How the "CURATION DONATION" window benefits "THE UNDERDOG"
The STEEM network is constantly growing in new user accounts. But inevitably the percentage of these accounts remaining active declines. This is to be expected, but according to this analysis post by @paulag, of the 45K new users who joined steemit in July, by the 14th of August only 17% were actively voting and and while only 50% made a post at all by August 14th, this reduced to 10%. So this is actually a pretty drastic decline.
^ Green = active voters | Yellow = inactive voters ^
^ Green = active authors | Yellow = inactive authors ^
Some of this post is extracted from another post I wrote 10 months ago.
Why am I posting it again?
Because there has always been a lot of voting for the same old same old authors on STEEM, due to the easy and profitable ability to auto-vote and the incentive of curation rewards.
This has always made me almost not even want to invite people to STEEM. And I personally believe it has always had a negative effect on user retention.
Curation incentives can turn steemit into an interesting game for the dolphins and whales. The trick is to choose content that will get the most rShares (stake weighted votes) after your own vote. The higher the post rewards become after your own vote, the higher your curation reward will be. It's kinda like putting your money on a horse in the bookies...
I once worked in a bookmakers (betting shop) where I sold bets on horses, dogs and football for 10 hours a day. It was a fun job and the punters were fun to be around. I noticed there were 2 kinds of gamblers: the ones who played euro after euro on horses at 100/1 odds, and the ones who played €50 on a horse at 2/1. The horse at 2/1 wins more often, but costs the gambler more if they lose the bet. The horse at 100/1 has higher risk of losing BUT since they only needed to bet €1 they don't realise the gradual losses especially if they eventually get a €100 win.
What this means is there is an incentive not just to bet on the "sure thing" but also an incentive to bet on the "underdog". The "sure thing" has a greater success rate, but the "underdog" has a greater return of investment if it wins.
If you think of every steemian author like a racehorse, there are some accounts that have greater odds at winning the race than others. Some horses are just famous for their speed. Some are just becoming recognised and realised for their potential. Then you have the underdogs. An "underdog" is a competitor who has very little chance of winning. It is human nature to root for the underdog. We all hope and want to believe that if we put in the effort there is a chance we could succeed.
So who is the "underdog" on the STEEM network and why do they matter?
The underdog on steemit is every high quality but unsuccessful author on the STEEM network. They are the hidden gems that a whale could make a decent curation reward from if they were to bring them to the attention of other curators - usually by upvoting to the "hot" page. When these underdogs find success on steemit, just like when the 100/1 horse wins in the bookies, people get excited!
People get excited because the underdog gives us hope!
And I believe it's that HOPE that retains users!
So how do we incentivise people to vote for the underdog?
Well, to my surprise when I wrote this post 10 months ago, suggesting that we use "followers" to determine whether curation rewards be 50% or 5% (or somewhere in between) of the post rewards (a solution I now see as too complex), I had a comment from @sigmajin that explained there already was an incentive built into the blockchain.
(in which curation rewards go from 100% being donated to the author gradually reducing to 0% being donated to the author)
creates a disincentive to vote for the "sure thing". This is because the return of investment is HIGHER when a curator votes first on a post after the current 30 minute payout window.
The author of THAT POST is considered
THE UNDERDOG
So you might have gathered by now that this post is a direct response to @blocktrades proposition to significantly narrow this window which creates an incentive to seek out NEW AUTHORS instead of just voting for the same old same old who regularly make it to the trending page. I'm sure that many curators like him (and like me when I wrote that post 10 months ago) just have not realised the beauty of that window and how it has a balancing effect on the "sure hits" and the "underdogs", as popular authors profit from their popularity, while underdogs profit by offering a greater curation reward to those who vote for them.
This incentive to seek out "hidden gems" on the STEEM network, is what keeps everybody excited and full of HOPE, that they too can get that recognition. Since this window (depending on how wide or narrow it is) can make it less profitable to vote for the "sure hits", this even makes BOTS less profitable than manual curation. For this reason I would even go as far as to say that perhaps this window should have been made wider. But I do understand that there are stakeholders who did not see the benefit to this kink in the blockchain so I'll leave it there.
I have been in Steemit for the past two months and I admit I got into it because of the prospect of being able to earn. Yet reality struck that it is hard. You do your due diligence, research a lot, make paragraph cuts and edit your post and place strategic pictures and it gets upVoted by cents or at the most 1 dollar. You just spent 2 hours to gain a few cents. Quite disheartening then you see a GIF or a selfie gain 5 dollars and you are further disheartened.
The way I see it we are still often looking at the number right next to that nane. More so when we perceive them as a whale. We try to get their attention by leaving a great comment on what they wrote in the hopes that they'll be interested enough to look at our profile and read our posts. It rarely does. Well in my case that doesn't happen.
Sure I have been finding some niche communities that has supported me but no where enough to what I thought it would be.
2 months seems like a short time for me to expect that good relationships will develop into followers and upvoters and it also depends on what kind of content you put out.
I have found that photographs, selfies and art get the most votes and kinds of posts and fiction and long posts don't necessarily get the love that they deserve. You can readily see that in teh tags and some of the data provided by the graph and eggheads who love looking at the daily numbers of Steemit.
Then there have been several scandals and issues from the likes of Zeartul and bellyrub, the vote buying and vote allocation to vote by some whales because it pays out better.
I know there are a lot of curation groups and individuals who have been actively campaigning on upping the quality of Steemit and stopping shitposts but a lot of people are taking advantage that they are on the autovote lists of whales and bots so they just churn out posts after posts and it becomes a cycle of shitposts.
I am not above it. Sometime I get into zappl and write something short and does not add to anything because at times you just have nothing to inspire you and you just take advantage of some of the tips and tricks you learned the way.
I have gotten into Steemit to earn but have realized that it's not feasible. Not yet anyway. The huge divide is really felt here the adage teh rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer is very prevalent here as teh whales get bigger and fatter and the planktons and minnows just get gobbled up and cease to exist. It is troubling to see those reports that more than 50% of those that created an account leaves after a month and only about 14% stays and are still active and upvoting but can be as frequent as once every two or three weeks.
Platforms like Steemit need a fresh influx of talent and people who support it but the way it is now makes it hard for planktons and minnows to stay. They just don't see the value of it.
To be honest I don't know how to fix things. I just write now to treat myself and no longer with the intent to earn.
One of the things at least for me when I first joined Steemit that it did very well was welcome me in and make me feel like this was a place for me. There are a lot of community’s, curtails, and individuals who invest a lot of time in welcoming in new members to the site.
After your first week or two here and the “this is new and wonderful” starts to fade it’s rather easy to find other reason to say for the community in the short term. Those that did not tend to stop using the site by then.
The biggest thing I have noticed is people finally reach that point where they think “they have found their niche here.” They either had a massive upvote from someone or they have an amazing couple of weeks. Then like a switch it’s gone. They seem back to where they were before and they get frustrated and leave.
I’ve purposely kept a small amount of people that I follow. For many months I would weekly go in and purine it down due to them going inactive. I watched people who joined around the same time I did dropping like flies week after week. Until eventual I ended up taking a two month off from Steemit myself. I just came back and I find my following list to be rather dead. The people who got me to join steemit in the first place long gone or mostly inactive with a post every few weeks apart.
There a couple of people who have remained. They were here long before me and will be long after me. Steemit is there home.
Everyone is always looking for those hidden gems in the new people. Somewhere a couple months along they are no longer new and set in where they are mostly going be on this site
People want either the sure hits or to take a gamble on the new possible gem that washed ashore in the new batch of people. Everyone else tends to be just in this middle ground. Eventually most just leave. Which feels like the large underlying issue.
Once you account for massive amount of the reward pool tied up in automatic voting and some in vote buying. It’s easy for there to be more talent coming into Steemit that could be a “new hidden gem” then those that did not make the cut to the sure thing. Thus creating a higher turnover rate over a couple month span.
It is really difficult to convince people to be active after they have registered on steemit. They believe they are going to earn immediately after they have joined.
Most minnows don't know about curations incentives. I am not a minnow yet and I don't know about it. All I do is just to blog upvote and comment on other posts. But know I have an idea about the 30 minutes payout window and the curation thing.
I think the underdogs(authors) should be giving opportunities to be able to stand well and get a good recognition by allowing a minimum curation on them. This will allow everyone to be on a good side.
Thanks.
@seyiodus.
Love the post and I love that we are getting more people talking about fixing this issue. I firmly believe content is the only thing that will keep STEEM relevant as a platform, and right now the barrier to entry is ridiculous/impossible. Buying votes to get noticed is not a solution.
I strongly agree with you, I tried to create quality and longer contents at first but were left unnoticed although I continue to do it once in a while because I believe its one best way we could help make steem stronger.
Since I notice that some whales are supporting a lot of steemians who are posting not so relevant contents I end up producing short less important posts, whats in my mind is the money i could get everyday which is still very little.
Maybe just like me who created a more than 2k words blog and yet no one (big fish) voted it a lot of steemiams who did the same gets discouraged to write more as we seem to receive the same earnings, regardless if its a 2k words blog or just a mere photo.
And since I came from a well known writing sites that requires authors to submit more than 1k words blog and that I was able to convince some of the best writers there to join #steemit I personally know a number of steemians who really produce qualitative contents but are starting to get discouraged with the results (i actually pitied them getting cents for a hard work done) and likely would end up posting photos although I encourage them to really write quality contents, its the reason why I initiated a 2k words blog writing contest in my group #steemitachievers and it turns out well although as I' ve said a lot of good guality contents were left unnoticed.
But as I understood the point of @beanz in this post, although im not 100% sure if i could call them underdogs, curators or whales should look into these amazing writers, such that if they will continue to produce quality contents, earn a considerable amount of money from it, then it would be very easy to convince other people to join #steemit and eventually do the same, to produce qualitative contents, if hundreds or thousands are doing this? Im sure steem will soar high and everybody will be happy.
@beanz
This is such a complex issue. I can see a little why luke is a bit confused or unsure of your suggestion or intention.
I read all the comments, especially yours and Lukes. I commented there twice...maybe to him, but for you to see too.
This post has me thinking and makes me want to post about it.... but it really takes some thought and planning. I hope to find/make time for it. Because these are the conversations we need to be having!!!!
Thx
I just posted again on the same topic if you wanna check it out.
I watched that. Really cool what you can learn while working for a bookie!
Yeah as far as I know, in most parts of the USA, bookies and betting is not that common. Just in Las Vegas and on Native American reservations.
I had thoughts about adjusting curation rewards depending on the users newness to the platform - make them a high % to encourage voting their posts.
And then I thought (and have actually read posts in the past to assume this has taken place to win @curie votes), people will just keep creating new accounts to perpetually fall into this category.
At least @blocktrades. yourself, and many, are on the same wavelength - curation, however the reward %'s are managed going forward, is the key to the long-term growth and success of Steemit.
Nice one!
The original post linked - where I compared betting with chasing curation rewards - was actually trying to solve that exact problem. How to increase incentive to vote for new users rather than the same old same old. Too many people say "I joined too late in the game" and this is causing a serious retention problem.
My original solution was to have 50/50 curation rewards for authors with less followers, and 95/5 (5% curation reward) for the people with the most whales following them - and everybody else in between.
But what I hadn't realised is that the solution is already built in. That "curation donation" window actually incentivises seeking out new unnoticed authors but we are still seeing this problem because 30 minutes isn't actually long enough to have an impact big enough to discourage lazy bot curation.
I think like me on that day when I wrote that post, the major stakeholders who want to reduce the time, never realised the potential benefit to this window, because it's never made a meaningful impact on curation behaviours. But if it were expanded instead of reduced, we actually might see a behavioural shift towards content that wasn't noticed within the first 3 hours.
Yes, why spend time looking for a few cents more when you can spin up your auto-voter and go to the pub?
The best rewards are when you find a gem at 30 mins, and its 2 days before momentum grows. But this rarely happens - there are gems but momentum never comes as the votes have automatically gone elsewhere from (and too) the ones that consider time more valuable than money - which of course, is fair enough.
Yes, we all value our time more than money, but of course that depends how much money we're talking. 😉
The amount of money that allows all your time to be 'free'.
99% of us do not have this luxury and must consider working, at least some of the time :D
I'm a little confused. If the problem is hidden gems getting unnoticed after thirty minutes, won't they also be unnoticed after 5 minutes and after 3 hours? I'm having trouble finding the connections you're making here. Are you saying a longer window would encourage whales to vote on posts within the 3 hour window, thus giving more of the curation to the author? Why would they do that? Seems to me, more posts would be missed by whales because they don't have much incentive to vote them up for less of a curation reward.
I agree that curation rewards are kind of only relevant to accounts which have powered up. Without much SP, they won't be much. I also think investors bring all the value here and as blocktrades mentioned in his reply to my comment on his post, if the price of STEEM goes up, everyone wins, including minnows and new users.
To me, it's weird enough to find a good post and then wait until after 30 minutes to vote it up. It's unnatural as a manual curator.
I think it's a complicated topic and I wish we could simulate things by replaying the blockchain with different rules and see how it turns out. That would be perfect as behavior would change as the incentives change, but it might at least give us an idea of what could happen.
To me, a clear problem we would have if we SHORTEN the "curation donation" window, is that the auto voting/ bot voting / sure thing voting would only GO UP. And the "unfound talent" / underdog would get even less of a shot. I think shortening the window would encourage more efforts to "milk curation rewards for all their worth".
Is that reasonable to suppose?
How would they go up? Would voters somehow get more voting power? Curation rewards aren't doing much for those without Steem Power anyway and changing this wouldn't really change that. Investors are always going to use the incentives given to them to increase their investment. It's like flowing water. If it's not worth it to them, they go elsewhere. I don't see how the window would change much for most Steem Power holders who use voting services not just for curation rewards, but also to support content and authors they like. They'll just adjust their bots to 5 minutes or to 3 hours. The distribution of Steem wouldn't change all that much, would it? It still comes down to those with wealth can make more wealth. I haven't seen any system that changes this (I'm not sure if one ever could without the wealth leaving to go somewhere else).
I don't quite follow your question about "Would voters somehow get more voting power?"
I meant, if the window was shortened to 5 minutes (afterwhich no extra % is donated to the Post'er) then for those whales trying to vote just to earn the highest curation rewards, it would be easier to follow the sure bets than it is now.
You bring up bots..... I don't use voting bots, so it wasn't at the front of my thought. I guess things wouldn't change much for whales that rely 100% or largely on bots for their voting activity. Just adjust the time as you indicated.
If there are even 5-20% of whales that manually curate for curation rewards... shortening the window would make it easier for them. They know within 5 min if too many have already piled on before them and they hold their vote for the next sure bet, still spending little attention or effort on the new or "unfound talent".
And perhaps I should just go ahead and write a post about it... but my theory is that Steem has more to offer to investors than just "self voting" and "curation rewards". That, at the moment, most do not see that it does. That many are being short sighted. And it is to their loss. AND to the loss of all Steem/Steemit believers. Because their current activity is at least partially suppressing the price/value of Steem.
The real payout potential for the Steem investor ought to be the Price of Steem. When it hits $2(just did) or $4 or $10. That is where the real money is to be made. But this real move upwards may not happen until Steemit(or one of the other frontends) is adopted mainstreem(or at least semi-mainstream... 5 million or so active users). ANd that type of adoption will not happen as long as the general newbie sees mediocre posts getting $20, $50 or $150 and his mediocre or better posts only get $0.07. When the general population new user sees this, they think it is crap and leave.
And go where? To some place that pays them $0? To me (because this is what I did), they'll instead double down their efforts to figure out why some authors do well and others don't. They'll learn the real value here is relationships. They'll learn about reputation. They'll learn about what it takes to be a successful blogger. The three posts I link to here are my attempt to help educate people on those concepts: #SteemitIsToMe: Relationships, Reputation, and Rewards
Speaking for myself, if the window was 5 minutes, I'd vote on more new content, not less. I'd be able to easily scroll to 5 minute old posts and check them out. I used to do that with 30 minute posts, but now it takes too much scrolling to find them (unless I dig into categories).
Everyone who starts out with no followers and no relationships (especially no relationships with influential people with Steem Power) will not be seen. This is obvious to me, but maybe not so obvious to people who aren't familiar with how social media works. Tweeting to no one and expecting a result doesn't make sense.
The amount of time that needs to pass before 100% of the curation reward affects how much curation reward is still available at that time. Yes the bots will just adjust from 30 minutes to 5 minutes or 1 hour instead. Adjusting to 5 minutes means less time to be undercut therefore higher rewards on popular content, adjusting to 1 hour means more time to be undercut making is less profitable to vote for popular content and therefore more profitable to seek underrated authors.
We're not talking about removing bots. But making them more profitable makes it pointless to be human, and a social network is pretty worthless without a shit tonne of humans
Do you believe large investors would actually do this?
I'm not sure they would. Maybe they would hire curators or maybe they would sell their Steem Power delegation (which brings its own challenges), but I don't think investors have the time to actually scroll through and find new authors to vote on ever day.
I agree a social media network is worthless without humans. The challenge we have here is making the connection between human activity and the value of a cryptocurrency token currently controlled by speculation by investors. Maybe we're trying to make connections (because we want them to exist) that don't actually exist (yet).
Steemit could actually become worthless as a social media site with crap content and stupid bots. If it did, the cryptocurrency STEEM would still be worth something because technologically it's one of the best tokens around (3 second confirmation times, no fees, etc). So we have two different sources of value potential here, but they all get measured financially in one way: The value of the STEEM token which drives the rewards pool.
The key then, I think, is balancing those concerns in a way where both the bloggers and investors feel they are getting a good deal. Some great content creators may leave because they don't feel they are being rewarded well, that's true. Others may join because every other social media platform pays them nothing. Finding the balance is key. I don't think it makes sense to not also incentivize investors as much as possible because, again, ultimately, they are the ones driving the financial value everyone enjoys. The money doesn't materialize out of nothing, regardless of how good the content on the site is.
It is actually currently more profitable to vote for a post that does NOT get noticed within the first 30 minutes than it is to vote for a post that has enough popularity for votes to front run you.
However, the difference between them are not significant enough to discourage bot voting or lazy curating (the same popular authors).
I am not saying the longer window would encourage whales to vote within the 3 hour window, I am saying it would DISCOURAGE it, meaning if they want to make significant curation rewards, they would have to find a post that is not written by an already popular author.
Since curation rewards don't mean much to minnows, they can vote for whatever they want within the first three hours, or after the 3 hours like when a whale brings something to trending. What that means is the popular authors will still do well, while those seeking curation rewards would do better to seek out less popular authors - or authors who have not yet gained recognition.
Okay. Time is money though. I can't imagine whales spending time searching for posts older than three hours. Instead, they will just adjust their vote bits from 30 minutes to 3 hours or they will move on to other investments where they can buy master nodes and earn passive income.
I guess I'm trying to think about this in terms of the motivational psychology of the investors as they drive the price. What's in it for them? With a 5 minute window, I'd personally be more motivated to browse the new feed (not too far to scroll to get to 5 minutes). 3 hours? Forget about it.
@lukestokes
Every other crypto currency appeals to investors without ANY (or extremely minor) internal rewards.
For nearly all other Cryptos the appeal is a price rise and flip.
I think the healthiest appeal for steem, in view of the steemit ecosystem, should still be the potential price rise.
I think the best way this can happen is ground roots popular adoption. However, whale investors using the internal rewards to milk out a ROI is exactly what drives AWAY the "ground roots popular adoption". Because the common person shows up, sees other's earning decent money for "just blogging", tries to do it themselves and fails... and says "F!!! This" and leaves. No one wants to see others earning big rewards blogging and be fairly hindered from earning themselves. (but please don't bite my head... I know better. I know it takes networking and time, AND investing in Steem/SP... I am just talking about the average new user, and the ones that are key to driving mass adoption and real notoriety for STEEM.)
Did you see that the price of STEEM spiked up to as high as $2.38 today? Pretty cool, yeah? The thing is, that didn't have anything to do with mass adoption or notoriety for STEEM. As far as any one can tell, it may have just been a random pump.
So it goes in the world of cryptocurrency.
Most Proof of Stake coins have rewards for staking such as running a master node. Steem only has a bit of share dilution protection with those who power up.
I think the average new user is here for blogging rewards, not as a sophisticated cryptocurrency investor. They may be bringing down the price of Steem as they just want to blog and "make money" for doing so. I've been running the exchange transfer report for over a year, watching way more accounts cashing out than those who deposit. From an investor standpoint, they may be avoiding STEEM because they see a lot of new currency being distributed to non-investors who consider writing posts on a Steemit a job, and those investors don't feel like paying them. Those writers cash out regularly, something cryptocurrency investors who believe in higher future prices don't do.
Personally, I wonder if there's been a little too much focus lately on the bloggers and not enough focus on investors. Investors are interested in returns. If the token they are purchasing is having the price pushed down by bloggers, they are less interested in investing. That, in turn, means there are far fewer rewards for everyone (including the bloggers).
What if STEEM became more like other POS coins and Steem Power holders were rewarded more? Could that cut down on the spam as they instead try to work the system with self-voted junk comments to gain rewards when it would be better for them to just power up?
I'm not trying to say ground roots popular adoption isn't important. I'm just not yet convinced it's directly tied to a rise in STEEM price at this stage in development of this ecosystem. When the price of STEEM goes up, people get interested and that also brings in more users.
I am saying we need balance of investors and users. Both need to be made happy in ways that don't leave either one feeling they are being cheated and their time and resources would be better spent elsewhere. Having watched the weekly exchange transfers reports for so long, I'm trying to figure out ways to get people to deposit and power up instead of just blogging and withdrawing funds.
I'm curious what you mean by that? If those with Steem Power are voting on sure things in order to get curation rewards because there is no other mechanism available to them to grow there investment within the STEEM ecosystem, doesn't that hinder manual curators and the unknown bloggers who might be found by them? Changing the curation rewards delay to 3 hours kind of makes the whole process silly for investors because they aren't going to go looking for old posts to vote on as it's too time consuming. The curation rewards for minnows don't really amount to much either, so what are we left with? The investors go elsewhere and the price goes down so the bloggers leave also.
I'm not convinced a 5 minute delay or a 3 hour delay would really have a major impact either way. One thing I do think it would do, for me personally, would make reading and voting on posts more natural. As it is now, I use a silly browser script to vote up a post I like after 30 minutes. I think that shouldn't be necessary. I also vote for people I follow and less in the new tab, because there's just too much there and it takes too long to scroll to the 30 minute mark (though I used to do it often when there was less traffic here). So there are also interface improvements which could help with content discovery and make it easier for those with Steem Power to find good stuff to vote on.
You are right about most new users coming here for blogging rewards. As far as I know.... that is kinda the whole marketing of Steemit. I am new, so not sure if that has always been the marketing or not.
What I meant in the quoted sentence is:
The new user sees others receiving a very high payout. They go through the normal steps of making a top quality post. They post it. At the end of 7 days they get peanuts(less than $2). Their post is "hindered from earning" because all the big votes go to the "usuals". The newbie doesn't understand that. The newbie was told "get paid to blog". They get here. They see others getting paid to blog. They get peanuts, or less than peanuts. There is nothing on site that helps them get more exposure. They are stuck in a mire and experiencing nothing of what the marketing told them this site was about.
Well, I HAVE been told, and LEARNED that you need to market yourself in the comments section. AND that you can go OFF SITE and meet and network in the chat apps. That THEN maybe you can find some bigger fish that like your work and you can start earning $2-$5 a post. Eh!? I know that now. The newbies don't.
And some of these people are experienced bloggers that have earned $10/post or $50/post or more through advertising. And where Google algorithms and analytics did most of the work to bring exposure to their blog sites. Here, google and duckduckgo searches do nothing for you towards earning. So what if 1,000,000 people did visit your blog here. IF they aren't Steemians, you don't earn one penny from their traffic.
Anyway, your replies have me thinking. Maybe ... just about any model can be "gamed" or utilized to maximize your ROI. You just have to learn the rules of the game. My feeling though, is that the long term success of the site, as a semi-social blogging site, will depend on a change of 'ROI focus' and behaviour by those that have 25K SP and higher.
I just need to write a post about it.
Thanks for the discussion! I appreciate it @lukestokes !
If you do write about it, please tag me in a reply with a link to your post.
I agree, the "get paid to blog" marketing creates some very bad expectations. At the same time, I also don't think people should come with irrational expectations. If I write the greatest tweet ever, but have no followers, no one will see my tweet. This is how all social media platforms work and Steemit is no different. IF you have a following and IF that following includes some investors who purchases STEEM, powered up, and vote on your content, THEN you can get paid to blog.
All of that doesn't fit well into a slogan.
I just checked the latest copy on steemit.com for a new user:
That, I think, makes a lot more sense. Your voice is worth something, yes, but unless you join the community, you won't get paid.
Going further to explain the importance of investors in that sentence for creating all the value we enjoy here may be a bit too much, but ultimately, that piece of education has to happen somewhere for people to set proper expectations.
We have to value the investors (or become them ourselves) for long-term, sustainable growth in the value of STEEM and the rewards pool bloggers enjoy.
Side note: I've been here since before linear curve rewards where most everything went to a few posts making thousands of dollars. Earning more than a $1 was a big deal. Most votes (even my own) didn't even register as a penny. It's funny to me how quickly expectations can change where $1 is considered peanuts, especially when other social media platforms pay exactly $0.
I can agree with pretty much all you said.
As for the very last sentence: other social media platforms pay exactly $0.
Except YouTube. I know of a good handful of new Steemians that came over from YouTube were they were making $50-$500 per month in shared ad revenue. For some this dropped due to YT's changes in acceptible advertizer friendly content. But some still have residual income coming from their YT efforts.
I, and many YT types would not have come to steem at all unless we believed we could earn here. Most of my type, and probably the YT type don't spend much time on other social media sites UNLESS they drive traffic (and therefore revenue) to their YT or other Revenue producing platforms.
And Many have other hobbies that could produce income. Sometimes we are just looking for something easier. When we realize that Steemit doesn't produce income easier than our other skill. Some people will leave for greener pastures. Anyway, I may be getting redundant.... my point: Steemit isn't really a social media site... many that come to be paid to blog weren't bloggers or big social media people prior to Steemit. IF they can't earn some on Steemit, they won't go to other social media sites... they will just go to Part time jobs or other places to earn some residual or side income.
Any push down of price by bloggers is generally because of the same bloggers always making too much money to keep held on a social media platform. That has always been the way on steem that is why suggesting the incentives should be to reward more authors not just the ones that consistently make it to the trending page.
One Example. Papa Pepper gets an income from Steemit. He is weekly making a withdrawal.
He also adds huge value to the platform. I would guess he has impacted 1000's or 10,000's. @em3 said he wouldn't have stayed on Steemit if it weren't for PP's tips and help, and for the Steempocalypse interactive Post thread that kept the interest in Steemit going through the difficult learning phase.
But my guess is that he and ALL of the sweetsssj's out there only draw 5-10% of the weekly withdrawals from steemit. That more is withdrawn by the old stake holders(at least true for last two months and Dan's withdrawals) and the $20K up to $1Million INVESTOR types that get their author and curation rewards and are constantly powering down and withdrawing to lock in their ROI.
I'd love to see more data analysis on reward distribution. I think it was greatly improved with the linear rewards curve, but that also brought other problems like self voting useless comments.
Do you have a source of data analysis you use to better understand the changes in rewards pool distribution over time? I'd like to keep a close eye on that stuff to better understand how it changes with the tweak we make.
As to the "too much money" point, maybe that's just an educational perspective. I'm a cryptocurrency fan so this is my wallet. I understand that and wouldn't want to move my money anywhere else (unless I want to buy more cryptocurrency). My hunch is, many who are cashing out to fiat now will regret it in the future. That, again, is another point of education we can bring as part of this process. It might even convert some people who expect to get paid into investors as well.
I replied right here to @beanz but hope you will see this reply also. it is probably showing up below THIS reply.
Thx
ANd I too hope that the majority of Steemit adopters get converted into Steem investors. It is the easiest most accessible Cryptocurrency to the average public... aside from being a little difficult to buy in from Fiat.
Exactly, so shouldn't those who actually spend the time retaining users on the platform get paid more than those who set up a bot and go do other things?
They can adjust their votes from 30 minutes to 3 hours, but there would already have been 3 hours for people to make this less profitable for the whale (if it is an established author that is).
We would be incentivised to retain more users therefore there would be more people who go from authors to investors. Think about all the people (including maybe yourself) who became investors in steem. Generally they were here a long time being rewarded for their contributions so much that they were convinced this was the right place to invest.
I think you're thinking too much about the current user interface of steemit as some kind of barrier to finding good content more than 3 hours old. The interface is soon going to change, and anybody can build an app that doesn't even show posts that are still within the 1 hour or 2 hour timeframe. Steemit is probably the worst application for filtering content on steem. That doesn't mean it's always going to be difficult to find a hidden gem. In fact they would more than likely set up a new algorithm (like they did with "hot" to make it easier to find these untouched 3 hour old posts.
Communities for example are going to filter content completely differently.
I know that it is more attractive to a curator to be able to vote 5 minutes after it is posted but I think we are sacraficing the kink that incentivises user retention. Without that we will just always have the same people trending, our new users will continue to say "I joined too late" and our network will wait for the next social media platform that pays them to launch where they have a better chance at "making it".
I guess I'm missing how a longer window would retain users. Seems to me it would make things more complicated for investors so they may just self vote immediately and be done with it. Maybe if there was more downvoting to prevent that? I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something.
I don't think user retention will honestly change much with this vote window change in either direction. To me, going to a shorter window just makes things more natural. I view a post from my feed of the people I follow and vote it up. Right now I'm criticized to wait or vote later or some other non-natural approach.
As for self voting I don't think that can be tackled until vote negation is implemented. The downvote is tried and tested and it costs the author (emotionally) more than the curator. Maybe you should check the post linked by @sigmajin to see what I mean by how this window disincentivises voting for the "sure thing". The bigger the window, the less opportunity there is to get a curation reward from the "sure thing". The shorter the window, the more opportunity. And that might sound like a great thing to a curator, until you find that everybody is voting for the same people all the time and none of the new users have a chance at growing.
Now you might say this is already happening, but I would say that is because that window was never made long enough to make a significant impact in the first place. The more time there is before optimal curation, the more chances there are for established authors to get curation that discincentivises whales to pile on.
I can see this 5 minute rule being extremely bad for incoming authors on the platform, and only good for already established authors and bots.
I use the horse racing as an analogy to show where the balance comes from. 100/1 bets on the underdogs and 2/1 bets on the sure thing. That makes the roi for the underdog 50 times greater when he wins. And that's the type of balance we should be looking for. It's what makes the bookie so successful.
Well said! I just wish that I will be more successful here soon that'll always appear on trending. The very first month of my stay here was tough. Competing myself to anothet author who gains the big hit was my problem but since I knew the system, it pushes me to stand up once again. It's great to be an underdog to inspire the others . In Steemit, there is always a horse racing. What we really need to do is to run actively everyday so we are not left behind and we can finally reach the victory. Thank you for being so thoughtful @beanz. 🏇🏇
I can say that's a good perspective. Though, I am not sure if I belong to the underdogs. Hehe. I have been actively posting on Steemit for 97 days but I never experienced any of my stuff in trending section. I am not expecting though as long as I am going up slowly. What you proposed is, I think, good for the community.
I am not an expert but propose my few cents worth.
Let there be a panel of whales who want to see steemit grow and still exist even in 2024. Let them decide whether to curate quality posts. To do that, users can submit posts for scrutiny. Let those who hold immense amount of money start voting for the underdogs instead of always self voting. This way, quality will not be compromised and last but not the least, let spammers be dismissed