As an (amateur) game designer, I can tell you that the whole Steem system sucks from the perspective of game mechanics.
It has to be redesigned from bottom up.
First, flags have to go. No flags. Or if they remain they have to be completely without any material effect. Otherwise we have a dystopian future where someone can quite literally BUY censorship powers. I don't like your review of my product, I'll just flag you to invisibility. People are sick of censorship, that's why they're seeking new social platforms... and here you give tools for ANYONE with deep enough pockets to silence anyone they wish.
Second. Trending and hot pages have to be SEVERELY redesigned. For example, there should be a category for posts which have a lot of votes of small SBD value. Popular vote, democratic vote if you will. One account, one vote.
And this is just the beginning. Of course the system is designed to be cutthroat capitalism, but there are reasons why cutthroat capitalism never worked for the majority of the population, especially over time. It is all fine and dandy in the beginning, when the playing ground is fresh, but it very quickly devolves into a system of eternal, untouchable monopolies, cronyism and all-powerful robber barons, a game where newcomers have no future. In other words, from a game designer perspective - this is fantastic if you're making a game with a definite end. On the other hand, this positive feedback loop is terrible for a game which is supposed to last indefinitely. Really, I have a hunch people who designed this concept never played a MMORPG in their life...
no capitalism has ever worked for the majority of the population lmao
^Lol ok. you just commented on a post that you did not upvote, and upvoted your own comment on that post. But socialism totally works, right?
have you ever heard of the term capital accumulation?
With a system based on capital accumulation you must push for the highest rate of profit or eventually be pushed back to the levels of working class. I must stay ahead of this if I ever wish to make change in society, this is just one of the reasons capitalism is destructive. The problem is not that socialism does not work, its that capitalism must destroy everything else to survive.
Yeah, I can understand why you upvoted yourself. What I don't understand is why you did not upvote the post you are commenting on. Surely he "must push for the highest rate of profit or eventually be pushed back to the levels of working class" as well. Why didn't you consider that and upvote his post? Aren't socialist suppose to be empathetic? Isn't that suppose to be the reason why you are a socialist? I didn't even agree with it and I upvoted (as a capitalist) just because I appreciate genuine thought.
I have read socialist books. It's hard to make it all way through most of them. They aren't that good. I do not like Stirner. I can't take someone serious while they are using the word spook.
The Conquest of Bread did a decent job of not being complete shit, though.
"Why didn't you consider that and upvote his post? Aren't socialist suppose to be empathetic?"
wow you are dense lmao.
its because revolution is the only way to save the tens of millions who die of poverty every year. All money that does not go to leads to more death. The most empathetic thing to do is not upvote the post of somebody not fighting for revolution
Ah, so you didn't upvote because you are retarded. Got it.
ah yes that is a very logical argument. Glad to see you are putting a lot of thought into your actions
I mean, how will people like us ever recover. Truly a devastating blow to socialism as a whole.
It is certainly more logical than the backwords ass pseudo-logic in your comment.
I stopped following you because of this comment. I'm sorry but you are obnoxious. I simply can't stand rich champagne-socialist hypocrites pretending to weep about the poor. You are sitting on a fortune, which could help hundreds of families. What do you do instead? Sit here on a capitalist social network site and bemoan how you are better than everyone else.
I could sell an ak-47 to feed a few families, or i could use it in an effort to save them all. I honestly don't care what you think of me, my goal here is progress.
You have zero understanding of capital accumulation or revolution. I think we both have one thing in common though. We are both class traitors
He's a massive asshole you never should have followed in the first place. Provides nothing of value to this platform.
I mean look at him - he thinks "all property is theft."
Toxic as hell.
Who said that politicians are good people? ... Difficult very difficult for a good person to succeed in politics .... Why? because to succeed in politics the person must be:
1- Knowing how to lie White Lies.
2- Perverse. Do good actions to the collective today to achieve a personal or individual goal
No feelings. If you have to do moral and ethical harm to someone in order to reach power ... Well, it's done.
Without values. Decisions must be made that go against human and religious values.
I can develop the topic here, but the above mentioned can you reader friend consider it necessary for a person to succeed in politics today ... The world and the way of doing politics is changing, but they are changing for the worse ... Today day a porn actress is considered a celebrity, instead a singer who dresses sexy and sensual dance is considered a vulgar without values ???
It is more profitable to give minutes and news space to scandals of porn actresses than to actresses who do excellent role in independent films ..... Not counting the news of human and natural catastrophes ....
that is what rises to the top under capitalism, other systems actually work it turns out.
also the type of people capitalism promotes is based on capital accumulation, that is why the worst get power.
🤘🏼♨️
Here is a picture of the moon from last night
I Refrained from Upvoting because i dont believe it deserves reward.
Especially since the folk it is direcred at could care less and will keep on abusing the system.
I think it's working, the folks are taking notice...
"capital accumulation"
the single phrase describing steemit
yeah its not going to end well at this rate
True.....
and judging by your comment you have zero understanding of any socialist theory
My brain melted reading this
what brain:) since I am on steemit for 2 years, I feel "fried"
Which part? lol
This guy is a supreme asshole who argues with intellectual dishonesty at the forefront of his strategy. He also longs to be ruled by Stalin, almost as if he has a fetish for degradation.
Ignore him.
Lolz @ you capitalist oppressors, both of yous!
I see all them dollars flyin around my post and me getting only cents!
I cry for justice! Revolution! :D
"Stand up you victims of oppression..."
ironic
My thought exactly haha
Nah, I'm dead serious man. This injustice simply cannot stand!
(gief upvotes lol, nudge nudge)
And besides I got a warm spot in my heart for the song. We sang it at school almost every day. I kinda have some first hand experience with these themes...
The art of politics is irony
Fork back your means of production, Comrade @compleatgamester. 😎
Sorry this is a very bad thing you are spreading here.
What, a joke? You actually downvoted the post because you a) don't get the joke and b) don't agree with it politically? And this carries real material damage to me?
You feel that you are justified in doing physical, material damage to my wallet just because you do not agree with me, because you "think" that I am doing "a very bad thing"? I don't recall internationalle being illegal, and I don't recall that making jokes is illegal. It is your opinion, and you exercise your power to materially hurt me because I have a different taste in humor?
Now imagine a person with opinions that you feel the worst possible - and that person buys a few hundred thousand dollars worth of steem and goes after you and your posts. Just because he can, he doesn't like your sense of humor, your political opinions or just doesn't like you personally. Just imagine that.
You just perfectly illustrated what is wrong with the downvotes system as it is now.
You mean damage to PENDING FUTURE POTENTIAL gain. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing can be taken from you that hasn't been given to you yet.
What matt-a said - if you don't hold it, you don't own it (yet).
And now for something personal: I LIVED through a goddamn communist dictatorship and I know what goddamn censorship and getting bullied for your opinions really is. My great-grandfather died in a communist "reeducation" camp for making "wrong jokes" and writing "wrong poems". And you DARE to downvote and therefore materially assault me for posting a "wrongthink" tongue-in-cheek joke about communism??!
Can you even perceive in that pea-brain of yours how "ironic" that is?!
"communist dictatorship"
Yeah, exactly that. Or how do you call a one-party single-ideology state? (hint: clue is in the name of the party) What? People's paradise?
I spent half my life behind iron curtain (won't go any further than that). I've got family members "exterminated" by both the communists and the nazis. But enough about me, what is YOUR experience with REAL communism and socialism?
also the USA is a single-ideology state, neo-liberal, and so is nearly every other state in existence today
im not a statist but a one-party democracy is a valid system, the problem was the failures they let in after stalin (and as an anarchist, i would say including stalin himself)
what i definitely dont see is any democracy around today
Don't argue with this asshole. He is a troll/agent provocateur designed to wear you out and waste your time. Don't give him anything to play against. Just totally ignore him. Mute him.
Ok i took my downvote back. Its quite misleading.
I would imaging he upvoted it so that it could be read by more people ( My guess only)
what's wrong with downvotes? reddit has downvotes. learn to take a negative opinion.
I have no problem whatsoever with negative opinions. The problem appears when you give everyone a gun and completely free license to use it in order to enforce their opinions.
Downvotes and flags should stay imo.. but they have to be defanged, deweaponized. Otherwise you achieve completely opposite effect from free exchange of opinions. Would you be as vocal with YOUR opinions if you knew that everyone knows where you live and if they chose to they can blow your brains out, with no liability whatsoever?
That's a great system for one thing only - total self censorship. Everyone posts only what is "safe" to everyone. In other words, inspirational quotes and pictures of cats. A social network which fosters this kind of community through its mechanics will not survive the upcoming realignment of the market.
Personally, I prefer systems which do not add up upvotes and downvotes but keep them separate. This creates a nice derived indicator of how "controversial" (in other words, interesting) a post is. In Steemit downvotes could be recorded, maybe even their steem value, but not deducted from the value of the post. Users could then filter to not see posts which have too many relative downvotes or are too controversial (difference between upvotes and downvotes). This would allow giving negative opinions through voting system without creating an ideal playground for actual cyber bullying. (No, I do not consider someone saying something nasty to me "bullying". But if someone directly and materially damages me just because he can then it is real, actual bullying. In their attempt to create a "self regulating" platform, steemit creators have actually constructed a bully's paradise, a place where I can BUY the power to take away your income and shut you up)
But all this is actually quite old discussion. Early MMOs went through exactly this phase almost 20 years ago with harsh death penalties in PvP and gear loss through death. They quite quickly realized where this is leading long term (hint: no, it's not prosperity and steady inflow of new players) and that's why almost no online games today feature this mechanic. As I said, under the hood all social networks are MMORPGs. Ignore the expensive lessons learned from decades of development and research in these games at your own peril.
I can't think of a more safe space than a place without those "weaponised" flags. Steem is a shared social space. We are social animals. Play the game, and be smart about it. If you really want to say something so much (hopefully it's not hate speech, because many supporting freedom of speech usually fail to understand the difference) - just say it? Of course in a place where it's a shared social space, you're guaranteed to have opinions flying in. I wouldn't run into a random village, taking a piss everywhere, spraying graffiti all over without expecting consequences? Plus, you said "everyone posts only what is safe to everyone". Who is everyone?Edit: had my points jumbled up, might come back to this later.
How is it materially damaging? Post payouts are not even paid out before it's finalised by the end of X days.
And then you mentioned about MMORPGs - don't they have items where people can buy to become more powerful and be utilised in part of a game? But okay, besides semantics and drawing parallels to MMORPGS , guns, cyberbullying, and censorship (which always gets twisted around here, because content actually stays on the chain regardless, and downvotes are not even exercised wholly by one single authority), flagging is just a tool for a decentralised community to self-regulate the supply distribution. Of course it can be abused like anything else.
But as a game enthusiast, you're actually proposing the total inability for community members to reduce potential payouts, leaving out an attack vector for exploits on so many levels. So what if flags are "defanged", giving everybody else ways to exploit the game up to "unlimited" earnings? With a community board just stating inconsequential opinions.. then what happens? It's not likely the relevant community members that are adding to the abuse/exploit gonna correct themselves - they're the ones doing it in the first place. This is will kill the entire system. Even worse is that it allows self-voted spam to go unchecked.
As for your perception that flags create a "cyberbullies paradise", consider these:-
Controversial does not mean interesting btw..
I've likened Steem as an MMORPG, but like everything else, even if we can reason out intelligibly that X = Y, doesn't mean that it's all 100% the same, like how you're trying reason out that what worked or didn't work for MMORPGs is entirely applicable to something like Steem. Not nearly the same thing.
Your last paragraph answers your own arguments. Steemit is cutthroat capitalistic, and it will never change to be any other way. Any hope for a more "socialized" Steemit is played out on deaf ears. Like most things, someone else will have to design something similar to Steemit, but not for personal profit, and released as totally open source. And neither EOS nor SMT are true solutions. So I'm still waiting. In the meantime there's Steemit. ;)
Simple Token is something to check out.
"First, flags have to go. No flags. "
Lmao. No.
We have had no problems because when someone is illegitimately censored large stakeholders get involved.
"Trending and hot pages have to be SEVERELY redesigned." I agree with this, your idea is ok but a lot more than that can be done. I think we should be able to follow tags as well.
"And this is just the beginning. Of course the system is designed to be cutthroat capitalism, but there are reasons why cutthroat capitalism never worked for the majority of the population," this is dumb.
"into a system of eternal, untouchable monopolies, cronyism and all-powerful robber barons, a game where newcomers have no future." even dumber. god forbid that the early bird actually get the worm.
steemit is not an mmo.
steemit is not an mmo
Of course it is. It's a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It is Massively Multiplayer Online and it is a Role Playing Game. Your account is your character. You are roleplaying it. All social networks are MMORPGS. No difference in the underlying reality whether you're an axe wielding Orc in Wow or an artist on imgur. From the systems perspective it's the same thing. And the most fragile and complex mechanisms in MMORPGs, by far, are their economies.
But it's not like these things haven't been studied extensively for almost two decades now. There's billions of dollars in these games' economies. Virtual moneys way before this crypto wave. To ignore all this experience and knowledge and just plunge ahead with your whitepaper written on a piece of toilet paper and no knowledge whatsoever what happens when you introduce a currency into a heterogenous, anonymous population following an arbitrary set of rules is... not smart.
But ok, let's start at the beginning... 1999 to be precise. Yes, almost 20 years ago.
He who doesn't know history is doomed to repeat it.
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html
The In-game Economics of Ultima Online
Zachary Booth Simpson, Origin Research Fellow
7 Apr 1999
I mis the days when one could write a short blog post with little effort and easily earn hundreds of steem dollars. It's so sad everyone has abandoned the project, it looked so promising. Then again, the graphics are not very good are they? The game mechanic is supper hard even if you are a pay to win player with deep pockets. I suppose all games not publishing expansion packs are doomed to be abandoned. We all log into our steem accounts for that nostalgic feeling and all the lovely memories from back when it was a thing. A window in time for us to look back to the golden days.
I'm joking of course. This MMORPG never had golden days and lets hope it will never get any given that the pie was sliced up in advance.
I'm here not for the money but to see a content ranking system build in the wild. I consider myself able to produce content of some type of quality. So far the system has not been able to populate my postings with an audience with a single exception.
https://steemit.com/gamble/@gaby-de-wilde/improved-rules-for-the-royal-game-of-ur
While a poor data sample the interest in this posting suggests the community is up for debating the building of a more challenging game.
I suggest making up and down voting cost a percentage of the wallet and taxing each transaction of the kind. A huge account can still pump up a smaller secondary one and that account can pump up an even smaller one and so on. The whale will have to again pay the tax every step of the way.
Be serious for a moment? Give me 1 cent for my effort? Are you fucking kidding me?
If you see a street performer, do you ever give him 1 cent? What kind of response do you expect if you did? Oh ghee thanks man!?
No guys, you better hold onto that 1 cent if it really means so much to you.
Even the dumbest MMO randomized rewards. Valuable drops are things one can use in the game. Preferably consumables.
Following tags is a really really good idea here!
To redesign, there is one major problem to be solved...What is in it for the whales?
FD.
Well it's survival, innit?
It's the old wolves' dilemma from game theory.
Wolves want to eat sheep. But if wolves do eat all the sheep, they themselves will starve...
As wolves are, by definition, selfish they will have to eventually go against their nature and feign altruism to stave off extinction.
I don't know what's the retention rate for the platform, but steem $ value is dropping. If the whales want to retain their gains they will have to make concessions otherwise they will quite literally melt away.
Whether they are capable of this, I don't know. Saint Darwin will judge them in the end, just like all of us. There is no cheating natural selection.
Steem value hasn't dropped at all. Our market cap rank has been stable the entire time I've been here.
Now that the value of steem has collapsed the whales will have to do something.
Am I playing the game right now?
Game theory applies here also, but like at prisoners dilemma.
Since uninformed players are trying to maximize their income, the optimum solution is missed.
No other explanation of flagging while it is a sacrifice of VP that can be used for, at least self-upvote.
FD.
Prisoner's dilemma is fallacious for all practical purposes. It presupposes that both (all) actors are perfectly selfish and therefore sociopathic (aka "perfect" according to Chicago school of economics at least). However, dominant sociopathic tendencies are statistically recorded in only 5-10 % of population, the rest being "abnormal" "sheep" or just plain normal folks who juggle selfishness with genuine altruism. (I guess there is a proportion similar to that of the wolves of "super-sheep" or "martyrs" who are overwhelmingly altruistic but I couldn't find any research on that, I guess self-sacrificing saints are not as interesting as serial killers and sociopaths next door)
Anyways, Game Theory is very interesting and even practically useful but only if you take into account the realities of human animal.
As for flagging... I've done some thought experiments on it and I can't say I've found a truly satisfying solution - IF our goal is a stable, permanent social system (And that is an assumption. It is perfectly possible the original purpose of steemit is to fleece as much as you can and run, a classical pyramid scheme - but not a social space of any permanence). Anyway you turn it, it is introducing weapons into anarchy. Never a good thing unless you're into Mad Max style juvenile dystopian fantasies. Kindergartens function only because children are forbidden from having knives. Primate group dynamics take hold very quickly and Lord of the Flies scenario becomes inevitable. Primates are a nasty animal order in general, better not give them guns if you don't absolutely have to. And if you do, at least give them toy guns.
For me, the prisoner's dilemma is tested and proved here with facts and data.
There are 2 people, Person A and Person B.
Person A : Greedy and selfish but totally legal ( not fair ) according to the system. Posts 10 times a day with discussable content and self-upvotes all his posts with maximum power. Consumes %6 of the reward pool alone with approximately 3000SBD. If he didn' exist, everyone's income should be theoretically higher by %6.
Person B : Rejects this situation, knowing that if Person A is stopped, everyone's income should increase by %6 including his.
With above conditions, the game starts.
Person B requests Person A to decrease the number of his posts to 4 times a day which should mean %60 decrease in Person A's income.
Person A rejects this and Person B starts downvoting Person A stripping approximately %20 of his income back to the reward pool. ( 600 SBD )
The pay-out table of this game is as below :
As you can see, there exists a much better solution for both parties ( reject-not flag ) but the parties, trying to maximize their income, applies the non-ideal solution.
I have written a more detailed post on the reward pool and flag wars.
I am really happy when I find intelligence on this planet.
FD.
"I am really happy when I find intelligence on this planet."
I think I just came across some.
LIST OF BULLSHIT POSTS:
MEETUPS : Meetups are like "Bilderberg" good for The elites of Steemit, the rich and minnows who are good ass kissers, and minnow chicks who wants to get rich making shit posts... Get funding from whales.
COMPLAINTS: Complain boxes shouldnt trend, they need a seperate page without voting.
PROGRAMMERS: Anything related to steemit should have a seperate page without upvotes, fund your own projects or take from whales.
2liners and Single photo posts.
BEST OF ALL: Remove Hot/Trending pages, let the members search what they like to see.
Welcome to steem!
100% vote because you are 1000% correct! Steemit platform is made so that Whales earn more. They are free to do anything they want because they have the steem power to do so, but if it's someone like me, a new guy, they will flag you and accussed of spam etc. Flags need to go! The only reason they flag is because they get pay for it. Otherwise they won't fucking care. Steemit is full of greedy assholes acting like they are here "because the technology"
Well it's sort of like with politics.
No matter what idiots or how corrupt they are...They are chosen from the majority ;)
Of course not every politic is an idiot.Don't get me wrong!
Who said that politicians are good people? ... Difficult very difficult for a good person to succeed in politics .... Why? because to succeed in politics the person must be:
1- Knowing how to lie White Lies.
2- Perverse. Do good actions to the collective today to achieve a personal or individual goal
No feelings. If you have to do moral and ethical harm to someone in order to reach power ... Well, it's done.
Without values. Decisions must be made that go against human and religious values.
I can develop the topic here, but the above mentioned can you reader friend consider it necessary for a person to succeed in politics today ... The world and the way of doing politics is changing, but they are changing for the worse ... Today day a porn actress is considered a celebrity, instead a singer who dresses sexy and sensual dance is considered a vulgar without values ???
It is more profitable to give minutes and news space to scandals of porn actresses than to actresses who do excellent role in independent films ..... Not counting the news of human and natural catastrophes ....