I have seen several articles coming by that are labeled "hidden gems". These articles include other Steemit articles that are undervalued. The author of the hidden gems article wants to redirect attention to the other articles so that they can still receive value.
First things first
The people who are making these hidden gems articles are contributing greatly to the Steemit community. One of the more popular hidden gems author told me he spends up to 8 hours per day searching for these hidden gems. When they find these they compile a great list of articles to read for others. The author of the hidden gems article can of course get upvotes for this too.
The goal of hidden gems articles
I can only speak for my own perspective here. If I where to make a hidden gems article, one of the goals that I would have is to lead attention towards these authors. Therefore my reason must be that I find these articles undervalued and want to add value to them. Another goal would be to receive a little amount for being the messenger.
The problem
The problem with these kinds of articles is that they can seem to become unfair to the original authors. Let me explain. When someone creates a hidden gem article but does not have a lot of steem power the original author might feel honored to be mentioned, but since the hidden gem author does not have a lot of reputation or steem power, votes might not be pouring in and not a lot of money has been made.
When someone with a lot of steem power creates a hidden gem article, they will be upvoted quicker because of the early curation reward. Because that user already has an established base of followers and reputation he might also make a decent amount of money out of that article.
At this point the original author gets exposure by being listed by someone with a greater amount of followers or Steem power. There are people who click-through to the article and vote on the original authors article, which is the goal of the hidden gems article. Here is where it gets tricky, there are some people who vote just because they know that the hidden gems author will be worth a lot and want to get in on the curation reward. Thus never reading in and voting on any of the original authors listed in that article. In this case the original author therefore has zero benefit of being listed as a hidden gem. This is a problem in Steemit's functionality.
The solution
The solution would be to transfer the Steem Dollars to the original authors and keep the Steem Power to yourself. Why you ask?
Because the original goal was to rise the value of the undervalued article.
Unless the original goal was to make money by creating a hidden gems article.
If a hidden gem author transfers all the Steem Dollars to the original authors he or she takes a 50% cut by listing someone else's content. Which in my opinion is quite rewarding. This way the goal of the hidden gems articles would be achieved by adding value to a undervalued article.
Moral Compass
The way Steemit currently works does not force a hidden gems author to give any reward to a original author. Therefore they are doing nothing wrong. But if you look at the true goal of creating a hidden gems article, the author can either have the goal to promote listed content, earn money with listed content or end up somewhere in between.
It is up to the hidden gem authors and the Steemit community to determine where.
It'd be really cool if the STEEM protocol allowed a reSTEEMit functionality. In that situation, a reSTEEMed article would route all of the rewards to the original author and give the reSTEEMer double curation rewards.
But it also exposes the reSTEEMer to double flag penalties.
Very good comment, you might have to expand on that idea and write an article. Please update me if you do.
Ok, I expanded a little here.
Great article, I agree with everything you say, I love when I'm mentioned in the hidden gems, But I'm not so sure if people actually click and eventually upvote those articles. I feel like that needs to be done more often.
I think that @inertia has a very good idea on that one. At this point you cannot tell if users who do vote for gem articles click through to the original article. If you can actually reSteem an article you automatically share the profit that would solve the problem.
I did the Golden Nuggets (before i saw the daily pics over a month ago) and i had this problem to so i changed the model and gave out 80% of sbd divided among the people i tried to lift. That post got less then all the others, maybe just bad luck and that issue was bad but i kinda lost a little steem. was about to do another one then a saw the hidden gems on the first page with like 1800$, just linking to stuff and taking all the earnings, and including authors that already are really popular etc.
And like you say, not enough votes gets to the posts themselves. They are good though so not to complain! When he starts sharing the sbd he'll be a hero...
Good points, especially "there are some people who vote just because they know that the hidden gems author will be worth a lot and want to get in on the curation reward."
I am trying to address the behavior of how people use Steemit, and to get them to understand to only vote for content they value because the read it and it's of quality, not simply because they are primarily focused on making money with Steemit, which seems to be 80-90% of most of the posts in the "new" category, which is very sad. It's largely low quality fodder that clouds the higher quality material from being recognized and gaining visibility for others to learn from.
Please consider reading what I have to say and sharing it. I am trying to get more people to understand the value and goal of Steemit and improve its quality content as well as their own, and focus less on the money. I put all my SBD into SP to help Steemit succeed in being higher quality in the end. Upvote only if you appreciate the value in it, not to get curation rewards from it.
Thank you. Take care. Peace.
^ Link sharing done proper.
Insane post there @krnel. Really devoted and a really good guide for beginners too. I just hope Steemit is going through a phase and that distribution will become better.
I make a habit of upvoting only if I think the post is quality content. Even if I may disagree with the author's conclusions, If there is some thought and effort into the post, I'll upvote.
I saw someone last night advocating to ignore quality and just do quantity. Certainly hope that doesn't take hold more than it already has. It is getting harder to find quality posts.
More junk is indeed accumulating here, but quality can still be found.
Good idea. Although I can understand why some who unearth hidden gems cannot afford to give the Steem Dollars to the authors (given the time and effort involved in uncovering the content).
I am however tempted by the idea of writing hidden gem articles with SD going to listed authors...
I understand too, but I think that the system currently does not provide enough fairness to properly reward the original authors.
I'm pretty new to steemit and have noticed this type of article around already. I think that it is nice to just check out to see if any of the “gems” have any subjective value or “shine” if you will. I personally would not upvote the hidden gem author unless they pointed me toward several articles I am interested in. This being said I think only a really benevolent gem miner would pass on their value to the original authors. You said these people are “contributing greatly” and I do think their work of scouring through steemit to present the gems should be rewarded.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
About linkback_bot
You might want to fix your bot. I already linked back in this thread.
I wrote about this kind of feature today here
Would love your feedback if you have time.