My Ideas on How to Create a Thriving Steemit.com
I have mostly been a fan of the recent HF changes because they have created massive demand for owning Steem Power, something that has been lacking on here for some time now.
However, there are certainly some major drawbacks to the changes as well, which I won't really go into detail here but I am sure you can all guess what those might be.
In my opinion there are 3 things that could/should be changed within the "rules" of Steemit/Steem that would make this place not only run better, but potentially thrive.
Without further adu, here they are:
1. Limit Self upvotes to 3 per day (or any number between 1 and 5).
There has been a huge debate ever since the most recent changes as to whether self voting should be allowed or not. I personally don't even think that should be a debate, it most certainly should be allowed as it gives great incentive to increasing your own Steem Power on the platform.
However, there must be a limit to it. If every user on here all of the sudden decided it would be in their best interest to only upvote their own comments and posts every day and not vote for any one else, this place would go down the drain in a hurry. To be honest, the current setup incentivizes people to do just that, so we need to make some tweaks.
Limiting self upvotes would limit the amount of spam posts on here and it would limit the number of comment self votes that many on here believe contribute next to nothing besides lining the voter's pockets.
2. Not allow users to vote on the same author on back to back days, must have 48 hours between upvotes.
(This is done to help discourage sock puppet accounts)
Admittedly, this is by far the most controversial. However, it piggy backs off of change number 1. If we just limit self votes without also doing this, then people will be incentivized to created multiple accounts and use all their voting power each day only to vote on all their different sock puppet accounts.
Not allowing users to vote on the same author more than once in a 2 day period will help spread votes around to more users. This is not my ideal change, but to me it is a necessary change to help curb the demand for sock puppet accounts.
In my opinion the first change is mostly useless if you don't also do a change like this one, no matter how controversial it seems at first.
3. Change curation rewards to 40%, so that the new split would be 60% to the author and 40% to the curators.
This one will help incentivize people to actually go out and vote for other people. The first 2 changes were targeted at preventing abuse, but ideally if we incentivize the right things, the abuses will become less and less.
The current curation rewards are too small in my opinion to properly incentivize most people to go out and spend the time using their voting power on other users.
Final thoughts:
Each change by itself probably won't do enough to change the behaviors of users on here, but when you combine all 3 of these major changes I think you could really see this place transform, spread it's wings, and start to take off.
Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Follow me: @jrcornel
Very good ideas!
I like especially your second point as it would not only help against using sock puppet accounts, but also discourage kind of 'vote-for-vote' behavior of certain groups of accounts. I hope it could encourage to seek good content instead of voting for some users because one is just 'accustomed' to do so.
I think step 3 would be enough already. This would incentivice to vote on other comments!
I disagree. Point 3 alone wouldn't stop excessive self-voters like this one for example:
https://steemit.com/@sandrino
Also it wouldn't prevent excessive mutual voting of certain accounts.
I like the 3rd idea but there should be more to this
we lost balance - really
if we could find a solution to bring back balance
otherwise people would just register, but steem (some do) and those who don't
will have to be wished good luck to grow
I miss the old days but we have to live in the moment
if people would just be aware that the reward pool is getting drained every second
they could also self regulate and adjust their voting habits
and just go around other posts too
if we want to grow
we have to find a way or a solution to having a "fairer" reward distribution that is not prone to abuse
I think the ideas of @jrcornel are a very good mix!
Great post indeed. The platform needs some change. A situation where you literally have to beg for upvote from people with big sp is an anomaly.
The issue of producing quality posts makes no sense for a minnow if you have nobody that will push the post up for others to see.
I am not a fresh minnow but this issue is still of great impact on my blog so I can imagine how freshers feel.
Hi @jrcornel thank you for posting this. I like your ideas also, especially the up-voting your own posts 1-3-5 times a day. I think if we limit that it would make fore more engaging conversations and better content. Thank you for sharing your insights with us :) -JoeParys
When you place too many restrictions on a platform, it just causes people to lose interest and eventually find something else
one of the only things holding steemit together is the fact that you can make money on this platform
if people arent allowed to like what they like, upvote themselves as much as they like ( something thats built into the code ), or are told when and how to do something on the network, all thats going to happen is someone else will make a new platform, where people can do these things, and eventually people on steemit... will no longer be on steemit
the only reason we have such a huge number of people who sign up everyday on here is because someone else told them in a forum that they could make money
if reddit or instagram started giving people money for posting content steemit would be a deserted waste land in a week
I agree with @moderninvestor. If there's too many rules, it becomes difficult to use. I'd like to see Steemit stay as free (as in freedom) as possible.
I totally agree. Earning money is the big selling point of steemit. If this is taken away, what's the selling point of steemit?
I agree with you, but don't you think there is something wrong with the current system when users are incentivized to only upvote their own posts and comments every day? If every user on here adopted this mindset things would go downhill in a hurry...
@jrcornel you're right one of those things that has gone wrong with Steemit is making people think that it is their new work from home/work office where they can make money. This has gradually divided the community through segregation and other unnecessary external sites. The other day I tagged KR in one of my post and someone was bold enough to let me know that only posts made for Koreans should be tagged with kr. Yet we are supposed to be networking with eachother socially. I even found another post tainting @craig-grant and @trevonjb. I joined in June and I am disappoited already with the level of fake love, and greedy people regardless of the self upvotes. But it's life, we just have to deal with it.
I sometimes upvote my own comments so that they are seen, but I don't do it all the time. It's very unlikely that every user would decide to only upvote their own posts and comments. A lot of people are here to network with other people, as that may be much more valuable then just getting a few cents by upvoting your own stuff.
In any case, I'm happy to be here. Wish I'd started using Steemit sooner.
The problem isn't with getting a few extra cents here and there. The larger accounts are able to allocate 10's and 100's of dollars per upvote, and if they wanted to they could direct that all towards their own comments and posts, which in the current system would actually give them the most "bang for their buck". Which is exactly why I think things need to be tweaked...
We want a system that incentivizes helping others while also helping yourself.
That's why I think point 3) is the way to go: Increase the curation rewards!
So you say people who are here primarily for the money would all leave? Wouldn't that be just great!
Most truly interesting bloggers I know blog in their free time, for their pleasure and on platforms where they are not financially rewarded for it.
Hmmm, I was going to write that I don't believe anyone should be allowed to upvote themselves - but you raise some very good points. In fact you're spot on and have converted me.
Great suggestions to help steemit thrive! I like how all of these actions would be geared towards incentivizing less abuse and more of the actions that should help steemit thrive. Thanks for the insight :)
I like these ideas.
Here's a couple of related alternative thoughts I had.
1
Reallocate a small portion of the author reward pool and distributing it in proportion to the dispersion of votes that each account has cast, or similar? I think this could have the effect of offsetting some amount of self-voting, sockpuppets and clics, to bring those problems under control.
Perhaps this reward could simply be proportional to the number of accounts each user votes on, so a pure self-voter would get 1, whereas somebody who votes for 100 different accounts gets 100 times more from that reward pool.
@dwinblood pointed out that with services offering instant account creation, this could result in some people creating large numbers of sockpuppets, but I think given the $10 per account fee, it would at least present a barrier to entry.
2
Limit the number of rshares that can be awarded per top level post (to the post and all sub-comments). This would force self-voters to make large numbers of top level posts which are more likely to annoy followers and be flagged for polluting the feeds.
Very good post. It's funny, I did a community building post too! I guess great minds think a like! Even though I don't know you I like your posts and your financial advice thanks
Great suggestions @jrcornel. I agree with all three of these, except I would not put a number limit on self-votes, but I would put a limit on percentage strength at which one could self-vote. I would make it graduated, like the 1st self-vote could be done at 100%, the 2nd at 75%, the 3rd at 50%, the 4th at 25%, and the 5th or more at 10%. Something like this.
Interesting thoughts, I hadn't thought about that. Might be an option as well.
Right now steemit is a complete mess, only a few people are coming daily to the trending page, and the hard working new users are not even getting cents in rewards, we need to get rid of those circle jerk type of posts, where the trending page is only consist of how steemit is great and other bla bla about steemit. we need diversity @jrcornel
I like this idea. It's similar to the penalty people used to get for making more than 4 posts/day. They could make more posts, but the payouts for their first 4 posts would go down dramatically.