Fallen UAngel
Three days ago, I wrote a post about reputation when the Steemit.com UI was acting up and dropped everyone down to newbie levels. The post was about the broken metric and the like and someone mentioned @steem-ua as a better metric. I agree, it is a better metric but it is far from perfect. As far as I know, the development on it has been pretty dormant but has been voting on those who delegate to it depending on their ranking.
My own rank has hovered around the 220 mark for many months now and my posts that get voted on are generally ranked in single or low double digits for the round. This is supposedly the way it is meant to work as I have a pretty high rank and I get a fair bit of engagement on my posts and Steem-UA is meant to offer a more objective view. Witnesses (I am not one) get a higher ranking because they should be more trusted for example.
I mentioned the two devs in the comment (@scipio and @holger80) and that the first seems to be absent from Steem with the last post 5 months ago (I think on whaleshares these days), but @holger80 is very active here and has added a whole lot of interesting tools to the ecosystem. I actually used Steem Together which I think is one of his creations to see the comments that have come in from Steem-UA because I noticed something last night.
That is a pretty big drop. So I looked at the comment before:
Boom!! :D
What have I done wrong?!?!?!?! :D
I don't put a lot of stock in reputation systems overall as reputation is far too subjective to be restricted to an algorithm that only looks at a narrow part of the data, but that is still a pretty interesting drop considering the timing.
For reference, this is the third last:
Of course, this could be a glitch in the algorithm, a reformulation of the algorithm or, someone didn't take too kindly to being mentioned - I dunno but this is the problem with a reputation system that is largely blind. Yes, the problem is that if it is too open people will maybe game it but, if it is not, it could be used nefariously - even if unwittingly. It could also be that suddenly a host of users above me suddenly did something awesome that raised their Steem-UA score - Dunno.
The Steem-UA project started about 9 months ago if I remember and I supported it heavily as I was hoping it would be able to distribute small amounts of Steem with a wide coverage and while it got traction early, it was unable to keep it long-term as delegation didn't return much of anything to the delegators and, the devs lost a bit of interest in the project itself as likely, there are many more interesting things going on for them.
What I have noticed however is that the project itself seems to be doing pretty well in terms of curation and it is in a powerdown mode sending Steem out to the developers.
It is good that developers get paid for their work, but I am not sure if this was quite the intention of the system or at least, what the community delegators thought it was going to be - Especially since it was pitched to me to get Steem powered up and take liquidity off the markets.
This is @scipio's transaction history of late:
I think that constitutes putting liquidity onto the markets, not taking it off. @neoxian is the largest delegator with 50k Steem delegated but he doesn't seem to be taking a cut of the curation. He is definitely leaking some potential though.
For me, while it is nice to get a little vote, I am going to pull the rest of my delegation (which has dropped from 2500 down to 250) as I don't feel there is the activity or value being added to the community through it at the moment. It feels like it is a forgotten project that keeps ticking over while at least one of the creators is not even on Steem anymore. It is okay to leave Steem but it seems a little bit like milking the pool consistently. @holger80 has been smashing it on Steem however and I am glad that he is developing here for Steem.
This is one of the great things about investing delegation into projects though as while there is an opportunity cost loss, I haven't lost anything and while I believed in the project, was happy to support it. That has changed so I can end my delegation and move it to somewhere else where I think it might be more beneficial. Maybe delegate to a minnow or something. There are a lot of small accounts delegating to steem-UA and I recommend they keep their delegation there while it supports them enough in their eyes but at the same time - does it support the ecosystem enough? I don't know. I was surprised to see so much Steem being taken out of it though and it could be that they each put the Steem into it to start the project so are getting their investment out and to exchanges,
... but it was still a surprise.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
I have no idea about how to data dive into these kids of things and there is plenty of room for misreading and I might be completely mistaken so - take all this with a grain of salt and make your own investigations and judgments.
I was as surprised as you to see my rank drop like a bomb over the last couple of days. 275 places in one hit and I have done nothing different, but being active. I must admit I don't like Steem going out like that either to the exchanges.
Ah interesting. Maybe it is an algo change. I wonder what has changed in it?
Maybe we are too active and they think we are a bot so we get penalised lol.
I have never seen you so, you might just be a bot :D
some people are moving up to so not sure what the deal is with it but, they are some pretty big swings.
Now my drop is only 44 so something happened to bring it back up 231 places. It's like a yo yo and something not right.
@scipio says that it is the Utopian thing and all the calculations getting affected as people have moved all over the place due to the change. Interesting to watch at least :)
For what it's worth, I did speak with @scipio lately (about 2 weeks ago) and he told me he was working on improvements to Steem-UA. I agree with you that I wish that there was more visible activity and improvements happening.
As far as your large rank drop, I don't know, perhaps a large UA person unfollowed you?
Edit: Annnd holy crap I just noticed I somehow jumped to position 19. No idea how that happened.
I don't worry much about the drop as others are going up at the same time etc and the rep doesn't really worry me overall. Hopefully the project progresses and improves as I think there is benefit in it but, not if it gets passively forgotten.
I think the bankers have taken over the algorithm ;P Hope you are doing well mate.
I'm still here ;-) Have been every day (on Discord)
And yes, the "rank jumpings" has a lot to do with @utopian-io announcing quitting its witness activities. As it is a top witness, that causes an immense "re-shuffling" of UA values flowing from its position.
UA is not a black box since months: it's Open Sourced, and anybody is able to check & validate the data from the source
ok. interesting as I don't really have much to do with Utopian-io at all while some of those that do seem to have gone up a lot in position. weird.
I know it is open source but, not open without the skillset available to understand it :D
I understand, the volume of UA computations and variables is huge and very difficult (for @holger80 and myself as well!) to fully "grasp" / comprehend.
So to not get into too much details: the @utopian-io witness change, also means other witnesses moved up the ladder, which makes other people do so as well. We're talking about ~ 1.4 trillion EigenValues; comple shizzle ;-)
Yep, it is all pretty interesting and I hope it goes somewhere further :)
Actually for me I did not remember the last time I checked my rank. I just do what I love doing most on steemit
So, you don't read your comments? It tells you in the comments so it is hard to miss if you get steem-ua votes.
Hmmm. Looks like some work in progress.
I went the opposite way :/
I have actually seen a large improvement over the last two weeks that have surprised me although it feel more inconsistent. I didn’t realize that the support had come down as I recall this program having over 500k SP in delegations given the hype. I still like the concept but now am concerned as well seemingly with the cash out it seems to be having. Don’t have too mich skin in the game other than the expectation of it adding value to the ecosystem.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Maybe there is a new metric in play. I don't care much for the scores themselves but it alerted me to have s look and I am not sure what is going on there.
I suddenly JUMPED 88 places up hahaha. I was wondering as UA is very much witness focussed, it could have to do with a huge witness closing down, shaking up all calculations? Utopian shut down their witness which could’ve had an enourmous ripple effect throughout the system.
Anyway, your post is the last push for me te remove my delegation as well, I was already in doubt about what it was adding to the Steem Ecosystem - time to spend those STEEMs on another project - enough to choose from :-)
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yeah, a lot of people are moving up but I don't think that Utopian would have had so much effect on it as a single witness and, I don't think it followed many. Dunno the metrics though so perhaps.
Would be interesting to get some more insight.
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