smartsteem
What is smartsteem?
IMPORTANT
smartsteem (https://smartsteem.com) is the first votingbot on steem that is purely focused on content quality and wants to make steem a better place for all steemians. Additionally, smartsteem works as a frontend filter that displays posts only from whitelisted users - similar to steemit, busy or chainbb. But it is not an alternative - instead more of an extension.
Steemians can apply and are then reviewed by Moderators through our SmartScore Rating-System and if they are whitelisted – are able to buy upvotes directly from smartsteem and sellers. Because we want to support new and talented steemians, the cost of an upvote is dependant of the total account value. Which simply means: High smartscore & <= Minnow ---> upvote discount. High smartscore & >= Dolphin ---> no discount.
Steemians can also sell votes for a 80% share of the profit. What makes this special is that while we already offer a very high level of quality - it is still possible to select for which users/categories these votes will be sold to.
Here an example of how we display posts from whitelisted users: (Important: because we have no whitelisted users right now, no posts will be shown on the site)
Quickstart Guide can be reached here: https://smartsteem.com/start
Why..?
The biggest problem right now on steem is the amount of spam-content that gets produced every day and also supported through regular voting bots.
This makes it extremely difficult for users to discover valuable content and for quality creators to be discovered. (Which created the whole need for voting bots in the first place.)
While there are some manual curation projects running - smartsteem does it in a different way. Instead of filtering every single post – which is not very efficient. A better approach is to rate the steemian as a whole. We do this with our own algorithm – called: SmartScore.
SmartScore
SmartScore is a rating system which consists of 5 key-attributes:
Quality (of the Posts)
Value (for the reader - given through the Posts)
Uniqueness (of the Posts)
Motivation (of the User)
Effort (from the User)
This logical process distinguishes smartsteem from the other curation projects. Our near-future goal is that the reviews will be made by smartsteem-moderators from the same niche. Which means: if the user is producing art / drawing images – then the Moderator should be a respected member of this community.
Here is a preview of how it looks like when a Moderator is reviewing a application:
Voting Bots are out of control
Now, another reason why smartsteem exists is to bring regulations to Voting Bots.
Currently, Voting Bots are in the Wild-West-Timeline and everybody who has money can buy themselves trending spots and/or upvote thyself and friends for profit.
This was fine, when randowhale was still alive and with MinnowBooster (before the huge votes came in) the only Voting Bot. Giving oneself 1-2$ Upvotes without regulation is no big deal.
However, as more and more money was raised by VotingBots like MinnowBooster, buildawhale and private leasers from @freedom – everything got out of control. Buying 50-100$ Upvotes and boosting oneself to the trending page without real value – is destroying the whole ‘proof-of-brain'-concept. steem is so proud about.
Quality Content Only
That is why smartsteem is only offering Upvotes to reviewed and whitelisted Users. The determined SmartScore is also an indicator of how high the upvote value is allowed to be.
Additionially, steemians can enable vote-selling for whitelisted users and even specifiy on which users their vote will be sold to.
How can you help?
Everybody: We are right now in beta status and what we need the most is - testing! So if you'd like - go to https://smartsteem.com, check out the Getting Started Guide and apply and/or sell votes.
Sponsors: Right now, we are looking for SP-Delegations which in return will be paidout by 20% of our total revenue (even vote-selling) based on the delegated amount.
More info here: https://smartsteem.com/sponsors
Moderators: We are also looking for Moderators to help us with reviewing. While we don't have a compensation reward right now implented, there will surely come a time.
Requirements for Moderators:
- At least 3 months on steem
- High activity discussing, commenting and replying in a specific niche.
- High quality posts
For interest - join our discord and contact me there: https://discord.gg/srHEUuk
FAQ
How does it work?
We have created a simple guide on our site: https://smartsteem.com/start which should explain everything well enough, but I will go in detail how everything works in the next post.
Who is behind SmartSteem?
@therealwolf (who is writing this Post right now) is the main developer & visionary in the team.
@artbunny is known on steemit as a creative digital artist and the creative muse for smartsteem – but outside of steem she has a masters in economics and thus is also in charge of the financial side.
What is next?
Our goals for smartsteem are huge and we want to change the way users are getting value through their work.
Especially since SMT are just around the corner and with this many many new users will come to the blockchain and the last thing we need is more bad content.
Instead our vision is to create a culture on steem where great content gets the value it deserves.
To achieve this, we have a lot of ideas but for now – we need to take one step at a time.
Is smartsteem OpenSource?
No. While we believe in the power of OpenSource, we will remain closed-source until we have established ourselves.
Our amazing Sponsors:
@therealwolf
@here-could-be-your-name
Our Moderators:
@therealwolf
@artbunny
@here-could-also-be-your-name
Join us on discord
If you have any questions, feedback or something else you want to tell us - come and join our discord!
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in https://smartsteem.com/start
Fixed. Appreciate the fast reply!
ok
Yes First Time I Also face this problem @investwarrior
do you still have that problem?
No Sir now its ok....
ok good :)
Thanks for your good response you are really kind
So, you intriduce white-black lists and more sophisticated sorting algo?
Am i getting right?
Hey! Interesting.
However, when I press the Apply button it doesn't allow me to enter any text in the "Why do you want to join?" box. I'm using a mac and safari.
hey - I've fixed that problem. Should work now! :)
Thanks! I confirm that works.
I just want to put my two cents here, not to be negative but only to put out my concern. Maybe something the judges will consider when ever they are judging an article, story or a post.
How do we properly measure all these if we are looking at someone who is posting an article not arts or drawings?
A non english speaking people will be at dis advantage
The quality and value might suffer for those people even if the message they are trying to convey is that exciting or interesting.
Motivation - what are we trying to measure here, the persons motive in posting the article? Whether that person only posted that article to tell a story or just to earn money?
Effort - it is not easy for a non english speaking background person to create a post. It takes hours especially if that person is trying to meet the requirement of the quality and value.
I tell you an example. I am a from a non english speaking background.
When I make an article I spend hours to it going back and forth creating drafts after drafts trying to see if grammars and spellings are correct.
Then after I post it I still get criticized that my post is very low value. Man that is devastating, especially to a person who tried so hard and pour his/her heart out creating that article.
It maybe low value due to the grammars and spelling but the story is unique, the motivation is there which is to tell a story or convey a message, the effort is definitely there because that person took hours to make that article. And the quality? The person that wrote that article will think it is high quality because he/she put so much effort in making it a good quality if a person reading that article says otherwise then that's his/her opinion only.
Remember we are not all writers, we are not all english speakers. Most of the people here are not blogger and probably come from facebook or instagram who are not used to making long articles, who did not worry about grammars and spelling or did not worry about getting slammed due to the quality of their articles.
You make some very valid points here. I was curious about the smartscore system as well, and I think perhaps like the Google Search algorithm it needs refinement from humans to help improve or modify the algorithm accordingly. Things like motivation and uniqueness could be measured by doing some analytics, but other things can be very context sensitive (quality and effort come to mind). Still, a step in the right direction I think :)
Right now, engagement is mostly measured by 1.) how much the user is engaging in discussions, commenting and replying and how much of that is unique instead of copy/paste comments like: 'nice post'.
And through motivation we rate how much the user is trying to change a cause that is higher then himself. For example: while @michaelcj 's posts are good but not great, he still delievers by helping a cause that is bigger than simply earning steem/sbd for himself.
You make some very valid points once again. This is actually something we find very difficult to rate right now. How do you draw the line between 1.) well written posts and 2.) motivated steemians?
I, @therealwolf, would have never guessed that it is so difficult to rate users and their content. Sometimes you really like the person but their content is simply not good enough.
@artbunny is reworking the score-matrix right now to make it easier and more reliable to rate.
Perhaps summarizing the issues that @webcoop has raised, I think it is important to give more weightings to objective measures that are not influenced by individual preferences or subjectivity (because it is impossible to create a 'fair' algorithm based on it). As someone who has worked in user experience design, half of the challenge with the job is to try and work out something that is intangible (what is the thing that someone 'experiences') and translate that into something tangible (i.e. a button that they want to push). More on that in my next post...
Looks like a valid way for the community to get rid of the spam content and focus on finding quality authors and work.
This has the potential to be a crazy gamechanger. I am interested.
hey @techslut, sorry for the late response. Yes, we really hope for it to be a gamechanger. However, we are also sure that in the long run, there has to be another system than voting-bots. But one step at a time. :)
Definitely! Being a minnow, I often times experience that kind of inner hesitation every time I submit an article. That feeling of to write or to not write is constantly playing in my mind because of fear of wasting my time and effort that nobody will be reading my post, let alone take the chance of up-voting it and waste their voting power on someone they don't know.
I haven't posted in a week before last night. And I've never posted more than 2-3 posts a day. If I don't have something of true value to submit - I just don't. Screw the payouts.
You have a valid point on that. We all have our own reason of joining the platform. For someone who strives to make at least a basic source of living out of writing stuff, it seems it's kind of necessity regardless of your current writing mood.
And I find it very difficult to have a justifiable return of effort if you don't have a massive amount of STEEM Power. Now I am beginning to incorporate some referral link on my posts in order to somehow justify what I am doing. #makesteemitgreatagain
thank you so much for sharing it :))
resteemed :))
Appreciate that!
Applied and resteemed! Great project I hope so much it takes off!
Thank you - glad to have you on board!
This is one of the few interventions that we have been waiting for. Let us #makesteemitgreatagain
I have applied, eagerly awaiting my score....
drumroll please....