Arguments For Keeping the Steem Reward Pool Whole

in #steem8 years ago (edited)

View this post on Hive: Arguments For Keeping the Steem Reward Pool Whole


Sun Yuchen is a liar, thief, charlatan, and all around cunt. But I don't need to tell you that. Find me at Hive, where we are glad to be rid of him and all of his fake followers, sockpuppets, and thieves.

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Because who has time to write more than four long-winded posts about tacos per day, right?

Ha ha! It's the problem of mechanistic instead of holistic thinking. That's the core problem. It needs to be holistic....

I believe that implementation of a less-superlinear reward curve is perfectly in line with the goal of increasing user participation, engagement, and retention. And better, it's a simpler change which does not limit the scope of Steem.

Yes the one thing that was most promising about HF17 hands down, as the community has shown with the voting experiment conducted by @clayop Voting Test

I applaud how you concluded with that, it's imperative that we engage and retain users and the experiment ran by @abit and @smooth actually succeed in that aspect, but of course the way it ran caused both confusion and upset a bunch of people and therefore could only do so much for user retention.

Steem is more than Steemit.

These two are really easily mistaken. Even I am aware of their differences, still from time to time I might fail to realize it. Very good points by the way.

I posted this via Busy for multiple reasons, one of which includes to illustrate that point. Currently Busy is very Steemit-like in features, but has added additional ones and has potential to find new uses for the Steem platform. Furthermore, like Busy, more apps or websites can be built on to Steem. The more limited Steem is, the more friction there is to building such apps. Can you imagine if Twitter said only four tweets per day could receive any retweets, or something so arbitrary?

I completely agree with this and I am now firmly in the anti-reward-pool-splitting camp. Also, I think that a solution that would work would be if steemit took a more hands-off approach to the development of the steemit.com interface and focused its resources on improving the code. There is a lot of room for improvement in the way that steemd is implemented, and I am pretty sure per cost for development the website is more expensive. I might even say 'hire busy to do it'.

I'm now in complete agreement with pfunk. I have been on both sides but always felt more inclination not to support reward splitting. Thank you for the post pfunk.

thank you maybe weigh the best cases for each or the worst cases if you can keep it short :D

Exactly.
Steem is the main engine.
Steemit is just one of many possible chassis that fits onto the engine.

I agree. Comment rewards probably don't need to be designed into the blockchain. Most likely commenting can be encouraged by the front end design & purpose of a website. A Quora style frontend for Steem will naturally encourage commenting, but the platform can still be effective using the same reward pool. Also 38% seems way too high. Building a comment pool with such a high reward pool will probably turn Steemit into more of a Quora or Reddit instead of a Medium-style blogging platform immediately. It would be an interesting experiment, but again it's better to leave everything up to the frontend.

You might say "Let's just give it a try anyway, it's ready to go, just drop all objection to it." I'd like to point out that once a feature is in, it's harder to remove.

and

The goal is rational: give more incentive potential to comments to increase user participation, engagement, and retention.

I'm not sure if separating out a comment pool will indeed support intended goal. However, my opinion is, we shall test and see the results.

I understand the fact when some feature is implemented in the code, it may not be that easy to get it disabled again. But I still think we should give it a try and give x weeks, or y months to determine the effectes and results. Would it not be possible to agree with Steemit Inc a clear "what to do" plan with clear criteria? When the real purpose of this feature is not resulting in the wanted effects, Steemit Inc commits to remove the separation of the comment pool from the reward pool again in z days/weeks/months?

I would also add the ability for a configurable split, ie the 38/63 split can be adjusted by just a configurable parameter to eg 20/80, 30/70. With such ability, a series of test can be executed in sequence trying different settings/percentages of split. This may give all of us a much better view how to progress, then just based on theories define our way forward.

In the end, we need to get the basics right before Steemit is ready to grow, and with that Steem. It will benefit all of us. To be able to create a great solid foundation to Steemit and Steem, we really have to test a lot of different ideas. IMHO, the split of the reward pool is one of them.

Great ! As we discussed already !

Thank you for commenting @edje. There are several major changes in the present release that I would consider experimental: a fixed 7-day payout schedule with no provision for meaningful abuse mitigation, delegated STEEM Power with the ability to create accounts with delegated SP, and a separated comment reward pool. Trying to see the results of three experiments at the same time is not ideal. You won't know what had the effect, and what didn't.

In regards to a configurable split, I would not count on it. People, such as those who might want to make an app for Steem, will base their decision to participate or build upon Steem on knowing the rules. If basic, intuitive rules like the reward pool being whole are always subject to change, it will make that decision a more difficult one.

In the end, we need to get the basics right before Steemit is ready to grow, and with that Steem. It will benefit all of us.

Agreed fully. I think the basics include an undivided reward pool. It's simple, and comments are likely to get more rewards with a flatter reward curve.

To be able to create a great solid foundation to Steemit and Steem, we really have to test a lot of different ideas. IMHO, the split of the reward pool is one of them.

I don't necessarily agree with treating Steem like a rat maze science experiment. It's true that there is more flexibility at a smaller size, but if growth is not being achieved it's not necessarily because of the blockchain rules. I believe in the goal of increasing comment reward potential. I think it will help with growth and retention. But the more straightforward experiment (fix, in my eyes) to try to make that happen is a flatter reward curve.

The name of this release is Simplicity. It was presented as a release to make Steem a more open platform. To put more bells and whistles on it, 3+ at a time, for the sake of experimentation will hardly get us anywhere. Any changes that limit the scope of Steem must be avoided.

Let's not turn Steem into this (note the two bubbles, one for each reward pool! :)

Love the pic! :)

The name of this release is Simplicity

I agree to this; Simplicity is Key; In anything.

In regards to a configurable split, I would not count on it.

I was just thinking from a coding perspective, once there, no code change is required to adjust. Adjustments only allowed when in test phase and in agreement with community, or at least the witnesses. After test phase, either the feature out of the code, or still by procedure managed by Steemit INC and Community.

Trying to see the results of three experiments at the same time is not ideal.

Agree. Would be super nice if all those 3 changes can actually be implemented in serie, rather than all at the same time. No idea if it is somehow possible to re-build the software once more and allow by configuration each of the 3 changes to be switched to the new functionality and back to how it is now (probably not, but wanted to question it anyway). Again, of course, thinking of code time spend, release time spend, and the need for "getting the basics right" by testing.

Trying to see the results of three experiments at the same time is not ideal. You won't know what had the effect, and what didn't.

This I agree with. I suppose there may just be a fear of being the only blockchain to reach hard-fork 100 and still not have it right.

I don't see this particular experiment as dangerous. It doesn't make us lab rats! We are a long way off taking off to the moon yet and I for one wouldn't want to get halfway there only to be overtaken by a competitor who recognised that the engagers (commenters) are 1000 times more valuable than the bloggers. Respectfully, please respond to my comment and points made rather than just refer me to re-read yours.

I referred to these replies because they addressed the specific things you were talking about and I didn't want to repeat myself. :) I don't disagree that rewarding comments is important. A flattened, less-than-rshares-squared reward curve should empower people who wish to vote on comments to have a more meaningful impact. But more importantly, implementing that will have a positive impact on the whole system. Let's give it a shot before trying to put Steem in another box.

Here's a related bit from @smooth:


i believe that the prospects of success of the blockchain rests heavily on more experiments by the community and different developers in form of different use cases and user interfaces and not just steemit.com and its own set of experiments, however important rapid or comprehensive those experiments may be.

now not all experiments are equal. introducing economic rules which strongly impede and disadvantage these forms of broad experimentation are harmful, arguably an existential threat. it is very possible for steemit do its work and rapidly iterate on combination of some UX and blockchain factors which do not have these harmful side effects and will still produce useful results (positive and negative), may very well lead to improved retention, etc. look at the usage metrics since the whale non-voting (which changed slope significantly before the price rise and continued through it) and consider that it bears a lot in common with linearity and has little (nothing) to do with segmented comment pool for example.

imo this is witnesses doing our job and safeguarding the blockchain as a neutral and promising medium for all users and reasonably-viable usages and not just steemit.com

Above text licensed by smooth under DGAF-0 license

I understand your and @smooth points!

I am in the camp that does not want to see it done for many of the reasons stated above. However, I have to wonder if steemit.inc has a reason they have basically been pushing this through despite much of the community not supporting it that they are not telling us? Perhaps there is some information they have that we do not that supports why this change needs to be done?

If there was one they could share with us I think it would have been done as there were many occasions to do it.

Agreed. Is it possible there is a reason they aren't able to share? Otherwise I am not sure why this change is being pushed so much...

Nicely put. I agree with both points of view.
Moreover we really need to take a step back and start with the basics. We need to put a stop to cramping a lot of changes into one go. Split them into smaller HFs and implement a proper voting algorithm so the entire community has a direct and official way to point the direction.

The proper voting algorithm is voting on witnesses. It is ultimately the block producers that run the software that forms the network. Stake-based popular voting is full of challenges for deciding on making changes to Steem. @chitty asked his witness voters what they wanted to see him do, but didn't get a large turnout.

FWIW @sneak and the Steemit Inc team have promised to make changes to the process of forking Steem to avoid the present situation of having a feature which a number of witnesses disapprove of.

It's true that the community channels their decision through the witnesses they support. Having a separate polling would mean double voting, in a way.

The idea that witnesses need a feature to express their choice with every fork change is a great one and I hope to see it implemented soon.

The other thing about getting exposure on your posts. This is something I've been thinking about a lot in the past week. We need some algorithms for our feeds that don't rely solely on the posts of the people we follow (and their resteems), in a descending timeline order. It needs to be something smarter, something more dynamic and personalized. That way, posts that get community attention reach a wider spread to get everyone's attention.

heeey it's not 50 pages long thank you :) Read Time: Stop: 00:02:43.495

I think I mostly agree so I will say I opposed it from the start, the problem is lack of care not lack of incentives, we should have enough, but nobody reads through comments, since there are no rewards we take for granted the fact that rewards are here and we game the system, rather than make the best of it we make it puny and then blame it for our misuse of a pretty much ok platform :D

Community is what drives it and comments are a part of that, I'd say either start using steem to support that and the fact people actually spend their day here, rather than making more bots, to go through all that posts :) my 2 cents, I don't care either way, one day I might start gaming and stop caring :) might, just to emphasize

Hey, thanks for timing it :)

I've personally been using my votes on comments more often now with the whale abstention/countervote experiment going on. Based on this, I am optimistic that comments will see more voting engagement with a flatter reward curve, resulting in a wider distribution of the reward pool.

Wasn't the four posts a day thing implemented because some people were spamming and were getting automatic whale-bot votes for each article, which crowded out everyone else from the pot?

Not sure I thought it was like that from the start to avoid spam to begin with.

yeah but people going for rewards don't see it as spam it's a potential turnout :)