Centralized curation = content needing to conform to a small number of curators with power

[alexgr]

With the price spike in steem, I'm kind of hooked the last couple of days since I'm interested in the dynamics of the system.

So, I'm noticing the new content and how it goes in terms of zero dollars, zero dollars, then you have someone with much more - say 50$, then zero, zero, zero etc etc. Now, some are good posts, yet get little or nothing. So, in a sense, there is a lack of representative curation for upvoting a wide spectrum of topics.

If the whale curators are, say, 50-100 people, these 50-100 people will have a certain spectrum of interests that they can effectively curate. Now if something doesn't fit in that spectrum, it will typically get overlooked (or not understood) and not voted - or get voted as a "gift", like "ok, I understand that you are on to something, even if I don't get 100%, so you can get my vote". 

So the curation power needs to be further decentralized to make all type of content bloom - content that covers a much wider spectrum than it currently does. By increasing the number of curators with power, this will "democratize" the process. This may not be necessary right now, but it will be as more users come on board and see that their content isn't rewarded due to being out of alignment with the spectrum of interests that the whales have.

If there is a failure of curation in terms of rewarding a wide spectrum of content, that is say popular on reddit but has no interest (=$$$) in steemit, then that will be a failure of the content platform to support diverse content. On top of that, curation power can be bought, and while this is great for antispamming, it can also be "weird" in its implications if it is used in a "directed" way.

I like to think of this with the following analogy: Imagine you have a search engine in the late 90's. You  know your traffic can make fortunes in a site if you just make them appear at the top when users search for certain keywords. Now, as a search engine, you'll be tempted to exploit this phenomenon in a monetary way: You'll make your own "affiliations" and send the surfers who are searching for certain keywords to your own "guys" who've set up their commercial sites, knowing they'll be getting flooded by your artificial ranking of their site. 

Obviously, this will make the search engine and their "affiliated" / friendly site some money, but in the longer term, people view that the quality of the main product (which is the search algorithm) is compromised and thus go elsewhere. At some point a new entrant with a nice search algorithm comes along and destroys all the rest who were tampering their results in order to monetize their search stream. Why? Because they were better at the core business.

Now, the danger here in terms of too much curation power being accumulated and used in certain content, is precisely that: It might hurt core business in the long(er) run. 

Just some food for thought...

Comments

[ajvest]

I would love to comment and expand on your analysis.
Overall, I think you're dead on!

[jonnyrevolution]

This is a fair point as the interests will certainly grow with more users creating new accounts.

[caerbanogwalace]

Testing something out. I'm just going to say a couple of things once and intelligent people should understand what is going on:

• Steemit has chosen to reward popularity. People are rewarded for voting as fast and mindlessly as possible in already well known topics or authors.
• Steemit routinely props up and concentrates as much money as possible in one author to demonstrate that you can live of it "easily". The front page features the same articles day after day, all of them highly payed. That feeds back into the voting pressures creating stronger and stronger "showcases".
• The section dedicated to posts saying "Hi everyone, I am me" is the most well payed section by far on Steemit. So easy.
• Concentration of voting power generates forced allegiances in hopes of benefaction and dissuades criticism in fear of retaliation.
• Only source of positive money flow is market capitalisation increase. Everyone else "receives" money. Creating an account, making a post, voting, witnessing, mining, keeping your SP still. All actions are money faucets, there are no sinks other than the caused inflation.
• This post will likely be downvoted because anything that does not make Steemit look the most amazing thing ever goes against the vested monetary interests of its participants.

I'm not sure Steemit curation has any "problems". I think they are very likely features by design.

[alona]

I upvoted you.