I have now been on Steemit for a little over 3 weeks and I have noticed a disturbing trend. Posts that do not get voted on by Whales NEVER MAKE MONEY regardless of how many votes they get. To prove this point I am going to share some insights into my recent posts.
The Truck Driver Stuck in a Different Time - How I wound up living 54 years in the future! [Continued by request] | 175+ Votes; 0 Flags; 1 Comment | 0.85 SBD @ Payout | Highest Vote was from @fyrstikken with a weight of 787.9q
I can't believe this just happened.... | 182+ Votes; | 0 Flags ; | 3 Comments | 0.34 SBD @ Payout | Highest Vote was from @cheftony with a weight of 137.6q
[Trucker Erotica] How I met the Love of My Life - for 5 hours! | 27+ Votes; | 0 Flags; | 6 Comments | 37.4 SBD @ Payout | Highest Vote was from @eeks with a weight of 758.3q
The Truck Driver Stuck in a Different Time - How I wound up living 54 years in the future! | 113+ Votes; | 0 Flags; | 17 Comments | 878.88 SBD @ Payout | Voted on by: | @itsascam | 4645.2q | @complexring | 1507.6q | @steemed | 837.1q | @steempty | 195.6q | @ajvest | 146.0q
In my last 4 posts only one had a real whale, that was the last one on the list above. As soon as @itsascam voted on the post it jumped to around $450 and drastically increased the REWARD for every vote afterwards, especially from other Smaller Whales.
Now I know some people will be like….but you made $800+ on a post why you bitching about the three after it….Well I am not bitching, just pointing out an inherent flaw in the design of Steemit's Curation System.
If you look at my last two posts (first two on the list) they had crazy amounts of votes but both closed at less than $1.00. Here is the problem as I see it:
1.) If a post gets over 100 votes (at least in these early days of Steemit) then there is obvious interest and most likely it is a really good piece of writing.
2.) Why would you want a system where really good writing, that lots of people like only makes pennies.
3.) If Steemit is to attract (and keep) talent so that it continues to grow then something has to change because talented writers are not going to respond well to one post out of 4 making any money….especially when there is interest in all 4 posts.
Now I know there where some modifications to the curation system during today's Hard Fork 12. So let me say this: all of these posts and complaints are based on the pre-hard fork posts above. It is still too early to say how the recent changes will effect the curation system or if there will even be an effect.
PS - Thanks to everyone who has voted on my posts, regardless of whether it made any money.
The problem is, it is trivially easy for 1 person to create 100's even 1000's of accounts. This is called a sybil attack. rewards must be tied to some measure that would require a great deal of money to exploit and would therefor cost more to attack then any benefit you'd hope to receive. The current SteemPower weighting for rewards accomplishes this.
I believe the solution is, we need more small whales and dolphins and this will simply take some time. We will get there. With a larger userbase of vested/powered voters more of the quality material will be found and rewarded. Currently A post with 100+ votes is more likelihood to be noticed by these players but the numbers of players are simply limited.
Yes. Sybil is the biggest problem.
@complexring i agree with you 100% percent,sibil is the biggest problem for us,steemit and our community.
It is fairly easy to make a shitton of accounts, there should be some way to prevent it.
Making fake facebook account is easy,so it is easy to make fake account here too.
We need to stop it,i hope we can erase all type of "sybil" people.
It is all about,if we can fight hard enough.
A sophisticated user can create, approximately, 2-3 accounts per day for no more than 60 dollars for a month, a la mining.
@hrottie, this is indeed an issue, I imagine. Not entirely sure how one would stop it, especially since fake accounts would be created via mining and I don't know if IP address is info that the network receives. I would think that it would, but maybe internals don't save it or provide a mechanism to do so ... may not be possible without some significant refactoring of code.
Even then, IP spoofing is still possible at many different levels.
Not even an IP checker will fix it, because almost no one is on a static IP. However checking IP addresses, machine names and Mac addresses combined with Site cookies will drastically reduce fake accounts.
Yes but i think that is not the main problem.
If we have not fair people over here, with big account,they may constantly upvote new , fresh fake accounts and take out profit's from them.
Im looking for some way to fight this,any idea @complexring or anybody else?
I think only IP checker can win.
I hear you on this one. I feel like right now new people like me will get pulled by see 300 -900 dollars per post but the reality is 3 to 10 dollars. So as you said the more small whale and dolphins we have the faster steemit will grow.
I think we need a way to confirm a user. You should only be able to have one account. I'm not sure how this would be possible, but it would help prevent spam accounts.
I can follow both of your arguments and I guess time will show how things will turn out to be. very interesting though to read both of your opinions. Thank you for sharing!
Part of the problem is that there is a fixed total pot of money to be shared each day, and if you are unlucky to have posted on a day where a few individuals scooped the lot, you won't make much. The following article explains it well:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@teatree/steemit-is-all-about-game-theory
Yup, I am brainstorming a lot of steemit ideas, but i just don't see the point in posting it because i know if i put say, a couple hours into some writing it won't get seen by a whale or even a dolphin.
Which usually means less interaction, i think we need a filter by comments on the frontpage to be updated very frequently and be the default setting.
Supply and demand?