Steemit is an experiment, a constantly evolving one. There's no technical reason why it cannot evolve into a more social platform.
Rewarding short form posts is another experiment. The community will decide whether that adds value to the platform.
"Decline Payout" is certainly an interesting option, and could go hand in hand with a revised short form section where the Trending page is arranged by engagement and not rewards. However, I also feel the author in this case could be thought of as a "curator". If someone finds interesting material in the public domain, links to it, adds a couple of lines with their thoughts, and this generates a lot of discussion and comments - they certainly have done their bit in adding value to the platform. It could of course be a fraction of the amount original content will receive.
Isn't that what the community is doing now? I would think that creating a group to specifically reward short-form content because it's not being rewarded by the community is the opposite of this.
We don't need to solve problems that don't exist. The problem is not that links, images, reblogs, and three-sentence posts aren't being rewarded enough. The problem is that the site is poorly developed for that type of content sharing. I'm curious to know - what exactly is the problem that this new experiment will solve, other than a perceived rewards distribution issue?
I see hundreds of short form posts every single day being ignored, generating no comments, and the authors eventually leaving the platform. Pretty simple problem. I don't know the solution to generating discussion and engagement, but I'm interested in seeing if this new project helps.
Three months ago, the same was true of original content - only a handful were being rewarded. There are several curation efforts today organized around promoting long form content - that problem has been solved.
I see plenty of long form posts every single day being ignored as well. Maybe the problem isn't the length of the posts? Maybe it has more to do with the UI features and the limited distribution of vests on the platform?
I happen to think you're trying to solve a very large problem with the wrong solutions. Instead of focusing on rewards, we need to focus on development. I have been guilty of this too, but it's time that we wake up and realize that this platform isn't attracting and retaining users - and it has little to do with the length of posts or the amount of rewards they get. It has to do with features/functionality and engagement. The latter isn't happening much because the former is terrible...and not enough people want to use this site. That's the problem. Let's get that resolved first, then see what happens.
Sharing my experience as a full time curator, there's a far greater proportion of ignored short form posts. For every long form post I curate, there are at least five short form posts I have to pass on simply because the curation guild I work with focuses on long form posts. It is as simple as that. I have seen authors writing short form content / sharing their thoughts linking to non-original content leave the platform and head back to Reddit etc.
There's no one solution to any problem. I'm sure the Steemit Inc team is hard at work developing the website. Meanwhile, the community will do its little bit to help. There needs to be different, varied efforts from different perspectives - that's how an experiment succeeds.
I completely understand you're not keen on this project, and that's just fine. I'm sure you have your own solutions - we have to work together. We shall see if it is successful like the long form curation projects have proven to be.
I have no problem with any kind of content, even just a heads-up, as long as copyrights aren't violated. The voters can decide if they find the content interesting or useful or adding value. I thought that was what we already had here. Apparently, short content doesn't get enough appreciation according to some. That's not a reason to curate short posts more, it's a signal from the voting community that they don't appreciate short content much. Only when short content gets a lot of votes but little money, there may be a reason to reward such content more, but such initiatives are already in place and we all suffer from this from time to time anyway, with all kinds of content.
Those were exactly my thoughts. If this platform is to be decentralized and based on the votes of users in order to filter "valuable" from "not valuable" content, then it's not necessary to identify the "not valued" posts and find ways to make sure that they are rewarded.
Now, is the current system of rewarding posts skewed or broken? Yes, it is. But that has nothing to do with the average user or the visibility of their content. It has to do with how the vests were distributed and how the posts are currently being upvoted (automated/bot voting, automated trails, curation guilds, etc.).
We need better development and smarter curators, not more gimmicks. This platform is going to live or die by its attractiveness to users as a social media platform. It's not going to die because someone didn't get $40 for telling us what they ate for breakfast or for linking their latest Vine from YouTube. It's not going to survive because Aunt Sally just earned $100 for posting another cat meme or because Jack was rewarded $50 for his 60-word snippet about his shiny new stapler.
Make this place better for the average social media user so that it can gain widespread adoption...or watch it shrivel and die as we all try to micromanage voting and rewards on a platform with an unfriendly UI. Resolve the development issues. Everything else should fall into place after that.