The Flawed Philosophy Behind Steemit Curation + Solution!
Steemit is a social phenomenon. But there's a reason why it's still in Beta.
Steemit is created around several core concepts. The most important one is that everyone will be paid, even if by a small amount, for their participation. Steemit users are also keen on posting original work and frown upon content copied from elsewhere.
But there's a reason why content copied from other sites constantly appears here. Would a professional journalist work at a rate of $0.01 per article? Not really. So, if the typical payout for an article of a new user is so low, why bother investing your time in research, interviews, good writing, taking photos, and anything else that makes a good and original article? Just copy-paste or rephrase and get a couple of cents for ten minutes of work.
I hear some you shouting: Curators! We have curators!
We do. About 99% of all users have no weight to curate any articles (they can work for free, of course), while the remaining 1% (whales) are too few to curate all articles and drive the content in the right direction.
There's also another side effect of this system - why upvote a well written article by an unknown author (probably a professional journalist, trying Steemit), when you can upvote a 20-year-old origami/makeup/halloween mask maker with questionable writing and language skills, but whose articles always get hundreds of dollars?
To sum up:
- Whales can't manage to curate all content by themselves.
- Minnows, even though they are more than the whales, and can curate all content, don't receive almost anything for curation.
- Authors, which are new and provide good content, will find it really hard to compete with users, which were the first to register on the network, regardless of the quality of their content.
Some of you will be annoyed that I critique the philosophy behind Steemit, without offering a solution to the problem.
So there - a solution:
A progressive scale. The less money (STEEM + SP + SD) an author has, the higher the percentage of the final amount to be given to curators.
Right now authors receive 75% and curators receive 25%. How about keeping this distribution for established authors (i.e. those having high STEEM + SP + SD) but reversing that for new authors, so curators - both whales and minnows, have a better incentive to vote for new authors.
This way, curators will know that if they vote for an author who is consistently getting high payout on his posts, they will receive only a portion of 25% of the earnings. But if they vote on an article which is good (and how else to know that it's good, than to read it - we just solved another problem on Steemit), then they have the opportunity to receive three times better payout by receiving a portion of 75% of the final post payout (as opposed to only 25%).
Benefits:
- Minnows and whales will prefer to vote on new articles, which they think others may like and upvote (actually reading them!)
- Good minnow authors will receive 25% of (some amount > $0) instead of 75% of $0, as it stands right now
- Minnows will receive a few more cents for curation.
- Wealth will be distributed better - new and established authors will both receive cash, as opposed to only established authors now.
- Established authors won't spam us with several new articles every day (they know each will cash out), as the richer they are, the less attention they will get from both whales and minnows.
- Bots become much less useful. They can't decide on the quality of articles and will only work with established authors, effectively reducing the income from automated software.
Drawbacks:
- People actually have to read the articles they vote on.
There you go. Steemit saved. Please let the developers know about this solution - I'm not sure how to contact them (@ned, @dan, @dantheman, are you there guys?). Certainly upvoting and sharing will get their attention, so please do!
The Flawed Philosophy Behind This Solution
One word. Sybil.
Attack works like so ...
A user creates a new account as soon as the threshold for obtaining rewards in the 75% regime is past.
It's not easy to optimize the quality and rewards and the whole Steemit system.
The @complexring reply already shows how your solution may become ineffective, but there are other issues: lower rewards to established authors may bring them out of the platform or make them publish less contents (or lower quality ones). Note that I'm a minnow too, so not defending established authors for some personal interest.
It's a complex balance and there's not quick and easy solution IMHO.
He and jesta are worried about Sybil attacks. Nothing stops a Sybil attack at the current 25% rate, right?
Lower rewards to established authors would mean that they have to post less, yes. And that's a good thing - would you rather have several people with several interests and everyone else working for free, or rather more authors and more diverse content, and more people receiving money for their work? It's all about a sightly better reward distribution and people actually reading the articles vs. mindless upvoting of established authors, because their articles pay out.
Also, being limited to posting less times a day, means that you will push for higher quality articles.
As much as I wanted this solution to be a novel approach to more wealth distribution, @complexring nailed it.
Let's play out the scenario, as I don't see a Sybil attack working?
Explain it in more detail, please - I don't understand? I'm proposing a progressive scale from 75% to 25% for curator rewards. How would a Sybil attack even be worthwhile?
I go make 100 accounts that all are minnows. I slowly start writing posts with them. On each of these posts, I use a whale account to upvote, and collect 75% of the rewards from the post.
Once the accounts gain enough SP from rewards, I power them down and discard them, making new accounts to harvest 75% rewards off of.
It would be a new way for people to farm curation rewards at a much higher rate than we see right now.
So what stops you from doing the same at the current 25% rate?
Nothing - it's just that by increasing it from 25% to something higher, it becomes more of a problem.
I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist currently, but this compounds it and makes it worse :)
It's not a problem to use reputation into the equation - that way exploiting new accounts will be considerably harder.
Using reputation allows someone with a higher reputation to upvote someone with a lower one and do the same thing.
Not impossible, harder yes. Will people do it. Absolutely, if the rewards are large enough and the time it takes to do so is negligible in comparison.
Create a new account so you are always on the 75% side.
I replied to @jesta above.
This is a really good idea for altering reward distribution. Specifically, the lower your SP, the higher your proportion of SD reward, and the bigger the reward for the curators who vote early, is how I would think it would function best. Speed up that initial part of the process of bringing new votes in. And yes, lower the curation rewards relative to the SP of the creator, relative to the voter. This encourages greater churn of who whales vote for, which encourages the new creators coming in.
Since the minnows get smaller rewards initially anyway, more liquidity helps them continue their work. Those who are established, boost their profile faster, and their ability to curate as well, and big curators will be incentivised to search for new writers, and it will also have the effect of defeating whalebot votes voting by user instead of making the effort to search for new users.
I agree with the second paragraph, but I'm not sure about changing the SD reward proportion, as this may have additional consequences to the operation of the system. Rewarding fast curation actually discourages reading and creates incentives for even more bots, so that's not really a good idea, I think.
Thank you for the upvote, I really apreciate it!
to the minnows, 5 bux is huge. To not be able to spend as much, but if they get such a reward, they need to be encouraged. Then they can decide to power up, or if they are broke, they can pay some of their bills. Starving artists is not just a cliche. The new writers can cash out, but if they do that, they reduce their ability to get bigger rewards. You do know already that SP affects reward size? So that's already accounted for. It would not be the leak out that letting exploitative whales win big rewards on curation and then powering down is.
I understand your point, but imagine 99% of users (minnows) getting 5 dollars away from Steemit - this will decrease Steem value even further. I think having whales and minnows voting on good content, instead only on established authors, would increase the chances of everyone, with reasonable writing skills, to get noticed and rewarded - this way only good authors can pay their bills :D
ok, but you see my point. you might be nobody, with a good idea, join up. you need to pay your bills first or there is no more posts. make the curve very sharp then.
Of course, I see your point. It's always in our interest to get money back for our work. But if minnows get the option to cash out immediately after they get rewarded, someone may decide that the more accounts he has posting content from, the higher the chance of getting noticed and receiving cash from a whale.
It's better to give more power to trusted accounts - maybe that's another use for the reputation meter - the higher your reputation, the more SD versus SP you can receive?
Regardless of SD to SP ratio, my idea would give everyone a much better chance to get noticed and receive money for their work, right?
Another good idea I have seen is to take the upvote button off of the feed page. That way you have to at least click into the post to upvote.
That won't change much more than users having to click twice :)
good points. I'd be down for that as would minnows.
What i usually hear as response to changing curation rules is that Whales and other big players have invested a lot of oney the system as it is.
Another rule is not beig able to buy out for 2 years, (last i heard).
So to change the rules would possibly make those heavy investors feel cheated. Discourage future investors because hey shit happens.
I of course want changes, Really, all your points spot on.
I will write a post directing people to this. See they think
I appreciate it, thank you very much!
I don't think my proposed change would devaluate the currency - it will only redistribute the wealth slightly and give minnows more attention from the whales. Which will make the system more engaging for new users. If things stay the way they are, people will start leaving.
what an excellent post--problem and solution--mostly i read about self righteous dolphins complaining that minnows should simply work harder and stop complaining--but really there is a systemic problem-it is very very difficult to get paid/noticed -unless you are noticed by a whale!!
Indeed - that's why I'm trying to get more eyes on this topic, so people realize the problem and talk to the devs.
Worth a try I think , also because the implementation would be easy to make.
I would think so too, yes. And I don't see any negatives associated with this change.
"..why upvote a well written article by an unknown author (probably a professional journalist, trying Steemi"...
you think highly of 'professional journalists? how cute! Why ever for?
Do you have some basis for this statement or are you just pulling it out of your nether regions?
I see you have have a general hatred for journalists and discard their education and professional writing experience as non-essential. It's pointless to argue.
I'd like to see some professional journalism here - Steemit is an independent uncensored media, which brings profits. A true magnet for professionals, trying to create independent journalism - if the income is reasonable, of course.
my opinion: A strong link between real person and account should be established first (it is actually quite hard given ever evolving bot/AI technologies)... even so we still have the problem of dummy accounts... but I think this is the most important basis upon which curating solutions can be discussed...
That's not a bad idea - using user reputation in calculating curation and author rewards is also feasible.
I'm with you on several points, but I can also see some of the problems others mentioned coming to fruition...there doesn't seem to be an easy fix to what currently ails this platform.
My idea was to give new users more incentives to use the system by making their posts attractive for whales to vote on. Of course, with the falling price of Steem, this problem is not only more pronounced, as newbies don't receive anything for their work, but whales have a whole new set of problems to worry about (i.e. loosing their enormous investments in Steemit).