Hello Steemians,
As we all look towards Hardfork 20, there are many changes that well-meaning steemians want to see for a better steemeconomy. You and I know most of the challenges that you and I are facing here. Except you are a whale or ned reading this, I'm sure you understand.
Here's the thing there are problems with upvote bots which became recently magnified as a result of people abusing that system to get to the trending page. In essence people are buying up spaces on our trending page instead of allowing other people determine their popularity.
This has prompted many people to ask; what's to be done? This came with a barrage of comments. Many people dropped their own opinions even the ones that were seemingly pulled from their behind. Many were just outrightly retarded like 3 year olds with some chromosomal abnormalities drooling saliva.
One person even said;
Since the trending page is the issue, get rid of the trending page entirely.
Hey genius! How about you get rid of your brain first and replace it with Einstein's cadavar. Pfuuh! The trending page is the front page of this blockchain. That's how we get to show off our $$$ signs and make the bold claim that "MONEY TALKS!"
I know you probably said something a little bit more retarded. Don't fret okay? We realize that everyone is not too smart so we have decided to feature the opinions of the smart ones. Don't feel too bad if yours isn't featured. Just smart up!
So here they are;
One of the smartest answers imho is from @mirrors.
I dunno whether he is a she or she is a he but I know she his human!😂 And the human has substance.
This is an abridged version of she his comment:
What is the goal of promoting a post?
a) To increase the posts visibility
--- This gives the post, irrespective of the quality, the inertia it needs to attract more upvotes
b) To grow one's reputation (I have seen several low REP accounts overnight sprint from 25 to 65+. This is long term play)
---This calls attention to one's blog, and also attracts more thoughtlessly given upvotes on one's posts, irrespective of their quality.
After this part she he argues further that the there's a problem with the algorithm which tends to be unifactorial and straightforward hence can easily be games. The trending shouldn't be determined only by popularity. She he profers some solutions as follows;
What, in my opinion, is a trending page post? Simply put, it is the is the most read, the most talked about, the most engaging in terms of comments, and as the least of the reasons, the most rewarded.
New algorithm criteria
"(i) The number rather than the weight of upvotes.
(ii) The number of 'human account' comments by the community .
(iii) The number of reply's to the comments by the post author/account holder.
(iv) The number of resteems by the community in general.
(v) The number of resteems by the high reputation accounts rather than the weight of their upvotes on the post.
(vi)And finally, the overall post rewards as a secondary qualifier after the rest above."
@mirrows
I was impressed that someone has finally given some thought to this. The other day, I saw a new announcement from @steem-plus chrome browser extension. They actually implemented a new feature designed by @andybet named Steem Sincerity see here. So people are working behind the scenes to fix these I guess.
One thing I have discovered is that the society's problems are usually an opportunity for someone smart to shine. Well someone retardedly smart and funny can also shine by making light of the situation.
So I'm waiting for a big announcement someday where someone tells us that he has built a platform on the steem blockchain that uses a better algorithm than Steemit. Damn! He or she is even allowed to use bots just to hyperboost such into our attention.
Steemit will be dumped immediately for a better system that appropriately grades content based on popularity as determined by real humans and not bots! That way, even a minnow can trend with a $5 upvote if he has enough minnows upvoting, commenting and resteeming his work. Then it will serve it's real purpose of exposure . A whale will then vote and boom! Minnows get appropriately rewarded for Hardwork!
On some level, I really think that this is what Steemit Inc wants to achieve. They want users to build on their efforts. They want people to make the platform go in any direction they want it to go without their interference. That's what decentralization means really.
I heard this statement in one of Ned's interviews;
This platform will scale when one or more of the dapps perform better than Steemit!
The point is to complain less and do more. Be the change you wanna see on steem!
I also saw someone else with a totally different but uniquely smart idea. He feels the problem is not symptomatic but fundamental. This guy's profile picture looks retarded but yet he seems smart. Lets hear him;
The underlying problem with society (not just Steemit) is the substitution of money for virtue. Society is far more valuable than money, and many things far more profitable than financial rewards. Steemit hasn't improved on this problem, as stake-weighting simply completely abdicates virtue to mammon.
For some of you that didn't pick a word from the above, stake weighting is the algorithm we currently have. It ties everything to stake. Eg upvote value is dtermined by stake. Voting for witnesses is same stake.
@Valued-customer argues that this is the one reason for all the problems on the site. I had argued in that light before in one of my posts . I remember someone reminding me that that's akin to asking for Utopia. 😎
He adds further that,
Society is people, not their money. Society, including on Steemit, is far more important than SP, and VP being based on SP is a foul twisting of our attention away from those things that matter more.
If we have a way of separating the social from the wallet model then we are in for a great long ride free of complaints and lovely humanity. Stem is full of many numerous potentials which should not be sacrificed on the alter of selfishness.
Finally, I'll close with the smart speech of @heimindanger the founder of @dtube and creator of the Clean Trending Page Initiative. He said and I quote;
Every social network in the world is a meritocracy, even the best ones like reddit. It's always the same users making the karma and who know 'how to trend'.
The fact that everyone can buy itself to the top of the trending on STEEM, is a symptom of the manipulation that goes on. Sadly, if everyone can get to trending easily, it's the proof the system is rigged. You wouldn't go register on Instagram and expect 1000s of likes on your first pictures, unless you are already a superstar. Should be the same on steemit, getting to trending should be a long quest that takes months of hard effort. Not a few hundred dollars...
I also believe it's pretty bad psychologically for the steemians. Instead of having the feeling of slowly growing up their influence, week after week, they can instantly boost themselves to the top for a couple of days. It's basically a cheat code, that ruins the game experience. I doubt all these bid-bot users will stay on STEEM once the cheat codes are removed or less powerful.
I have one question for the bidbot owners. Well, it's not mine but @abh12345…
What will happen when all Steemians delegate to bots?
Source Of Comments: @TheRealWolf's post.
😎😎Ciao!😉😉
They call me @Nairadaddy aka SteemDaddy!
My aim is to leave you better than I find you everyday!
Join Us On Air-Clinic Discord
My aim is to leave you better than I find you everyday!
Join Us On Air-Clinic Discord
Certainly I believe Steemit Inc wants the steemit.com website to be replaced by something else ASAP.
Steemit.com is a liability for them that they believe is not needed as part of their business model.
They clearly do not want to spend any significant resources on maintaining or improving the site. I doubt steemit.com will ever go out of beta.
Building a better version of steemit.com will be great but of course it will still sit on the same blockchain and run on the same reward pool.
That is the problem.
I believe Steemit Inc is mistaken in its strategy. Steemit.com is its flagship product - its reference point of visibility to the outside world.
It needs to be the best it can be - not the worse it is.
The real giveway will be if we see steemit inc quietly change its name at some point to Steem Inc. Or maybe Alphabot would be more appropriate 😊
Hey @pennsif,
Lolx
But this is exactly what I got from their attitude,
They seem to just let the system run on autopilot . How hard can it really be for them to fix some of these things?
You just notice this non-challance or laid back i-dont-care behaviour.
Don't they want the platform to survive?
As long as we are concerned Steemit.com is still the frontend of this blockchain. It should be the gold standard for others to emulate.
Nobody really knows the diet they are cooking in-house. I just only hope that it's a good one. Pls they should make it extra spicy just the way Daddy likes it 😜😜😂😂
Thanks for your contribution man!
Dying of Laughter here.
However it is sad what Steemit has come to be like.
I hope the next Hardfork help change some factors that encourage what we are facing.
@ogochukwu
Hardfork 20 will change the factors. It will make mining rewards more profitable for the oligarchs, and make the problems worse.
It isn't necessary for a clone of Steemit to use the Steem blockchain.
While this would abandon such stake as adopters of the new fork might have accrued in Steem, that may be of little import by the time such a fork has been developed, particularly if bots continue to degrade the engagement in Steemit society at the accelerating rate they are presently.
Frankly, eliminating the oligarchical whales that mined their stakes in Steem would be beneficial to the community, since they are the ones mining rewards with bots, or delegations to bots, and killing Steem now.
You are absolutely correct that considering Steemit the flagship of Steem is what Stinc should do. Myspace, Fakebook, Twatter, Youtool, and many more such platforms show the power of social media. That these have become the FAANGs of legendary financial import today is no fluke.
IMHO, Stinc is abandoning their greatest potential to success by neglecting Steemit. They are conflicted by their dependence on the mined stake whales, and the need of Steemit to counter that influence, which requires abandoning stake-weighting.
What Stinc is doing is comparable to a rubber manufacturer that harvests the sap of the latex producing trees by logging them and squeezing every last drop of sap from them once. The production of latex upon which rubber manufacturers depend will plummet quite soon after they begin doing that, after it peaks spectacularly.
Instead, rubber tappers in the jungles where these trees grow incise the bark, and induce the living trees to leak sap into buckets, which they sell to rubber manufacturers today. This is a sustainable source of latex, although it may produce less latex in a given quarter than pressing the latex out of logs might, it does so permanently, rather than for but one or two quarters of earnings.
Corporations which can simply change business models don't care. Quarterly returns are all that matters.
Similarly, Stinc is mining it's whales by crushing the society upon which Steem value is derived. Were the market for Steem globally only the 37 whales, Steem would have zero value. Steemit creates the value of Steem by providing thousands of users of Steem, and the whales are dependent on the volume of users for their wealth.
They are destroying their investment by sucking the rewards from the pool that should be driving growth in the market for Steem. Stinc is looking to move to a different business model than maintaining a social media site. They are preparing to abandon the single greatest growth business model that exists in the world today, for something else.
No one will lose more when this happens than the whales. Since they aren't seasoned investors, but instead geeks that happened to be able to mine Steem when the ninjamine occurred, they probably don't understand this very well.
I think that reflects poor vision, and a lack of management expertise.
Thanks!
savage....delete trending page. kuku make steemit sercret.
lol....she his human...sense will not kill you papi...too much creativity
wow @mirrows she his really on point. thats how we address the content rather than the result.
wow thats really true. the power won't be as a result of how much you have to flaunt on bots,
but on how well people respond. thats a really innovative one.
@heimindanger spoke right. i know people buy promotions on instagram too, but its the influence you have on people that determines the likes.
papi...but to be sinere, the trending page kinda excites money-hunger o and in a way can be discouraging. because it kills visibility for some people who don't have money to buy their way to the top.
shebi everyone shouts is only naija that buys their way to the top...come to steemit.
i dont know if i should see it as another way of bribery.
but i started using bots some days back just to earn some more cash coz i sponsor a contest. but now, i guess its a question of growth, influence and how many people are actually loyal to me.
the voting using bots is kinda really amazing at least i make like an extra $2 and can use it for something else. its kind of encouraging.
but i think if the top is not being bought, a number of us ould feature and get some reasonable upvotes for our posts.
but Papi, whats your own take on the use of bots?
Hey @t-flames,
Check it very well. One thing you don't know about using bots is that you are actually just funnelling your SBD /steem into a whale's pocket just for upvotes. You don't make profits from most bots rather you lose.
The proponent of vote bots think you should use it to boost your posts visibility. But one thing you will quickly notice is that no matter what, it's still there people in your circle of influence that will engage with your content.
The rest may be bot commnts, spam comments and scammers. So where's the visibility. Instead use that time and build an audience. Visit blogs and make friends.
Will write a post on this soon.
Pls don't allow the fire of your flames to burn your sense.😂😂😂
Use your head!
If you found bots profitable though, feel free to use it.
I appreciate your kind regard for my comments, and exposition of this issue.
You note that seeking to improve the world is seeking utopia. We all do seek utopia, moderated by our expectations, if we are reasonable.
That's why we can use fire today. Some hominid discovered how to control it, and created utopia at the time. Blockchain and other technologies are no different in import today, nor has the goal changed.
We all seek utopia, if we work to make a better world for those that come after us than we found when we arrived in it.
Don't stop.
Thanks!
Exactly my friend.
Utopia is possible!
One thing I know is this;
If Steemit doesn't do it, another chain will do it.
I don't understand how is this connected to HF 0.20.0. / “Velocity”
HF 0.20.0 will change sign up process (no more Steem fee, accounts will be mined again), Remove Account Creation with Delegated Steem Power, Remove Vote Dust Threshold.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/proposing-hardfork-0-20-0-velocity
Hey @fbslo,
The point is that they should implement some of these other changes to HF 20.
I think we don't need hardfork for this. To change trending, we just need to change condenser(steemit website).
This post is intriguing, 9 views and 36 upvotes.
So... yeah, what will happen to Steem when there is naught but a cesspool of megalomaniacs and their armies of bots remaining?
2cp
The obvious thing: it will die.
Thanks!
I hope we don't get to that !
This should become the new slogan of Steemit. @ironshield