this matter before until in recent months. Sure I've hung out in #price channel before, but because everything under the sun has been talked about there before doesn't mean I was into discussion in there. Plus I'm just a lurker.
I'm not sure how I've ever been displaying any animosity towards them. I like them for their honesty.
Edit: and as for "you and your crew". I don't have a crew.
oh, i read that part about @ats-david being very very toxic as animosity; I see you've changed it, so that's super cool. :)
I like them for their honesty too, and I like that you took a moment to reply to me so thanks.
b.
I see lol. I was just continuing that vein of humour since he was talking about it that way in one of my previous posts. Just a misunderstanding.
ahhhh ahahahaa. kewl. ;)
50% of the rewards for clicking a mouse button... right... lol... that seems proportional to you?
As for incentivized downvotes, so then a whale can be incentivized to abuse others with flags by making money flagging people they don't like or want to piss off... that would have worked out great for me last year as the whale would have made money by targeting me, encouraging them to keep going when they were already doing it for months without incentives... lol
I had the same knee jerk reaction when I came through this suggestion. Thinking about it, it's one of the only ways to close in the gap in making curation communities at least on par with vote trading communities. Plus if this move is in favour of distributive voting behaviour instead of pure accumulative behaviour, then it could overall be better imo.
I think it remains that downvotes generally add to the platform rather than detract from it. Whatever you've gone through certainly isn't the norm and even happens on any platforms with downvotes. So I'm not sure what you're suggesting, make downvotes more useless?
I was just saying we don't need to incentivize downvotes and encourage people to use it more because they will be getting paid to do so in that case, and abuse it more.
I don't understand this part too much:
Can you elaborate? What's a curation community? How many vote trading communities are there, and that are visibly a problem? I'm not sure who these are... What's distributive vs. accumulative behavior? Thanks.
Yup I agree with this. Prevention by way of economic design is better, which is why there are the other ingredients in that burger above (50% curation, modest superlinear, etc).
Ok vote trading in linear is basically self-voting in effect. Vote trading includes vote exchange, vote selling / buying via bidbots etc. By definition, it's a content-agnostic activity aka not proof-of-brain. Curation on the other hand is not content-agnostic aka proof-of-brain. Alright, maybe community is not quite the right term, it's activity / behaviour. Now selling your votes is the best move that rakes in 600-1000% more than spending time curating. What we've proposed here is likely to bridge that gap.
Distributive vs accumulative is a way of framing curating vs vote trading. Maybe it'll be clearer here - https://steemit.com/steem/@kevinwong/distributing-wealth-should-be-equally-profitable
Edit: Thanks for asking me to elaborate. The gist of the proposal - it is designed to strike a balance between curation / distribution and vote trading / accumulation. The hypothesis is that voters will more likely use their votes for the long-term greater good stuff when it benefits them "sufficiently" in the short-term. "Sufficiently" here means on par compared to the short-term benefits of selling most of their votes away (which fuels content-agnosticism and unhealthy accumulation). Now that selling their votes away yields far superior short-term benefits, nobody's going to use their votes for the greater good (which fuels curation and healthy accumulation)..
Not nobody, plenty of people still do ;)
Removing delegation solves the ease at which vote selling can be done, and reduces the profitability of those buying votes. This only started because of delegation.
Under linear rewards some people have created bots and comment farming. They don't even have to click and get "free money" while the rest of us are on the treadmill trying to post stuff.
That's one of the issues.
For some people it's hard to collect money and investing in steem blockchain especially and cryptocurrency world on general.
Like me i can't invest because in the real life im still jobless so steem blockchain give me a chance to to make money although it's hard because i still have a weak SP that's why i work hard to make a different.
My meow 💙❤
I am happy to hear most witnesses are not taking this seriously.
It isn't about rewards for end users. I believe this would have a negative impact on most small users.
This solution is not a solution it is about hurting "vote sellers" not improving rewards for small users.
yeah right, so the econs should still remain to reward vote trading 6-10x more than curation. i'd say think a step ahead, you're thinking of the immediate effects. if there's a larger curation economy going on, it'd be a better game for actual small users than enabling a legion of spammers bloating up the network for dust-votes that mean nothing and hurting the UX. nvm, another megapost coming up to explain..
I will read it with an open mind. I don't mind how things are going though.
I am very glad to see where your attention with the current state of the platform you are right on and I congratulate you to daily confronting the economic issues of the voting model. I really like the curation concept, not being able to sing or dance (Rocky Balboa on why he boxes-Rocky I). A thought like I mentioned to you before in a sea of comments in your last post (fans wanted--content appreciated also). Another thought, with a minimum curation on every vote (10% or whatever works for the one person armies voting themselves) and a double tiered round of curations. Round 1(front run curation round)- 0minute to day 2.5 of the post. Round 2 day 2.501 to day 5 (back run curation round). Each round has an equal curve in value, but round 1 is more geared to catch in the front of the earliest point in the post, and round 2 is geared up for closest to the finish of the 5 day period (ascending curation value for voters up to 5 days old in the post).
This way you are not ever missing the boat when a great post is released and you read three days later, and have zero shot at any curation (like this one for example, lol). You are also making voting more liquid toward the back end as well, also making bot votes possible again at another term to also make them more profitable for the user, having two "sweet spots" for posters at the time use the bots. You would have the option to cut the curation in half among these two curves, more highly value the first, or whatever everyone thinks need be done. Another unsolicited opinion from a guy that spends a lot time thinking about hypothetical scenarios. Wonderful post once again!
Thanks @kevinwong for pointing out this seriously if you are new on this platform it is hard to get noticed unless if you have connections.Am a steem promoter in my country who brings people to this platform but have realized if you cannot support the person then telling them about steemit is worthless because they get frustrated after posting for a month and commenting without even making 5SBDs..Every single day steemit gets harder and the newbies cannot survive for long it is all about who knows you not the quality you produce.
well they can survive, they just do not have to expect to earn and be grateful if they do...
other platforms do not pay you either...
A big problem is that people expect/demand to be paid.
a bigger problem is that steem-preachers start off with "come and post and earn. steemit pays. blah blah."
jerry and co...
yeah, that is the wrong approach in my opinion, that is partly why as member of a witness team (@swisswitness) I do not vote for him.
@holybranches true that is how we do it by the way but what do you think is the best approach?
be real with your preaching.
dont be phony.
talk from your heart.
can you earn? yes.
is it very very hard to earn? yes.
abandon your sugary lips whenever you envangelize steemit. cheers.
I love Steemit as a platform and I've been an active member now for four-and-a-half months. But I am not going to sugar coat it, it has been incredibly hard and I still am not at the point where I wish I was. I know if I withdrew some cash from the bank and bought Steem, I could take a shortcut and buy myself voting power to get to the top quicker.
The biggest concerns I have about the Steem platform are @ned and his cohorts have made no efforts to make this platform a less hostile and unbalanced place.
The biggest improvements they could make to this platform are:
This is all I can think of now, but things need to change and Steemit Inc have thus far made no efforts or gestures towards the community to signal they will improve things. I am excited for SMT's, but they're not going to fix the platform.
Words are not enough. The community has very little power/ability to make change on Steem than they think, ultimately it's Steemit Inc who has to/can only fix things.
The initial idea to give creative content the lifespan of a fruit fly was the one thing that bothered me from the beginning of my time on steemit. Why kill the earning power of content after a week?
The second thing is the limited nature of our blog compared to let's say a Wordpress blog with categories, various pages, etc.
Imagine a case where content could always be upvoted, and we had Wordpress-like sites. Then for example, someone might develop a blog-site for gardening, yoga, stamp collecting, guitar instruction, whatever -- and with time visitors themselves would join steemit to be able to comment and upvote, or create themselves. People would be focusing on quality and thinking longer term.
If steemit was mass adopted, those websites could be nice streams of income for the hard working people behind them.
Personally, it often feels like we are drops in a vast ocean. We need mass adoption and tens of thousands of organic steem-based communities, and I personally think the two things I mentioned above would have helped us achieve that (long term.)
Of course I realize this is a Don Quixote idea that will never happen, but that's how I see it.
The 7 day limit is a tech limitation, more than a decision. Perhaps in the future there may be ways to make a post “evergreen” but I do accept and understand it.
To your other point, I say... add Steem to your blog! Too many people forget or don’t realize that there is so much more to Steem than just Steemit. I’ve gotta put a lot more work into my sites, but I’ve been so psyched playing around with https://finallycomments.com/
@sambillingham is building an amazing project, there’ll probably be a WordPress plugin soon. I just currently manually embed the code in the footer of my WordPress posts that mirror my Steemit content.
Creators fan bases never even have to come to Steemit to gain the benefits of Steem.
Thanks Bryan! I haven't got a clue what is going on technically ;-) As for putting it on a blog, that's kind of a chicken & egg situation. After mass adoption of steem it would absolutely be a must do idea.
In any case, respect for what you are doing, that's great!
We need to invite more communities here and train those communites to invite on their own.
I started to implement this with the established art community here with the help of our local tourism govt. I hope it turns out good.
Let's also train on the art of upvoting your own comment with 100℅. Shall we?
Good Advice.
I was made a part of Steemit about a year ago through my goddaughter (@tecnosgirl) but have mostly just been getting over here to take part in discussions when I find the time. I'm planning on becoming much more active a.s.a.p. Anyway, I see Steemit as a wonderful way to touch hearts and lives with what we write.
As for the cash...I'm still trying to figure that one out. I mostly have just let it stay in my account and take care of keeping me able to reSteem, but I began transferring some of it to where it goes to be paid out. Anyway, I had given my PayPal address when I first was asked about how to pay me, which was one of the options at the time.
But nothing ever went to my PayPal account -- which I found out is no longer a payout place. So, where has my payout gone?
Anyway, the important thing right now is that Steemit is kept going because a lot of ideas have been shared to make this world a better place, and they need to be preserved and read indefinitely!!!
When you are ready to transfer again get a hold of me and I will come over and make sure you are doing it right. It can be confusing.
I agree with you @kevinwong, steemit has a good future awaits for us all. hope this good platform will prosper, hope that sharing blessing on very successful steemians here will help more minnows like us in order for us to grow in this community.
we are hoping people like you shared your true concern about the voting system in this community.
for me, I'm just an ordinary steemians with not so high power of steem, hoping my time will shine on this community, I love to write some poets.
Hope whales give us chance to grow and help us to do more good and quality post articles. @curie and @surpassingoogle are the best example steemians who help minnows like me.
P.s
@mrblu
Thanks for writing this up; a platform is only as strong as its foundation, and in this case, Steemit's foundation is its users unless the devs have their own private idea of how the platform is built. There's already a high learning curve when it comes to even signing up; once you get over that, then there's high turnover as users spend a lot of effort on posts without recognition.
(I've turned to comments, myself, haha...)
The other thing is that power is concentrated in the few; the few have a very limited attention span because of reality and math. So even if the platform grows tenfold; all of them could be creating quality content but only a few can be rewarded due to the nature of the economic system.
So I like your ideas as a way to start; although I admit 50% curation for say bidbots makes me a little leery. But in general something does need to change for the long term prospects of Steem; I guess if I were to throw out an idea, maybe a 'sponsored community' where whales are mods but delegate power to help communities grow - I think this kind of already exists but something more developed might be nice without having to jump on discord to join random groups...
Power is not concentrated in a few. This is capitalism. You can work yourself to the top. Welcome to the free world!
The problems of STEEMIT with respect to profits will always exist, it is the price to pay for being a decentralized social network. At the end we must recognize that users can do whatever they want with their accounts so the changes in the community should be incentivated but not forced.
We still have a long way to go, so I'm glad that these issues are discussed
I dont think this would do us good since you shift the maximum economic gain from bots and selfvoting to whale to whale upvoting.
There really is no economic model that users wont find a way to exploit.
Its really not the economic system imo. People will act like this in any system.
Those that act in detriment to society have always had higher gains then people that work to improve it.
What we lack is a rule set, some kind of consensus on what is and what is not tolerated.
But sure. At this point what do you have to lose?
Once all the whale SP is locked up in bots there will be no one to upvote us minnows anyways.
Maybe it would be a good idea... Not for the idea itself but because this would be some kind of reboot of the system. While users are getting aclimated and a new get rich scheme gets hold we might have a fairer system for a while.
errr... as far as this world goes, evil is here to stay. steemians are only looking for the option with the lesser evil.
Evil only exist in your mind not in the real world
great. in a mind that lives and shits on Earth-blockchain. you should start a Jesus-movement.
You have a dualistic mindset of split things up in good and bad. That is a mind trap!
When I first came to Steem and read what it was all about, I thought that it would regulate itself and provide positive changes as a community toward something that would seduce everyone to come, something like reddit. But nowadays, the changes that I'm seeing are instead toward greed, making Steem less profitable for the new and more profitable for the big stakeholders who run bid bots and other commercial features.
Whereas I would earn around 150 USD a month before, now I'm making even less than 40 USD a month due to the SBD dip together with the "unprofitabilisation" of all the services. I'm not very sure what can be done, but I would really appreciate some urgent redesigns to keep the site attractive for everyone. I think that it is on the blockchain developers to keep it aluring.
You have to network and build relationships
I disagree with the increased downvote incentive. The incentive to downvote now is to rid the market of competition. If there is an even greater incentive than this, competitors will more rapidly exit the system. Punishing the users is not going to make Steem grow.
I fully agree with this distribution. After all, why should a user with a large voice have to support me even if my content is large? Is he a benefactor? My publisher? No. A person has invested his money in this and of course he wants to see his profit. I fully understand the feelings of the big players. And the 50/50 distribution can help the platform. At least it is beneficial for fry and for big fish. More profitable than it is now.
As one who have invested serious cash, time & talents into steem, it's only natural to desire good rewards. So, I'm in full support of your proposed 50% curation reward, @kevinwong. Even a 40% reward to curators would make a lot of difference and address all of the challenges of curation bedeveling steem which we know about. The current 25% curation reward model is no longer working. Who knows what percentages Steemit Inc. is working to implement in the forthcoming #Hf 20.0? Post upvoted & reblogged.
@maryfavour.
there is no substitute for good curation. any incentive that is inserted in the system can be worked around either by using bots or by quid pro quo collusion. so our focus should lean heavily towards increasing the number of curators. we also need machine learning bots to help auto curate one level before handing to off to a human curator. by curation i dont mean upvotes. i really mean grading the article on some scale of 1-10 based on parameters like grammar, style, formatting, content quality (expert needed) and other suitable parameters.
this is harder but worth it. make an interface like a digital library which automatically shows us these curated articles and gives us a way to sort on the curated parameters.
it is a long shot that will pan out when AI peeps make more headway in their respective tech-districts. Funny how we will look back on these discussions and wonder what the fuse was all about anyway.