We, who have been here a while in Steemit are witnesses on how unbalanced the rewarding system is at the moment.
I am calling the attention of our steemed developers: @dan, @ned, and the other Steem/Steemit devs like Valentine Zavgorodnev, Benjamin Johnson, JamesCalfee and Michael Vandeberg
Please, closely consider what I am about to say.
A post can gain thousands of dollars in a short while, if and when it caught the eyes and fancy of the Steem/Power rich. No matter the content. No matter the topic, no matter the time. Once a post gets more dollar score, more and more upvoters are attracted to it with the hope of getting a share of the growing bonanza. The attention, the time and the dollars funnel to those kinds of posts. Leaving little, to no space for other posts to be even noticed.
Its okay, we know how the system works and its working the way it is designed. We are all a part of it these days.
But what would happen, if this current system is not reformed or adjusted?
As the membership sign-ups grow, posts and other Steemit activities grow concurrently exponentially. While in comparison, the Steempower rich number is growing in a much slower pace. Their attentions and interests to reward handsomely the new posts diminishes, for whatever reasons, among them being humanly tired, to check time and again if there be someone who posted a reward deserving article. So they become more choosy, it is their time, effort and money at stake anyway. This situation is magnified a little everyday.
Unless the new good-content contributor is relatively famous, or popular, he or she will run into the danger that his piece won't even be noticed nor get a dollar. They will inevitably open the trending category and find people getting so much, for something so simple as a self introduction. Maybe he will try again, but although he may get some votes, if those votes were from accounts of new signee, it will not really make a dent. Some may succeed, that's true, but we should be concerned about those WHO DON'T. They are potential Steemit builders too. Losing them disheartened, means losing all other people that they may influence to join the platform in one way or another.
We are happy that some of us are getting rich overnight thru Steemit. Yet, if we expect the platform and its goals to really flourish, another algorithm to reward posters and good content is in ORDER.
What can we suggest?
We can elaborate the voting process a bit. Instead of just simply upvoting a post and let it receive the total Steem rewards with that one click, we can segregate the PARAMETERS which will identify a post, if it is really a good content or it just caught the fancy of some whales.
For example we can have radio buttons instead, denoting a post parameter. Something like the following:
Originality (Checking this by a voter will mean it is not a mere quotation of posts from somewhere else which can be given a certain percentage rate of the over all steem reward, which our good devs can decide upon)
Creativity (How was the presentation? Was it well thought out? Was it attractive to read? same reason, different percentage)
Usefulness (Is the content have any practical application? Will we benefit if we read it? another percentage from the Steem reward)
Correctness (Are the data and info presented precise? Or will it only lead to misinformed decision to the readers?)
Formatting (Is the post properly formatted to help the readers read it and understand it easier? For example the last percentage goes to the poster when this fifth category is checked.
AND OTHER PARAMETERS THAT I MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF.
Now, at this point, this voting process, only made curation harder, and there's no net difference on the reward that the a posts will receive as before, posts voted by the Steempoor will still receive little to no reward, while those posts which are voted upon by the Steempower rich will still get much.
How can we resolve that?
There should be a trigger, where the system itself will reward a post because of the REASON OF: it received many votes(a certain number of votes) from legitimate Steemit accounts. The amount, will also depend on which parameters are voted on and how many votes were gathered.
This way, even if the POSTS were only voted by lesser Steem holders, for whatever reason that caused that (maybe the whales were asleep?) It will still get some rewards from the system itself. (Have you seen a post with 40+ votes and NOT even a DOLLAR score? That kind of situation will be eliminated by this method.) (THIS!!!)
Where will the system fund come from? The devs can allocate 10% of all votes to automatically go into this system rewarded Steems. If they so decide that this is the only way to fund this. maybe they can even adjust it from somewhere else. Don't we know that there is even a budget for market makers? So this one is not impossible.
This way, even if no Steem whale ever notices a good post, those who votes(even if they don't hold much Steem yet) will help the platform take care of the more deserving contributors with some system rewards. No one, will feel neglected, no one will feel left out for them to leave and criticize Steemit. Then all good contributors that are attracted by Steemit will then STAY on the platform and we can ALL GROW happy together. -east
Holy Cow !
Now that is a beast of an article. I mark you 10/10 in all categories you mentionend ;)
I guess many people have felt exactly that Way. You write good content and even if it gets recognized as such, you go unnoticed and without a reward.
I already started to think about completely changing my topics, from speaking about disabilities to something more lighthearted.
Would this make great content? No.
I do not want to end up posting stupid clickbaits with a fancy .gif , instead i want to share what really bothers me. Right now people are not even using the categories tab, since hunting and insta-liking new posts in hopes a whale will notice them is the most rewarding.
Votes should be well considered and implenting a system like this seems like a good idea to me. This would make room for rankings in above mentionend categories aswell.
Personally, I would love to read the articles with the highest originality score.
Have my like ! (sorry, its worth exactly $0.00 ;] )
Seriously great call out and good points I like your style :D
Hey, thank you!
I myself encourage post to be as original as possible. Where we can express our innermost thoughts. I hope they find this too. And look, 20 votes for 12cents. Compare that to a post with 2 votes and almost a thousand dollars. So people would naturally vote for that post too. Right?
That is absolutely right. Right now this is really getting flawed. Instead of having discussions and posting HQ content, they try to be the first to add a like and a funny .gif to a already high valued thread.
You name the posts i talk about.
Many people already expressed their concern that this platform is shifting to the worst. But you put it together really well and this is the first solution to convince me.
Let´s not lose hope for this post to gain some attention.
I see this post is becoming the perfect EXAMPLE of my points made.
SCREW YOU ALL!!!!! https://steemit.com/investments/@resten/so-i-finally-realized-i-m-a-total-useless-idiot-on-steem-i-m-leaving
I say, stop complaining and have some fun, all the bloggers earning the big money now will become future curators, in time the steem power will spread itself out and all will be fine.. just be patient
You could make the argument that a popular content creator will become so busy making content that they will neglect to curate and why should they are that point. I know it's nice to be altruistic to help curate but if you are popular you are going to focused on making new content to keep your audience happy.
there is no such thing as popular, from what I can see the big money for bloggers gets paid to mostly bloggers with not much steem power, if a blogger seems to be popular its only because that blogger has enough steem power to upvote their own post and attract attention, but eventually that wont be a significant, as many others will be able to do the same.
So what you're saying is that life... uh... finds a way?
I agree, there is no point in complaining. BUT there are reasons to improve. If Steemit continually adjust as platform implementations and growth requires to better reach its goals, WHY NOT? We will all benefit from it.
We can't improve if we don't try and continue to voice our pain points. I'm curious, what do you think the effect would be if we limited the amount of upvotes a person can get per day? And perhaps link the amount of upvotes to the some sort of quantity/quality score for the amount of posts/interaction for that account? I haven't really taken the time to think it through, and I'm fairly new to the platform. I would be curious about your thoughts, since you seem to be a lot more experienced than I am.
I spent quite a bit of time on these articles and I haven't gotten anywhere near the stratospheric rewards that the makeup videos have gotten. It's crazy:
this!!!! upvoting.
you need a whale to upvote your post to be seen or get really lucky
Yah, let us hope that this can be implemented. You found it here first!
Ok, so I'm learning, and new...what is a whale??
Great post, one point however is that as Steem grows larger there may be less diligence and more reckless automation, rather than apathy.
one of my feature request that never caught attention of those who should have see it is this. https://steemit.com/steemit/@easteagle13/a-little-helpful-feature
Voted. I'm only a dolphin, it's the best I can do....
voted also
These criterion are fufilled by aproximately 0% of current steemit posts so I am all for them. I am shocked by the amount of garbage which is highly rewarded on this site.
As it stands only clickbait bullshit gets voted up (for the most part) or posts about the platform itself (which is fine IMO). Good content is generally non-existant. I don't see too many posts about things I actually enjoy reading TBH. For this site to grow there needs to be a significantly greater emphasis on good content, and by good I mean variety. More topics need to be rewarded as the general population has a wide variety of interests.
And it SHOULD be real people who want to use steemit, not just crypto enthusiasts. This should be the gateway to crypto for people, not a huge crypto circle jerk.
As more people like yourself join and spread the message, the content variety should get more diverse. At some point, if this platform is successful, we will witness a tipping point and things will change almost overnight.
It's early in the game, the existence of the platform alone is awesome in itself. The most important thing IMHO is that the devs are willing to adjust as the site needs. We just have to be patient with how things are at the moment.
There is good content here , its just hard to navigate and find it. I am hoping for a better website design so I can filter through all these different tags. Maybe a personalised pages where users can follow their own interests without seeing all the stuff being posted.
That sounds like a really good idea. Also, there should be an automated check if the images and texts are unique and published on for the first time or if they can be found trough a reverse search to avoid content theft.
I did a video talking about moving past make up posts.. And taking Steemit to the next level.. Will you check it out and please let me know what ya think :D
https://steemit.com/new/@stealthtrader/steemit-vlog-2
sure, why not?
Agreed. I am in the process of posting all of my short stories and novellas here, free to read, but have made only pennies on them so far. The most any one post has made is $10.45, the next largest is $2.30 or so, the rest are less than a dollar at the time of writing.
I am content to give my work away. But, as you can confirm for yourself, it is of a quality that merits more than pennies. I would be happy as a pig in mud just to make enough from my work to live comfortably and continue writing until I die of old age. It is frustrating to see only a handful of views on any of my stories while posts like "I got hacked but am still here" and "look at these photos I took while traveling" make enough money to pay off my student loans, shelter, clothe and otherwise finance my basic needs for many years.
I am not entitled to money. I am not even entitled to bare acknowledgement. It is just disheartening to toil in obscurity with nothing to show for it. I have received no shortage of gushing, glowing reviews from the few who are aware of my work. I have been told it was life changing, and cherish the opportunity to make such an impact on the life of even one other person. If my basic needs were met, then fan appreciation would be the only additional "payment" I could ask for, as it is supremely fulfilling to strike a common chord with others and to bridge our minds, however fleeting that link is.
There is always short term pain for long term gain. The existence of this type of platform is proof enough for me that we are at least stepping in the right direction. It will take time, but the effort is well worth it.
Just be patient and continue on making great content, one day you will just be surprised, It will all bear fruit.
This is one of the best articles I have read on here and I totally agree, I just wrote about this topic today about my frustration as a writer creating good useful content. Thank you for this insightful post
tu post estuvo excelente
Muchas gracias.
perfect!
the sad part is : a makeup tutorial will be better awarded
This is so true. It seems no matter how the quality certain users posts do better than others. That's just not a good way of promoting the highest quality content available.
I know that feel, friend.
This is a great idea. Separate the men from the boys, quantitatively.
I really like the creativity of this post. I also think a lot of this will even out over time. HOWEVER, it seems inevitable that Steemit will eventually be just like YouTube and Facebook where you cannot control content. Meaning there will be a very large portion of the population that only wants those cat videos. And, there will be a much smaller portion that actually cares about their liberties and will stay focused on a sort of Libertarian agenda. But the 3rd group is made up of people who love both cat videos and freedom. I really like the suggestions though, even if difficult to define. What about Steemit Awards that go beyond money, like the YouTube awards for the most popular and/or quality content?
I have made a post regarding a new reward algorithm as well, with a slightly different focus. Unfortunately I don't think any of the big whales saw my post. If you don't mind, would it be possible if I could ask you to read it and see if you agree with my proposal?
Your proposal can be considered too. Let's wait what the devs will implement. We are in the earliest stage of this front so changes to the algorithms are bound to be adjusted one way or the other.
thank you for reading! Problem is, I don't think any of the devs even saw mine. Do you have any advice on how you were able to get the attention of dan?
its all dependent on chance alone. Im also glad he saw the post or it will also go nowhere, even if its important.
I agree. I put a lot of effort into this short story. And more so have been putting the plot together in my head for years! I was going to eventually write a book but thought I might get some critiquing here. Nope.
https://steemit.com/writing/@exitmass/the-immortal-agenda
Great post, and I fully agree the rewards are not making a whole lot of sense. Someone can post a link to a news article, literally nothing more than a link, and receive thousands of dollars. Whereas a post that required several hours of effort gets nothing.
I think one easy way is address this sort of gross miss-allocation is to automatically cap rewards for posting links. If a post contains an url it can earn a max of $100 (pick a number) for the poster's time. This would reduce spam, encourage posting an analysis or original content and make more of the reward pool available to quality content.
I make only original content and think that I deserve more attention
https://steemit.com/@shla-rafia
Kashmir - A conflict between two nuclear armed nations. https://steemit.com/kashmir/@vikram/army-and-state-police-brutality-in-kashmir
Problem is really here, but solution which pays for ever post which get's X upvotes don't work because bots can give X upvotes to any post and for sure will be used in such case.
Paying some $ for any post won't work too - because in this case bots will post lots of articles.
Good points :D
I hope this solves the problem with all posts being steem-biased because of financial incentive too.
Let us hope for the best, we can be sure that our devs are concerned more about these issues in several magnitude greater than us. So we only have to sit tight and wait, while we do our utmost within the prevailing conditions.
How could they have overlooked this BIG issue?
it's not really an "issue" as in a flaw, its just that an "improved" rewarding scheme will encourage more people with the same amount of rewards coming from the system, if ever this kind of suggestions are implemented. There are so many positive things going on for Steemit anyway. Its gonna be big sooner or later. https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptotradersgm/steem-your-gateway-to-crypto-addiction
true, this system is kind if unfair; i wrote a nice first blog but only got like 5 cent for it :)
Don't lose heart, it happens to everyone, just try again.
Im new to the platform so Im soaking everything in knowledge is power.
Read the white paper again. There are very good reasons why the system works the way it does. It's not just a matter of attracting the right people and spreading rewards fairly, it's also about preventing vote collusion and other attacks. Perhaps some of your ideas do both. I will leave that to folks who are smarter than me.
The white paper may mention something and the actual implementation may do something else. Like what we are seeing right now, it is clearly becoming a VIRTUAL VOTE COLLUSION. Though not intentional.
By the way @sean-king, do you find the suggestions AS BAD IDEAS?
I am in complete agreement with the author. As someone who is a beginner to Steemit shouldn't mean they are not a good writer about a topic. I have seen a pattern where new players don't get a platform. Personally, I have written about what future holds for Steemit and why the conventional social media like Facebook and Twitter will slowly fade in the background. https://steemit.com/steemit/@chhabiz/conventional-social-media-are-they-really-social-why-is-steem-power-going-to-work