Hardfork 19 Might Have Been a Step Too Far In the Right Direction
With the recent hardfork we saw the number of ideal 100% votes per day get lowered, but also at the same time their power was raised substantially. Ultimately this was implemented in order to make newer users feel like they were actually contributing to the system by having an actual impact on the dollar amount. It succeeded in that regard, but ultimately I think it was a step a bit too far in the right direction that ends up centralizing the system more than it should.
The biggest problem we had before the hardfork was that because the ideal target number of 100% votes was so high, many people either didn’t bother even voting, or left the site because they could vote even a penny. While I agree this was not ideal, we definitely saw many accounts grow during this period and many more people actually were making money off their articles. The only real problem it created was an inflated steem dollar price way over the pegged amount. The hardfork has definitely fixed the peg problem, but I fear now it will push it too far in the wrong direction.
The good thing about having a large amount of votes per day for people who were invested was that we could support a larger amount of audience and it heavily incentivized against lazy curating. Right now instead of seeing many people spread their voting power out, they are all incentivized to vote on the same 10-20 people every single time they post an article, leaving many people out of the loop now. People, who are creating good content and deserve to be making more than pennies.
While the small ideal voting target doesn’t mean people cant spread out their curations, it does mean that many people simply don’t have to put the work in. I have always been of the thought that the ideal target amount should be at a level where most people have to work to reach, ultimately rewarding those who put the effort into voting, more. I personally save a majority of my voting power for the people who comment on my articles in order to help spread the wealth. I don’t think that is currently happening now.
This is coming from someone who has actually benefitted from the hardfork, but I don’t think it leads to long term survivability within the platform. I would rather see the money more spread out and have the ideal vote target at an amount that forces people to actively curate. Personally I see this target at somewhere between 20-25 votes per day. I think this amount is a healthy medium for many people on the platform who still want to see their votes have power, but at the same time, be given the change to succeed. I want to see a plethora of content, not just the same 10 people on the front page everyday. Incentivization is the most powerful tool that the developers have, so by incentivizing people to all upvote the same 10 people, were doing a disservice to the platform as a whole.
Thanks to @Elyaque for the badges
I agree with you in the short term - we've all been caught off guard by our newly powerful 100% upvotes.
I think the community is starting to catch on though - in some cases, this actually enables us to support the newer / under-appreciated authors. When I see a quality post with less than a dollar of upvotes, I can crank my vote to 100% and provide 40-50 cents - while hardly a huge payout, it's a notable difference compared to my previous 100% vote of 5 cents.
Depends on how the community uses it. I could definitely agree with you that a sweet spot might be a slightly less powerful 100% upvote, maybe half as strong as currently set.
I fully agree with you. I am not long on steemit, but I definitely liked the platform before HF more. The voting culture especially on the minnows level was different and more encouraging. Now we have a hard time and have to be very patient.
Patience does make for great quality. I agree it can be discouraging and hopefully the developers and witnesses are reading comments like these to find improvements.
Without patience this is just a pile of rocks...
Balanced rocks and photo by me
Thank you for the encouraging photo. :-) ;-)
Absolutely! I love to help others achieve wealth and happiness. It all comes back around.
Lots of issues rising due to HF19 I believe. I can't count how many people have come to my posts and commented how much they loved my work yet didn't upvote, or the worst yet the ones that did comment and say I am sorry I can't upvote you because I am out of voting power. I literally have not changed my writing content, still have the same influx of growing followers and commentators but I was doing way better payout wise preHF19 vs what has happened here now a couple weeks later. I also run Steemit Blogger Central and have an army under me in a way, yet averaging from $100 posts to fighting to make $2 a post the last 2 weeks has really making me wonder what is up with Steemit lately.
The effects on me are this, less drive to curate content as often, a bigger push to help others in my project than myself (that being a plus), a huge negative for me though is seeing meme posts make $50 earnings and I sit for hours on top of hours doing research and tighten up my posts for readers...that alone has me questioning HF19. Its going to get a point I think that this voting issue will end up reaching to the top, hit us lower to moderate guys first but there is buddy systems forming with upvoters and in time it could spread out. This concerns me as well...centralization forms that way with groups forming to horde up votes. Personally I did make a good run with Steemit for a guy just banking back post earnings and near 1000 SP in a month but how long should it make sense to scrap $10 a week for the family? Not too much more sense to me personally and why I may cash her out if it doesn't change and move onto trading again. This is something Steemit should be concerned with because that is how everyone I know in here is talking lately. Luckily I am in this for the long term and have a project to keep me active but your points are scary valid on the situation and more so with the lower crowd who keep telling me they are about to call it quits, think we are going backwards here all the sudden
But that is Bullshit., They just are not at 100%, but the are not out of voting power.
i've seen people running out of voting power , new people like me that keeps liking / upvoting things there is no fail save protection on liking / voting people do run dry and leave because they don't understand why .
Ah, see, there is the difference.
They don't run out of voting power (which is afaik impossible), they just run very low and don't understand why.
the system is to complicated for the below average users
@lennstar I actually looked them up on steemnow when they said that, actually they were being honest the 2 that did tell me that, they got down to around 5% so to me that was 0% enough lol. What is going on is people that are new are not aware of the tools out there enough I think, not keeping an eye or grasping how fast that runs down now after HF19. That recovery time is slow to when they drop out so hard on it. Personally though I could care less where my earnings come or go, if it keeps getting bad I will just return to trading coins, buy a little Steem here and there to make up for the downfall going on with my profile lately and hope eventually people wise up on better ways to upvote.
In the end its all about what people choose to do with this, if they want great content then they will upvote what they feel is great content, if they just want to make this about making money alone then I suspect the content creators that do work hard will be hit and miss on truly getting their due values. Personally I am fine with Steemit and HF19 has a few flaws but positive sides too. Its all BETA still so everyone just kind of needs to go along for the ride if they are in this for long term.
No they actually run out! Newbies don't have that feature of setting voting power and if you're new and vote 10 times in like 1-2 hours you're out COMPLETELY!
As a minnow digging for gold I find it difficult to choose who to upvote and who to just pass by. While it is impossible to have zero voting power, what good is my $0.0001 vote to anyone?
There are many more minnows than whales, and this is a good thing, but the minnows should at least have the ability to give a consistent $0.01 upvote when they see something worth the vote.
Before the HF I was DOUBLING my payouts every day! A week after the payout, if I'm extremely fortunate, my posts and thoughtful comments make around $1.
The atmosphere has changed from this
To this ...
Image credit Giphy
We all just have to hang in there, its all about 2 options, are we in this for the long run or short term. Me I am in this the long run, I may have worded my comment where I seem to be about to quit but I am meaning its the users I talk to lately threatening that, me I mine so when its slow here I just run off and do other stuff, do get a little less active but you have to kind of weigh what is good for your personal gains and not. Right now this went from full time here to more of a hobby at the moment. But i have a project called Steemit Blogger Central and that is my full time gig. Honestly its just a growing pain right now, any HF will do that, few tweaks, little education on the usage from the new people and they will turn it around.
It would be nice to see the votes spread out a little more evenly that's for sure. Although it does feel good now that my vote has a value lol I have mixed feelings about hf19
I suggest if the voting slider includes how much estimated vote power you have remaining, people would be using the slider more often and more carefully.
I agree, the problem (as I see it) HF19 tried two things at ones:
They should have done one before the other, so they could monitor the behavior of voting / curating better!
But now we're here, so I guess the best way forward is indeed changing the voting to 20 votes and reduce the Voting Power to 50%.
I fully agree on this and am hoping the next hard fork would be for the better as well. There will always be people jumping hoops and trying to rig the system, and one hard fork doesn't fix it all. It's one drop at a time to fill the bucket. Hopefully the next hard fork takes us further unto steem becoming a better platform.
Exactly. That's what I keep saying to people. I've invited a lot of friends to Steem and when they didn't like what they were getting from their posts. I told them it was way worse before for people who have less Steem and they just have to be patient because Steem gets better and better because of the consensus in Hardforks.
Thank you again for reminding me. :)
This is the biggest issue that I see right now along with the fact that some are upvoting themselves almost exclusively. Or the circle jerk groups that are essentially doing the same thing. The idea was right but didnt work out well.
I agree with your thoughts.
I also think it might be great if we had a separate flagging power. I wrote an article on it earlier tonight. That would allow us to flag out some of the spam in places like the "Business" tag in Trending, without using up all our voting power in a negative fashion that helps no users directly (beyond the reward reallocation) and nullifies curation rewards, does not build followers, etc.
A separate power for flags would be an awesome idea. We should also require users to have a minimum reputation of 50 to flag a post so that they understand what the community values and what it does not. That would reduce flag abuse and make flags more "fair". It would also reduce "revenge-flags" because the person being flagged would lose the reputation needed for a backlash.
I definitely think Rep could be used here effectively, too.