RE: Which came first, the Engagement or the Reward?
Excellent post, I sadly missed reading it! Definitely agree with you. I do think it will take a large mindset overhaul, as the majority of the early adopters are all crypto nuts, and we love our crypto news... I'm guilty of following and voting for this stuff because it's presently valuable to me (e.g., I would have completely missed the byteballs airdrop if it wasn't for @kingscrown; he's always on the ball with crypto info.)
Despite a largely positive HF19, I'm afraid after HF19 I see a lot of engaged curators with large SP holdings (or delegated) give out 10%-25% for others, while saving 100% for themselves and their friends/colluders.
This is interesting, and I'm already guilty of saving 100% votes (e.g. for @steemcleaners logs). I have a strong feeling this will become the norm. It makes me curious; how much will people now consider a post to be "already too valuable" and not vote on it. In this case, not voting for oneself may end up with the same reward at the end of the day, as more people might be inclined to increase the reward, instead of the power user increasing it themselves.
We opened a whole can of worms with this hardfork, should be interesting to see it play out.
For the longest time, I was partial to the view that this is a free open market and everyone should do as they please. Of course, I still believe that, but I've come around to the notion that there should be accountability and the players should act in the best interests of the community rather than their own.
We have a real shot at making this place special, but I'm afraid we are curating sub-optimally right now. It is about time the top stakeholders of the platform took responsibility. Stop delegating SP to people you like, stop voting on your friends, start voting for authors that have a chance of attracting the mainstream. It's in the best interests of the community and the stakeholders themselves. I can promise you if the Trending page was replaced by engaging content the mainstream audience can enjoy, this network has a real chance at hitting dozens of millions of users in short order. Stakeholders stand to gain millions of dollars, if only they stop being myopic and look at the bigger picture.
I have limited reach, few would ever read my opinion. My hope is influencers like yourself can start a serious and involved discussion on the matter. I would greatly appreciate it.
There's the free market, and then there's cutting down fruit trees for firewood. If somebody with a $10,000 stake can upvote their own posts and comments to something like $700 a week, 7% per week!, there's no way that the current economy can be sustainable. Maybe a couple of months of that, and then we go back to $0.02, and the $10000 turns into $1000, against the trend of the whole crypto market, and everybody will cry foul.
This upvoting of one's own comments is not stimulating interaction, and it's in bad taste. It always was lame, now it's completely over the top.
Yeah, definitely see your point. Stakeholders being myopic is exactly the tragedy of the commons that I often talk about.
I have always wanted there to be a separate trending page on steemit: a front facing one with normal blogs, and a
circlejerkinternal trending page. My post here would fit in the latter. Perhaps communities, when they arrive, can help this this kind of separation.I think you have a bigger reach than you think. I personally regard your opinion extremely highly due to all the effort you have put in this platform, and I know I am not the only one. As for my influence, I still struggle to get people to pay attention to plagiarism. :p
If you have ideas to push this forward, you'll have my support for sure.
Precisely, communities should solve this issue, but it would also require the voters to act responsibly. There'll no longer be an excuse of "Oh, this is important, it must be trending!", but the voters still have to learn to vote on valuable posts that'll attract users to the network.
Top authors can also disable curation rewards on their posts to disincentivize vote piling. That seems like an altruistic act, but most top authors are holding Steem/Power that stands to gain value if they help reshape the Trending page.
I'm aware some people are listening to me, but at the end of the day I prefer working behind the scenes. I don't have any political skills and don't intend to learn. I don't really have any ideas on how to push this forward, but that's where I'm counting on influencers and witnesses. As the abit experiment proves, the community has the power to unite. If a couple of influential people got together and made a pact to not vote on circlejerk posts, pull back delegations to irresponsible curators, look to vote on new authors, I'm sure it'll happen. It's as simple as someone taking the initiative and making it happen.
That someone isn't going to be me :)
Hey liberosist, I'm curious if you know of anybody who'd be interested in leasing out their SP for a small fee. It would be for a voting application that I'm building which will target comments specifically, and I'd strongly commit to no self-voting or anything like that.
I'm guessing that everybody you know who has spare SP has already delegated it to @curie or some such, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Funny, I'm looking to lease out SP too. Your best bet would be @neoxian. Come find me on Steemit.chat (http for now, not s) or Discord liberosist#1871.
Ah, that's why I can't access Steemite chat.
I actually found someone for the time being...