RE: [PROPOSAL]: Timely vs Timeless content, Longform Content, Incentives, and Scalability for Steemit
A lot of times, quality goes unrecognized even for the brightest authors and most talented artists - until they are dead, or centuries after that. If that can happen to the top artists, novelists, musicians, philosophers etc, imagine how much worse the problem is for above-average or "just good" creator. I've written about this issue here: https://steemit.com/talent/@alexgr/unrecognized-talent-fact-of-life-or-whale-conspiracy
Now compounding the problem is the lack of time. We live in a "fast food" era of content consumption. The content which is timeless or becomes classic, will, in my opinion, find its way by itself - over time. People will bookmark it, link it, etc etc. Then you have stats showing you what old articles are getting accessed a lot - and from there you get a better idea on what has become a "classic" after some time.
Excellent point. Indeed, "time and chance overtake us all." However, I find it hard to reconcile the fatality of your argument with the argument itself. Why make the argument if it ends up being true in the end anyway? What's the point of anything? Well, you do it because you love it and the rewards don't matter. The problem is, we live in a world that has technology in it that would have connected Van Gogh to the one obscure collector that lived during his life time but never met him. Don't you think we should be fine tuning this technology so that the artist can know, in her life time, how big of an impact she has made on the world?
The issue is that you can't just declare something as a "classic" in realtime by just putting it into a "timeless" category. Classic things only become classic on their own, no matter the intention of the creator, and always after the passing of time. They become classic after a process of maturation where society -or subcultures therein- appreciates them.
I am not saying that posting garbage to the blockchain instantly makes it a classic, and I am not saying steemit will find the next Shakespeare (or even the next Classic (capital "C") content). I am merely saying that presently, the opportunity to get recognition for creating something that could end up being classic does not exist on steemit. After all, if blockchains are forever, they are way better then a copyright owned by a publishing company, so when do they grow up and start acting like it?
For instance, if Shakespeare published on steemit under the current system he would get paid in the first 24 hours, then after 30 days, then no more, and he wouldn't make much of anything. Then some time later he would die and a few of the actors he worked with would remember, "hey those plays were pretty good," they would replay his works and realize that they were all brilliant, only now, his decedents can not benefit from them (as I am sure his wishes would have been, because he was probably broke all his life, writing stupid plays), and they would probably get re-posted somewhere else, somewhere that could pay. Why not open up this opportunity to pass on ownership keys to take care of future generation long after the death of the original artist if that artists work becomes a classic? If it doesn't become a classic, the cost is 0. Really struggling to see how this isn't a win win.
I don't have an issue of extending the upvote period for further than 30 days (if there is such a limitation) from a limited reward pool but then again I don't know the game theory extensions behind such a choice and why it was made. Perhaps (speculation on my part) the understanding was that if there comes a point where there are like 5mn articles and only 1000 the last 12hrs, and people upvote a lot of the old ones, then the new ones will not get much. So perhaps a limited pool for old work could work per your suggestion.