Robots whales are up voting a list of auhtors who gets all the rewards all the time. This behavior don't encourage the creation of original content by other members. For example i posted some steem analysis but got almost nothing while ozchart is getting all the rewards by bots.
Excellent point. If they don't have the time to vote properly the shouldn't vote at all.
Those rewards will be distributed more fairly by voters who curate properly. I've tried making this point before but it gets ignored repeatedly. I think one of the whales doing this equated it to having a publishing company with a staff of writers.
The point is if someone wants to do that they can do that but not on Steemit because the whole point of this platform is that content is curated. This kind of behaviour makes a mockery of the whole premise.
You will also sometimes see the kind of writers who are on these lists simply copy someone else's idea for a post and end up getting on the trending page, when the original poster whose article was just as good gets overlooked. I think that is just ridiculous.
It is bad for Steemit and will put off new users. Sadly it will continue because whales are basically a law unto themselves. I take a very dim view of these kind of whales as I see them using Steemit as their own little toy with little concern for the other users.
I have been trying my best to help other users and have put my own personal money into doubling my holdings in the last couple of weeks just because I really believe in this platform. It is sad that some of the people who are supposed to have a huge investment in Steemit don't seem to have as much of an interest in it's long term future as minnows like myself and many others do.
As time goes on I think the community will start to wise up and see that these kind of people are bad actors and are actually harming the long term prospects of the platform.
Don't want to be too negative and on a more positive note it is good to see that @dantheman is actually taking some of these issues into consideration and taking steps to deal with them even though it seems to be taking a long time.
What about some system of curating the curators? With there being a much larger population of minnows and dolphins, why not have a curation list show for each whale that in it self can be followed or upvoted by smaller users.
If the point is curation of good content, why not pass these 'selected quality posts' back to the larger group to see what they see. Personally I would love to be able to reward those curators that ACTUALLY take the time to find 'diamonds in the rough' versus a bot who just trails behind looking for payout.
One other idea to enhance reading of a post (and I'll admit I have no idea how this would be done) could be to have a multiple choice/fill in the blank question about the post content to see if the info was truly absorbed. In the 'Should I stay or should I go' post listed below, the first half a dozen commenters completely missed the point of the post. I don't mean this as a know, but just a multiple choice question would have shown who absorbed the meaning. Maybe have some curation adjustment for those who answer it right. This would reward those who truly read it, without having a punishment aspect.
Should I stay or should I go
That is what already happens. We get the ones the whales voted for in active, trending and popular. The other way we interact with steemit is we search for pearls in the dirt, as it were by looking in the new(created) category.
Now, to me, in both ways of interacting we miss a lot of great posts. There are too many for the whales to curate from new. That's why there are bots curating.
We are back to the book store. We have a list of favorite authors and we buy books from them. The curation system is broken because it comes from the top.
I think there a enough newbies to curate content for the user level accounts. As a user level account myself(10-100 steem), I would like to see a newbie approved new category. Which have been approved by users that have between 1 and 10 steem. Amoung other users I can read the favorites of the newbies(1-10 steem), assuming I have time for that. Those that have over 100 steem power can look at posts voted up by users like me. Continuing in this way, posts will actually be read before they got into trending.
Generally this kind of approach can be done with instead voting power, or reputation. The plaform is new but whales don't scale
Rather than the steem power of users this could be instead the maount of voting power behind the posts or the reputation of the
I like the bookstore analogy as well as your idea of better possibility of 'bottom up' curation to supplement the 'top down' style we currently have.
Maybe even tying a curation reward with a bonus/boost when paired with an upvoted comment on that post.
While I know it's not always practical, I would love to see a snippet of WHY a post was curated such as being a preferred topic, originality, moved by art/music, genuine bearing of the soul, etc. (Sorry, I'm just brainstorming now) But just like having some description of why a post is being flagged is/would be a huge help to reduce negative reactions, I'd assume others wondering why a post was curated (say over theirs) could help with the envy or jealousy of others having success.
@leprechaun That's actually a really good idea. I hope @dantheman sees it.
Curating the curators is a good idea. I suppose the reputation system is supposed to be doing that to a certain degree but it has no effect on whales unless other whales flag them. It would also be interesting to see some statistics on how well whales do on curating content that is upvoted by other users - and not the other way around. This may give an indication of how they compare at curating compared to other users without the influence of attention a whale vote generates through the immediate prominence it gives to a post.
I think back to the old video store where each employee has their stack of weekly picks put out. After a while I would find whose recommendations I valued more (typically because of shared tastes or interests) and more than likely watch (vote) on their picks.
@thecryptofiend I think a lot of us are hoping this situation will remedy itself once the user base grows large enough to handle the massive influx of new posts due to the platform's rapid growth recently.
I've noticed even @cheetah is having difficulties keeping up and @cheetah is one of the best if not the best tool to prevent plagiarism and assist in curation that the platform currently has at its disposal.
So what exactly are you proposing? Sure, bringing awareness to the problem helps, but it won't solve the issues at hand. That might be why it's getting ignored. Or it could be simply suffering of the consequences of the problem you're trying to denounce (whale bots->less visibility for content of equal quality).
What dan is proposing here and in his People Rank are at least first steps in finding a better system. Other possible solutions like a lottery based trending page (great short-term solution) and incentivized downvotes might also help making the situation better.
I'm proposing exactly what I said. If you don't have time to curate properly don't vote. That is pretty simple isn't it? Bots should not be seen as a substitute for lack of time.
But that's not something you can implement. Bad actors will always be there and need to be considered. A "cultural shift" isn't enough when it comes to these kinds of systems.
As I said in one of my replies ITT, try convincing @wang that he should stop making ~$4.5k USD/week in curation rewards because "he needs to curate properly". I doubt it'll work.
It does seem to me that this principle of fairness is an important one. Similar posts (in quality and content) by different should attract broadly similar rewards.
The current system does not seem to have any mechanisms to ensure this.
If you are not in the bot list you get nothing even if your content is better. I stop trying to make original content as it's useless until i get on that list.