RE: Reflections on the Benefits and Growing Pains of Project Curie, Steem Guild, and Other Curation Projects on Steemit
Thanks for posting but I disagree.
I suppose they have helped get rid of the $8000 post but actually a$500 curie post at $0.25 per Steem is still an 8k post at $4 Steem.
I think the big problem is that these are artificial programs, they are top down and fundamentally less sustainable than bottoms up. Before these curation guilds were targeting diverse content, categories like crypto currency news with a natural constituency with our user base were growing from the bottom up. They were sustainable until these top down methods sucked up all the rewards and tried to attract such diverse content that it appeals to no one. If something doesn't get many comments it's probably trending because someone was trying to earn curation rewards by front running whales, curie or author based bots.
Focused is better
I think the Steemtrails seems a much better solution through targeting categories. VIP tries to get activity. Maybe these general guilds had to happen first before the better focused version but I think Robin Hood and curie have contributed to the decline. Really they aren't much different than a website paying for polished articles of a bunch of random content. I guarantee such an unfocused website would never succeed. Focus is what is valuable, but it's a common mistake to go for breadth.
Appreciate your comment - I'd agree that focus is better and may have some better business sense to it. After all, companies like Paypal only managed to really get their first leg through the door when they shifted focus on selling their services to the top players in eBay.
Back to Steemit, that "focus" phase has already happened during the pre-July 4th launch. Back then it was mostly about cryptos, government, and musings about Steemit. However, I wouldn't call what happened back then to be bottom up. The top influencers were definitely seeding the early adopter's accounts, quite directly from top down.
Anyway, decentralisation (in a social sense) necessarily means diversity. The focused, heavily-centralised phase is over. Perhaps it can even resume back to the way it is, but the network has to grow into a social media platform. And there will be cost requirements to come up with cognitive-mining pools (curation guilds) to help top influencers put value into the many accounts that are coming in. In that case, the decisions are actually made from the bottom up since our field curators and proxy voters are working together to call the shots. And as cost optimisation, process automation catches up - we will see a dissolution in curation guilds, perhaps into smaller chunks.
I may be biased being involved in the curation group, but I don't think such efforts are contributing to the decline. No doubt this is just a band-aid approach. Ideally, the whales should bust their asses day and night doing their best to reward good content creators. Fact is, most whales are miners, and aren't necessarily equipped with the skills and especially, time to do DD checks and reward diverse contents. Curation groups enable power distribution with more pairs of eyes and brains to do the job. And there are already signs of specialised curation groups, and steemtrails is one of it. Hopefully by seeding a breadth of small accounts, there will be a greater organic curation especially when Steem price catches up again to better market evaluation.
I'd like to make one other comment on this portion of your reply to @dennygalindo.
Sometimes tactical retreat is called for. The explosive growth in July did not sustain. The active user base is now smaller, the rewards pool is smaller, and if we've learned anything it is something that didn't work incredibly well to effectively launch the platform into a large wave of adoption.
In many ways the situation on Steemit now resembles the pre-July period more than the July-August period and perhaps refocusing on some key specializations makes sense, as either a base for slower organic growth or as a platform for another, different, attempt at a large adoption wave at some point in the future (perhaps when social features on the site are better implemented).
Just a thought, but I think a perspective well worth considering.
The sustainable solution is to make people want to power up. Why would they want that?
To get voting rewards and to raise their comment to the top.
This could be done by a curie type org that finds voters to follow, not posters. We have plenty of posters, need more voters. More commenters would be nice too b/c it builds community. Commenters and voters power up and writers take money out and lower the steem price..
Thus far all "marketing" like curie is focused on the writers who take money out to "make a living".
it's no surprise this is causing an accelerating decline in steem price.
Interestingly now that vest are under 90% it makes a lot of sense to power up to curate and comment. Marketing applied now could create a self sustainaing org. People power up, get more voting power and power up more to get more voting power.
Definitely worth considering @smooth, I've been thinking lately perhaps the focus that's required is perhaps, back to seeding posts / accounts that work to perpetuate Steemit both internally and externally. But then again, I think that's the natural participation of most Steemians that will eventually lead into strengthening the currency over time. Maybe the focus should be about that..
Before the July period, the top daily curation lists took about an average of $50-60 per listed entry.
Now with Steem back at July prices, Curie's top daily curation lists are taking about an average $4-7 per listed entry. And this is used to support:-
To add, a decent level of DD, QC and collusion-avoidance with 2-3 layers of vouching for every suggested post, plus the #curie outlet - imo, it's a good mix of decentralisation and self-policing.
Moving forward, we are going to (and have been) implementing the following:-
I understand your concerns.. and it certainly did not escape all of us in the team as well, especially when the daily reward pool is shrinking. Organic curation at grassroots now is way too little for any meaningful curation, even when my vests are > 100M atm. (I could give out a cup of coffee / vote a few months ago, not now).
Personally, I think the overall ops will retain and build a database of close-knit, diversified set of creators. At one point, I think Steemit will have an on-demand gig layer that could provide services to non-Steem related entities, which will drive Steem's value moving forward. Imo, Steemit could be a very valuable database, with everyone in it essentially acting like a HR apparatus.. and I think this will have an edge over stuff like freelancer, fiverr, etc, and could be positioned in many various ways. Still working on that concept to present.. (this is a conjecture, of course, but what's not conjecture is the internal trading that's going to happen through store functions, and the database needs to be pre-populated).
Thanks @smooth, I think it's healthy to continue the discussion. No doubt I'm biased, seeing that I've been with the team since day 1. But we're definitely doing what we can to keep it relevant while working on community feedback, plus adjusting cost dependencies on the ops scaling with the value of the currency.
In a way, I guess a curation group like Curie is all about mass user attention / distribution, a way out of many other approaches to improve the network. What are your thoughts on what should be focused on?
I'm not sure what this means. Before July, I don't remember any real curation lists at all. I know @arhag made a few custom lists of rewards, but that was about it. So I'm not sure what you are describing.
Some of the things you mentioned seem a bit possibly overinvested to me. That may have made sense with 20x the reward pool but given the current size of the economy I'm not sure it really supports that level of 24/7 staffing, layers of vouching, etc. Just a thought, I don't know the details of your business model. Could be time to go leaner though, and try to keep the best of the positive impact that can be delivered with a lower footprint.
Focus on the consumer side of the equation...
It's possible this is a required evolutionary step. I think specialized curation ( and consumer recruiting) might work well to reverse activity trends. For a while we were the best place for crypto news and now redit is much better or Bitcoin talk. We have 3000 active users. We are much better writing about (and rewarding) their shared interest than something that might appeal to tens of even 100 of them. Writing for people to get them to join is not smart. You don't need to join to read! We need to write for the activity producers( posters commenters, voters) the rest will come automatically.
Great post! Especially the part about the whales... we essentially do what they cannot. I would imagine more and more whales will join efforts like this in the coming weeks/months.
Somewhat. They are doing so according to rules and guidelines that are entirely top down. Someone decided that spreading the wealth and creating a lot of $10-$30 posts (along with one daily $800) post is a good idea. It may be, or it may not be.
There do need to be ways to for stakeholders to delegate, but there are many different ways to skin that cat, and it doesn't necessarily require any particular model of delegation such as a guild. For example, some of my vote power is currently delegated to a specific individual I have picked who is an effective curator and is very self-directed and self-managing, this minimizing my time investment, while resulting in competely decentralized curation that I personally find to be effective.
The answer on how this really should work is a lot less clear to me now than it was when I started the Teamsmooth Curators guild. I think we need more experimentation and in that vein things like Curie are a good thing, but let's take care that they don't turn into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy supported by a daily $500+ reward fund tax (which as @dennygalindo points out is equivalent to a daily $10K+ reward during the price peak).
The daily rewards are an issue to me as well, and it was one reason I wrote this post. I see this as a temporary band-aid and I think the formalized voting guilds will allow for better models, but for the meantime, the work these projects are doing is too important not to support. I'm definitely in agreement with you that we should continue experimenting (and listening and being open to other ideas). There is no top-down decision-making or magic # to the $30 rewards; the team members have come up with that rewards range as a group, but we are not wedded to it at all. In fact, we have been adjusting these at various points and are quite open to community feedback about what works best. If a better model were to emerge, I can't tell you how happy I would be to stand aside. :)
Hi Donkeypong.
About the daily post you made with curie. why not just post it on a external site or use the 0% reward option?
That daily post could fund another 25 authors, instead of the curie account.
His point is that the rewards from that post are needed to pay the costs of operating Curie in its present form. Otherwise he could just post an update and summary less frequently (say weekly) as another option.
Tough decisions may need to be made though (I think noted in the post). The reward pool is shrinking and that is a significant slice being drained from it.
Maybe top-down is not exactly the right way to describe it, but the point is that it is institutionalized and such institutions must have a degree of inertia to sanely function as an organization. Curie has a mission statement (an informal one at least). That's not to say it can't evolve, but people join knowing that mission (and likely supporting it or they wouldn't join), so it becomes self-reinforcing.
Individual voters who haven't institutionalized their decision making can and do more easily shift direction on a whim, as quickly as today's hottest pop star can be tomorrow's has-been. Steemsports is a great example of something that likely wouldn't have been popular or fit the mold of what voters were looking for a few month ago, but it successful now.
I started a curation guild to discover unrecognized posts and authors (and still have an individual dedicated curator doing that for me) but now I'm recognizing more value in people having at least the possibility of a critical mass of success and earnings in some (not all) cases that call for more focused voting. In some ways the smaller reward pool makes this even stronger as the amounts of very-widely-distributed rewards become increasingly meaningless (better to give at least meaningful rewards to a few, I think). So the pendulum swings on these things.
sorry need to reply to another reply the 6 answer reply limit is so bad ;)..
Yes I read that donkey said they are thinking of getting rid of the finders fees for authors. so under this assumption they could do it externally or post a weekly update.
do you know what happens if one uses the decline payout option? will the reward pool still shrink?
The reward pool does not shrink if the post is not paid out. The rewards get allocated to other posts instead.
in this case if curie got rid of finders fee's they could do their daily update using their decline option.
I like the post as I can see which posts they voted and I can't track manually all their votes.
I trust donkeypong and all others that they will find a way to optimize curie in the future.
We're all trying the achieve the same goals and there is nothing artificial about using real people to curate. Curie has a Tier 1 focus for the highest quality posts, which get more focused rewards. Curie and Steem Guild have helped build several focus areas already which are free to set their own guidelines, so there is no top down control of any sort. Spanish, science, and photo areas all have been thriving this way.
As for your criticism that these two projects suck up voting power, there is a ton of available whale voting power still that is not being used on Steemit - go out and get some. More whales should vote. I hope some of that gets dedicated to other worthy projects also. Steemtrails is a neat idea and I love the concept of targeting different tags, as long as the curator can provide some assurances that posts are screened for originality, so that this burden does not fall on other community projects like Steemcleaners. As the platform grows, we all will need to move more into the tag direction. In fact, my lifelong ambition is to train in more people to manage these projects so that I can spend my time curating a tag or two. :)
Thanks for the response. By top down I mean a few people highlighting post strategically instead of what they actually want to read. Curie seems focused on these medium type post.i can't imagine all the voters there like to sit around and read most of that stuff. I think they do it because they are imagining they are signing up good general content producers. Unfortunately it's not sustainable as marketing to get people in. You want the audience first then the content in my opinion. Still lots of time to fix this, it's just my diagnosis of the issue.
Yes, it's Medium-type content, because that is what voters have been rewarding for the last 5 months since Steemit was launched. Reddit-style links and shorter posts have not been well favored. Curie did not start that preference; voters did, and it seems to be supported by the design of the rewards on Steemit. Should we be focusing rewards on lesser quality posts instead? Actually, I have talked to several whales about experimenting with that type of curation, intensively curating in tags to reward good comments with small amounts, etc. Maybe that will work on here someday and I'd love to experiment with it myself if I had the time. I hope there will be enough support to try many different things and see what it takes to build up some communities. At the moment, I think we're supporting the growth of some really good ones and it's only a start.
Well I think the voters who "voted for it " are ultimately the whales. It's not what wins the most votes. They are trying to predict what content will make the platform do well. I am just saying they are wrong about what market the platform serves. Serving out of work authors by overpaying is not the right market. I think there is a much bigger market for short 1-2 page post (not links) and comments and being paid to vote. That's what's new about steemit. Paying someone to write a long article has been done for a hundred years. And even the professionals are exiting that market. No one has tried paying someone to curate before. Not until steemit. Plenty of time to fix though. I have been powering up lately because now it finally makes sense for an occasional non posting user to power up (now = vest under 90% of virtual steem supply)
Keep pitching this. You have one whale nibbling at your bait (if not entirely hooked). I have a feeling more are hungry.
(Maybe saying "they are wrong" is not the most politically effective, nor the most accurate way to put it. We try things, see what works, and most people, even whales, are open minded enough to change and evolve. Maybe not all, but most. Perhaps it is more useful to suggest that it is time to try a different approach. At least, that's how I would try to sell it, and I may indeed be trying to sell it.)
This is very likely wrong mathematically. Yes there is more voting power unused, but the reward pool is fixed and divided up according to how much of (and how) the power is used. If hardly any voting power were being used, then significant changes would be possible by bringing in more, but once the denominator is large enough, further significant shifts are unlikely (putting aside something extreme like using the 'steemit' account).
Steemtrails may turn out to be a better solution... these are just a first step in that direction.
Steemtrails is another great experiment. We should embrace it as one possible approach but ultimately it is more important that we try different things, and also evolve as the platform and user base (and even the STEEM price) changes than get too tied to one particular strategy, and this includes my skepticism about the devs building their (current) vision of how curation guilds should work into the platform itself.
I think the issue with the low STEEM price can only be tackled if external investors are convinced to buy STEEM as a long-time investment and advertisement dollars are used to fuel the payouts for authors.
Although the 30day limit on payout really is bad. An author should earn for his post as long people are voting for it.
Maybe with the earnings of the advertisements Steemit Inc. will be able to afford to pay the 2 founders a decent salary so the founders don't have to sell their STEEM every week sending the STEEM price into a downward spiral.
This is just an observation but ned and dan were not able to explain why they won't stop selling their STEEM. If the 2 founders are selling their "shares" in STEEM this doesn't make me confident as a STEEM Investor. When I invested over 30 BTC into STEEM as an investment, nobody told me that the founders would be selling huge amounts of STEEM every week thus I lost 95% of my investment...
If I were one of the founders the first thing I would do is: Make a post writing something like: I am the founder of Steemit and I stopped powering down, I believe in my own site, my own product and I promise to not power-down for the next 2 years....
Anyway, I am in fulltime and 100% believe in the concept of token based economies. Will Steemit survive? Maybe, but I am betting my 30BTC + 3 month fulltime blogging on Steemit that STEEM will survive and disrupt the Social Media Area forever!
Yes, I agree. The more and different kinds of these things going on the more likely the best one rises to the top...
But we already lost all our users! Oh well let's get em back.
We will have another chance. They haven't done any major advertising yet and we are still in Beta... can you imagine what will happen when we do a hard launch with a massive advertising campaign? We will be in a much better position to retain many of those users...
Agreed . Get the kinks out now.
Agreed 100% :)
@jrcornel, I'm truly not picking on you, you just keep making points I want to address.
I've heard this argument a lot. That we are still in Beta.
I just can't accept that. You can put beta in the logo, but this train has left the station. How much more "beta" testing do we need? When will it be ready to launch?
I've seen startups fail for waiting too long to leave the starting block. We had all the momentum a couple months ago, and seemingly, it was wasted.
Further, how are they going to fund this massive advertising? The currency is so devalued now that it's going to be much harder to bite off that expense.
A lot of coins were sold from the 'steemit' so-called ninjamine account at much higher prices. Those funds are supposed to be used to support and grow the business. Even at devalued prices the coins still in that account have a theoretical value of something like $20 million (though a large portion of it, not all, is supposed to be given away to fund new user accounts). I have no visibility on whether that money will be used for advertising but it potentially could be.
I could not agree with you more on the beta tag being little more than lame excuse for anything that goes wrong or disappoints. It should have been removed long ago, probably July 4 when the payout system went live.
I don't feel that you are at all :) We all just want the same thing here... the success of steemit. Some of us just choose to see things in a little more positive light than others and that is fine... There is a big change coming to the site in 2 ways in the very near future. They are going to start allowing advertising on the site, the same way FB and the others make money. They are also going to be getting large guilds up and running, probably much larger than what we are doing currently. Those 2 things alone will dramatically change the site from where it is today... Lets talk again in 3 months shall we?! :)
When is the hard rollout? What is the game plan? Have they (Ned and Dan) announced it? Do they have one??? I think this is the reason their is very little general confidence in the platform right now.
I am sure they do. They have more to gain than almost anyone here :)
Very interesting comment. I commented similarly in reply on @joseph's post before seeing what you said here, but I have to agree that I have misgivings about this "spread the wealth" philosophy.
In addition, consuming a large portion of the voting power and reward pool paying $10-30 to a huge number of posts means that available rewards for other posts just is not there (even more so than the price decline alone would dictate). That means posts supporting open source development, professional writers, high value subject matter experts such as professional traders, etc. just mathematically can't be there.
I fear the pendulum may have indeed swung too far toward these guilds and a breadth-oriented spread the wealth philosophy that destroys any real depth.
Good points.
Not the best choice. I actually have this problem at work too. My writing is too black and white. I know whales all have good intentions but sometimes you need to take baby steps to get where you want to go and sometimes as you said you need to try steps in different directions. I know whales listen to criticism and suggestions or I wouldn't give any.
On spread the wealth, I am not sure exactly what you mean. But if you mean spread over many topics I think it has gone too far. I think steem trails has the right idea: Focus on key segments to get commenters/ voters on board. I think guilds will work but they should be organized around one or two marked (like guilds historically). One day we might need a awesome writer guild but I think you need 1m active users before you could organically support such content.
Focusing is better. But repetitive focusing on same authors by same whales is worse, imho. From my experience, Curie is encouraging many new authors and attracts new users to Korean community.
Agree and definitely confirm on the #spanish comunity