Revamping Curation Is The Way To Increase Steem Power Demand
If you haven’t been living under a rock, for the past month or so, it has been quite clear that the price of Steem has been rapidly falling. Although before the run up to $4 was most likely in a bubble and the system is in no danger of failing, as it has worked at this price before, I still believe there is a long term solution that needs to be found to fix this problem. Ned made a post yesterday talking about ideas he had, which mostly, in my opinion focused on lowering the supply entering the market, but this is only a symptom of the problem. My solution although a bit drastic addresses the problem which is a lack of incentive to purchase Steem and power up.
To begin, what are the incentives now? Well the main incentive is having weight while voting, as well as getting a daily return on the Steem Power you have in the system. These might seem like adequate incentives in theory, but in practice I think we are seeing something very different. The problem right now is even with the daily interest we are getting on our Steem Power, we have still been losing money due to the price drops. The interest, which is supposed to act like inflation protection, is actually doing nothing because as long as the price is falling, people are not going to want to move their Steem dollars or Steem into Steem Power. We need to give a greater incentive to hold and purchase Steem Power that will benefit us as a community in the long run. Sure we can wait for the price to fall and have people cash out and make it cheaper to enter the system, but this still doesn’t address the underlying problem.
So what is my solution? I strongly believe we need to move the payout split to 50:50 between authors and curators from the current 75:25 it is at. I know this will be controversial, especially because many authors today, INCLUDING MYSELF, are making essentially a living off the site, but ultimately it comes down to what is best for the community. We need to look at who is adding more value to the site, the authors or the curators. Depending on who you ask their answer might be different, but in my opinion both are equally as important. One cannot survive without the other and the payouts should reflect that.
Curating is supposed to be a heavy incentive for people to enter the system, but the earnings from it are subpar at best. For example, I have 20,000 Steem Power and my average earnings per day is around 6 Steem Power. That means my daily return on investment is .03% a day and only around 11% a year and that is with a pretty profitable curating strategy. Sure it will technically come out to a bit higher than 11% due to compounding but it still won’t make that much of a difference. A huge selling point to me was that if you choose to curate rather than create content you will also be able to earn a sufficient amount, but no one is going to put 20,000 Steem into Steem Power that they would have to wait 2 years to pull out if the reward of waiting is not sufficient enough. Selling Steemit as a platform where the users who upvote the content are equally as valuable as the users who create the content makes users actually want to buy Steem and convert it into Steem Power.
We should not focus on slowing down the supply that enters the market, but rather retaining and creating new users that will become active daily. Once people have upvotes that actually mean something we will see people flock to the system. Rather than just browsing reddit and upvoting, with no return, they would have a much better experience here. The majority of the people on the site are not authors but lurkers or readers and we need to cater specifically to that crowd because they will end up as the masses, should more come. Authors deserve to be paid for their work but the percentage of money that goes to payouts is a lot.
Like I stated before, I have been very successful and Steemit which is why I want to cut down my rewards, because if we continue in the direction we are currently going, it will become a race to the bottom , at which point everyone will leave. I strongly believe that splitting the curation rewards and author rewards equally can benefit the demand for Steem power in the long run and cause a higher amount of user retention within the system.
-Calaber24p
Yes the old curation system works quite great and it's the strongest selling point of SP, IMHO. After changing to the new curation, these are a lot of people complaining and totally stop upvoting. You could find a lot of posts about that problem.
Definitely true.
I hate to admit this is probably right...
We may lose some authors over it. But we won't lose the good ones.
Minimal IMO. I really doubt the 1/3 reduction would be make-or-break for more than tiny number of cases, if any.
I appreciate the discussion, but I don't believe curation should be 50:50 with the way curation currently exists. Curation is a bots game currently, and that would have to be changed first (with the proposed 0.14 changes perhaps), for me to get behind an idea like this.
Right now we have bots that are powering down millions of vests a week and regaining the entire balance powered down simply by curating. This won't stop them, this will only make that behavior more popular.
I could see 50:50 maybe being viable is the changes in 0.14 go through, but right now there's push back on that as well.
Also - writing is harder than curation, why should it be an equal split?
I've seen this claim repeatedly made. It appears false. My power down rate is currently 20K/week. I'm making 3K/week with a combination of light botting and manual curation. @berniesanders is making 4K/week. @wang is apparently the most successful bot relative to SP and is making 2K/week while powering down 4K/week.
Seems there should be snopes page on this :)
More importantly though, voting for curation rewards is a competitive activity. There is always someone who is going to be the best at it. Looking at that one individual during one particular time window is not a good way to assess the effect of the mechanism across the overall system. This is no difference from balance in games. There might be a few excellent players with very high K/D ratios (imperfections of that metric noted), but that fact alone does not imply the game is unbalanced at all.
The rewards for reading are split among potentially hundreds or thousands of voters.
@smooth You are the No. 1 VESTS gainer last month without posting any. Increase of curation reward will surely increase your earning but it will discourage many good writers IMHO.
1/3 reduction in posting rewards will discourage "many good writers"? I doubt it. Which ones, exactly, will quit if they earn 1/3 less? (Or maybe that won't even happen because better curation rewards will engage more users and attract more investors as OP suggested, increasing the size of the pool.)
As for my own rewards, those were achieved only using a paid staff of 10 curators (some working close to full time) with much of the rewards going back to them as salary and bonuses. I've since had to cut back on paid curation because the economics no longer support it.
I'm now working on a revised and downscaled program with less risk and exposure for me. As curation becomes more competitive and as the size of the reward pool in VESTS shrinks each day it, becomes tougher and tougher to justify high level professional curators (who IMO did a great job which included finding some great posts that did extremely well once promoted, but sat undiscovered for 10 hours in some cases).
There is no free lunch here.
I disagree that we would lose good writers. We may lose some writers alright, but not the good ones. The fact that we're getting paid at all is revolutionary, and I agree that the curator should be valued as much as the writer. My writing has no value without those who read it and those who promote it.
My only concern is with the ongoing distribution. With increased curation rewards for whales and decreased author rewards for minnows, wouldn't this increased the disparity between whales and minnows?
And as you've said before, one of your reasons for powering down is to try to spread the rewards more evenly. I have absolutely nothing against whales powering down and it's my belief that if the system were to discourage whales from doing this, this would further discourage investors. However, I can see that from those who cannot see what's going on from the outside, from the markets point of view it just doesn't look good. So I'm wondering how we can address this to make potential buyers aware that with steem this trend is different from when you see it with other cryptocurrencies.
Also, as suggested by one of my brothers who are here on steemit, perhaps we need further incentive not just for whales, but for minnows to buy steem. Website perks for example might be a good way to attract a small amount of investment from a lot of minnows. Since becoming a dolphin feels like a goose chase without using your money, because of the difference between a $10 and a $3000 account. If there were better incentives to try to reach an $P of $500 worth, we might see a lot more users reaching into their pockets.
Distribution in the form of rewards is too slow to matter very much. Over the next year approximately 20 million STEEM will be distributed in rewards (both content and curation rewards) and the total money supply will reach about 300 million. Under any conceivable scheme a very large portion of the 20 million will go to very large SP holders (including some who are successful posters as well). The only really significant redistribution that can possibly happen is though the market. I don't consider this a good reason to cut rewards for voting across the board, large and small alike, which is what cutting the size of the pool does.
Good question. I don't know of easy answers here. 95% of the stake is owned by roughly 1% of the users. There's no fast or painless way to spread that out. I guess time and confidence that things will work out longer-term is the best we can do.
I don't believe you are sharing your post key (of smooth) with your curator team. Are your referring teamsmooth?
I think we should push for a change where a user can delegate a percentage of their SP voting power to a user along with a percentage split of curation rewards. For example if you wanted to delegate 20% of your SP to 4 good curators, and keep 20% for yourself you could. You could start by giving them an 80/20 split, and increase their split percentage as a reward for doing a good job.
@clayop
The way it worked is the team members submitted candidate posts to me and I vote for them myself using the web site, as well as adding some of their identified authors to a list for automated voting. I received the rewards and paid the team members for their work from other funds (since rewards are SP and can't be transferred).
I was in the process of creating a different process using mulitple posting keys for the various team members when the economics shifted in a manner that discouraged further investment in curation infrastructure, so that work is on hold for now. I'm still accepting post recommendations and voting manually, though at a lower rate than previously (in part because the market has become much more competitive with multiple curation teams operating; I'm an investor and supporter of one of them).
I'm currently working on a new initiative with my curation team that should start going within the next few days. The process and curation goals will be slightly different than before, and more in tune with the current market.
If curation bring in more Steem owners and price goes up 1/3 it could be net postitive for authors.
I fully agree with @beanz. From the market site steem as investment doesnt look good with the inflation of at least 100% per year. Even if 90% is given back to Steem power holders, still the market graph looks going down for an outsider. The hyper inflation also destroys the incentive to use steem as currency or to provide liquidity.
Reduce steem inflation rate drastically
Therefore i would suggest to reduce the inflation of steem dramatically to 10% per year. 5% could go to steem power holders.
Reduce the time period you must hold steem power drastically
Also I would suggest to drastically change the time period that you must hold steem power to at max one year.
Give incentives for users that verify their identity
We should also think about giving incentives for new users that fully verify their identity. This could look like the following: If you verified your identity, you get 30% interest per month, until the value of your steem power equals 500 steem dollars.
Give incentives for using steem dollars to buy something
Also we should think about incentives for buying something with steem or steem dollars. For example you get up to 10% of the purchase price if you buy something from an verified steem merchant.
There is such way on traditional markets, they call it credit
If I put 20 hours per week into posting material that makes roughly $60 a week, and suddenly this is cut by one third, but I still have to put the same amount of work in to write good quality content... Many people value their time more than money @smooth.
the "game"/"money making scheme" is nice to those who benefit from it, but I thought steemit was a social media, meaning where people interact.
What good (to the author/community) does it do to the upvoting of something no one read ?
Because a bot upvoting, means just that, no human read the post. It was upvoted based over criteria which have nothing to do with interest (mostly based on author rep or stuff like that).
And it will be upvoted for the same reason by most of the upvoters, curation reward not because the article is good or was a good read... In terms of social media it is in my opinion a fail
It is described, I think, as incentivized social media. It is clearly not exactly the same as regular social media and is more of a hybrid between that and cryptocurrency mining (as in "blogging is the new mining").
But if we are to accept this, doesn't it mean that a large portion of the quality content creators out there won't be drawn to the platform? If this is the proper understanding of the platform, then there's no reason for good writers and creators to come here. Visibility is likely a higher priority for creators/artists than the money - especially those who are trying to build followings. If curating is only for gaming purposes, then it makes no sense to try to attract writers by trying to market to them with the claims that they can "get paid for quality content." They won't be getting paid for quality content. They'll simply have a chance to be paid for being the most easily gamed by bots.
@ats-david
I'm not really sure if you are trolling but come on. The content that gets voted up for most part is the most popular stuff. More people think it is the best quality, or at least most of-interest to them. Take follower count for example, which presently has no reason to be gamed in this system (though elsewhere in social media it does and I'm sure it will here). @dollarvigilante has almost 3000 followers. A lot of people here like him and think his work is quality. So when he gets voted up that is exactly quality work being voted up, even though it happens in practice by a combination of people and bots (controlled by people). Similar comments could be made about @gavvet, @charlieshrem, @heiditravels, etc. Even @msgivings who was a highly divisive author and had an issue with plagiarism, was widely followed and her posts consistently had very active comment sections. People here like them and appreciate their work.
If you think you're the next Bethoven and your musical symphony scores are top "quality" and should be voted up, well you are one person who thinks that, and you might even be "right" in some philosophical quality sense, but the system is unlikely to reward you accordingly if no one else knows about you or cares about your work.
Now if your issue is that whales control all the stake and have different opinions about who or what should be voted up than you do or some other users do, my answer is the same as it has been every time this has been discussed: We need to redistribute the stake (via selling).
Finally, if your claim its all bots and nobody actually likes the stuff that gets voted up, I disagree. See above.
It is a game yes, but it is a game that results in the most popular authors and content consistently getting the most votes, along with fairly consistent successes from hidden gems. That's both the intent of the design and the results we see in practice (again see above). Is there a better system that exists? I doubt it. Go post on Facebook or Twitter with no followers and see if you have any significant chance whatsoever to get a lot of exposure (you don't). At least here there is a constant ongoing effort (because that effort has the potential be rewarded) by those who are digging through hundreds and thousands of junk posts to find a few that look like that have a lot of potential and voting them up, which in turn starts to give them exposure and shot.
That's probably the best example, which proves it is can be true. Just because @wang is the only one who can accomplish this right now (that we know of), doesn't mean everyone won't be able to in the future. How does that make the statement false?
The entire reason I mentioned bots is that if we went to a 50:50 split, it would make it even more possible to power down and completely regenerate that value simply by running a bot. @wang as an example would jump immediately from making 2k/week to 4k/week, which is what he powers down.
I feel like you and I both play the "devils advocate" roll a lot ;)
That wasn't the original claim:
The original claim was off by power of two in the case of @wang. Also, a lot of this is natural, even structural, early-adopter dynamics. Ignoring competitive factors (see @owdy's reply), the reward pool is fixed in STEEM/day but SP inflates by about 5% per week. The two are inevitably diverging.
This is not devil's advocate, it is simply false (as far as I know) that people are currently making as much from curation as they are powering down. @wang, so far the tightest ratio so far identified is lagging by a factor of two, and others are lagging even more.
Finally even if it were true, would it matter? Imagine that power down were extended from 104 to 208 weeks (both arbitrary numbers). In that case curation would indeed currently match power down for @wang, but so what? How about 1040 weeks? 52 weeks? All these comparisons are arbitrary and meaningless.
Let me make one last point. Any linear change in curation does not change the balance between larger, smaller, dumber, smarter, human, or bot curators, it simply affects everyone's rewards proportionately. When we cut @wang's rewards in half we also cut in half the rewards for every modest-SP user on the site (which is most of them), and likewise for doubling them. This particular change is entirely neutral to whether these rewards are too top heavy or bot-friendly.
I would also guess that content rewards are probably as top-heavy as curation rewards, if not more so. Clearly people like @dollarvigilante, @charlieshrem, etc. are earning faster from content rewards than they are powering down. Why is it considered acceptable for them but not for curators? Again I would say the comparison between the two rates is arbitrary and meaningless.
THIS^^^^
@jesta
The ratios do not change significantly over a short time period (only about 5% divergence per week) and not at all if you measure both rewards and power down using the same units.
Come on, that's completely silly! He voluntarily reduced his powering down rate to match his reward rate. Every single user who ever earns a reward at whatever rate whatsoever can do that!
It is also seriously cherry-picked BTW. Depending on which particular time period you choose on that chart you can get the result to increase, decrease, or stay the same!
I think the most important point you are missing is that rewards denominated in VESTS decrease single every day. Everyone here now, including @wang, is an "early miner" in a sense and we are all benefiting from the rewards being much larger than they will be in the future. That short-term fact shouldn't be used as a basis for system design.
@jesta
Likewise!
You're talking about SP, I'm talking about VESTS. That 2.5k SP he powered down this week is the equivalent to 7.8125 million VEST. That's exactly what my original claim was about. I still don't see where the statement was false, maybe I'm just dense. Where's this power of two you speak of?
It's true if you look at it from a monthly perspective. Here's wang's ~30 days history, the red line is VESTS:
3 power downs, 1 week of no power downs, and only curation. It's pretty much even. If you want to run the numbers yourself, here's an API endpoint with every day's snapshot:
https://steemdb.com/api/account/wang/snapshots
My entire point was that if we went from 75/25, to 50/50, that the red line in the chart above would be increasing faster. I am not against early adopters making some profit, we're all early adopters here. I'm also not against bots, but I do think they should be kept in check.
In my opinion - yes, it would. As I learn more about the subject, it may not matter to me anymore, but currently my perception (and others) feel this is a problem.
Thanks for the good discussions on the topic :)
@smooth - Points taken, and thank you again for engaging in this topic so far with me. Regardless of the point by point back and forth we're having, I also think that fundamentally you and I are seeing this from different perspectives.
But you're right. I drove this comment thread by starting to talk about bots and curation, which is a totally separate topic from the actual rewards structure itself. They play off one another, but ultimately shouldn't dictate the direction of one another.
Just a note on this - It's just the timeframe I have currently since I've started recording. I don't have more complete data, and I doubt anyone else does either. I'm not cherry picking on purpose, I'm just using what I have as an example.
Can the bots be a positive for the indirect distribution of SP. What if the Whales use bots to follow volunteers that find new users with good content. The Whales can't do it all by themselves. They set their power to vote the same as the volunteer at a certain percentage. (Slide Scale) Maybe they can even divide the SP to their own secondary account to follow more volunteers. They are keeping their own SP but just voting with the volunteer.
These volunteers would have some stipulations for votes. Don't vote for themselves, don't vote for users over a certain amount of up votes or dollars already awarded in a post, look for new users with quality content.
Say a Whale had two volunteers doing the searching and voting for 20 posts, meeting their criteria, with what ever percent on the sliding scale they want. That's 40 votes a day and spreading their power by their bot just voting the same as their volunteers.
I'm just trying to think of ways to help. And I try and think, If I had this kind of power, I would want to spread it out as far as I can to benefit the community. From what I understand the bots could do this....
Anyway .... Just an idea. :)
Pk
There are all sorts of things going on in this system, bots being used in different ways, humans voting for all sorts of reasons, comments being made to attract votes to themselves or to the post, etc. I don't think we really have a full grasp of it all, and our understanding will likely decrease going forward. Large complex systems with complex interactions, feedback loops, and competition quickly become impossible to fully understand.
@smooth Exactly and that is just taking account of conscious human motivations. It is hard to know the unconscious motivations and behaviours that people will engage in.
I'm pretty sure this was the case about a month ago. For at least a couple of weeks, @wang was making over 6k SP/week when he was still voting at 14 mins. Ever since he cut down on his upvote delay, the bot game has been a lot more challenging for everyone.
See my reply to @jesta. Not only is this a matter of increasing competition but also structural inflation. The rewards are getting effectively smaller, by design (until a floor is reached but not for quite a while).
I do agree that a 50/50 split would make the curation 'game' more appealing, and would provide additional incentive for users to power up. My issue with it is this though:
Even though the curation reward is being split amongst hundreds of thousands of voters, it is really the big whales who are getting 99% of the curation rewards. Even a good dolphin curator with 5-10k worth of SP who maximizes their curation by somehow voting on posts that all get upvoted by whales, will only see a very tiny portion of the curation rewards from the posts.
The "little guy" curator will still not have much incentive to power up, because even with increased curation rewards - their portion is so minuscule that it won't really matter. It seems like in the end it will help the rich get/stay richer, but offer very little to average users who can not afford to buy in 100k worth of SP.
This problem is solved by redistribution (i.e. whale selling). As long as <1% of the users own 95% of the SP (source: https://steemd.com/distribution), everything else will follow along in this same (broken) proportions.
Spread the stake, then the system can work really well, not before.
As I said elsewhere, linear changes in curation (specifically cutting it in half or doubling it) do not in any way change the proportions that are going to various demographic segments. Cutting whales' curation in half does not help anything if it also cuts non-whales curation in half (or worse, pushes non-whales below the minimum floor where they go no curation rewards whatsoever), and that is what was done.
And finally, what is happening by piling on even more content rewards? A few very successful bloggers are concentrating the bulk of the rewards, amassing huge portions of stake, becoming the next whales, and still not helping the little guy (btw, many of them are using automated voting now). This is not really solving the problem either.
Nevertheless, despite this ongoing issue, even in this thread I see non-whales discussing curation and their strategies for performing it as a compelling form of engagement.
@smooth True! Infact little dolphins can make significant SP/month; easily compare infovore and charlieshrem (very new btw) with equivalent SP and followers but significant differences in curation return.
I also manually curate 6.7 SP/week & from where I am from that pays my coffee all week )).
I totally agree.
What level do you currently need to be at though in order to make any serious money from curation rewards though? 50k? Does cutting that from 50k to 25k really provide much more incentive to power up? Regardless of whether the split it is 75/25 or 50/50, I think the threshold of SP needed to really make a difference is so high, that nobody other than a huge investor is going to see this change as an attraction to power up.
I don't completely agree. While most of the rewards are going to a handful of contributors, there are still a significant number of small users who are getting a lot of SP from posting. I think way more users are gaining SP from authoring than from curating. With a 50/50 split, less money would be going to low SP holders through posting, and more would go to high SP holders who get the bulk of the curation rewards.
you are an exception in that you are a whale that actually cares about curation. i think the biggest problem with Steem currently is that curation power wasn't optimally distributed and those that have it either don't want the power or aren't well equipped to have it: https://steemit.com/steem/@ntomaino/optimally-distributing-curation-power
I agree with your post except that I wouldn't say I'm the only whale interested in curation or even necessarily the one most interested. Several of the others vote very acively and @berniesanders is backing the Curie Project which seems to be an excellent curation program. Nevertheless, yes, we need redistribution. The proposal in the OP helps support this goal by giving people more of a reason to buy.
You're not the only, but are of the few. I appreciate the work @berniesanders is doing as well in protecting the integrity of curation power and not hesitating to downvote posts that compromise the integrity of curation power.
because it is harder to put hard earned money to SP !!!
Exactly writing is much harder than reading the content.
Not all the time, have you seen some of the shit on here?
its not an equal split. 50% to one person compared to 50% divided between 400?
It's an equal split between the author and the curators (plural). I never meant to imply it was a direct equivalence between all curators and the author :P
I just saying people won't do shit for a fraction of a cent.
The vast majority of people will still only get a fraction of a cent, except doubled, if we went to 50/50.
0.001 SBD * 2 is still only 0.002
This change won't make curation worth it for people who don't earn much to begin with.
This is only because the rewards are so low only a bot can justify doing it. Encouraging commenting would also be a way to improve activity. I still think bots would be disadvantaged if you got more curation rewards for posts that were above "consensus" for a poster. Consensus is based on posters history rep score etc. all trailing info. Bots are not good at reason and curating hence Bo's don't vote for newbies.
Nailed it. Content is not worth much. You can always paste from another site you run. See all the crypto news sites. Honestly it should probably be 75-25 in favor of curation. Activity and dare I say attention is what makes this a valuable platform. Every move has so far reduced activity. Hopefully the next steps will increase activity and I include curation in the list of activity.
I would do 50percent curation 25percent comments and 25 percent orginal poster if you want activity.
Every improvement to site should explain how it increases activity (reading, voting, commenting and posting)
Agree with just about everything in your comment (though not sure about 75-25). I would add, though, that "posting", at least as it currently exists in this system, is without question the least important and widely practiced component of activity. Most people are not and never will be expert writers/bloggers, world travelers, etc. capable of creating amazing original content on a regular basis. We need to refocus on "activity" with a much wider base of participation.
Funny i almost left out posting but thought it wasn't fair to leave it out of activity. I agree it's least important.
Thank you @smooth! I joined this platform about 3 months ago and my activity here has been incredibly high, my work ethic is insane and I put much energy in something I feel promising. Not that anyone cares but if you or anyone noticed my recent productivity here it has dropped not due to the fact I don't enjoy this platform but energy giving out needs to have some type of energy coming in at some point. I have over 1500 post of course comments are included and all my comments are relative to the topic and has major value 90% of time if not all. If I had the funds to deposit massive steem I would be a human bot curator that bots would want to get rid of, I love reading and learning being on steemit is made for me. If activity dictated rewards I would be a "Whale"
Yeah giving more to the curators attracting more people into steemit may just be more beneficial for the content creators in the long run anyways. I think this change is needed, curation rewards definitely need to go up for minnows, I'm not complaining mine have been decent but that's because I have 14000SP. I can only imagine how discouraging it can be to vote day after day and make fuck all day after day.
CONTENT IS KING
I support this. I opposed the change from 50% to 25% for various reasons including simply rewarding voters more.
I stated at the time (and this can be found in the old #witness slack logs) that after switching from 50/50 to 75/25 (or even more so the 90/10 that was thrown out as a trial balloon at one point), the asymmetry creates a natural incentive to switch it back. That's because going from 25 to 50 doubles curation rewards (and earnings for all of those voting, large and small) while it reduces content rewards by only 33%. The farther you get from 50/50 the more leverage there is in the effectiveness of rewarding that segment of the user base by moving back toward 50/50.
There are other effects from shifting too much of rewards to content, basically none desirable, unless the objective is to attract extremely successful bloggers who need a large paycheck to be interested. For everyone else, extremely large content rewards are basically useless. (Even for successful bloggers, the 50% increase that comes from 50->75 is not a game changer.)
Good post and thank you for the original thought, since you were apparently unaware that the original design worked this way.
I think you have the wrong idea here. Steem going down isn't the problem, the problem is that we let it go up too quickly.
Here's what people need to understand: your blogs aren't worth what you're getting paid, and your work as a curator isn't worth what you're getting paid either.
The biggest issue with that is that people who thought these payouts could last are/will be disappointed when we return to an equilibrium.
Sure, your blog might get paid a bit more here per reader than on other platforms, since there's no company taking a cut of the revenue it creates, but when it reaches an equilibrium, it won't be anywhere close to what it is right now (at least with the current userbase). That equilibrium could be an order of magnitude lower.
Curation shouldn't be seen as a way to make money. It should be a small + to using the platform.
"You've curated content for a year? Here, have an extra $20 for your work on the platform."
Now that might be closer to what we should expect. If you're looking at it this way, no increase in % given to curation will make this appealing to investors. The reason for powering up should be influence, and let me tell you that influence on a platform with ~10k active users isn't worth all that much.
One more point, people will power down until their holdings match what they'd be willing to invest in the platform (say if they'd just heard about it). A lot of "Steem millionnaires" will want to drop their stake down to a tiny fraction of what it is right now.
Agree with most everything you said, but I still believe curation rewards should be 50%. Even if that only makes the difference between $10 for the year or $20, that difference still matters.
It also does make an important difference to the value of STEEM because it determines the rate of dilution. Content rewards go to authors (successful bloggers for the most part) and dilute SP holders as a class. Curation rewards come back to SP holders as a class. The change that cut curation rewards in half (actually more) had a significant impact on the value of STEEM, even if not specifically cutting the value in half (because of the remaining value from influence; also long term potentially network access)
Alright I see your point. Might not make a huge difference per investor, but as a whole it does.
IMO curators are also much more likely to keep their Steem powered up than authors, so it would make sense to have a larger part of that pie go to them.
Makes sense, yes. Because it affects their earnings. For authors it mostly doesn't (it does buy influence so authors can promote their own posts, but established authors don't really need this).
Hello @calaber24p, I just stopped by to let you know that I included this post in my favourite reads on my Steemit Ramble today. Seems you've hit a nerve with this post, I read it just after you posted and an hour later it is going crazy. I'll be back to read the comments more thoroughly. Nice work.
The post can be found here
Interesting that you suggest this as it was the original design.
I actually didnt even know this Dan. But I think it makes much more sense to have the split 50/50. If we dont value the lurkers and readers then there will be nobody left to stay around to actually read the content the authors are putting out. Like I said I have made a nice amount of money from being an author but im willing to give up that extra 25% cut to add more inclusion into the system. I dont want steemit to fail because it fails to retain users. I think you guys have a fantastic working system and that we are just a few tweaks and changes from making it more impacting.
What about dynamic reward percentages?
The reputation of the author?
For example
If someone with a reputation of 70 submits a post, the author:curation would be 50:50
If someone with a reputation of 50 submits a post, the author:curation would be 75:25
The potential Payout of the post
For example
If the potential payout of the post is > $1000, the author:curation would be 50:50
If the potential payout of the post is <= $1000, the author:curation would be 75:25
Sounds good in theory old bean (there is no English dandy monocle emoticon at this time, somebody should be working on that and a Oni).
I think that the proposal has the right idea (making SP seem more appealing by adding more value to having it) but it is going after the wrong part of the problem. I think the main thing preventing a lot of investment is that there is not much value to have a medium sized amount of SP. If a user buys 5k worth of SP, they can only earn a few cents per day through curation, and their votes only give authors a small amount too. The solution being proposed to change curation from 25/75 to 50/50 would really only benefit the very large SP holders, who get most of the curation rewards from the posts. For a small sized user, I think a lot of people think "what is the point of investing 1k". If we could figure out a way to make that more attractive, I think there would be a lot more small investors ready to buy in.
really well i have just powered up at this unbeatable price of steem right now by 1300 to my steem power to help improve on my return !! I am not a writer it would seem but i love the site and believe in what steemit will do once it gets really off the ground !! This idea would be a great help for people like me who are here for the long run and who have invested money but get little back through the post rewards !! Please Dan consider this valid idea !! Would certainly be a great incentive to bring in a new breed of curators for the multitude of new posters which will i hope soon be arriving !! regards to you and your incredible team .
If you are open to suggestions. I ask you please read my post. @caleber24p I am sorry if I am spamming your post and will remove if requested, this is just a direction I very much want to start to see. I am not asking for your vote, but to read the idea and the reasons behind them. Thanks
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/if-it-were-mine-to-change-my-answer-to-stellabella-and-why
Has the change worked out? Should we not go back to the old way??
It was 50/50 and then they changed it to 75/25, partly because they felt whale curators were earning the lions share of the pot. Here is the article explaining why they were changing things:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/overhaul-of-curation-rewards
It is possible that there is a sweet spot between 50/50 and 75/25 - but it would take a lot of iterations to find it.
Great point and thank you for the link.
I think whales making lots of money is not a problem. The issue is that the curation system does not do what it's supposed to do.
So looking at who gets how much is asking the wrong question.
Part of the reason it probably doesn't do what it is supposed to do is low participation on the lower end of the SP wealth spectrum. By cutting the pool in half it doubled the amount of SP someone has to have to earn any curation rewards at all. This excludes many people on the lower end from participating and for those that barely do make the cut, the rewards are still very small (specifically half of what they would be otherwise).
It is true that people with low SP don't vote as much.
However the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main reason why curation does not work is because it is not profitable to vote for what you like, but what others vote for exactly 30 minutes after a post was created.
This is best done by a bot. But we want people to vote for what they like and people get rewarded if they create content others love.
So the overall algo needs to be reviewed with this goal and the data from past experience in mind.
My feeling from what I read is that we are a little bit not accepting reality here and trying to come up with excuses.
It does not matter if fewer people vote if they still vote according to the right objective.
@smooth Thank you for the dialog and thank you for your work and input. Have you read my proposal to make steem better via bounties?
@knircky I do not believe I read your post about bounties. I mean no disrespect by not reading a post but frankly my time is limited and I can't read every post, explore every idea, etc. I wish I could.
@smooth I understand. Please do. I really think it is worth your time. it as a short summary, maybe u can check that out. I wrote the summary exactly for people like you who don't have time reading the whole thing.
Some points from my post:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-potential-of-bounties-an-improvement-proposal-for-steem-to-double-its-value
I would really like to hear what you think.
What about 40 % to author, 40 % to curators and 20% to the top 10 comments (based on votes, of course) ?
In this way commenting will be the next game, not posting.
And, IMHO, commenting =activity.
Activity=steemit will thrive.
Commenting seems to be lumped in with author/content creation right now.
I think this is a good idea. Although I post here now and then and they do good, I still think curators are rewarded too little. It has totally taken away the incentive for me to want to curate properly noticing a small reward in return for my efforts compared to my SP level.
I am glad the community are taking the steps and asking or suggesting changes, shows that its headed in the right direction over time, considering Steemit listens to its users!
I agree that some curators should receive more for their efforts. I said some because not all curation is good. Automatically distinguishing between the good and bad and paying out proportionally would be a difficult task to solve.
Very interesting. For those of us who haven't been here long, we're ignorant of the fact that this was the way it used to be. I wasn't convinced from the article, maybe because I'm used to the way it is. But after reading through the comments, I can see the value in a 50/50 split. And the reduced payout for authors might be offset, at least to a degree, by more curator participation.
The min needed is 80:20 split- curation/author rewards... otherwise the system will fail fast due to no demand to buy Steem (and power up).
More Here
Who is going to continue writing and creating the content at that rate?
Here is a general guideline of what freelance writers online can earn:
I know from experience from years of writing online now, that the starting point for a new writer is right around .03-.05 cents per word. Which would put a payout of around 50 bucks or so for a 1k word post.
What I'm failing to understand about Steemit right now is do they want this to be just a mass social media website? Do they want it to be a website as a "to go" to website for quality content?
Changes reducing author rewards hurts the majority of the writers, the handful who are always getting upvotes regardless of their post will still go on, just making less. But the majority of writers are not even getting noticed or getting rewarded even close to the rates above.
What incentive does a writer have to power up a measly .56 they just made from a post they spent a full day writing and creating? Or where is the incentive to keep writing with payouts that low?
There are probably writers here that do not write to earn, but I would suggest the majority do.
We agree on the end results, not on how we get there. And I am 100% positive that you get this one wrong. The problem is the money in the Steem system do not grow on trees. For the money to come there should be solid logical financial reason to purchase steem (and power up). There is zero reason to do this right now. more detailed explanation here. Demand for steem from curators will do 2 things - increase the price of Steem (and so the author rewards) and diversify the curation in the hands of thousands of people (as oppose to the current 100 or so whales. Whales qualified to do curation mainly by being at the right time at the write place and or being software developers ...)
And no there is no need for the writers buy steem and power up. Their are what you yourself described them - hired help wanting their $X per word/article for their talent and effort. Actually the current system trying to make them long term 'investors' in the system by paying them half of their pay in steem power is quite ridiculous in itself. (paying them all they earn in SD is a way to effectively double their pay).
So to sum it up - writers will get as much as possible, but that depends on the money coming in the system. The pure desire "They should be paid more" is not gonna increase their pay.
Your comment about paying authors in SBD (or at least liquid STEEM given the new limits being added for SBD stability) and not trying to force them to be investors makes a lot of sense to me. Is there any reason to think, in general, that a writer wants to be an investor? That a writer makes a good curator? I think the answer to both is no. There is probably not a good justification.
If they want to invest - in order to curate or otherwise, this should be their voluntary choice. As it is now, they are forced to become "invested"/investors for 2 years with 50% of their pay/author reward earned in the Steem system.
I would be completely onboard with an author cut down if that change would happen for sure. You both have pretty much said what I personally as a writer am thinking. I don't really want to invest or curate, I enjoy the writing process, but I won't lie and say I do it for pure fun with no profit in mind.
I would be interested in what @dan and @ned would think of giving the authors pure SBD instead of the split. I imagine they want the split for steem stability and longevity forcibly though.
Exactly right. The problem isn't the percentage of rewards going to the author. The problem is terrible curating results largely due to bots and trying to pile on whale trends. Actual writers pretty much avoid this place. We see the mediocre and relatively awful content atop the trending page on a daily basis, but those who keep putting it there don't care...because it's not about quality. For most of the voters, it's only about gaming and getting paid.
Changing the rewards to give more money to bots and gamers won't resolve any issues related to bringing in quality creators and bringing up the value of the site based on the content.
There doesn't seem to be much incentive for good writers to be here and lowering payouts to writers won't improve that. It seems to me that we can have either really good content or really good curation gaming, but not both.
I have had thoughts on this also. I was a bit more extreme than you lol. My thought was to have 25% of a post total by default go to author. The rest is divided up and focused amongst the comments.
I was trying to think along the lines of "What can a human do that a bot can't?". I would say provide meaningful relevant comments to a post. I would not at all want to remove the author from the reward pool of curation though.
If the rest was thrown into comments and votes/responses for the post wether it is supportive, a counter argument etc by post readers and/or authors defending their post. Just makes an interesting way to divide the rewards from a post.
New users are encouraged to read and make statements relative to the post and if theirs is chosen they get to earn beyond what the curation rewards currently would allot them.
Bots, well they could take a stab at the correct answers, but I would think this seriously limits their use to game the system.
Great idea, I posted something similar below 25 author 25 comment 50 curate but we could flip the last two.
I don't think more "good post!" spam comments is what we need.
Comments rewards are already pretty good, the incentive is already there. It also doesn't help with the SP valuation problem.
It wouldn't be the comments themselves that get the reward, but the upvoted comments. Why I had specified the "what can humans do easily that bots cannot" line.
good post..... would go just as unnoticed as it does today. However a well thought out counter-argument to points in the post, that has the support of votes, and maybe the authors counter post to that.... it removes the bots from the equation a bit more and still allows the author to compete for more than the 25% they get by default.
"We should not focus on slowing down the supply that enters the market,"
Indeed you didn't lol
ok by watching your wallet, I see that you are powering down, and have 0 steem on your account.
This means you are dumping everything you can on exchange (fair enough, I'd do the same), and yet you are complaining that the interest you are getting doesn't cover the lost of value of steem.
May-be if you were stopping to dump (both SBD and Steem actually since you makes lots of post), this one would hold some more values... you can't have both, changing the curation system or not won't change anything.
The whole curation reward, should just be removed, it is a non sense, why anyone should get a reward for liking a post he just read ? (liking the post isn't enough ? lol)
ps: you are very appreciated by the badgers (partial voting list), hope you'll get as much success with the rabbits ;)
badger3106, badger3146, badger3134, deanliu, badger3164, rimantas, badger3172, badger3145, bue-witness, badger311, bue, badger315, mini, badger3195, healthcare, badger3111, jl777, boy, badger3156, ballinconscious, daniel.pan, badger3154, proto, bunny, yefet, badger3112, moon, badger3181, helen.tan, badger3104, cybergirl, badger3144, badger3143, badger3183, badger3136, badger3115, badger3176, badger3123, badger3125, badger3131, badger3192, badger3184, badger3124, badger3161, badger3175, badger312, badger3166, badger3174, badger3103, badger3107, badger3185, badger3171, badger313, jesta, allianz, badger3102, badger3186, badger3162, badger3141, badger3133, badger3114, badger314, badger3196, badger3163, badger3193, badger3135, badger3173, badger3142, badger3105, badger3132, badger3182, ruscion, badger3116, badger3122, richardcrill, electronicarts, badger318, badger3126, superfreek, roland.haynes, badger3194, penthouse, badger3113, badger316, badger3155, badger317, badger3151, badger3101, badger3121, badger3165, badger3152, badger3153, blender, badger319, badger3191,
Hmm seems kind of a catch 22 give more to the curator who goes and reads content, compared to the actual author who spends time writing it.
But also with out powering up no one would get any rewards, the main issue is a cap on how much a post can earn- Err nvm that is centralized and censorship why not having any post that earns more than $1000 should have that split in favor of the curator.
It is not "the curator" it is split among dozens, hundreds, or even potentially thousands of curators.
forget! perhaps the dev does not recognize the value of the curator . for this reason it is that only has post trash.
Editado: . for this reason it is that only have boring post more . stemit needs simple and popular post.
This is another suggestion I thought of, but then you would get nobody upvoting posts that have no chance of making it to the cut off. Then again, we havent been seeing much of them anyway.
It seems curation may soon improve. Also, the reputation system may improve. Despite all this, the total value depends on accomplishing a purpose or many useful purposes.
My purpose is to promote a better worldwide koin. If I had more money I would maybe put $20,000 into steem to get influence and coordinate with like-minded individuals. This desire to participate in meaningful discussion and action is where the money comes from.
What's your purpose?
But by actively contributing and adding unique solutions to difficult problems, I hope to find friends and earn influence. Right now many good posts are not being noticed, but maybe an improvement in wealth-distribution would help this.
I'm sorry, but I foresee that Steem will get down to at least 20,000,000 before rising to take its rightful place. But who cares, it's still a great place to study, innovate and improve blockchain.
Is this a Potemkin village? Perhaps yes, maybe all of cryptocurrency is. See my link above for making blockchain what it can be.
...and then you have people who just want to post and not have to figure out how to operate any kind of complicated contraption. That's where the strengths of 'social' sites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram lie. If Steemit is going to be exclusive to Pulitzer prize winning authors, stoic curators, super intellectuals, genius mathematicians, or brilliant banker types, I think I, and some others I've noticed on here have stumbled into the wrong web.
Says who? I am still waiting for a answer on what the founders want here. Right now we just have everyone elses perspective of what "they" think Steemit is.
Have you noticed the trending page? That's clearly not the case. I suppose it could happen in the future, but not with the current system in place. None of those types of writers/investors have a need to come to Steemit. They can do what they do on other platforms and make more money, reach a larger audience, and/or still find good talent to support.
And keep in mind that - if the user base grows as initially anticipated - payouts across the board will be lower. So, in the long-run, this site will need to cater to people who just want an alternative social media outlet. It needs to be attractive for many of the same reasons as the other platforms are. "Making money" isn't going to be the main draw for the average person. And the more complicated the system is, the less likely they'll be to invest their time to figure it out. The functions here need to be intuitive.
You make some great points here and I agree! Will that be enough of an incentive though to get people to power up? What if we do both? Slow down the supply and up the curation rewards?
Hi Calaber24p - I looked over your post history and noticed that you made next to nothing for most of your posts and then one day everything changed. Did you buy steem or something? Or did you just get upvoted on a post by a whale and that started it all off? I'm still a newbie, trying to learn this thing. Thanks!
Questions:
-Do you think big investors who want to buy in want to curate? If so what %?
-Do you think existing stakeholders who are selling do so because of a lack of curation rewards? If so what %?
Very good questions!!!
I'd say close to 0% in both categories.
Good question. I can't give you %s. But steemit and steem need more positive news to attract big investors and move the price back up. Right now a big investor might recoup a part of their investment by curation and writing. A post by someone well-known attracts whales and generates big payouts. It's a way to get repaid and keep the original investment.
I'm not sure that changing the percentages really does enough to address the underlying problem. I spend hours writing and formatting my weekly posts, but on average make more from curating than from my writing (which in itself is a problem but that's another topic of discussion altogether).
I feel like my close to 800 SP is a decent sized investment relative to my crypto portfolio's net worth, yet I'm still a minnow and 800 SP is a drop in the bucket compared to what I would need just for my vote to be worth a dollar. Only a handful of people can afford to invest enough to make a decent amount from curating, and it shouldn't be that way. You shouldn't need to invest thousands and thousands of dollars for your vote to become meaningful.
I say rather than fiddle with percentages, more needs to be done to redistribute SP away from the whales and even out the distribution, so that regular people can participate and feel they are having a meaningful impact on the community. I know this process is ongoing to a degree with power downs, but it's a slow process and I wish something could be done to accelerate it.
Are the rewards for voting being too little really the problem? You don't earn money from upvoting on reddit, facebook, youtube, etc. and yet those sites are incredibly valuable. I'm not sure curation rewards are necessary at all.
If people are only joining steem to earn money, then it'll only be a game for investors which will lead downhill.
Money is the initial incentive. People will stay for the community and the fact that there earning money will make this whole endeavor not seem like a total waste of time like all those other site's you just named plus people right better stuff when there being paid and of course less trolls under the bridge because the majority hates trolls.
Copying the model of those sites means virtually guaranteed failure. They are already established and it would be an incredibly hard uphill battle to build a user base comparable to reddit doing the same thing when reddit already exists. The unique selling proposition of Steem is its ability to reward users.
Agree. This is key! I it's about rewarding users, and rewarding them for things that make steem valuable.
My issue with the curation is that I think it does not accomplish this well.
Who gets how much is relevant but not as important as making sure everyone, curators and posters get rewarded for creating value. The current curation rewards bad behavior and as such reduces value. We need to make sure the rules are changed so good behavior is rewarded first before worrying about who gets how much.
How would you change the rules?
I highly disagre with 50/50.
I create content, og high quality. Sometimes it get a whale, sometimes it doesn't . It hard work, and I create the content. It would not be worth anything without voters true. But that's not the case for curation, to "make money".
I also go through all the "new" posts each day pretty much, and I curate. Why? Because I want Steemit to succeed. Not for the payouts from curation, because that is essentially 0 from my SP position.
If people want Steemit to succeed, they need to devote themselves more to help it succeed. People who create the content create the quality or lack of quality on the platform. 50/50 is not good.
Take care. Peace.
I think there's a line somewhere. Top posts are overpaid (public opinion) and curation, as it exists today, offers nothing for new users. The author may take a dip in the amount they receive, but if it is balanced by more eyeballs, more votes as well as more users it will find a balance I would think.
Where else can you write $1000 article without giving up copyright? Way overpaid.
Upvoted because I agree in a sense. Disagree because there are no guarantees here. Maybe you make $1000 one day and then the next day you put in just as much effort but don't get the votes. Risk carries added reward.
Still rewards seem sufficient and reducing them by 1/3 to double curation rewards is a good tradeoff.
way late response, but I agree. It makes more sense to look into having authors be the one wanting to invest and new users playing a freemium version.
Where else can you upvote something and make $10?
Do you understand that you are just getting back a portion of the dilution you are paying for with your own investment? That's where 100% of the rewards come from. Someone who has enough SP to earn $10 from a vote is paying for a very, very significant amount of the rewards going out.
I don't think I've ever thought of it that way, but I do understand that's how it's intended to work.
So basically by wanting to change the split to 50/50, the goal behind it is to make investors experience even less dilution?
[replying from below]
My primary goal (and I have stated this all along) would be to significantly increase (by 2x) rewards for the type of activity and engagement that is most relevant to the largest share of the user base. That is voting. A smaller number comment and far, far smaller number create highly-valued long-form blog posts. By giving far more people a path to earn, even if it is only token amounts (though doubling it is certainly nice), it increases the competitive gameplay element and gets more people engaged. No one realistically expects the bulk of the userbase, with modest SP, to ever make a living from curation, but the rewards still matter.
Already we see, in this thread for example, people discussing voting strategies as gameplay, including the idea of "covering the board" as one might do in roulette. The people discussing this are not professionals making a living from curation; they are being competitive and having fun. They report earnings of 1-5 SP/day. That is engagement. Other users of course, will never be that competitive or strategic but will still like to see rewards trickling into their wallet the same way one might collect diamonds or gems or some other in-game reward (except in this case it can be turned into actual money!)
The cost of this 2x increase is a 1/3 decrease in content rewards. I see that as a modest reduction that is better spent sprinkling rewards on a much larger number of active voters than a relatively small number of posters.
Increasing curation rewards does effectively reduce dilution and thereby increase the fundamental value of SP, but that is not my primary goal in supporting it. The goal of reducing dilution could also be achieved by simply eliminating curation rewards altogether, something that has been proposed multiple times and which I have always strongly opposed for the above stated reasons.
The reason I brought up the question of dilution, is to illustrate that "upvote and earn $10" is flawed logic. The correct logic is "invest $100000 into a system that will rapidly dilute your investment (in fact by paying a huge chunk of it to a small number of very successful bloggers), upvote, and earn $10". Do you see the difference?
(I don't know if $100000 is the number that produces a $10 curation reward for an upvote, that was a made up number, in fact my guess is it may be higher.)
@smooth
Just had a question about this. If long-form blog posts are in fact highly-valued (and you're not the only whale who has mentioned this), why are so many of the trending posts not those types of posts? And the ones that are - why are they such a relatively poor quality?
Is the gamification of the system just not adequate to actually reward quality content in that regard? It appears to me that curating is almost purely driven by potential earnings based on nothing more than guessing the next trend and following whale votes for certain users. Should writers like myself just expect that this is in fact how it will always be? Because there really doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to my post rewards, no matter the form, tag, or writing style.
@smooth Totally understood, and I can get behind that being the rationale of wanting curation to "earn" more per post. It undoubtably makes powering up SP more appealing to those entering the system, regardless of their method of curation (which I think is where I focused too hard in our conversations).
I could be on board with trying 50/50, just like I'm on board for trying the 5 votes/day system. I still have some reservations in how it would be perceived by the community, as it's initial appearance is seemingly in favor of investors more than content creators, but in the end it might actually benefit content creators to have more investors actively curating.
@ats-david
I guess quality is the in the eye of the beholder and I'm not sure what posts you are talking about. There are always exceptions (makeup lesson -- which happened exactly once), but mostly what I see recurring there are @dollarvigilante, @charlieshrem, @heiditravels, @dantheman, @sterlinluxan, @barrycooper, etc. I consider their quality all fine (maybe you disagree?), but most people are never going to be them, write like them, or have their following
Meh Curation doesn't pay for me I get more followers by commenting and up voting but all in all nothing in the form of Steem. writing post gets me very little more because I am quite horrible at the word game. 50/50, maybe more like 60/40. Maybe add a penalty for idle votes not cast above a certain percentage. maybe other actions offset it in case you just don't think any article deserves a vote from you at the moment. I didn't read the white paper which I should and will but does the Steem power you hold give your articles more buoyancy?
I see it a little differently... I don't think the split needs to be changed, I think something needs to be done about the bots. I've been meaning to do the math and write up a post about it, but my observation is that bots vote very early. That is, within a couple minutes, a popular author will have dozens of votes already... and sure, those bots are getting smaller rewards because they vote early, but they don't care. More importantly, what also happens is that each one of those bots lowers the rewards for anyone else who follows because the first votes get a higher percentage of the reward.
So if 10 bots have voted at 2 minutes, and you vote at 30 minutes you'll still get a small reward because the 10 people ahead of you got the majority.
I haven't been able to think of a good solution yet really, but I think the key is limiting the bots' influence more than anything.
I'm glad You Posted this
Thx So Much!
Interesting that you post :)
@calaber24p Finally, someone with a solution to offer.
Thank you for writing this, not everybody is aware of what's going on
and you've just enlightened me how things really work here percentage wise.
Kudos for being one concern soul to the investment we are actually in ;)
I think other solutions must be found.
I have 2900 SP and my stats are:
Daily average curation rewards:
2.374 STEEM POWER
Estimated curation rewards last week
16.618 STEEM POWER:
So it goes like .08% and 30% over a year.
Note that I also spend upvotes in comments as "likes" - so it's not maximized.
The reward pool is a fixed amount and competition will likely drive those rates down. There are only two possibilities here. One is that your voting skill is not exceptional, meaning that others will successfully compete with you and drive your returns down. The second is that your voting skill is exceptional (even if by accident) then you are being rewarded for your exceptional skill, but your experience is not typical. Even then people will still probably study what you do and eventually learn to compete successfully with you, driving your returns down.
To the extent that talent to compete with you does not exist within the system, it means increased demand to buy in and compete with you.
I think no particular talent is needed for "covering the board" (taken from the roulette idea of filling the table with chips - but the rewarding structure here is different so my 80 cents of daily upvote value end up getting far more): https://steemit.com/curation/@alexgr/curation-strategy-covering-the-board
Try it for a day or something... use one of your regular votes, split it in 100 parts of 1%, and just upvote anything that seems upvote worthy with anything <1$ worth of upvotes before you click it (preferably <0.1$). This should work better for whales than me, because they are followed by bots.
Now, by the very fact that other whales have to vote something, you'll end up front-running them. This 1 vote split by 100 might actually give you more in curation rewards than several of your full votes. You can try variations as well, like 2-3 regular votes instead of 1 - for 200-300 votes. Or more % per vote... You can be creative if you want to try this out.
Sure but if it works, it is easily copied. If only the first to do it makes money then competition will drive these votes to 1 second (really 3 seconds) where they make nothing.
You perhaps found a profitable strategy which is great. That doesn't make it sustainable or scaleable to more participants.
Also, there is supposed to be a natural rate of return for even stupid voting (so not voting at all is slightly punished as non-participation). That is somewhat inflated now due to early-adopter distribution dynamics (that is, the reward pool is a fixed amount of STEEM per day but STEEM/SP inflation makes that worth less each day). Thus the rate of return on any fixed strategy will drop (I'm told by currently about 300% per year but I haven't checked that myself) until the floor on rewards is reached (year 2? again not sure on the numbers)
In theory yes. But some people think they know best (pride) or are bored to check what others are doing. I mean we should already be seeing analyses of users who get top curation returns (in something like a % relative to their SP) but we don't.
Indeed. The major issue of such a strategy would be vote overlaps due to too few decent + undervalued posts. But there is also the possibility of a posting boom, where we have a sharp increase in userbase and posts - and this coupled with a 5 vote limit (even as 500x 1%) would be unable to cover the board. Even multiples whales would be unable to cover it.
As for the SP rate, I've seen similar numbers with what you mention. We need some kind of visualization tool so that we can simply check past, running and future inflation rates, make calculations on SP inflation or Steem dilution from date A to date B, etc.
Perhaps a few small bounties would go a long way for getting tools like these...
But the goal is not to create a skill voting game. The goal is to have users tell us what content they like.
The goal of curation is to identify the most valued needles hidden in the haystacks in the most timely manner. At that level, users can't yet tell us what they like, because most users haven't even seen the content yet.
It has to be a skill game otherwise you are asserting that curation has no value added. (If there is value, then people will differ in their ability to deliver that value and the only way to assess those differences and maximize the value delivered in exchange for the rewards paid is via competition.)
I don't believe that there is no value, and neither does the system design (nor does the obvious observation of the amount of money spent by various companies on people and algorithms to perform curation). So lets dismiss that possibility.
People or bots (which are always controlled by people, for the time being at least) that are able to identify the most valued content the earliest are the most rewarded. That is inherently competitive and must be a skill game to function. It is also very, very close to how the current system is designed.
Not everyone will decide to compete in that game (just as not everyone will post, or comment, or mine or be a witness or develop software), some will just vote for what they like, which is perfectly fine. Others will be gamers or algorithm designers or talent scouts or promoters. There is room for all these roles and more within the broad scope of "curation".
And on top of all that, I don't see anything wrong with there being a skill game component simply for the purpose of playing the game, if that attracts interest from people who want to play (as seems to be happening to some extent already). Why not?
First, thanks for your post and unselfish attitude. That is priceless and is one of the qualities of great contributors to the platform.
However, without a very innovative technical initiative to deal with bots, you still would not arrive at the proper balance required to propel the platform into the mainstream of the social space.
Producing consistently high quality content that would be of interest to a broad audience of non-crypto enthusiasts is very hard work but is needed to in order for Steemit to draw users into its space.
Without sufficient rewards for good authors the platform will not be sustainable.
The definition of what is a good author requires a clear vision of who the current target audience is for Steemit and an understanding of what is mandatory for them to join and engage with the community.
In my opinion, the curation author split is not the critical factor for immediate growth of Steemit. I have seen numerous posts suggesting pieces of the puzzle. Now, we need to quickly assemble a combination of the bests small bits and execute them as quickly as possible taking into consideration the issues of testing, etc.
Better communication regarding what is coming and why would also go a long way towards building a perception that Steemit is the best social media platform today.
Steemit has to make sense to new users, existing users, past present and future investors.
That my friends, is a very tall order which I am hoping the community can achieve. It needs everyone involved and committed to a clearly defined set of objectives.
This is not a job for a few at the top. It is, in my opinion, a task that can only be done with a concerted and enthusiastially engaged community.
I think this is a bad idea.
Curating is already skewed to a strategy. I.e. The best curators are bots. If we rewards curation more it now makes sense for people to invest steem and then curate with bots. This will lead to the site being run by bots.
The problem with this is that fewer people will vote for things they like and more for what is profitable.
Steem is going to be successful if good content, that is content that people like will be attracted and visible to people. This is what will attract more people to the site. Which will in turn increase the price of steem.
We need to give people a reason to write great content on the site not make it possible to make money with bots.
I used to make 1-2 SP a day curating. Now I make 4-6. I vote without reading any content and don't care about the content. Every few hours when I have a free minute I look what has the most potential that has been created about 30 min ago. That's what I vote for.
I'm sure I have no idea what I am doing, but I was able to vote with a strategy vs for what I like and increase my reward tremendously.
That is horrible. It accomplishes the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.
You have 11000 SP. So yes you can make a little bit, say 4-6 per day via bad curation. You are apparently doing quite a bit worse than @alexgr who commented elsewhere on this thread about making about 5/day, except that he only has 3000 SP. So your strategy is actually not very good. I don't know how you assess the posts with the "most potential" without reading any of them. Apparently you can't, which is not surprising.
Curation is competitive. If you continue to curate poorly, you will make a little, sure, but you will fall behind other curators who do a better job, and over time their earnings and accumulated SP will greatly exceed yours. That is exactly how it should be.
I understand your argument. Most of this world has been forged via competition and survival of the fittest. Sometimes strategies that seem not intuitive actually work. I.e. a male lion killing all other male lions that are not his kids. It seems it destroys part of its own species, but what it actually does improve the quality of DNA pool overall.
If we wanted to create the best curators than this skill game strategy is the perfect way to do it and it would also not matter if it were human or a bot.
However is our goal not to build something that many people like. So including many people is important and then making them pick winners vs picking the best people pick the winner.
Is the goal to pick the best content or is the goal to have many people decide what good content is?
Maybe I mis-understand the objective.
Thank you for the dialog and sharing your thoughts. I am certainly learning from it.
It is both. You have SP. SP has the ability to vote. You can decide how you want to use your SP: Do you you want to play the competitive curation-for-rewards game, or just be a late voter and vote for what you like? Voting for what you like is exactly how you express your preferences to the earlier voters (i.e. professional, competitive curators, human and/or bot). The earlier voters are rewarded when later voters (who are basically unrewarded) support their picks. But how are the later voters rewarded?
In return for rewarding the earlier voters, the later voters get this: Those earlier voters will in the future to the maximum extent possible, deliver to you exactly what you want, curated from as many sources as possible, as quickly as possible in much the same was as Google tries to deliver to you the search results you want or Facebook delivers to you the feed contents you want, except of course in those two cases or others like them, there is no transparency nor are they necessarily choosing based on your preferences (as opposed to theirs). They will do this because whichever early curator gets the most later votes will get the biggest rewards.
Right now, competition is low, so it makes some sense for you to compete even if not doing a very good job. In the future, competition will be much tougher. By not reading the posts and voting on any somewhat-viable-looking crap anyway, you might earn 0.001 or not even that (in fact smart competitive curators might even try to actively sabotage you with decoy posts). It won't be worth it and you will decide you might as well just vote what you like and be rewarded with the services of the really good curators.
I don't think it is necessarily quite this simple because portions of the market may mature (become highly competitive) at different rates and to different degrees. People will also have different competitive advantages. If there are Urdu posts, I'll probably not do a very good job of curating them, but native Urdo speakers might be good at it. That market might be too small for high powered bots (and bot-human collaborations) to make sense for a longer period of time, and thus remain more open to casual curators-for-reward much longer than the larger English market. Likewise for various other niches.
Does this make sense?
Sure. But the point of my argument is that I used to just vote for things I liked. Making no curation reward. Now that I vote a little more tactical I've tripled my reward.
That is bad I think.
I don't think competition is good here. I think we should make people pick what they want? Maybe I am wrong though.
I understand the original idea behind creating the competitive game: we want people to pick good content.
However I don't think the objective is being met. Instead people who have superior voting strategy get most of the rewards driving normal people away.
This way, @smooth will game the system.
I very much so believe in steemit far beyond any other crypto and due to the falling price of steemit, I have not transfered other coins into this platform yet.. Now seeing that the price is at a low, and honestley don't think it will go any lower.. Therefore does anybody agree that this is the time to move the majority of assets into steem?
Thanks for the share :D
I agree.
Also selling advertising space (banner & text)
and add discussion service ( reddit style) so we can have more participation.
You make a very interesting point but with all the supply being eaten up demand is sure to rise, imo this situation is actually a good thing.
Tuning the curation set screws alone will not suffice to achieve what is most important now: significant growth of the platform!
What I firmly believe is that it is not enough to focus on how to curate good content within Steemit. We need to think about how to use Steemit to curate the Internet!
I therefore propose to establish at least a channel in which link posting is encouraged. If Steemit proves to be a place that rewards the surfacing of great content in the Internet this would have the potential to attract a lot people beyond the blogosphere. And we need to have a lot more people here! No way to even maintain a three figure million market cap without millions of users.
Content is what drives Steemit and authors should be better rewarded. A sharing of 75%/25% in favor of authors should be considered.
Even a doubling of curation rewards only makes SP marginally more attractive for smaller buyers. Doubling a trivial curation reward still leaves you with trivial curation. Doubling a whale's curation reward has a huge impact in absolute terms. This would make SP more valuable for whales, sucking even more money away from the rewards intended to bring in new people contributing value.
Curious your thoughts on this idea:
Human vs. Bot Curators - Introducing Human Competition into the Equation - Allow Whales to Delegate Curation Power to Dolphins and Minnows
lol so whales who are already doing 400 steem power a day in curation will be doing 800 and will be able to cashout even harder? The biggest problem of steemit is that curation reward is heavily influenced by your steem power, so the riches gets richer. Unless that change, do not expect people to jump in and start buying steem power. Right now its whales cashing out on people believing in their future. Ill wait for steem to fall near .1$ a coin
I don't believe a 50/50 split is the right way to go to increase incentives for long term investment in SP. I agree with others who have said more effort is required to create posts than to comment / curate them, thus the 75/25 is reasonable.
Although I curate far more than I author currently, and I would like my curation rewards to increase, I do not agree with the 50/50 proposal presented here. There are other options within my control I can pursue to increase my curation rewards besides lowering author rewards.
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i find it all still kinda confusing.
The incentives have been a trainwreck so I agree, lets try to reward all the participants that add value. I often see as much value in a brilliant reply as the OP's blog post itself. It should get a hefty reward too because it obviously takes time and thought, and itself is a reward to a blog.
Merely upvoting shouldn't get much reward if other than repulation because of bots. But upvoted replies? Hell yes!