What if steemit users were rewarded according to their 'attention span'? Opening a quantity vs. quality debate.
Following up a conversation held in the chat (steemit.chat/channel/general) yesterday, I am wondering about steemit´s current rewards system and eventual improvements.
This idea also pays tribute to numerous voices who have been criticizing the current trend of automation and anonymization during the voting process on steemit.com (e.g. increasing number of bots and trails).
Is quantity more important than quality here?
Paying rewards according to the user´s attention level
One of the revolutionary and outstanding selling propositions of steemit is the fact that users get rewarded for their contribution to the network. I consciously haven´t used the term 'content' since we don´t only get rewarded for our own posts but also for the upvotes of other users´ (successful) publications.
I´d like to take one more step forward: in my opinion the big revolution is not only the fact that users get rewarded for their input, but also the fact that steemit could be able to reward users according to their different 'degrees of attention' paid during the content consumption process. What does that mean?
A fictitious steemit attention span
(sorted by attention level - from low to high)
- View (since one of the last updates even displayed for users by the 'eye symbol' at the bottom right of eacht article.
- Retention time (time spend 'reading' a post)
- Upvote *
- Reblog (resteem)
- OnClick link (in case article includes links / videos)
- Comment (simple text vs. included picture)
- View / comment (ratio between views and comments, % of comments per views)
- ..... ? what else?
*If there were even more possibilities to 'evaluate' an article (not just upvoting it) the list could grow even longer. I am definitely NOT talking about heart icons ('I love this post') used on facebook! I think we are on another level here.
Intelligent evaluation criteria for articles might be for example:
- Content teached me something new.
- Content was of high quality.
- Content made me laugh.
- Content was entertaining.
- Content was innovative.
- ... etc.
A simple upvote doesn´t really 'reflect' the user´s opinion about the content. There are so many different ways content is able to gain our (1) attention and (2) perception.
Why do we need this debate?
What currently happens is that we are not differentiating between attention levels. That means for example that a user who fields a bot in order to vote for him/her is rewarded exactly in the same way like the user who (I exaggerate) spends hours studying a post, reblogs it and even leaves a personal comment. Is that 'OK' for us?
This is not merely a question of 'justice' but especially a chance to make a difference.
It´s not only about the difference between attention levels paid from one user to another but a difference compared to other networks. We want quality? Well then we should reward quality accordingly - not only the quality of the content itself but also the time users spend in evaluating. This is an eco-system where everybody is constantly contributing anything. That means that the feedback given on an article is as important as the article itself. Without these mutual interactions the network wouldn´t even work. So shouldn´t we reward these contributions according to their quality?
Quality in this case is especially measured by time - the time a user spends reading, commenting, reblogging, interacting, etc. inside the network. Depending on the time spent, a user passes from one to another (a higher) attention level.
Why don´t reward the user´s time - paid with the 'currency attention'?
It would be a question of redesigning the rewards system, so nothing to implement overnight. But I think we should at least discuss about it :-)
I would be really happy to get your comments on that. They won´t be rewarded (yet), but highly appreciated :-)
Cheers,
Marly -
Picture source girl: http://theinfong.com/
Picture source quote attention: http://i.quoteaddicts.com/
Picture source quote time: http://cdn.quotesgram.com/
Picture source quote vision: http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/
Bad Idea... as it will be unfair to Visual Artists. People will not look at a picture for the same length of time as an article.
We just need more quality content over all. I see posts that are not really articles but only a paragraph. But they don't get many upvotes. So it seems it's working fine for those.
Thanks for your comment @nspart!
I don't agree on your first paragraph. First because blog posts are not read as books and second because depending on the art it surely can be more involving than text.
You say we do need more quality content. What is quality in your opinion and how would you encourage its production?
You don't have to agree, it's a fact. People don't look at pictures for as long as they read text so it would be unfair to visual artists as I said before. I have been on sites that do what you are suggesting and it does not work well. If that was in place I would not have even signed up honestly. As the time I put into my work far exceeds writing the average article.
The system is in place already. Upvote quality content don't vote for poor content. I don't think it needs anything else in this area.
You didn´t reply to my anwer :-) But it´s OK.
Just had a look at your blog. You joined the network 10 days ago and have already a rep of 60, that´s pretty cool. Good luck though!
What part did I not answer...
"What is quality in your opinion and how would you encourage its production?"
Quality to me is apparent. It's something someone put some times, energy and thought into. I can tell a quality text post because it was not just one or two paragraphs that really didn't provide any useful info.
A song that someone spent time creating, a image from an artist, painter, photographer, an article or story that shows quality. A self-portrait vs. a selfie.
I personally think it's easy to spot quality. In the terms of photography or art or music some of it will be more objective and rely on the taste of the viewer.
For example in my own work. All of my Photographic Art images are quality that I put out I feel. I put time and energy into them. I size them for the web, don't over compress. My Polaroids don't have as much time put into them, but some love them and even buy them from me because they like the raw feel of them. So Quality is in someway subjective. But even then I have Polaroids that are not good pictures so I scrap them and I used the best ones or highest quality.
I think the same can bee seen in music, painting, drawing, articles, tutorials of people all over the web.
How to encourage more. Upvotes on the quality work and people that put out consistent quality. And don't upvote on crap like stolen pictures or posts that are just some youtube link to a video the person did not create themselves.
Now of the created a post filled with good info and a youtube links as resources then I would say that might be a quality post.
That's how I look at it.
Thanks for your super detailed reply!
I have a different point of view. In my opinion quality is not defined by the time spent when creating it but by its impact onto the recipient. You made me laugh? Awesome. You made me think about something? Brilliant. You surprised me? You taught me something new? You provided me with anything beneficial?
A lot of different types of content are able to spark something. Even a link, a joke, a quick thought which came to my mind could be 'valuable' for my audience.
A quite controversial topic - I like that! :)
Steem on @nspart.
That would be discriminating against young people, and by 'young' I mean less than fifty years old.
Won't even think about the millennials..they have the attention span of a gnat.
It is nice to be called young by @everittmickey, surfermarly ;) However I do read every post I vote on, it feels too much like cheating to do otherwise. It stands to reason that many of the millennials have no problem with this, they were typing in cheat codes for games before they could read actual words. (I've seen this in action)
I think it has to be a healthy mix. Right now you can handle anything manually. And yes I also read EVERY article I vote for, and I comment a lot of them, too. I just think it´s a form of respect paid back to the author.
But if steemit grew it could get quite complicated to not rely on some 'safe rewards' earned by bots or trails. I am not anti-automation, but love the idea of a 'bonus system' for hard-working users :)
yup...they use the word 'curation' then do something else entirely.
Note: I have no problem with them doing that, just call a spade a spade...
If they are going to distill, process, and mine the blockstream then say so...don't pretend otherwise.
Your answer led me to another point of view (thanks for that :-)):
I think our problems are still the problems of a small network. If we had considerably more active users (I don´t talk about these 115K - 80% of them are offline), these dicussions wouldn´t exist. Right now there is not much cake to be given, and the cake we have is distributed amoung a few people. Until we don´t have a representative number of participants here, nothing will ever change I guess.
Ha ha!
Thanks for calling me young, you made my day! :-D Haha
The idea of rewarding attention would be an 'add on' to the already existing voting system. Surely, the 'no. 1 attention level' would be still the simple "I like that". We have to be realistic.
you're most welcome.
you know...I think I might be the elder here.
(on steemit)
I haven't seen anyone admit to being as old as I am.
Your beard is quite long... i wouldn´t disagree though :-D
71!
AHA!...so there IS one...
Told ya!
Good point! The more time and effort I put into an article, the less I get. Watch, I wrote an article today that took about 4 hrs. I'll probably make 13 cents (about average) I posted a silly meme and made $24 So, you've got a really good point!
I describe it like fishing. It isn't even completely time. Some of my personal favorite blogs over the past months I've been here made nothing or close to nothing. I've had things I wrote for the hell of it that I didn't expect to do well that did well. I've stopped trying to predict. I just write what I like and let the chips fall where they may. I can't predict what will do well. I've had more of my longer posts do better than any of my short posts. I've had a few short posts do okay.
Maybe doing what you like is the best strategy of all @dwinblood. I do it exactly in the same way :)
If you write a long article, you're competing for my time with professional journalists and novelists. It better be worth it!
I agree. But that won´t stop me from trying :)
Or what...you gonna beat me up??? Please, I haven't shot an asshole in almost 2 weeks!!!
Even worse: I would not upvote the post! :)
I don´t think that long articles don´t get nice rewards in general @richq11. In my experience the most important thing is: structure! In the end every single article is like a small marketing campaign. You have to sell it! You have to sell your idea and yourself to somebody who doesn´t have much time. The best thing about it is that you have infinite chances to try.
Supposedly the meme you mentioned made a lot of people laugh - that´s one of the strongest emotions of all! So obviously they paid you well for that. 'Effort' doesn´t have to be measured necessarily just by time. 'Effort' here is creatitivy - and the capability to understand what may 'work' and what may be downvoted.
It´s an amzing ride in any case! :)
Thank you very much for your comment @richq11.
Well there are two different perspectives: the author´s point of view and the reader´s point of view. Both can receive rewards for their contribution - sometimes even in relation to the same piece of content. One publishs and one votes. I hereby wanted to focus on the rewards given to the audience.
But keeping with your example: humor is a very strong emotion. If you can make a person laugh, you provide him or her with a considerable value. So the reward should be accordingly - independently from the author´s invest. Quality is a personal issue - and that´s what makes a rewarding system actually that complex.
Yea it'd be fun if we could record how much time we used on each post and the system would reward it accordingly. Similarly the system could record how long each post is been read and rewards the curators accordingly.
I don´t know if the time of elaboration is really representative here. I sometimes struggle writing only one good sentence and then on another day I could right a book in only one day. But I am totally with you that the 'efforts' paid by the author should be rewarded fairly. That means that these efforts have to be appreciable - e.g. by an innovative idea, creative structur of the post, outstanding presentation of pictures,.... the list could be endless.
Time is not only measurable in time. That sounds weird :-) But time here is measured with the currency attention. That means that time has only a value in combination with an action towards something or somebody. I could open an article, close my eyes and don´t do anything at all. But that´s neither quality time nor real attention. I don´t think I should get paid for that.
This question is very controversial and I don't know if I can be very sincere dear @surfermarly, but I see many good authors getting cents for posts that add much knowledge to the detriment of "celebrity" posts that are just copy and paste of yahoo news. I think what makes great returns here is its influence (Steem Power) coupled with some recognition in the crypto community.
Controversial is good! :) Thank you very much for your detailed comment! I heard some desperate voices, too. That´s what actually inspired me to write this article.
I think we need more differentiation. A sophisticated rewards system will incentive quality - and at the same time build a more balanced eco-system. Could work though :)
I think that some experimenting in this direction would be a very good thing, not only because I use a lot of time on each post be it drawing or something written, but mostly because it would be interesting trying to do something that is different from the rest of the internet. Right now it is just like Reddit and Facebook and the rest of them.
Thank you for your nice comment @katharsisdrill.
I am totally with you. In a world of superficiality, automating and bots-invasion some quality could be really appreciated.
Yea, it would, but to me this is also simply a question about seeing what would happen. I am sure that you can game and automate and bot everything, the interesting part would be how the humans reacted :)
I think these observations of yours are very important, and implementing your ideas would have a significant impact on quality. There are potential problems, of course - for example, some people are simply much faster readers than others - but an algorithm that takes into account a blend of your suggestions would no doubt be superior to the simple upvote system.
I think that the importance of genuine interaction - actual reading and thinking, discussion in comments, interchange among blogs - these things, if measured and measurable, are very significant.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking post! :)
Thank you very much for your detailed comment @creatr!
I am totally with you. It´s about the importance of personal interaction as an added value.
Let´s keep the thoughts coming :)
A first step would be to disable the upvote until the reader has actually clicked and open the article. It's too easy to click on upvote button if you have not even read the content of the article.
I actually would not 'disable' the 'unpersonal vote' - just not give it the same value as to a more 'laborious' feedback. Bots should still have their right to exist, but they should get desperate in the long term :-)
There seems to be a small community of those who pay attention, as well as a larger community of just upvoters (Facebook Syndrome). It should all work out in the future. just this morning I was thinking to only comment on people in my feed... sort of self regulated.
Sure! This idea is seen as an 'added value' to the already existing voting system.
Self regulation is absolutely OK - we all have to manage our 'currency attention' :)
Thought-provoking! So many proposals, it's like a swarm attack. I disagree with most of them, but some will still slip through.
I don't buy the equivalence of time spent consuming and quality. Is a game walkthrough video on Youtube worth 100 paintings?
Rewarding comments means an incentive to post inane comments when you have nothing to say. I do think that more people should upvote comments they like.
I'm sure that views could easily be simulated by a bot.
Do we need curation rewards at all? Isn't using your voting power its own reward?
Resteeming a lot of posts annoys me, although I happily follow Tumblr accounts that only reblog and never post anything original. I'm not sure why. Maybe because Tumblr is bigger and blogs are more specialized.
Suppose that Steem became as big as Facebook. Wouldn't we neglect an important part of culture if posting memes, jokes, art or photographs was discouraged?
Thank you very much @edb!! Strong arguments, there is no doubt.
One question: what is 'reward' in a 'social' environment for you actually?
That's a rather abstract question... Here I was talking about financial rewards, and influence at #4.
Reputation is another kind of reward; both the formal number and people's opinion of a user. I wouldn't call average post quality or feeling part of a community an individual reward; that's a subjective common good, not a property of an individual user.
I didn´t understand very well the second paragraph of your comment ;)
But anyway... I think our big challenge is that the product we are dealing with has a lot of emotional values. Content is always the result of a creative process. People feel personally touched by the success or failure of their outcomes. So I think a purely rational and algorithm-driven rewarding system won´t ever fulfill their needs.
I agree. I'm happy that financial incentives make us more polite than Redditors, but not everything has to be based on algorithms and money.
Great idea for discussion. I'm not sure we need to do anything or allow the community to evolve first.
Thank you for your feedback (attention :-)) @benjojo!
Sure, there is still this 'beta' symbol flanking the steemit logo. But maybe we should not wait too long since many users have already left exactly for the reason that their efforts were not rewarded like they expected...
It´s going to be an exciting journey in any case!