_{Photo by victoriawhite on flickr, labelled CC2.}

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I haven't done a discussion post in forever, so let's see how engaged I can get my followers. :)

I'm sure most of you have heard the old parable, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". If you didn't pay attention in high school biology, it's a cute little paradox -- if you did pay attention though, you're pretty aware that the thing that laid the chicken we know of today, was basically a less-evolved chicken. Another fun form of this parable-paradox would be "What happens when an immovable object encounters an unstoppable force?"

Our Steemit equivalent, I believe to be, is "Which came first, the engagement or the reward?" Ever seen a post on trending with few comments, and few views? Ever seen a buried treasure with tons of views and comments, but no reward? Over time, the first post will hopefully gather comments, and the second will hopefully gather reward... but which should come first?

I believe these two things are more intertwined than we initially come to believe. We all know the main reason why people are here on Steemit (HINT: It's not the UI), but which does, or should, come first: the reward that we are here for, or the engagement?

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A little about me...

Steemit isn't fair. It's never been fair. Take me for an example; let's face it, my photography is terrible. I'm just some amateur that sometimes takes a half decent picture with a half decent camera, and happened to have visited a bunch of half-decent places. There are an uncountable number of photographers that are mind-bogglingly better than I am, and when they first come to Steemit, they're not likely to immediately match what I have previously been rewarded for my photos. So why is that?

Well, there's a few obvious reasons. The primary being my follower count. With over 1,800, I've amassed a significant chunk. You could argue that this is the main driver of success here: a huge audience. Or maybe you're a bit more clever, and understanding the steem distribution, realize it's not the number in the audience but rather the aggregate influence of the audience. A few important characters with extreme influence in your audience, makes a world of difference. Thus, the community (and engagement on your posts) matters quite a bit. But how does that high follower count come to be?

In my case, I built a following starting a year ago, right after Steemit launched. I wasn't anyone famous, and no one in the community knew me -- I wasn't a bitshares name like a lot of people were at the start, nor did I ever blog before. But I interacted with the (then small) community, made myself known, and became somewhat infamous for being 'the cheetah bot guy'. This launched me into a steem witness spot too, making me an ever more well-known figure in Steemit land. While starting early gave me an advantage, getting involved with the community was far more relevant and important to increasing my rewards.

I've made a fair chuck in rewards this past year, and I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to do so. With that said, I'd say I started with the engagement, and then got the reward. In a way, some people are voting for me as a person, rather than necessarily the exact content that I produce.

In general, you might be thinking by now "Of course that's how it works! You have to build a following." and you might be right. However, famous people come to Steemit and immediately make a huge reward, sometimes without even engaging. Perhaps the reward is expected, as their popularity and influence brings theoretical value to the platform when they join. So that begs the question...

Can Rewards come first?

Can the reward come before the engagement? In a way, this recent hardfork to linearize reward has attempted to flatten the distribution of reward, such that the highly popular have less reward, and the "middle class" of Steemit has the new opportunity to see a drastic improvement in their influence. Now, more than ever, we can put the reward before the engagement, as the ability to reward is less concentrated in the hands of the few. Of course, one still has to minimally engage in order to be qualified for a reward (need a post or comment to vote on), so the real question is the quality of the engagement relative to the reward. You can perhaps think of this situation as a post that is voted highly before it is even digested or otherwise engaged with.

There are a few arguments I can think of where putting the reward first is useful:

1. Enticement.
   • The enticement of reward draws people to contribute and engage further, and the desire to build a following.
2. Positivity.
   • A reward is positive feedback!
3. Promotion.
   • A high reward draws in new people to look at, and engage with, a post.

But I don't think this is reason enough. Here's some counter arguments on the situation, and reasons why I believe that the engagement should come before the reward.

1. The tragedy of the commons.
   • If everyone seeks to maximize their own reward, overall community support and involvement will dwindle, and resources will deplete.
2. Plastic dolls.
   • Some famous people cross-post content on Steemit, but do not engage with the community. They paint themselves as pretty and superficial plastic dolls, figurines with no internals. This even leads to incentivize identity theft, as scammers try to latch on to the fame of others to try and get a quick buck, knowing that famous people will be well rewarded.
3. Laser focus on rewards.
   • People who know they have a large following, or know every post they create will be well rewarded, will often take advantage of it by focusing on quantity instead of quality. Or people will spam comments like 'great post', in hopes to get an upvote. And at worst, people will abuse the platform with plagiarism to defraud voters.
   • P.S. Abuse on steemit is at an all time high. Is that the canary in the coal mine, once again?
4. 'Deserve' mentality.
   • Some people begin to expect rewards, or expect voters to continue to vote for them.

What does it all mean?

So, what's all this discussion about? This wasn't just word vomit, I promise I do actually have a point. To generalize: perhaps we should be more careful with rewards. With a high price of steem, and newfound influence of the middle class, one could be quick to think that everything is fine and dandy. However, with the new ability to reward only our friends or ourselves with all our influence, we run a great risk; if people focus on the reward rather than the engagement and community building, we could quickly collapse into a self-serving, reward-leeching scenario.

As linear rewards also mean voting for oneself is easy and profitable: a true tragedy of the commons will occur if everyone only voted for themselves "because that's what everyone else is doing". Quality will degrade, and efforts will focus not on providing value, but rather on extracting reward. If this happens, we are likely to see another steem bear market, as a new fire cleans out those not soley here for reward, once again. To prevent that, I believe we now need altruism more than ever.

What are your thoughts on the engagement versus rewards paradox? Does the current linear situation have you thrilled, or concerned? Do you have more or less faith in humanity than I do? I'd like to hear your comments below!

And with that said, time to change gears for a bit and talk about my own voting.

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The paradox of more voting power on curation.

There's another friendly Steemit paradox that I encountered: The ability to greatly reward a post, actually reduces your own potential curation reward as a percentage of your influence. A bit confusing, but let me explain.

A few months ago, I created a voting bot that strategically voted for posts to maximize curation reward. I found myself as a top curator, frequently catching posts before a larger curation trail voted for it. I then set myself up as an available curator on streemian to enable other Steemians to automatically follow my vote. Over time, many Steemians started following my votes (and a big thank you to them!), at which point in time I noticed that I was no longer catching posts before other larger curators... I WAS the large curator!

What I found happening is that I could reward a post well enough on my own, and in such, the other curator just picked a new post to reward. In a way, it became a sort of implicit sharing of curating; "you get this post, I'll get that post", rather than piling on to the same person as I did before.

With great power comes great responsibility.

When I found myself with new influence, my old strategy didn’t work as well. Come hardfork19, this difference was further magnified, and I'm now re-organizing my voting strategy. Moving forward with my own votes and the new linear reward, I'm going to completely scrap any focus on maximizing curation reward, and instead focus on rewarding under-valued, quality content, and spreading smaller rewards to more deserving users, since it is now feasible to do so! I am going to have most of my votes picked by manual curators, and follow their choices with a small power. If you feel like joining me in this curation endeavour, check out streemian.com where you can follow me as a curator!