This is an idea I've had for a long time but haven't had an opportunity to share. Today I brought it up in a reply to @kevinwong's post Distributing Wealth Should Be Equally Profitable and started expanding on it a bit. I think I might have mentioned it in a reply to a post by @meesterboom a long time ago.
The success of the platform depends on Steems ability to be well distributed and to flow towards people who are enhancing the ecosystem. If we have a system that rewards overly selfish behavior (or "accumulating weath", rather than spreading it as @kevinwong refers to it as), we have something just as unsustainable as what we are all used to in the old paradigm, in fact it is even less sustainable because of the lack of rules in place.
Rather than make more rules or allow the wealth to slowly trickle upwards, why not try to create a greater incentive to spread Steem around?
Many argue that 50% curation rewards will do that but we already see many users who use their upvotes to maximize profit, which translates to upvoting users who are consistently receiving high payouts, people like @kevinwong. Don't get me wrong, I think @kevinwong deserves his success and so do some of his high SP holding peers but I don't think his continued success should be built into the systems incentive structure. The opportunity for such curation should be spread more equally among the whole community. I don't see how higher curation rewards will achieve this.
The problem is not that curators are paid too much (or too little). The problem is HOW they are paid. Being rewarded a % of the post payout encourages them to upvote posts which are likely to receive high payout and all of us who have been here long enough know that high payout depends less on quality of content and more on the users reputation....but more than that, it specifically depends on how many people have them on autovote (or in some cases how much they use bidbots).
If we just set curator rewards to 0% and did nothing else it'd create a large incentive for the largest users to keep self voting. I also think we would all agree that truly valuable curation deserves reward.
I propose we create a voting system for curators similar to our voting system for witnesses.
- Set the curation rewards to 0% of post payout
- Keep allocating 25% of the reward pool to curators (this % can be adjusted later if the need arises)
- Curators will be paid monthly (weekly?) based on their standing in the curator ranks rather than through a percentage of post payouts.
- If a large stakeholder wants to make money from curation, they will curate in a way that the community approves of.
- If a large stakeholder doesn't have time or doesn't want to do curation themselves, they can delegate to curators and pay them for their work. People will vote for them based on the quality of their curator selection.
@acidyo and @curie have done some great work, and deserve praise and rewards for all they've done to help distribute rewards throughout the community. Honestly though, it should be the norm. The reward structure doesn't currently encourage it but it should.
How amazing would it be if all the whales were actually encouraged to spread their upvote throughout the community to real quality posts from a variety of users, rather than just the same few (or even worse, through gaming bidbots)?
Some minnows (and even dolphins) are disillusioned and think that none of the whales and witnesses care, but I don't see that to be true. After seeing this post from @kevinwong and a discussion on how to reduce circle jerking among witnesses yesterday between @lukestokes @pharesim @transisto @sircork and other high profile witnesses, I am sure there are people with power who would like to see more decentralization of power on the platform. @timcliff and @rolandp also seem to want to help spread the wealth. There are up and coming witnesses like @abh12345 and sleepers like @krnel. @acidyo and @curie are already doing their part in their own way and would surely be at the top of the list of curators (it might help solve some of curie's current problems as well). Look at all those names, and there are others who want to see the system improve as well. If your immediate reply is "everyone is just after profit", you are certainly not delusional, but you also aren't looking hard enough.
What do you think of this idea? Is it even possible? If yes, why not? If no, is there any other similar way to tackle this problem?
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I'm fresh over here from Kevins post actually, had just finished commenting :)
I like the idea, but it sounds like a tough one to implement.
Where are the funds stored? How are the rankings decided upon? Are just two initial worries.
You are right though in that curation as it stands is a race to front-run bidbots/utopian votes/large accounts letting smaller votes in, whilst the actual content quality is almost irrelevant.
What I have noticed though in my time here, is that the very best curation rewards come from (depending on your SP) spreading your vote out as wide as possible, whilst not rendering the vests you apply to a vote irrelevant. This is though, massively time-consuming and with rewards as they are when compared to just slapping a selfie on, just not a good time/cost venture.
It's an interesting one though, but yeah, how do judge the curation quality, and who keeps the float?
Some kind of system based loosely around your curation and engagement leagues? I have absolutely no clue as to how that would look, but I'm sure there are many people smarter than I am that would be able to pull something together.
It's the old chestnut, 'what is quality content'. The league focus more on engagement of account, and less on what they are actually upvoting. As long as the vote spread is good, and they are commenting away, I'm happy.
There's no golden answer to define quality content that matches everyone's ideal, and so the concept of rewarding curators for spotting golden eggs becomes tough.
Really, it is the whole premise of the curation system. You find something at 20 cents and it goes to 200$, you receive a 'good' reward for doing so.
However, when you can stick a self-vote down (mine being about $2.20 at present), and take about $3 in liquid from that in 7 days time, who is going to care about spending hours seeking golden content?
I think engagement and quality content go hand in hand really. Good content will, by nature, encourage comment and engagement, whereas spammy crap is unlikely to garner much interest. Perhaps a move away from pure curation and toward engaging in conversation and activity could be a solution to growing a community rather than a "content farm" of low quality posts.
I think letting the community decide is as good a barometer as any. You have the problem of higher stakes having more of a say but that's a problem that is consistent across the platform, so no NEW problems there.
You'd have to make getting on the top 100 curators list more profitable than self voting, and for smaller curators, the promise of getting up there. If it takes more than 25% of the reward pool, I'm ok with that.
Honestly I'd also very much prefer a toying with the algorithms, a new curve, to give minnows and small dolphins a higher VP weight per vest compared to whales or something along those lines. I believe the existence of super whale sized upvotes is ALWAYS going to be a huge threat to the platform. A little less incentive for huge investors to become even larger investors would likely help the masses want to get invested in steem, including youtube and other social media personalities who are looking for somewhere to go......urgh, i forgot about multiple accounts, they could just make 10 dolphin accounts rather than one whale account....urgh!
I have a hard time seeing how this would go any different than voting for witnesses, which IMO, has proven to be an absolutely terrible mechanic for selecting the most deserving witnesses. In all likelihood the leading vote getters would be the same usual suspects who are already the highest stake users, who are already top witnesses, who are (half of them) selling their vote on top of it. This would just be one more cherry on top for them, they would get all the curation rewards as well.
I can see the argument here. But they’re all making that money through curation rewards now anyway and this way at least there might be a little more motivation to behave because people’s support for your curation efforts would matter (not to say curators couldn’t form a circle jerk. But it seems most people agree that the top 20 witnesses is not full of assholes. I see an effort among them being made to stop circle jerking each other. Or at the very least stopping support for the ones like Jerry who has been accused of upvote4upvote as a witness.
My point is, it might be bad but it couldn’t be much worse than what we have now.
The only other solution I can think of to stop all the wealth from flowing to the top is to end self voting and multiple accounts by means of ended anonyminity, and this wouldn’t stop circle jerking but at least people might feel more accountable if we did this and then went to a one person one vote system. I don’t like this idea because I appreciate having anonymity as an option, also there are obvious benefits to the community in opening some initiative based accounts. I don’t really want this to be the road steemit takes because if it is, I don’t see it acting very different from Facebook in the future, but I can’t see any other way to efficiently keep the wealth from concentrating at the top at an exponential pace.
Anonymity as a choice is positive for social media but it doesn’t seem to work with this stake based voting system nor does it allow for a one person=one vote system. Too easy to game with multiple accounts and circle jerking. Then again we could turn into minds where everyone is arguing....urgh Hahaha this post is the best idea I’ve got aside from the continued effort to shape the culture of the platform and tovweight everything towards the “middle class” of steemit.
What deserves a vote for quality curation is up to the individual, everyone is free to decide where to spend their votes and can change whenever they want, the same way we can for witnesses.
I'm a concept guy, not a tech guy, so I'm not sure about the difficulties, but it doesn't sound any more complicated than the witness system.
The only problems I can forsee is that it could turn into a circle jerk the same way witnesses have, but we seem to have a bunch of top 50 witnesses who want to try to change the circle jerkyness which means it should be do-able if people are interested in the idea.
I'm totally with you on the idea that the rewards pool needs to be distributed more equally. I take it you're thinking of 'one account' one vote where the curation leagues are concerned...
It does seem like a viable way of reducing voting on 'posts we know are going to get high rewards' and of claiming back some of the curation rewards that go to people who circle jerk.
But it does only apply to the 25%... still, it's a start.
I also predict a comment from @yabapmatt telling you why the above isn't possible.
One account one vote can't work for steemit because people can create multiple accounts. So I propose it works exactly like the witness system works or as close as possible. It’s not perfect but I don’t see it opening up any new problems. I suppose it could be game day but I don’t see it opening any new ways of gaming the system and it could close up a few of the old ones.
I think it's a sensible suggestion, yes I always forget the multiple account thing!
Personally, what led me to open an account was the whole concept of curation (which I still try to understand), I have not used Facebook or Twitter for years, because they supposed too much nonsense, I love the communities created on YouTube for example, and although I think this aspect can be better here, if it's not already, I find difficult to understand the basic notions, such as the implementation of ideas and changes, I also believe that more work should be done in decentralization, and I think it can be something like a new semiautonomous world with its own economy.
I wonder if it can be improved and maintained, because right now is very close to a kingdom with many provinces and ghettos with a peculiar gambling way of life i'd say.
I'm not complaining is just how I see it, although it is not perfect this platform fascinates me.
A lot of nameshooting there bro ;)
Im not sure if this is THE solution but I agree that with current curation awards it really makes no sense to actively curate as a minnow
I’m not trying to name drop, those guys are too popular to notice when they’re tagged. I just want people to see that whales and witnesses care, at least a bunch of them do. It’s not like everyone is soooo selfish like most people say, most are afraid of losing their influence to selfish people. Right now @haejin can not be stopped by anyone on the platform. His rep is to open high from self voting. So some whales are acting selfishly to try and get strong enough to stop these guys. Everyone trusts themselves to fix the problem. But they don’t always realize they are spreading the same kind of feelings that make people want to turn into haejin.
Eventually steemit is going to have to make some big changes, I don’t know if any of will like them but they I’ll have to in order to salvage the platform. It’s such a mess. But we can still do what we do while all this drama is going on I need the background. I’m just throwing ideas out there which I think can help .
It is good to ventilate! Present options, like making a moodboard, thinking broad.
I agree with that some things would be better different!
I don’t know much about the payout system, but I don’t like your idea. As it is, and unless I’m wrong, I have equal chance to be involved in curation. I may not get a lot, but that’s fine. I don’t agree it should be ranked like witnesses, you suddenly make something that all can be involved into something exclusive. I would resent that that. It’s tough enough for new players to get anywhere in the witness scene. There are problems in the witness system, there are problems on Steemit. It all revolves around greed. The Witnesses have an important function that involve them providing a real asset. As far as I’m concerned, curation is an opinion, everyone has an opinion and they can send out a vote as they please. The platform can survive or not, but I do not believe in creating yet another select group and thus taking yet another reason why I even bother with Steemit away from the masses.
As I said, I don’t know much about curation, it’s very confusing. But it appears to me you are creating exclusivity.
There’s already exclusivity. People with high SP always get the majority of the curation reward, even if they vote later than those who have small SP. There is literally no way to make money as a minnow with curation unless someone delegates SP to you. As of right now, minnows are under the illusion that they can make money from curation and curate to make money, which just means throwing their money at large accounts. Larger accounts actually have lots of incentive to vote for other large accounts cause it’s so profitable for them given the current curation situation (and some are pushing for even higher curation rewards to solve this problem which seems counter productive to me).
I don’t think it’s worth focusing on how “the system is run by greed”. The system incentivizes greed, and there are fundamental problems with the system. Not only steemit, also the real world economy.
I also don’t like exclusivity but you have a system where money attract some money and I’m just trying to propose we make the best of that. If you don’t want money to attract more money, I understand that too, that’s what I’m pushing for in the long run but that’s not or crypto (or fiat work) and I can’t expect everyone to suddenly throw away all their longly held values (hierarchy and competition), all I can do is chip away at them one at a time.
I personally feel curation should not be rewarded because it adds incentive to support the people who have the most support and why not just support things to support them. But we have the issue of self voting which people are trying to counteract. And if you end self voting, people open multiple accounts. You could solve that by having very strict sign up vetting, but then the power goes to the company and you are less free.
I was just like you when I got here but it’s way more complicated than you imagine and wanting it to be perfect is fine but people aren’t ready for that. I’m not saying you are wrong, but you have to understand the problems a little better if you want to fix them, and if you don’t want to bother that’s ok. I see more opportunities for myself in crypto than in the old economy right now so I’m here.
I’m happy with things as they are as far as curation. It’s not perfect, but the way I see it, I can deal with it or leave. I got nothing for my interaction before, but I get something now, so I’m happy. I’m genuinely not fussed by how much I get. I’m just glad I feel I can participate. I’ll work my way slowly up and hope to make friends along the way. This isn’t a race for a money grab for me. Of course there’s exclusivity when money is involved. There’s no need to add more constructs to encourage it. I would expect your solution would end up with similar issues the witness ranks have. Anyway, I’ve said more than I care to say as a noob. I’ll just run along and enjoy my micro contribution on the platform. ;)
You didn’t sound happy in the chat :-P
Now I’m confused. What are you referring to that directly relates to this post?
I don’t mind the curation structure as it is. I will happily ‘curate’ others that inspire me and still be frustrated by people as far as engagement. I’ve never complained about what I was paid for curation. Curation is actually why I was attracted to the platform. There’s a reason I’m still around, and the frustration despite me outwardly complaining, is self-directed. I’d love things to be better, but I’m not bitter. For most part, besides venting, I’m content enough, and when supporting the people I enjoy, I’m happy.
I think I've mentioned to you before that I thought that having account types (creator or curator in this specific example) with rewards split accordingly might help everyone get the most out of things. I'm still not sure how that would work out in real life though XD
How would the votes for curators work, kind of like current trails? As curating is a lot easier than witnessing.
I think curators should be paid exactly the same way as witnesses would. It be a lot more competitive because no knowledge of tech would be necessary. People could also comparing for support and hopefully would see success based on how much people like it. Most people agree he rewards aren’t fairly split, so the people who had the widest variation of users and the best content would likely be upvoted to the top. Of course there could be gaming done, but it wouldn’t be any worse than the top 20 witnesses voting for each other and there’s has been discussion among them to curb that behavior.
Your idea sound a like a good one but it sounds like it’d be a much bigger change to the platform and require a lot of thought.
Yes that could really work!! My cogs have been in overdrive thinking there has to be a better way, By Jove I think you may have cracked it young man!!
Seems these ideas can only be planted in people’s consciousness and then left to spread on their own though