How to make Steemit great again in 5 easy steps!
Steemit is in my opinion one of the greatest social experiments to ever come along.
I know almost all of us come into steemit and it's like this...
But consider this for just a moment
Each and every one of us now have the ability to help others to earn a meaningful living in a world where the only thing scarce are jobs.
Unfortunately, the waters are a little choppy right now.
@Dan just quit and many people are flipping out, and now we have major players like @dragosroua shutting down their nodes, powering down and dumping their steem. We have whale wars going on and an experiment, that sadly is beginning to seem like a particular experiment from Stanford...
Nothing personal @abit and @smooth but here's the truth. The experiment is awesome for the reward pool, but it's going to kill steemit if you and the others continue with it. The negativity associated with a flag is too much for most people emotionally to bear. You can claim it's not personal, but people feel like it is and that perception is all that matters. They feel hurt. You can get the same result with far less effort by just upvoting whatever content you do like.
But that's pretty much all of the bad news. The good news is that steemit and steem are still in great shape, and we as a community can make this even better.
So here are 5 easy steps that we can all do to make steemit great again!
Power Up 100% on every post, every time! - Doing this reduces the amount of new steem actively entering circulation, plus it gives you clout, weight. This additional clout is power for your upvote and means that your voice carries more weight. With major whales powering down and you powering up, your voting power will be worth MUCH more in the near future.
Never flag! - unless the post is a violation of copyright, or it's trolling or abusive. I know the design here is that downvotes/flagging redistribute the rewards pool. But the part that was missed in the design of the system is the emotional impact of being flagged for earning too much money. This isn't a communist system. Yes there is the option to forceably redistribute someone's earnings. But the same effect can be achieved just by upvoting the content you like. The downvoting to remove rewards serves no purpose that isn't better served by just upvoting only the things you like.
Share your posts here on other social media! - Not just the posts themselves, but also talk about steemit on your other social media. Make your initial posts here and share there. If one of your posts happens to attract a lot of attention on other social media networks, then it brings attention to this platform. That attention is the real currency behind steemit. The more attention we get, the more valuable the efforts of each and everyone of us becomes.
Get involved! - Not just here but also on Github. A lot of discussion occurs on Github that never even sees the light of day here. But these discussions are vital to the long term future of the platform and as an example
Here are 2 feature requests, that will change the face of steem as we know it...
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/848
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/947Consider buying steem whenever it droops a little! - Right now we have people that bought in at as much as $5.00 trying to exit. These people are taking a major loss just to exit. But here's the thing. This won't last. If you're an American, dumping your excess steem for a loss is a tax write off. There is a good incentive to dump because Uncle Sam is paying for all your losses and there are people including myself that are powering down for this reason alone. But this will only be true for a few more weeks. Once April 14th rolls around, the price decline will stop and most likely reverse as a lot of the pressure to sell abates. That means that there HAS NEVER been a better time to buy than right now, and there may not be another chance like this again.
Stay happy! Because there has never been a better time to be part of this than right now...
Some final thoughts...
As the whales power down, yes it pushes the price down for everyone, but it's also redistributing the economic power of the steemit platform into a more democratic arrangement. These whales who are dumping are doing so at a loss. But if we endure this short term pain, I am still confident that in a few years time steem will be trading at $10 each. We just need to focus on the long term and take proactive steps to make that happen and one of those steps is acquiring steem on the open market. As new businesses adopt steem and use it in new and innovative ways it will attract more businesses and consumers to the platform. @tradeqwik for instance powers up it's entire cold wallet and uses it to upvote our most active traders. That's hardy the only business giving steem a long hard look right now. But these things take time, so have a little patience because it will pay off in the end and you'll get to be part of all of it!
Steem On!
This post is 100% Steem Powered!
These images all came from various google image searches, if you know who's they are, let me know so I can provide attribution, thanks!
Your post has been a real breath of fresh air!
Attitude is Everything!
Promoted and resteemed.
Thank you so much for doing that! I really appreciate that you liked it, the resteems are great, and promotion is always an awesome feeling!
You have done a great work @wiliambanks! I love it!
You are doing so many things for this community! I hope one day to become like you! 10 more people like you on steemit and it will blow up! Cheers @onceuponatime!
You are making me blush lol
That's not what I want :D
I can say in the name of a lot of people that you are very generous and they will admit that! That kind of person I want to become! Maybe next time when I will have the chance to meet you like I had at Steemfest, I will thank you in person for your generosity you provided!
Love it! That´s the way to go, YES. Thank you!
Resteemed :)
Wow! Thank you for the support!
With @dan dumping I feel we could be looking at another 13 weeks of depressed prices .
I have my doubts he'll keep dumping past the April 14th deadline. The tax penalties would be awful and when push comes to shove he's dumping at a major loss. Who knows though. But either way it's one less whale in the pool.
FYI, dan said that he will be powering down at old speed (2 yrs). But I don't know how I can check his current rate. Information from -
https://steemit.com/steemit/@berniesanders/why-did-ned-lie-to-the-steem-community#@dan/re-berniesanders-why-did-ned-lie-to-the-steem-community-20170315t031525677z
I agree with every point, @williambanks! Great post. :)
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
You bet! Looking forward to that price rise.
Oh boy, so am I :D
Upvoted and resteemed. Thank you!
Thank you so much for doing that! I really appreciate it!
It is the stated argument but the reality is that a group of whales and bots always vote for the same people regardless of the content of the post.
The experiment partially broke this pattern
Removing curation rewards would also break this pattern. Like I said it's great for the reward pool, but it's actively harming the perception of the community to the outside world and frankly it hurt's people's feelings inside the community too.
Great post 😁 And love the attitude.
On one point you're incorrect though
To counter the effect of an up vote using only up votes you'd have to up vote every other eligible post in a very precise way to raise the overall up votes considered for reward pool distribution. Down votes work very well in a much simpler way.
However I really agree that flags have a negative emotional impact. I believe this could be solved by a UI change and outreach.
I disagree with the idea that ui change and outreach solves this. And yes upvoting things in a very specific way may take more time and effort, but if you care enough to downvote, my question is why waste the one resource this community has very little of, i.e. good will, in order to save a little effort?
Furthermore, how can anyone really support the idea of redistribution of wealth like that? A simpler solution would be to keep what we have but ditch curation rewards. The automated upvotes exist solely for 2 reasons. #1 is curation rewards and #2 is solidarity. You'll never do anything about solidarity voting. But ditching curation rewards removes an economic incentive to run a mindless bot.
Great comment though and thanks!
If curation rewards were ditched, what would be the incentive for holding Steem Power? After all, we already got rid of the hyperinflationary interest rates, and so far as I can tell that hasn't really made more people want to invest in Steem as was hoped for. Sure, having a greater ability to help others out is nice, but there has to be at least some personal benefit to holding SP or I suspect we would see an acceleration in power downs and sell offs as a result.
For example, VIVA has the dividends based on liquidity pool stake, so in VIVA you can get away without any form of curation reward since that compensates for it. But Steemit has no such other mechanism to take the place of curation.
Curation rewards incentivize the mindless bot behavior and it's the mindless bots that are being given as the reason for the whale war.
Ditch it and give people an interest rate for holding SP equivalent to what they would have gained from curation. It's simpler and it serves a valid purpose.
Curation will still occur because of solidarity. People like who they like and we upvote our friends even when they shitpost :D
VIVA was designed partly based on lessons learned from steem, so the comparison is a good one.
Under VIVA your ability to upvote tomorrow is partially related to whether or not you used your upvotes the previous day. The longer you sit idle and do nothing, the lower your power creeps. It's the opposite of steem in that regard. That's why it's called "participatory income". You get paid more for what you do, than what you did. But you continue to benefit from all your efforts, for life.
Steem could mimick this in a way by ditching curation rewards and causing all new funds regardless of source to be autopowered up, instead of entering general circulation. Then when people want money they could just start powering down. The incentive there is the price of steem will have risen dramatically because it pinches hard on the supply.
gee, I have been lowly participating the participatory VIVA and highly participating the anti-participatory Steem... What's wrong with me!? LOL... Gonna hit the viva chat later...
Loved your post. Much inspiring :D
100℅ power up now too.
Exactly!
Thank you! I'm glad we agree! :D
Followed and resteemed :D
Let's hope you are right. I do have to say though that this experiment has been a good thing,minus the flagging.My curation rewards have doubled(to the whooping 3.6 steem per week,lol),and lots of people are seeing higher rewards,and now their votes count. I think the idea to turn the whale accounts into investor accounts with higher interests is a good one.
Upvoted and resteemed.
I agree that the experiment is good for the rewards pool. Thereby making those of us who finally can upvote and see results feel better about ourselves. The problem here is that the indiscriminate flagging in the whale war experiment is harming feelings. No other social media network pays it's users to participate. Yet they all get along fine. Why? Because a flag is not taking money from someone that they feel they've earned.
These people who are getting hurt by this, have made a choice to be here rather than wherever else it is they could be. Many of them have large audiences outside of steemit, and by punishing them for earning too much we're putting fodder in their mouths for a rage quit. But that's not even the whole point.
The same effect could easily be achieved by people just voting the content that they like. Period.
If you're a whale with enough voting power that your downvote can take money away from someone. You can also use that same power to make some random person's life better.
Why waste time and effort and most importantly, the community's good will on a downvote?
I agree on all points.But it seems to me that the mistake was starting the experiment without consensus. I'm very curious to see if this will lead to changes however,coming up in hardfork 18,whenéver that might be.
thank you for sharing some positivity :) I have resteemed to spread it around :)
Thanks alot! I'm following you now.