Discontinuing my daily statistics posts
Following a systematic flag of my latest statistics posts, I have no choice but to stop posting the daily payouts report. According to the authority flagging them their content is not something the network should be rewarding in such a way and they are not in the best interest of the rewards pool.
I apologize to all steemers following and liking those daily posts.
I also want to thank everyone for their support of my statistics posts in the past weeks.
isn't the community as a whole the best option to decide what is fair? I think the idea of 'capping' is a socialist/ communist way of thinking. That is the definition of wealth distribution. What individuals have the authority to decide what is fair for everybody? Starting capping is going to be a very slippery slope. In my humble opinion (I have confidence I am allowed to express opinion) capping is a a dangerous idea and incapable of deciding fair. Very sad to this type of censorship being considered here on what I thought was a free market. I am really bummed out. To you masteryoda, Steem ON!
I am sympathetic. A few days ago, I published a post about a business idea, which was flagged by a big guy with a motivation which I found more or less understandable. So I withdrew the post and the project. A few days later, a similar idea was published, got no flags, and took off... This downvoting thing is probably being abused.....
Wait, i thought this was steemit? The free thought , anarcho-anything place for all to be heard? Keep going @masteryoda something tells me your information needs to be out there when the head honcho himself thinks it doesn't!
masteryoda + smooth = ned downvote
you're right. it "was". Now its quite controlled these days.
Do you agree with Ned's flag or not? If not, why are you choosing to stop a service you believe is valuable to the network? Why are your actions dictated to you by someone with Steem Power? Your post here seems to signal to the network: "Sorry everyone, you may have enjoyed what I was doing, but I won't do it unless I get paid enough money. It wasn't about providing value to you, it was about me getting paid."
I do a weekly report on Exchange Account Transfers. Some versions of that report have made over $300. Some far less. The last one was less than $20. If people value it, I'll continue to do it. If people don't value it and ask me to stop, I'll consider my own views on whether or not it's a valuable service to the network. If I choose to continue and receive flags or lose followers, I'll have to reconsider my subjective position on what's valuable to the network.
It's still my decision. I recommend rereading this post by Dan: https://steemit.com/anarchy/@dantheman/nonviolent-censorship-is-how-nonviolent-societies-create-nonviolent-government
There is no violent censorship here, and people who are truly free thinkers not shackled by the belief in authority can do whatever they want. Ned and Dan don't control you. If you think your posts are valuable, and you are doing them as a service to others, why would you stop? Are you only interested in the payouts or in keeping some "authority" happy? Why not be interested in providing value to others?
I maybe possible to provide this kind of data every day (plus curation activities!) But I don't believe that a whale will give me over $5000 in a month. (Between 8/19 and 9/18 when @ned began downvoting, these posts obtained around $5500 from the whale with 24 votes) I think this $5500 should have gone to more creative writers and contents providers.
As I explained in another comment, this is misleading and dishonest. My vote on a post alone pays out about $42, and this number is backed by an actual test (I found a random post in New and voted on it, as a test, before removing the vote; in the process I burned about $20 of my voting power, but getting accurate real world data made it perhaps worthwhile). Thus 25 votes would be about $1050, not $5000. The rewards on @masteryoda's posts, including rewards of sometimes $50 or more when I didn't even vote on them are the result of my votes along with many others' votes.
@clayop, please stop lying and trolling about whales' influence. Yes, whales have a lot of influence but when people like you who should know better (and I would argue do know better) distort the facts and constantly approach these issues from a negative perspective it brings down the entire platform. I have not been downvoting your comments consistently even when they are formed on the basis of lies, half-truths, distortions, and negative trolling, but if these continue I will start doing so in the future.
There are ways to work positively to build Steem into a better community, but you, unlike @masteryoda, are choosing a different, decidedly more negative approach that is filled with criticism (even when couched as 'data') and is increasingly bitter. Please reconsider it.
If you intended to give him $50 per post, you could adjust your vote after a post reached to hundreds dollars, or you could skip some following posts to set the average to $50~100 (or whatever you want). But the your actual contribution in the payouts is around $5000 in a month. You had enough options to adjust the degree of the payouts, but you neglected. Now @ned tried to adjust it and you are against his action.
And what am I lying about? I can open my code (although its shamefully dirty) then everyone can run the same analysis. I think the negative perspective is not from these analysis but from some behaviors of some members. If there is no such behaviors, the analysis cannot tell any negative things.
IMHO, @masteryoda now can run his own web service with rewards he obtained so far, and provide the same stats.
I intended to give my vote. The rewards are up to other voters and the system and I don't control them, nor do I have any intention of continually monitoring the rewards of every post I vote on to fine tune a particular reward level. That is absurd.
I do sometimes remove or adjust my vote on a post if I find the overall reward to be excessive and I think I may have done that in one or two cases of @masteryoda's posts (not sure). But in general I did not and do not find the overall rewards he is receiving to be excessive given the positive reception these posts and masteryoda's presentation and presence have in the community and what that suggests about value.
Value is subjective as I'm sure you are aware and I don't necessarily find original novels, poems, etc. to be more valuable than @masteryoda's contributions (and I use that word broadly to encompass the positive presentation and vibe that he brings to Steem). In some cases such original-works posts may be very valuable, but not necessarily. If I tried to write an original novel and posted chapters, my ability to do so would suggest that you should downvote it based on value.
That is a measure of contribution (or elsewhere you call it influence, though in fact it is neither) that you made up and which allocates a composite result of a collaborative voting process over time in a particular, and as it happens, very peculiar manner. In effect, it assumes each voter returns to each post the same instant right before payout and makes an explicit decision whether or not to remove his or her vote independent of the observed or anticipated actions of other voters. That is not how the system normally operates, not how people use it, and it is not reasonable to ever expect this to approximate reality at all.
This is false I have stated several times in this thread that I support @ned taking the action he did based on his perception of the value. I had some disagreement with some of his reasons he shared with me privately but ultimately it is his vote and his choice.
Thank you @smooth for your support of my statistics posts, obviously many people like them and find them valuable as it clearly shows in this post’s comments and your support has a lot to do with them becoming so popular. I apologize for the time you had to spend on this post to explain your point of view, unfortunately some people insist on vilifying me, my posts and people who support them. To those no matter what we say it will not change anything.
You are definitely one of the wisest big stake holders who truly care about this project and its future. Thanks again!
@smooth, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that your vote did worth around $75 or more before. The reason of current $42 worth is that, steem decreased in value and so the account value too. Take the example of Aug 25 2016 when Steem was at 0.0019 (open price) and BTC was at $577 (open price) which means 0.0019 x 577 = 1 USD per STEEM but today, it worth 40 US Cents. So, your vote was worth around $90 before.
Even on 8th september, steem was worth 0.75 USD which means your vote did worth around $75. And I don't know if you meant $42 worth for both of your accounts or single, because your witness account is also powerful.
BTW, I am neutral in this case and just thought to leave my reply as I felt it essential because @clayop is not completely lying, although I don't think $5000 could be correct figure, he said 24 votes which means, he imagined your vote $200 worthy which is nothing but a big mistake or error.
Oh and by the way, I waited for your more replies but I feel like you forgot to check again. Check them out and share your thoughts.
@steemist I can't reply directly to your comment because of nesting. You are of course correct that the value of a solo vote will vary depending on the price of STEEM, level of account voting power (when I did the test I was at about 99%, but in general many of my votes have been made with lower vote power), and other factors such as the level other voting activity that day. My test did include both accounts BTW.
Thanks for taking your time. So, you tested your both account and that's something I wasn't sure about before.
Yes, value of votes also depend on how many people upvoted before you, and if any whale voted before you and you vote after that whale, your vote value will increase automatically.
Clayop, you don't understand how this works. IF we raise the price of steem by building a free, useful network, where votes count, the number of steem dollars issued every day increases. It is not limited, only the number of steem coins produced every day. This is why when steem wen to 3 dollars, there was more than enough to go around. If it went to 500-600 as bitcoin has done, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
I think you are tapping on a wrong place. I meant the money could go to more productive contents creators who can increase Steem value more.
No, I'm not. If that's the message, then reward those doing that, instead of penalizing someone who's doing work that is obviously appreciated by the community, who are supposed to be directing the flow of rewards, unless, of course, like voting in presidential politics, that is all a big myth.
My point is that I can provide the same stats as masteryoda's. But I may not get a whales continous support since he probably thinks I am not a friend of him.
True, but I would give it a shot. Since you are not a whale, which masteryoda is, you probably also won't get busted for it!
@markrmorrisjr
I am a kind of whale... a smaller one (but much greater than masteryoda)
Flagging is only for spam, not for over riding how the community sees fit to vote rewards out. It's centralized censorship what @ned is doing, plain and simple.
@smooth is doing exactly the same thing on @dantheman since he thinks paying devs with rewards is not good.
And he also does against attacking people. Here
Sorry I may not have clarified my concern as much as I probably should have. I really have no big concerns with whales that are NOT founders voting however suits their fancy (they invested so whatever they want to do is their business in my opinion). My concern is having one of the primary founders of the network doing the equivalent of putting a community member out of business, EVEN though the community itself decided they wanted them to STAY in business by voting them up. That is the only red flag I see here.
I agree with your point. If you look at curation statistics, curation influence in sum of all devs is only 60% of one whale(smooth)'s influence. (Need to mention that they have five times more SP than him) So I think the current situation is not that serious.
@taoteh1221 IMO, some of here (e.g. jesta or roadscape) easily can provide this service on their website(example) without any additional rewards. It's not a hard job. One just can make a script that generates daily/weekly/monthly stats and posts them automatically. Paying thousands a month for this makes less sense. We can rather pay this money for real original contents creators (such as novel writers).
Interesting. Yeh, it's not that serious overall big picture ATM. I still completely trust @ned as well, I think he has good intention and is not malicious at all of course. It's just a shame somebody is shutting down a highly liked community service because of a mere click or two of a founder. I'm sure everything will work out just fine in the long run. :-)
A team of whales can do the same thing as well. IMHO each individual dev is also a member of this community. They put lots of efforts as like other whales put their money, and obtained the shares. Using their own shares is one's choice.
I understand your point of view. I just see it a bit differently I guess. I hold founders to a higher standard myself, because they are the primary caretakers and creators of the platform. There is a big difference in my mind between a private investor who may only be in it for the money and nothing else, and a founder / caretaker who created and maintains the system. I tend to expect seeing an extra level of caution from founders when interacting with the community.
Yessiree bob, your reports will be missed by many...
Perhaps there is another way that you could continue your service by capping the payout reward.
@dantheman, why should it be necessary or logical to "cap" the payout reward. Doesn't the platform take care of this through the built-in incentives? If users value the content they upvote. If they don't value it, they don't upvote it. I don't see the point in flagging content because someone doesn't think other people should value it. All we're doing here is directing the faucet, so to speak. Whether or not specific content is more deserving should not be the point of the flagging system IMHO. Flagging is for content that is abusive, stolen, obscene, spam, etc.
The Oragami ones are cool. One should do what he/she is good at! MasterYoda is good at stats.
I vote on both. Well I used to. What will you be posting next masteryoda?
What do you mean used to? Did you not get the message, there are no new voting limits or weight changes. Vote away!
oragami posts worth hundreds, analytics break downs not acceptable?
who is working for Soros on the Steem team?
Agreed, sounds fishy that someone is downvoting Steem data, only reason could be that they are hiding the falling payouts.
it was @ned
no joke!
Flagging was originally downvoting, which as the whitepaper describes, was intended as a tool to bring down over-inflated rewards. Our vote weight is supposed to be able to both say "I think this should be rewarded more" and "I think this should be rewarded less".
I think it would be ideal to have some smarter voting options available. For example, "I think this deserves $X. My vote will count towards it up until the point of $X, but not further".
I think after they changed downvoting to flagging, they should have revised the whitepaper to say flagging was for spam only. Reducing payouts seems to be censoring BS to me. If a user doesn't get paid anymore, chances are they may stop posting.
they did not change downvoting to flagging. They changed a graphic in the UI. AFAIK, nothing at all changed on the steem blockchain.
The front end change has resulted in a semantic change for the community. Especially with the guidance added on SteemIt.com, about flagging being for abuse. This change in philosophy was never implemented consistently even among the founders though.
Stakeholders are entitled to believe, express and vote that a post is being given too large a share of the rewards pie. To disallow or discourage votes which say "this is rewarded too highly" is censorship in itself.
I don't think @ned got the memo that flagging is only for spam, and not to be used to censor people.
Sounds like this user is essentially being successfully censored by a centralized authority on your platform? Not good.
Dan maybe you can talk to Ned, since it looks like he did the flagging in the most recent masteryoda posts? This is a case where the data and information presented is consistently upvoted by members. It's not content that should be flagged. In fact, why flag content without discussing it with the author first anyway? Please consider helping to resolve this. Thanks.
Yep, I agree, 100%, this is either a user generated platform or it's not and it was definitely presented that way, so I'm afraid I don't get what this is about.
Why does that need to happen, Dan? You talk a big game about liberty, but this right here, is an authoritarian response. You either believe in a free market, or you don't.
capping rewards (instituting a maximum payout for all Steemit posts) has occurred to me also, but I rejected the concept because it deviates us from the natural law of imbalance / the 80/20 principle. IMHO it is far better to continue to allow the best connected people to keep earning 'unfair' $5000 payouts, than it would be to payout 50$ to 100 people... hmm. AND i also have a problem with flagging used as down voting. But I guess that's just me.
How about we cap flagging instead?
Flag content and it costs you exactly what you took from the person you're flagging in terms of money and rep. Then require commentary on each and every flag and allow users to appeal that since it does not only monetary damage, but rep damage.
Your flag the other day on my post cost me an entire rep point even though I was busy talking to those who upvoted and explaining that several of the upvotes were coming from people i was contacting via email to discuss a business that would be using their infrastructure and because this was crypto world i had no other way to verify my ident.
It took me forever to get that rep point, and you took it away because you felt my post wasn't worth the money it generated despite it becoming an active discussion on the merits of voting and curation. Eventually the big voters filtered in and removed their upvotes so it would have gone to 0 anyways. But you did damage to my rep and god only knows how long it will be before I get that point back.
If you cap earnings then what will happen is sock puppet city, just like when you capped maximum number of blog postings. Limiting speech on a free speech centered platform is never going to fix it and money is the ultimate form of speech. You need to loosen the restraints not tighten them. The core of this problem is the fixed daily payout amount. Get rid of that and tie it to user activity instead.
The "fixed daily payout" amount is a myth anyway. Since the price of steem going up, could increase "cash" rewards, making every vote worth 50 cents, a dollar, or more, even for plankton, why sweat it? We need to be looking much more big picture.
I’m not aware such option of capping the reward exists. Also what would be an acceptable reward in your opinion? Thanks!
$50 is an acceptable reward
Says who? People should be able to vote how they want, Let's raise the price of steem, then the SBD payouts each day can go crazy! If you start limiting top payouts you'll stimey the incentive to grow the platform, everyone will end up with a $1 here and there and the whole place will be swimming in spam!
Is there any logic behind this number, or is it just your "gut feeling"? Or are you being sarcastic? I can't even tell...
I think it's a number that none of the users on steemit would feel "weird" about if they see it everyday, unlike seeing $300 everyday for the same post on the trending page, does not look fair
Who cares? Are we shooting for "fair" how are we going to judge that. Is my posts, after twenty years of writing in various capacities for a living on the same scale as some high school kid? Who gets to decide? Is this a decentralized, distributed network, or an autocratic oligarchy?
@craig-grant
What do you know?
I think $50 is too low. It's not the same post. It has new data each day and it's always interesting.
It was a rhetorical question, one that has no exact answer everyone agrees on.
I understand masteryoda. But what I personally don't understand is why some entities flagged content that people are interested in. We know there's interest because of the upvotes and comments. I can only assume the flags came from some people who had a lot of SP. It just smells fishy and is censorship by flagging.
I don't quite understand it neither, so that makes two of us.
That's ridiculous. In one thread it's the system decides what the work is worth, now a cap is proposed....
http://bit.ly/2cu76fn
Maybe @dantheman learned it from @smooth e.g.,
I have not been voting on these posts only on the basis of the statistics. I've been voting on them also on the basis of @masteryoda's presentation of a leaderboard as a generally-positive and engaging community-building concept, along with his interaction with followers to the same end, and finally in support of his ongoing work to produce other useful and interesting statistics such as the recent SBD report. That has been evidenced by the generally-supportive comments that I have consistently seen on his posts, on this post (other than yours and a very few others'), and by mentions of the posts elsewhere on the platform and in chat rooms and private conversations. All of this indicates to me that the posts add value to the Steem community and thus I am awarding my votes on that basis, in accordance with the standards suggested by the Steem designers and founders. (And to be fair, I assume that @ned is using his votes according to the same standards but with a different point of view.)
Your behavior has not evidenced this same sort of community-building approach, at all. If you could present yourrself and your data as @masteryoda has been doing then I would support it.
Also, you made a blatantly unsupported, possibly-inflammatory, and false allegation in another comment, that I was voting for these posts because @masteryoda is my friend. This is not only irrelevant but also false. Other than his presence here on Steem, I do not know @masteryoda. I have never interacted with him other than via his posts and the #witness channel (he hasn't been active there) and a couple of private chats where he asked for my advice and support on a couple of Steem-related development projects.
Please stop the trolling, negativity, and false accusations. They do not add value to Steem and your presence and actions are becoming a stain on the community.
Hello @smooth
Dropped a few important messages to you on steemit chat . Please check them out and reply. Thanks.
BTW guys, @ned already removed his downvote so stop spreading negativity and falsehood.
You have that backwards. I quite literally learned about downvoting being an appropriate action to take in the case of subjectively excessive rewards from @dantheman.
In this case I do not object to @ned taking the action he did if he feels that the rewards on the posts he is flagging are excessive. I do, however, believe that the reasons he gave to me in a private conversation for why he believed this were mistaken and incorrect. I'll let @ned comment on his reasons if he chooses to do so.
Just my curiosity. If I provide the exactly same statistics every day, will you vote for me? (not always but around 20 times per month)
I am trying to understand your wording because I could not understand the term "capping the payout reward" - does it mean to use another metric for measurement?
No, it means limiting the payout on the data posts because some idiot thought it was making too much money.
I feel that, for @masteryoda to get $300 over for a daily statistic posts, is definitely legit. We upvote his content, for appreciation. It may be very simple posts, or complex ones with details, there should not be a cap to how much @masteryoda should receive for the work he's done.
In real life, there're times when we buy something which we feel is over-valued, but we still buy it anyway, be it the reason that we need the product, or service, or its just appreciation or for charity causes.
I hope you continue your work, appreciate what you've done before. And even though I feel that you're over-paid for getting $300 a day for daily posts, I do not support the idea of having a cap to what you can get.
its basis of capitalism.. What's @dollarvigilante gotta say? Steemit makes him tons of money based on his ideology. Will he stand up for MasterYoda ?
This may not be the case where, Steemians who made great posts take a stand with, or against @masteryoda. @dollarvigilante does not need to say anything, neither is he obligated to do so for this case. But I believe most of us here, our primary concern is, why should there exist a cap to what @masteryoda can earn, when us, the community decides whether we upvote his posts or not.
There is no need to introduce the cap in this situation. As time goes, and as we grow into a bigger community, votes will get diversified, with more contents available. At the very moment, @masteryoda 's daily reports are generating decent income for himself. The daily posts might just be simple jobs that takes less than 15 minutes of his time, or perhaps there were effort and passion in what he does that makes his daily posts a thing to be 'upvoted' daily. When the community grows over here in Steemit, most new users might not find @masteryoda 's post to be helpful, and thus, may not benefit from the growing community. Perhaps in the future, the potential of Steemit maximises to the extent, every posts will be so good, authors getting $300 a day will be peanuts.
@neowenyian27
No one ask the whales to UPVOTES
@solarguy
Do you think dv would read this?
@dan haven't even reply to me.
Is a pointless attempt.
he left a comment so he will get notices when a new reply is left. they care.
Dan , Ned , I know your checking in on this particular post. I know you're clever guys and capable of overcoming this hardship. We all believe that. It not easy, I know this was not part of your dream but i also know you were prepared for it. How you will deal with it will be your legacy. I still applaud you for you genius in developing this revolutionary platform. All steemers do.
We are just frustrated today.
^^
And I thought Jedi's don't bleed... What a weak individual you are,,, much disappointing @masteryoda ,,, this post deserves a flag, to show you which of you're post would really get flagged