I think my concerns are more about how the correlations are drawn, not necessarily the explanation.
For Example:
Now if all players were in one instance of the game, all playing on the same server, and the amount of gold to be won was finite; then having better gear than most others would give a player a better chance at getting a bigger slice of that fixed pie.
- There is not a "finite" amount of Steem or Steem Power .. there's the daily rewards pool (which I guess is "finite", but it changes daily and is a new increase to the previously existing Steem/SBD/SP, so as a stickler of details this part threw me off.)
Then there's also the inflation .. but that's not an easy one to cover with analogies :)
You can keep steem, just like keeping WoW gold, or you can power it up into steem power, just like buying gear to make you more effective.
Effectiveness on steemit doesn't just give a steemer the chance to make more steem (although it certainly does that through increased curation rewards), it also gives him influence.
- I was going to say that this part was wrong, but thinking through it a little more, I think you nailed it.
Steem is the liquid currency, and at a basic level, it's the same idea as the gold in WoW.
Steem Power doesn't just increase your curation rewards .. but since self-voting is discouraged, I guess mentioning that part is counter-productive .. so again, nailed it.
Just like expensive armour and weapons allow a player increased scope to dictate the outcome of battles and the allocation of gold in WoW, a high steem power balance lets a steemer push a friend toward the top of the trending page, drive his own observations into the top of the comments section of a post, or substantially reduce the payout on a post he believes undeserving.
- I don't really like the last part here .. while it's not inaccurate, it does lead one to believe that this is an acceptable practice on Steemit -- which it is NOT. Reducing an "undeserving" post is akin to censorship IMO, so the phrasing may be slightly misleading.
I'd probably discuss it as something along the lines of a Powerful Player (or group of powerful players) using their armor/weapons/gear to suppress a cheater (since there are no "mods" on Steemit).
Those selling their WoW gold for real money may assume that the whole thing is a pyramid scheme, and that Blizzard will run out of money soon; but they misunderstand the nature of the transaction.
- Well, Steem Power actually has the exact same effect as a Pyramid Scheme, but as long as those who have the large amounts of power want to continue to grow in their influence, abusing their power is disincentivized (because to your other point, the value of Steem is Speculative and Speculators would de-value it if whales were abusing their power) .. so I get what you're saying :)
My biggest concern is that Whales are actually incentivized to let small fish become medium fish, but not grow beyond that point. And this is something that they can absolutely control via self-voting their SP onto their own content ... so I'm curious how this all plays out in the future.
Good, detailed critique.
I appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately, no analogy is perfect; we need to make trade offs between accuracy and simplicity.
With this one I'm angling more for real noobs who can't bring themselves to engage until they understand just a little more of how this place works.
I've certainly simplified in places, but I've tried not to give the wrong impression at any point.
You mean
|\|3\/\/|3$who are familiar with WoW :)