RE: Something Useful For Blockchain
Do you know why this initiative won’t work in my opinion?
Yes, it is quite likely that nothing will come of it. But I'll know for sure when I try :-) I don't really like the burnsteem25 initiative because those who are in clubs burn their earnings, but they could Power Up those earnings. In my opinion, Power Up is more useful than reducing inflation. Also, burning SBD is much more efficient than burning STEEM.
At first - of course - there are the users who are (always) busy like ants for just one purpose: attracting the queen
Regarding the Steemit team. You rightly pointed out that we all focus too much on them. I'm sure the Steemit team aims to make this platform more decentralized. But the fact is, the platform is not decentralized right now. The way to decentralization is Power Up.
Unfortunately, in the pursuit of SC01 votes, most authors do only what the Steemit team suggests and do not develop their own ideas and initiatives. So for this initiative to work, it needs the approval of the Steemit team, otherwise it is doomed.
Yes, I'm sure of that too, because here's what they've always said: "We're strengthening your communities so that you can support yourselves in the long run and be independent of sc votes."
No, the platform is not centralised, there is only one central big curator (not even that, because Upvu is kind of one too - for the self...🫢). And the big problem is that most users just see that, rely on it. Most of them have not understood that we are all curators at the same time. Well, and therefore many have not yet understood how important a Power Up really is. They have not understood that it is not about making the Steemit team happy...
That is what annoys me the most! I think I expressed that well with my metaphor.
As good as the one or other initiative of the Steemit team is, blindly following it makes the platform boring. Everything seems similar. If you don't adapt, you don't get (high) support. Many (old) Steemians leave the platform or "flee" to Upvu - if they can afford it. But even they will not be satisfied if they still have a bit of blogger blood in them: the lowered quality of Upvu users' contributions cannot be hidden. Well, they don't have to put any effort into their posts with the algorithm. It runs automatically. Boring. And definitely not attractive to outsiders.
Well, that depends on us, or rather, on the mass of users...
I have a completely different suggestion, but first a short (historical) introduction:
It has never been particularly good when a dominant whale intervened in blogging. Let's put it this way: In my eyes, the Steemit team does it best with its various sc (especially sc01 and sc02, of course), because it scatters the votes a lot - in a way that I have never experienced before. The community, however, reacts in the same way as before: they "suck up" to the whale (something that was so frowned upon before (see netiquette)) by doing everything that might please him. They only refrain from interaction, from appreciating and curating each other ("Write, write, write, the sc might overlook me...").
My suggestion to the Steemit team:
Vote at least two months (just don't specify how long!) nothing at all! Nothing at all! No reports or anything like that either! Nothing! Sit back and observe! If the "community" is left to its own devices, firstly the wheat will be separated from the chaff and secondly it will have to become more imaginative (by this I don't mean great topics for "engagement challenges" - those who are ambitious and have understood everything will get involved all by themselves). This will certainly include the promoted-page...
I didn't use mentions on purpose, although my fingers were tingling, because the longer I think about it, the more ingenious I find this suggestion... 😉
If you agree with me, feel free to follow up. I'm happy to provide further clarification.... 😊
You are a cruel person :) If SC01 does not vote for two months, there will be suicides here :)
In fact, everything is simple, but because of this it is very difficult. In order for the platform to develop, grow, and be interesting for third-party readers, everything has long been invented. For this, it is necessary that those authors who write interestingly, qualitatively and originally receive a higher reward for their work. Less work, less talent - less reward.
Do I achieve this? Decentralization. If there were 10,000 curators, each author would compete with the others to attract more curators to their posts.
Unfortunately, now we only have a few curators and 10,000 authors. The reasons are known.
Note that there are practically no professional journalists or writers on Steemit. But, for example, they are on Facebook, although they do not receive any money there. What can Facebook offer that Steemit can't? Here you can also present your own book and share this presentation among your friends and subscribers. But no, they are all on Facebook.
Steemit has a lot of potential, but it's not being used. Unfortunately, I still have no idea how I could help the platform :)
Don't blame me, I'm very sensitive... ;-)
Well, I think (hope) we can rule out suicide. But of course some users will leave the platform or disappear into Upvu & Co. And so we have recognised them, the users who are here ONLY because of the rewards. Honestly? We don't need them! So this selection would mean the separation of the wheat from the chaff - the wheat will continue (well and committed) as before, the intersection will think about what they could improve in order to attract the attention of very normal curators or readers.
In my opinion, this is the original idea that I have always advocated and propagated. I have had to take a lot of "scolding" for this: I was an antisocial capitalist. Everyone should get something.
Yes, the last sentence is even correct! The question is only "how". And also for this Steemit has to offer a lot. There is nothing in the white paper that says that everyone MUST blog or develop. If you can't do both, you don't need to (or shouldn't). The Steem also needs appreciative audiences (through engaged comments and/or votes). For that, on the one hand there is the lush CR (50%...!), on the other hand comments can (should) be voted. @afrog - I'd like to call him my mentor - has always said as a kind of maxim "don't disregard the comments as the spice of every article and a little income!" I can understand that with the current mentality of quite a few users, he has little interest in steem anymore. But I don't want to be unfair: this development is not new and could already be observed before the big fork in 2020.
Exactly. This imbalance must be brought back into balance. And in my opinion, as sorry as I am, this will only work (for the time being) without the involvement of a huge stakeholder. People have to understand that mass production will not get us anywhere. We need just as many (even more) interested readers. And they are only interested if the articles are also interesting. A vicious circle that must be broken with all our might.
Audience! Reading audience! Readers who want (and expect) nothing more than to be entertained by articles. Readers who wouldn't even think of writing (sustainable) content themselves, because content production is simply not their talent.
Oh, "back in the days" we had isolated FB influencers here who tried out the platform. What happened? Hardly anyone noticed them, because most of them were focused on their "I have to produce something now". There was also a lot of envy and resentment, because once they were noticed, there were suddenly (much, much better) competitors... Some were simply disregarded like hot potatoes.
I think if you keep doing exactly what you are doing in a loyal, honest way, you are already helping the platform enormously!
Just finished reading the interesting discussion on this post. Different perspectives and proposals have broaden my understanding of the platform. I will talk about one point raised by @chriddi:
We need loyal audience who just want entertaining content like on Facebook or Instagram etc and nothing more.
I'm more of an Instagram person so I will talk about it. It's interesting to see the effort micro-influencers put in their content. They don't get a penny for all their hardwork and sweat until they get a following of several thousands and hundreds of comments on each post. To get that level of engagement, they work really hard on their content in hopes of attracting audience and getting loyal audience requires constant hardwork and excellence.
Why can't we have that level of dedication on Steemit? Because we get rewards regardless of our followers and engagement on posts.
In most cases here, first we get rewards then we get audience (an sc01 upvote and then people come to see why a big upvote here). I believe curation means just that - curate content to make it trending for others to see. Only if it's reversed; let others (readers/small curators) find content first and then let big curators reward it.
A post shouldn't be rewarded unless it meets a certain standard and it should go for all authors out there. We see comments only on Engagement Challenge posts. Hardly few people bother to be as engaging on the posts outside the challenge. Once again, we see a could-be-useful initiative as merely a way of earning more rewards which destroys it's true purpose.
Like chriddi said, maybe wait for five days to see the engagement on a post, if it's got meaningful engagement then big curators can reward it with a generous upvote.
I think I said more or less the same what you guys already discussed but that was what my initial thoughts were after reading your points.
As always, you opened my eyes. Still, discussion is something very useful. It is now clear to me that Steemit's weakest point at the moment is its lack of readers. Not the lack of developers, not the small rewards, not the price of STEEM, not the lack of interest from the main owner. It is the insufficient number of readers that is the weakest point. If there was a large audience, there would be all of the above.
Having understood this, I immediately paid attention to:
It seems to me that very few people take advantage of this opportunity. And those who use only share their posts.
Maybe I should systematically share the posts I like the most? I will think about it. But I don't have cool social media accounts, I've always avoided them :-)
Thanks, I have more to think about.
Yes, even extremely important. Without discussions, weighing up the pros and cons and courageously trying out one approach or another, nothing will change here.
Me too. 🎵 Steemit was my first love and it'll be my last... 🎵
But you also bring me to other exciting questions.
Let's assume that we succeed in directing thousands of FB users to this platform. What do you think they would do? Would they be the desired audience? Or would they quickly think "Oh, wow, what rewards - I can do that too!" and start spamming the Steem and then disappear after some unsuccessful time? I fear the latter...
So I came up with the idea of how it would be to make curating more lucrative: Let's say 75% CR instead of 50% CR. All the authors will howl, but in the long run they will benefit too, because they will get an audience, more curators (among whom, under the conditions that it is worthwhile, will be investors) and maybe, perhaps, a more balanced Steem (because spamming might not be worth it anymore for 25% of a few cents). Of course, this would make Upvu and other bots even "richer", but maybe it's just a calculation that users won't delegate to them anymore (then they won't need to spam daily either) and prefer to use their SP for their own CR...
At first glance, this is a very good idea. But any idea can be spoiled. If it were as you suggest, I think many authors would leave the platform. Those who have delegated their SP to Upvu would remain. They would receive their curation rewards in liquid STEEM. Perhaps the result would be terrible.
Everything has advantages and disadvantages, everything can be exploited. At the same time, the law of action/reaction also prevails. Where no action takes place, no reaction (to which one can/must then react again) can follow.
Well, remlaps has elaborated on this idea and pointed out the great disadvantage of the public displeasure of "spoiled" authors... ;-)
Thank you for this post, which has inspired such a great discussion! Thanks also for the direct dialogue - I haven't enjoyed conversation on the Steem like this for ages!
I am also very grateful for the discussion. I know I have taken up a lot of your time. But I really learned a lot from our conversation. Thank you very much.
Agreed. Especially now, while the SBD print rate is 0. This is why I've continued to use /promoted even though it hasn't gained much traction.
I'm not actually sure if this is true.
In principle, authors can attract attention from the Steemit team in #club5050, #club75, #club100, etc... but use /promoted to attract attention from other curators. If a $0.02 promotion cost gets you an additional $0.50 and reaches a wider audience, it's still worthwhile.
It would definitely be more compelling with participation from Steemit, though. ;-)
Perhaps the promoted page would attract more attention if a competition were organized. For example, whoever gets to the top of this page by a certain date will receive 50 STEEM. But for this we need sponsors :-)
Still, in my opinion, the only way to the success of the blockchain is to earn money from the outside. As a country sells goods to another country, and when it has a positive external balance, then the standard of living in the country increases. Steemit needs to make money. Currently, the price of the STEEM token is based on the belief of investors that one day they will be able to sell it for a higher price. The price of all cryptocurrencies is based on this. But if Steemit could make money, then it would be the most unique cryptocurrency project. We even have a product - it's content. We just need to figure out how to sell it to someone. Content is tightly coupled with ads, but a new front-end is required to install ads.
Maybe there are other ways. Some merchant could order reviews of their goods or services by posting on Steemit. But for some reason, none of the entrepreneurs are interested in this. Also, the authors would be withdrawing the money instead of investing it in STEEM. A system is needed where all earned funds are converted to STEEM. But I have already been carried away into the realm of fiction :-)
So, it occurred to me last night that we can already use pinned posts in communities to provide visibility to promoted posts.
See STEM Saturday Post Promotion #9: Human brain size started shrinking when information storage technologies emerged
Good idea. It would be good if other communities joined this initiative. This can really incentivize authors to promote their posts.
I agree. I had actually hoped that other communities would follow my initial idea of promoting a community member's post each week. I had thought that it might spur a little healthy competition between communities. My goal is to lose control of what appears at the top of /promoted. ;-) Unfortunately, after 9 weeks, that didn't really happen.
Of course, with this latest idea, there is also the possibility that community owners could sell "Pinned" post placement directly. i.e. "Send STEEM/SBD to the admin to get your post pinned for X hours."
Or there could even be a hybrid model. Burn SBD during the reward window or send STEEM/SBD to the admin to rent a pinned post slot after payout time. Lots of possibilities. It's such a simple gateway into advertising that I'm surprised no one has thought of this before (or maybe someone has?).
I guess it will be up to authors and curators to figure out which (if any) model(s) make sense.
An interesting system occurred to me. I don't know who could implement it. It is possible to develop an automatic algorithm that would work like a lottery. This algorithm could add up the number of SBDs burned by members of the "promoted" page during a certain period of time, for example, 24 hours.
After that, the author, whose post at that moment was the highest, would receive a reward - 50% of the burned SBD. The more participants, the bigger the prize. I'm sure such a rivalry would result in the voluntary burning of significant amounts of SBD. Even bot lovers could participate in the competition.
Funding of rewards must be done with Steem.DAO. That is, someone needs to write a proposal. I am sure that it could be supported, because in this case, in essence, the blockchain "buys" itself a reduction in inflation. In the end, everyone wins.
The system has one weak point. In the blockchain, everyone can find out who sent how much SBD to @null. Then the last member can just send a little more SBD to @null. But this can be overcome by the fact that the period of time during which the winner will be determined should automatically change in a random order every time.
I've been thinking a lot about things like this - ways to gamify it. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with anything that would not require more time and funding than I have at my disposal. I definitely think that gamification would be a good direction, though.
Especially if a game could be created that delivers audience and not just rewards.
This is a very important sticking point. It will also be part of my answer to o1eh when it comes to why we don't have good FB writers, even influencers, here.
Maybe...
I get your point, and I have even thought about the same thing. In my own mind, I ruled it out over two challenges, though:
Also, as the largest stakeholder, I think Steemit really ought to maintain some discretion over what gets rewarded.
Therefore, instead of stopping curation - if I were running Steemit, I would set up some sort of long term incentive structure that links their curators' bonuses to the level and types of blockchain activity and also the future price of STEEM. (of course, for all I know, they may already have such a program)
( I would also start burning 100% of rewards from the steemitblog posts. ;-)
Yes, I also think that Steemit employs such paid curators. But maybe they are not only responsible for curating and could be entrusted with other tasks (besides holidays) for a while. I think that is already the case, because curating is already taken away from them quite a lot by the suggestions of sc03-sc09. I also worked in one of these teams for three months. It was very exhausting and it takes quite a lot of idealism, because no one would work for the "hourly wage" (in our western world). I hope that Steemit Inc. pays its "real" employees better... ;-)
Perhaps there would be more bot and delegation users (only those who can afford it, of course). But since Steemit doesn't really want that, this was part of its monitoring task: anyone who overshoots is not community-supportive, gets put on a list (ah, the "idle" employees could create this during their break...) and also has to expect no attention from the Steemit team in the future (after the break)... ;-)
Yes, of course. As in any other case, that would be: Exceptions prove the rule. This would then be a surprise for "the lucky user" - and Steemit could be sure that it would hit a committed user who is willing to produce good content independent of rewards.
Good idea. A break like this is perfect to think about this in detail and then publish a consistent "set of rules" and the roadmap that has been called for so often in a transparent way.
This programme definitely exists in rudimentary form. Too often, however, the Steemit team does not adhere to its own guidelines when voting, which it "demands" of the curatorial teams. Sometimes you think, "OK, they want to use up their votes, because nobody would had read that sh..." I can relate to that: Nobody can read everything. Well-paid curators should, though - or the thesis of people hired specifically for curating is disproven.... ;-)
Word... ;-)
Well, I actually also think that the proposed "absolute voting pause" is rather utopian.
But a step in the right direction might be the following: The Steemit team votes after five days at the earliest. If by then hardly any private curators have taken care of the post in question and there are no comments on the content, it could be that the article is crap or the author is shunned by the community because of other "offences". That could be checked.
I think this is worth considering for another reason, too. High-value curators could use curation rewards to train smaller curators about what to look for. In the past, I have even thought that whales could (maybe) make Steem more valuable to investors by announcing a certain percentage of their votes a day or two ahead of time and intentionally letting the smaller voters "pile on" to collect the curation rewards. Yeah, the whale would lose curation rewards, but hopefully that would be balanced by an increase in the value of their holdings, since it would encourage investment (or at least, HODLing).
So there's a feedback loop there. The whale learns from the smaller curators and the smaller curators also learn from the whale.
This would be a very "social" aspect for manual operation.
Unfortunately, the reality is different: upvu, for example, votes after exactly five minutes and leaves smaller "curation calculators" no chance at all. Then, of course, there are the smart users who sit directly in front of the whale via autovoter.
But fortunately we are not talking about Upvu and all those who take advantage of this "service"... ;-)
I would be very happy to perceive this feedback loop at some point.
However, that would bring us back to the beginning: for that to happen, many, many more users would have to recognise themselves as curators.
This - and also the new comments by o1eh - give me further ideas: Have you ever thought through what it would be like to increase the CR share to 75%? Curating would be more lucrative, not every user would constantly produce something (which nobody is interested in anyway) "at any price". Unfortunately, upvu and the bots would profit greatly from this, but it would also be a chance to balance the imbalance between readers (curators) and producers (including spammers, scammers, etc.).
Your opinion is important to me! Maybe we can manage to sort out our thoughts (pros/cons) and find an attentive reader in the Steemit team. Many good thoughts have already emerged and been reflected here - they should not be lost.
I have thought about it. I would support it because I agree with your reasoning and I think it would be better for authors, curators, and investors; but I think the impact would be modest. Also, there was HUGE opposition when they switched from 25% to 50% for curators. I'm sure that switching to 75% would be extremely controversial.
IMO, the biggest problem with rewards is not the percentage, but rather that there's no incentive for the curator to self-regulate their vote size. Downvotes were supposed to let others act as regulators, but that didn't work out.
So I have long thought that the most effective thing that could be done would be to take the rewards from the voter with the highest rshares on a post at payout time and throw them back into the rewards pool. This would create an incentive for voters to compete to be the second-highest voter. High value votes from a single account that are wildly different than the consensus would be automatically zeroed out and redistributed to other posts. So... in theory... the voter would want to try to guess what the highest value vote would be at payout time and place their own vote just below that value.
Someone could game this scheme by splitting their stake into multiple accounts, but there is a natural penalty built in if they do that, and the capability still exists to regulate those "cheaters" with downvotes.
Another thing I have thought about is to let authors set the curation percentage at posting time. New authors trying to build an audience could gain visibility by setting curation rewards higher. Established authors could set them lower.
Interestingly, the @null beneficiary creates a sort of a backdoor into this, so we already have it in an ad-hoc kind of way. But that brings the conversation full-circle back to needing web site changes to make the posts easy to find. ; -)
That is also a very interesting approach, which I - I think - already read about in your blog a long time ago, but hadn't quite understood how you meant it. Now I can understand this idea very well, thank you.
In general, I would like to thank you for this very interesting dialogue!
We are watching /promoted now. Hopefully more people will use it now and burn more SBDs.
Powering up is good but alas some people then power down. That is always the risk with #club100.
We like the permanency of burning.
We like people powering up and manually voting.
But that isn't permanent, whereas #burnsteem is.
Thank you for your input. I always try to give the best example through continuous Power-Ups and share my upvote to the other Steemian.
We would love to see less focus on us - in fact we positively dream of that.
But we are not seeing much growth of big independent manual curators. Alas too many get tempted to take an upwards view to other opportunities...
Please, please, please, please... we want to see more independent ideas and initiatives that are not solely designed to get more votes from sc01 and sc02.