EXPERIMENT? What stinkin' experiment?
It seems that while I was enjoying real life, my beloved Steemit platform had been immersed in an experiment...and didn't tell me!
Truth be told, I don't think the experimenters told anyone outside of their tiny communication circles, which has led to a lot of confusion and yet another round of anger and bitterness from general users.
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Honestly, I knew nothing about it until I signed on this evening to do some reading and curating when I noticed mass down-voting on decent posts. By sheer happenstance, plus the fact that I had a day full of real life obligations, I did not post anything today and therefore unwittingly excluded myself from this experiment... I think.
WHAT EXPERIMENT?
The one @abit started earlier today. Here's the post
Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you anything about the "test" except that it's begun. No... Wait... There is the title:
Whales No Up-Voting Test
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The Negative Effect
One user caught my attention with his Title and featured picture:
Brian's last post states that he's kind of deflated and is going to take a break from Steemit, which kind of sucks because he's been a consistent contributor on the platform.
This part, by no means is a Brian-bashing moment, but COME ON, MAN!
I just looked at his feed and post earnings range consistently between $10 and $28 per post - some higher and some lower...and by lower, I'm talking the $4 to $5 range, which is still no small feat. So am I feeling too terrible for @mynameisbrian? No.
Sorry he was part of an experiment that he didn't volunteer for but his reaction is a little over the top, if you ask me.
And how does this affect @abit?
For being an active participant in an experiment which is largely unscientific
For doing something well-meaning and for the betterment of Steemit (in their opinion)
For experimenting with vote power and its distribution to dolphins and minnows...
people are unvoting him as a witness.
or is @abit a her? I don't know.
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Easy does it, Dwayne. Settle down.
Just sit there and flex your beautiful body for me, okay? The people of Steemit have free will and can do what they want with their witness votes, their posting habits, their up and down votes and their curation routines.
Let me note that I do not agree with this experiment because I think it's detrimental to the psyche of our general population. The lack of CENTRALIZED COMMUNICATION is glaring. We have no billboards to warn of fires ahead. We don't have a siren to direct us to the nearest evacuation route or shelter before the shit-storm lands.
We content creators show up, do our thing and hopefully watch our numbers move up. We do this as we try to build a community of like-minded souls because we love it here (or at least its potential).
BUT
if we're not privy to something that's going to affect the behavior across the board then you have effectively stripped us of our free will.
The biggest mistake was not telling us - the community at large
I personally would have volunteered to fall on a flag or two if I was first asked to participate in an experiment that may guide a future hardfork into leveling the power structure and vote weight.
I've seen the benefit by watching YOUR earnings rise much higher from my vote during this experiment - even being a baby dolphin that I am. And excuse me, I am an engaged, organic curator and you want me out there reading, commenting and curating material because members like me are going to take this platform into the future.
People are keeping their heads about them.
Read @timcliff's post: The Whale Voting Experiment Explained (including downvotes from @abit)
Read @neoxian's post: The Experiment: communication required, this is a social platform
I still have questions
- How long is this experiment / test?
- Who are the experiment-participating whales?
- Which whales didn't get the memo - or did not feel like participating?
And questions to the community-at-large:
- If you knew about this test ahead of time would you continue to participate in your normal posting pattern?
- Would you have stopped posting and started curating more to see how much your new more powerful vote moved the dollar sign?
- Would you have completely abstained from Steemit until the experiment was over?
One final thought
When I joined in July, 2016 I knew this was the WILD WEST of blogging. I missed out on the mega rewards and many of my posts didn't earn one cent. But like pioneers we venture forth with a can-do-it spirit and we deal with the hardships as they come.
Good, Bad or Ugly
I don't have a cure for what ails this platform but if we're so hellbent on trying to be autonomous, why are we trying to govern who, what, where, when and how much the whales are voting?
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Join my curation trail on Streemian
Aww, it's a baby dolphin.
squeeeee!
LOL
You know thinking of Brian's reaction and thinking back on other people who have expressed disappointment at downvotes etc. Its really important to note that steemit will never succeed whilst its a playground of a small percentage of people who consistently get high payouts whilst the minnows get less than ten cents. I love Brian's posts and hope it was just a knee jerk reaction but steemit is not a place for just 30 people to earn money. We should all get a touch if we are producing engaging and good content!
Loving yer work as always @merej99!
Part of the reason I love you is because you are a man of humor and common sense, @meesterboom
I left a message on Brian's post hoping he stays. I hope he doesn't think I'm picking on him but I only started digging into his account after I began writing this post. I was all set to raise my sword to defend this "unfair" treatment...and then I put the sword down. LOL
Hold on! It's gonna be one hell of a ride.
Haha, i like you because we are kindred in the humour stakes!! It is going to be a hell of a ride. There are a lot of people out there who think it's terrible that money earners are being penalised but it's to spread it about a bit! Lol, love the clip/gif!!
I'm just going to continue as I've done before: write my posts and upvote what I enjoy reading/seeing. It's nice to see us smaller fishes have some more influence, but ofcourse I understand the frustration from people who could always count on a whale vote or two (or more...).
I don't know, it's hard for me to feel sorry for people who generally get upvoted to the moon, just because they gained good rewards before. Sometimes you see the simplest of posts with big rewards, while the well thought out posts hardly gain anything. It takes time to build up a following, but these bots following people around can feel quite unfair at times and it makes it hard to keep good members, when they see these sorts of things happening.
Then again, it is their money and they're free to spend it any way they like! I just wish that the people with the most influence would vote manually on content they actually enjoy, instead of following the good votes. They have the most invested in the platform after all and should go for quality to gain more members and up the value of Steem(it).
In the end, though, we're still in beta, which means we have to understand that there will be changes and tests to see what works best for the platform.
Great attitude @playfulfoodie
Even on my own posts I wonder why some made significantly more than others. I am fairly certain that I've made it on a few auto-vote trails but I'd like to think that my engagement on the platform has accumulated more organic followers and those upvotes really are earned.
I think I need to work on another post and play a game: How many flags can I get? The one with the most WINS. lol
The only issue I have with whale votes are upvotes when they collaborate to upvote someone famous to attract them to the platform. I don't see a benefit to this. In my opinion It just gives the impression of a ponzy scheme and those people take some of the daily payout fund from hardworking writers with little benefit to the platform. In my opinion they would get a better impression of steemit if they got a donation from a whale to come and check it out. Attract them that way. Let them stay to be part of the community.
Whale downvotes is a whole other issue. Hardworking writers are caught in the middle of a whale fight or experiment. When will this end????
I totally agree with you, @eroche !
The benefit of attracting celebrities is name recognition and endorsements in order to attract millions of users to the site. Unfortunately, I do not think we are anywhere near being able to handle that kind of volume right now without completely obliterating our payouts because the reward pool would definitely be pretty shallow.
I don't actually think the whales are fighting per se. I think they're just expressing their differences of opinion through their votes and we are unfortunately feeling the brunt of it. Sadly, I don't think things like this will end until we come out of beta - and I honestly don't think that's going to happen for at least another year. Remember, we're only hitting our first birthday next week. Steemit is still a baby.
I completely get that and I agree totally but my point is it doesn't need to come out of the reward pool.
If I was a celebrity and someone asked me to come to this site, I would say great. I may take the money and cash out (as several people already have) and never be seen again.
I dont think this strategy does much to attract people. It gives the impression that this site is a money making ponzi scheme. Another way to achieve the same thing is, contact the celebrity and ask them to post, and even offer them remuneration. Let whales promote the post but dont upvote. That way organically the person can see how the site works, and get involved. It might grab their curiosity a bit more and if they are getting paid I am sure they will be happy to try it out.
And your right to point out its still in Beta. That is a very important point but that doesnt give people licence to do as they please. I am all for trying new things but a bit more communication would be nice.
Thank you sharing your perspective on this ill timed experiment. Really bad timing.
It's really never a good time to experiment on people especially if they didn't know about it. I'm going to try to stay positive and do what I do.
I like your plan, sounds perfect.
That explains a few things, thanks for keeping me updated. We've had a hectic few days on the move, and checking into Steemit via poor WiFi signals to make comments. As i didn't know about this it hasn't affected my posting habits, but what about others?
I've been on Steemit all weekend and I don't know if it's just the normal ebb and flow of things but it seemed as if content creation and engagement had dipped quite a bit. My feed isn't nearly as active but I cannot speak to why it's the case. On the flip side, I have noticed some old faces returning. :)
If it spreads out rewards a bit more across quality content then that is a good thing (reference to @steevc comment). It's always nice to know the purpose of the plan. 😉
At last count I've got five low percentage whale down votes for this post. I suspect a few are just attached to a vote trail and I was expecting this so my ego isn't busted. I'm not being nuked. Now if all this gaming was affecting my reputation score, I'd probably go ballistic because I've worked too hard to build it up.
well, my vote moved you $0.01 - What steem power! Don't thank me - it was nothing...really, nothing LOL!!
ROFL, John. I'll take that $0.01 cent and thank you kindly!
At least the ticker moved - after all, you can't see the all-powerful $0.001 votes that we normally dole out. ;)
you're such a positive lady :)
As you wrote, "The biggest mistake was not telling us - the community at large". So, in the facts this "experiment" don't change anything for me about the payout and my goal on steemit (as I wrote in one of my posts) is to have 3,33 $ as a payout for every post (I'm abitius, I know ^_^ ). BUT...my old poor bones are running in the net and in some communities for many years and it's very simple to think that the human factor is really important to increase/decrease the number of active users. Looking around I read some interesting comments and posts about the "why" this experiment is important, but the users are not only a nickname/avatar/number and maybe they don't have the right skills or tool to understand something that the "main characters" don't explain. I think that this "experiment" give us 2 answers: the first will be around the new weight of dolphins and minnows (believe me, I really hope in this significant result), the second will be around the capacity to keep the users/good content creators active. So, I upvote the idea of an experiment, I totally downvote the non-communication! ;)
Well, this is my shot at a positive approach ;) https://steemit.com/life/@dreemit/to-everyone-who-is-not-a-whale-let-s-see-if-we-can-t-get-something-from-this-experiment-read-on
I could not agree more with your sentiments
Posting and curation is the future. If the experiment serves to clarify that this is what the platform is about, well and good. The days when gaming does not work cannot come soon enough for me and members like @merj99
Sadly, I think there will always be people who game, cheat, and steal especially if there is money or value involved. I don't pretend this is a happy place all the time but I want to see Steemit succeed and I'm willing to work for it.
I just watched and resteemed the the video by @fyrstikken. He uses the data about user types and staking power to explain the experiment.
Basics are that 52 accounts control 60% of the voting power. The majority of content is coming from a much larger group of people (newbies and users) - about 5,000 accounts are active in these categories.
52 people cannot curate 5,000 people's content - they would have to do 100 a day each. By not voting, that voting power shifts down the pyramid into the group under under the whale level. With 500 to 1,000 people active in this area, we only have to curate 5 accounts worth of posts each to get a wider curation job done that does not rely on bots.
Had they explained that - different story.
What does it mean for us today? Do the 4 posts and curate away busily because the pool for the day has been pushed down the pyramid.
I'll have to look for @fyrstikken's post. Looks like we've got some fiery posts today. Boy, am I glad I'm on my second cup of coffee. LOL