RE: Be Careful, Steem!
You as the user are better off when organized, yes, at the moment. Not only that, but what the site also needs is scale. A small system like this one, in terms of numbers of curators, doesn't behave the same when it's larger. Networks are very sensitive to scale, in their intermediate internal states and behavior.
@surfermarly wrote a great post. I agree 100% with it. Problem exist to be solved, as John Wheeler said. Therefore problems ought be posed to be solved.
I suggest, it's not quite capitalism per se. It's more path dependence; — the site is a consensus economy, but it has very few large curators. Why — because it only recently became popular. That and the low number of miners besides the devs at the very beginning. The issue becomes, then, that only 10% of any group ever participate much — for instance, curate for quality. Which is exactly what we see with the large stake holders. 4—5 actively curate or delegate to those who do bother.
It's unionization but also it's not. The search cost on a large content site is very high. Search is stake weighted, visibility is convoluted by ordered stake patterns, creating a feedback.
Few users have the time to perform an above threshold search, and the probability that they are also the same users who have the stake to upvote much is . . . The result is status quo is maintained.
Therefore organizing is quite beneficial to all. There's not a bargaining conflict, I would say. The newer users don't have a market position; groups of users posting in organized fashion make it much, much easier to find their content.
Excellent point! Thank you @tibra.
I only understand half of what you wrote Ned in that comment, will read it a couple of times more though :-)
The more people, the longer the tail and the bigger the gap between influencers and non-influencers. That's my prediction under the current system. But with SMTs a lot will change, so by now we actually can't forecast what's gonna happen.
The key, I suspect, is the stake weighting. More people with high net worth need to appear on the platform and curate. To have a voice here, you need content and stake, or content and have somebody with stake curate.
That means the platform might do well to help some existing communities transition onto Steemit. The ones with both extensive activity and curation and sufficiently wealthy users.
Tenured and/or chaired academics are easily wealthier than most users here. Mathematicians generally possess a very strong sense of aesthetics and principle. I suggested to Ned they would do well to curate. The issue is that most of the people joining have literally nothing and cannot curate, even if they wanted. Therefore the gap between influencers and ordinary content producers grows.
One user with high net worth also cannot curate. No time, too few full upvotes. Increasing the number of full upvotes would lead to more abuse by some current large users: " :) " 300. " :-) " 300. " :-() " 300.
As you said, with >90% of all steem in the hands of <1%, and only 10% of that, 4-5, curating for quality, the gap between influencers and ordinary content producers would increase as more and more people join; but it will decrease if a threshold number of the new people are both very principled AND can easily obtain stake.
The issue now is that with all the spam and flag wars and weird upvotes, the problem itself, precisely the people who can help the platform — because they are principled and wealthy — for the same reason — because they are principled and their time is valuable — will not join — and the problem grows ever more serious.
(I should disclose that I'm a mathematician; I venture that I could get quite a few people here from there, especially if Dan is going to upvote, the minute MathJax is on Steemit. Then just sit back and watch angry mathematicians upvote the content producers, especially ones clearly trying, and flag to negative infinity all the abuse and spam and flag wars. An opposite feedback, a good one, just might establish.)
What about making upvotes on smaller accounts more attractive from a financial point of view? e.g. through a weighting: the larger the difference between the curator's (high) and the author's (small) reputation, the better the weighting.
Example: My rep is 71. Now if I upvoted a piece of content of an author that had rep 30 it would be proportionately more beneficial to me than voting a rep 50 user.
Does that even make sense?
Correct. That's one point which could be addressed by STMs like the @communitycoin. I really believe that by introducing SMTs the inequality could at least be partly solved.
I have never understood why the majority just sits and watches while the platform's store sign is covered with hatred. The trending page is the entrance hall of Steem for everybody who's still not signed up to this place - which is the majority of internet users. There's not only one day without drama, which makes this place look like a kindergarden.
Well I presumed that to be honest, since you were talking so much about them :-)) Great. I'm a Computer Scientist, and math was my favourite subject at the university. Now I confess that I haven't been much into it lately since I was working in marketing and sales all my life.
But maybe that common denominator and passion for science in general is still one of the reasons why I enjoy talking to you very much... who knows :-)
Enjoy your weekend!