I joined this platform 2 days ago and this post is a follow-up to my initial post here: https://busy.org/@siur/day-1-why-is-this-platform-so-fucking-bad
So I've been kinda thinking what could be realistically done to increase the content quality and discourage spam on the platform. I know that it's obviously not something easy to fix and considering the whole thing is on a blockchain and open-source it really narrows down any potential solutions to the problem.
Now, first things first - to my understanding steemit should look like medium.com quality and structure-wise.
The difference is that on medium you have to pay to write and pay to read/support - on steemit you can post your trash for free and by depositing money you're pretty much supporting writers for free.
The first problem in my opinion is a mentality problem
Since things are free 80% of people that join are under the impression that they can make some easy crypto by spamming copied content.
After a while they realize that no one reads their shit and they decide to deposit tokens to boost their content or to sell their votes.
This allows random shit to be up-voted and get on top, which is bad.
Now let's see what happens if the voting value structure is changed
My opinions is that keeping the vote value proportional with the steem power is ok, BUT it's not enough and it should not be the only variable.
If the vote value would be changed to be a bit more 'randomized' that would make the vote-selling more useless and would encourage honest voting.
Secondly I think reputation should influence voting value.
I also think account age should also influence the voting value. At least the age in relation with the reputation.
Being a curator should also influence your voting value.
Bottom line is - I think the people that upvote quality content and encourage quality writing should have the most vote value and not the people that deposit the most money.
I think small gradual changes to the structure can be made and things can be improved but I think the only way you can get positive changes in the long run is - give people that care about the platform more power.
Now this is a double-edged sword and of course some people will abuse it but I think that if you manage to give the option to create a 'quality vouching' system where curators have the some influence and they can basically impact the writer's voting value and the content rewarding.
That way high quality content is better rewarded and good writers gets more visibility.
Then your problem becomes keeping the curators honest when they vouch.
I guess to solve this problem you can create a +51% validation system where you can ask more curators to confirm or disprove the vouching decision. If the majority agrees - the writer gets his bump in value, the initial curator gets a small bonus, etc. - pretty much everyone is happy.
If the curators disagree then the initial curator gets penalized in one way or another.
The same way a curator could negatively impact bad writers by reporting them.
I know there's probably lots of things where this could go wrong and I'm sure there's angles that I don't see at the moment but I think this just could be a improvement because the current system is obviously not working.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think.
And as always - remember to smash that follow button and the like button or I'll smash your mum.
I might do it either way.. idk
Unrelated pic
