Pitchforks Are Sold-Out: My Thoughts On The Recent Remarks About Curation Guilds
Disclaimer: I'm an operator in Curie, but I'll be speaking for myself here. This is an add-on to my previous post which is similar in nature - My Thoughts About Curie and Its Criticisms.
During the early days of Curie, I was one of the members who thought that the piecemeal-fees dedicated to Curie operators for their activities were too much. It was subsequently adjusted over time that it even rendered full-time stints impossible for those in high-cost of living areas. While you may or may not agree that such an activity is considered work, it certainly consumes time and effort. I don't know which part of the world you're from, but shouldn't such a thing be compensated?
Personally, I have no qualms about dissenting ideas - I'm quite a rebel myself. But sorry to say, I've never seen such a level of butthurt and entitlement anywhere, ever. It's almost disappointing, seeing that the pitchforks are coming from a largely so-called anarcho-capitalist crowd.
Also, please keep in mind that curation guilds like Curie and Steem Guild are powered by whales. It's their SP and they've decided to delegate voting activities in the hands of these trusted guilds. Are you guys (whoever you are, I'm not going to single out anyone) telling people not to put their stakes to use? And it's not like these guilds aren't casting votes widely - a feat that's not achievable by the whales themselves.
What's even worse is rallying up community anger and distrust, attempting to exert control over the freedom of others to put their votes to work, all without informing others of the downsides of whales not actively voting all around. It's almost too easy to game the system with lots of free small accounts (which could be owned by one individual / group) to game the curation rewards when no whales are voting. (Removed, thanks to @pfunk's explanation in the comments below)
Plus to my knowledge, nobody in these guilds are saving votes and avoiding voting on other accounts just so they would have enough to vote themselves - that's unsubstantiated. We just sift through piles of posts and doing our recommendations - that's it. It's not like these guilds are overusing voting powers to 0% everyday with nothing left to spare. We're just limited by time.
The only thing I agree with the whole fiasco is that guild members shouldn't occupy (or appear) the top trend almost every single day from self-upvotes. This has to be fixed with a different design of the trending page. (But thinking about it again, it really sounds absurd to limit appearance on trending anyway..). Also, I would also like to inform that while I do get the occasional upvote from Curie whales from time-to-time, it's not frequent at all, and I only approve of it only whenever I'm comfortable having a certain post appearing on trending. But that's just me, I'm not nearly as full-time as others.
Anyway, Curie's frontend is almost done. It's going to be lower than it's already low-cost of operations soon with its backend automated as much as possible to facilitate manual curation. I'm happy to say that this is only possible with months of operations trying out this new kind of activity / organisation and seeing what works. It is only with experience that we're able to see that this could be a guild that's open for community participation as well. At this moment, we are also testing out some Curation Score for anyone participating. Consistent quality curation will soon be able to earn anyone a place as part of the core curation team. So now, if my curation quality goes to hell, even I will be removed out of the core team from taking a hit on my own Curation Score.
We've said this ever since we started back then, and now the organisation is slowly dissolving into something more open and homogeneous. Top curators are now a mix of Core-Curie members and Community-Curie members. Even someone like my grandma can soon try her hands being a quality curator, rise up the curation ranks, and earn a little out of it. For one, I can't wait to move on and try other things.
Streemian will be making this guild function available for anyone to form their own, pretty soon. That said, I would personally give my thanks to any groups of people who are able to do consistent and concentrated curation works for whales full-time without any compensation (not even front-running the whale votes, mind you).
Lastly, I want to end the post with this - please take notice: those who are actively pitchforking are actually the ones automating their votes and also enjoying curation rewards from curation guild activities. This is basically free money for no work, if compared to the fairly time-consuming operations done by guild members. See how perverted the entire conversation is?
Ok another last point to drill some sense into nonsense. Some have said that guilds are centralised organisations. All I can say is that a whale alone without SP delegation to guilds is definitely 100% FAR MORE centralised. So please don't just throw words around trying to appeal to some ideology..
(That said, I'm happy that part of the community have spoken out, because personally, I've always avoided any sort of confrontation. I just think that it's highly misdirected, given that the guilds don't take up significant portions of the whole for the work being done. So if you're bandwagoning on the hate, I just hope you reconsider your position. Better things can be done than just complaining. Try to develop and show better solutions so that your problem can be solved. Guilds are basically a market response to individual account posts on highly-paid hidden gems from months ago. That's all. Sorry if what we're doing isn't working in your favor.)
Nicely said, Kevin. I agree with your points, which you have stated very persuasively. In particular, I agree that Guilds should not be using as many highly paid team member posts to get paid. Unfortunately, there have not been other options for Steem Guild in order to track, review, and reward so many (18,000 already) posts from 350-400 of Steemit's best content creators -- it is incredibly time-consuming work, as you have mentioned.
Some detractors who curate on their own simply go through posts, make their 20-40 votes, and they're done in an hour. They think what we do is easy. It doesn't work that way at all when you are actively following up to 400 people and trying not to let a single good quality post they make slip through without notice. And Curie's intensive sourcing of good quality new authors requires fuller-scale review than most curators ever perform, since those authors are not proven or established names.
Going forward, both of these projects can streamline more with automation and I think the cost model will make more sense to the community. Aside from that point of agreement, I mostly write off the pitchforks to people getting bored on the site. We need to give people more things to do on Steemit rather than either write thesis-length articles or complain. And hopefully, those additional activities are coming soon also.
Personally, I am looking forward to the comment rewards pool, and I can promise one thing: The whale accounts we work with are not going to curate those much at all. Let's leave comments to the market and see what the community can do.
@kevinwong this rant was just to drain the reward pool a bit more, wasn't it?
I want more money for ferrari
I had noticed the certain anarcho thinkers starting to sound like socialists over this issue. Quite ironic, I suppose. Personally I've never truly understood the arguments against Curie and Steem Guild. It's their (or the Whale donators) money (SP), so ultimately its theirs to choose how to distribute.
You guys are doing a great, and a highly needed, service!
User retention on the platform is dismal at present and If it were not for these guilds, it would have plummetted and would have been discouraging for everyone, to say the least.
I have seen curie adapt to the realities it encountered since it started and believe it will become better and more transparent in the days to come. But it has to survive this phase too and evolve, if we are to see continued engagement and growth of the platform.
I, for one, have found time between my busy days to be a regular contributor of at least a post a day, and it was largely due to guilds like these which made me do that. I am sure there a lot who have benefited and got the motivation to keep contributing and being active, and an initiative like this must continue.
Thanks for being the early tester for Curie @ streemian - let's so how well this can work out.. the curation score is pretty cool.
I am proud to be associated with curie in a small way, and have admired the innovations as they came along. I feel the "curation score" concept is another one of these innovations which needs to be watched!
Are curation rewards not compensation for curating? This is literally what every non-guild member receives when they curate content on Steemit. They get some SP rewards for voting on content that they want to upvote. What exactly do guild members do that is so drastically different from others who find good content and upvote it? And why do guild members believe that their voting ought to be rewarded enough for them to be able to live in "high-cost of living areas," as you mentioned?
The question is - why should whales vote "all around?" According to the whitepaper and the stake-weighted voting algorithm for this platform, users are supposed to be voting on what they like or on what they think will be popular. This was never meant to be a full and equal distribution model. The goal of curation guilds shouldn't be to distribute rewards just for the sake of distribution. And that is in fact not how the guilds were pitched to the community.
We were told that they would be searching for quality content that has "slipped through the cracks." But upvoting 200+ posts per day (Curie + Steem Guild) out of a total of 600-800 daily posts (and that includes spam, plagiarism, and other abuse/low-quality content) is not "slipping through the cracks." That's pretty much just blanket distribution. And with 150+ votes per day, there doesn't appear to be much of a selective process for Steem Guild.
One of the problems with the volume of voting that Steem Guild does is the distortion of rshares allocation across the platform. The few whale accounts alone that are being used ( @ned, @michael-a, @michael-b ) are dictating about 12% - 16% or more of all daily rewards allocation. So, those 150+ posts being voted on actually distort the content "market" on the platform. It's hindering the discovery of truly popular content, which essentially renders the voting algorithms moot.
I find it fascinating that your solution is to redesign the trending page rather than simply stop the self-voting. This particular argument is directed at the Steem Guild operations. They dole out ~25% upvotes to pretty much all of the content that they upvote...except when it comes to their own posts, which frequently receive 80 - 100% votes. And this happens nearly every day with more than one guild member.
This is certainly at the heart of a lot of the discontent from users. It goes back to my previous question about why one group of voters on the platform believes that they deserve hundreds of dollars per week in rewards from the rewards pool while every other user who votes on the platform only receives the normal SP curation rewards established in the code. What's the justification for this? Do guild members believe that their time and their vote is that much more important than the votes of all other users on the platform?
I'm not asking these questions and making these points to be confrontational. I really would like someone to explain to me why certain users ought to be paid more for curating with money from the same rewards pool that every other user/curator shares - other than how stake and SP rewards are calculated and distributed by the code.
Yes - every manual curator is spending time and exerting effort. Guild members are not special in that sense. All manual voters are essentially putting forth the same effort by reading content and clicking buttons. Whether you do that with power delegated to you by a whale or do it with your own SP is irrelevant.
The 30 day average is 1,300 posts daily. 1,347 yesterday.
As for the rest of your post, everything you say sounds like the free market in action. The Steem network is indubitably a free market. Whales choose to use their SP however they wish, whether it be to curation guilds they strongly believe in, or sanction upvotes for the guild members. (Personally, I don't agree with the latter, but whales are totally entitled to use their SP as they wish.)
Every curator on Steem has a several options, here are some of them -
If you don't believe in the free market or feel the blockchain algorithms should be changed, that would be a different topic.
Suddenly we are in full agreement again.
Full-time wages in expensive areas?
I am sure investers will be lining up for that.
<copy & paste from answering @ats-david>
This is not something I agreed with since the early days. It's not that they demanded it. It was just a requirement for them to be able to do it full-time at their respective areas. (it did not last long)
As far as I know, we're not front-running any whale votes with our own accounts in our curation activities to earn any amount that way.
Guideline checks, make sure the posts aren't fraudulent in nature, "consistency" checks on accounts comparing between previous posts. In the case for Curie, the goal is to look through all posts to discover fresh accounts too. I know anyone is able to do the same too, but since SP delegation from certain whales are entrusted to guilds, operators need to make sure votes are given out not-as casually, and it takes considerably more time and effort to do so. (this pretty much answers the rest of your comment)
This is not something I agreed with since the early days. It's not that they demanded it. It was just a requirement for them to be able to do it full-time at their respective areas. (it did not last long)
Not sure what's SG's internal rate, but from what I know, their work takes plenty of time (look at @donkeypong's comment here). Again, whales have delegated SP to the guild, and it's not a very casual work. Definitely not as simple as individual curation (I just like whatever I see in an instant, even voting if I spent time reading even though the post don't make that much sense to me. But I don't do that if it's guild related stuff)
Thanks for writing in, I know you're not being confrontational - they're all legit questions.
Maybe you should. That would be a far better compensation model than upvoting the personal accounts of guild members with the delegated whale power. That would place guild members in the same camp as every other curator on the platform. You're earnings would come from curation rewards, as the code has established.
I do these things on my own. I'm sure a lot of users probably do the same or operate off of an "author list" like Steem Guild does. But again - why do the guild members believe that they are unique and entitled to more compensation?
I know exactly how this is. I operate under essentially identical conditions. But my voting is not meant to be a distribution model for the sake of distribution. I vote on content that I like and that I believe will earn me a good return. I put a lot of time and effort into this platform every day, but I don't consider my effort to be necessarily superior than everyone else's because of it.
I understand that. I think this is a result of people believing that this is and ought to be a replacement for an actual job. In my opinion, that's a reckless expectation for an individual to have. And pretending that reading blogs and clicking buttons is actually a full-time job certainly seems to be one of the factors contributing to the rationalization that guild members ought to be handsomely rewarded for curating. Upvoting content isn't supposed to be a full-time job. There's a reason that curation rewards are as small as they are. This is a blogging platform. I do hope that "professional curators" understand that.
I don't know how else to respond. We've been reducing fees and working on automating etc. It's a cost & control issue in the end. Anyway, i've made a new post to simplify the situation..
I would like to add that there are plenty of whales who don't participate in curation guilds. Please get in touch with them and found your own curation guild. That would be far more productive. Different curation guilds will have different objectives. I still see so many areas which are not curated - links, non-original content, politics, religion, COMMENTS, etc. We need all kinds of curation guilds.
Or, power up to whale levels.
Finally, curation and curation guilds are the one true USP of Steemit. We have seen a thriving community of curators grow that are engaged every single day. Many spend as much time and add as much value to Steemit as content creators.
@liberosist Steemit could seriously use a guild for comments to increase engagement. I'd love to see that happen.
We played around with the idea of a comment curation project, but honestly, I'd like to see what the market can do with comments. Unless there are whales trying to game them or make lazy votes, then there should be enough balance that the community can handle comments pretty well. Even with an expanded reward pool, curating comments is not easy work.
@donkeypong my one concern with any guild centered around curating comments would be the question of guidelines around how they select comments to upvote. I think I would specifically be interested in how they choose comments to upvote which they would not agree with, may be offended by or flag. I think the downside to a guild devoted towards that end would be censorship almost to the point of propaganda in a way. Maybe it was a good idea for Curie and Steem Guild to avoid wading into that pool altogether.
I am not on any side on this issue, mainly because I choose not to. But, I did see a paragraph here in your post that spells out an issue:
"Personally, I have no qualms about dissenting ideas - I'm quite a rebel myself. But sorry to say, but I've never seen such a level of butthurt and entitlement anywhere, ever. It's almost disappointing, seeing that the pitchforks are coming from a largely so-called anarcho-capitalist crowd."
Unfortunately, I agree with that comment.
I almost couldn't type this post out myself because it's not very me.. but I feel like saying something. The only valid complaint will be if guild operators are getting too much compensation, but it seems like the conversation has gone to vilifying every other thing guild-related. It's almost like a terrorist situation..
Yup, terrorism has creped in along side the entitlement
That jumped out at me as well. We're seeing both the entitlement and victimization mentalities playing out in many of the complaints. I don't know about the rest of the world in this regard, but that's become very American, unfortunately.
I'm too focused on my own things to worry much about others. Not in a selfish way, just a trying to mind my own business way.
Speaking of business. Much of the SP I've earned came to me with the help of curation guilds. I had no control over that, all I can do is say thanks. I appreciate the support, regardless of where it came from. Anyone who votes for me is awesome in my books.
The support from all directions turns into my vote. I use it to manually vote for the authors and content I enjoy. It might not be much now, but I'm still passing it down the line. When I vote, the people who receive that vote can also thank those who I'm grateful for.
I realize that probably sounds corny as f^ck, so I'll end it with something sarcastic. I drained the reward pool nearly 8500 SP in a little over four months... and I did it on purpose.
Thanks for writing in @nonameslefttouse , and for passing it along the line.
We should be ashamed of our actions..
This Man has a lot of nerve coming in here and working This Man's butt off just to pass it along to everyone else!(Sorry, This Man had to. Just trying to lighten things up.)
edit: This Man seems to be learning a lot from many of the comments here. My pet peeve has always been those who set bots for the sure win scenario when it comes to curation rewards. That behavior is usually encouraged by those offering the services. Those members using the full power votes on themselves attract these auto votes from others seeking the easy rewards. In the long term, that's not good for business. Mosquitoes are attracted to light, but sometimes, it's a bug zapper. If people feel like they don't need to be around because everything is automated, and if votes are already set and ready to go to those who trend consistently, the new user doesn't stand a chance. Eventually, those who never trend don't stand a chance. I'm one of those who may get pushed out of the picture some day. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.
Glad to hear the other side of the story Kevin.
In both posts I've seen to date, the author's took care to point out the necessity of the guilds. I think they were each trying to start a dialogue on the topic, in effort to make this platform better. They weren't trying to lynch Frankenstein. Although perhaps that is what happened.
I think we all value the content we make, and people can get discouraged when what they spend their time on isn't rewarded. Sometimes that's justified, other times not so much. The system isn't perfect, and it probably never will be.
Having a curator score is a step in the right direction. It will help stifle some of the mistrust around "gaming" the site. I'm interested to know exactly how it'll work.
I'd also like to know more about how you reward curators now. Do they get a set % of the curation teams total voting power?
I think the curators should be paid a fair wage for promoting content unbiasedly. Otherwise you can run into problems where curators seek other means of compensation for promoting content. (aka they turn into shills).
Yup perhaps I've over-read the entire thing. It just looked like a lot of finger pointing without even stating both sides of the coin (I'm always wary if the conversation is only one sided). I'm glad that some have the balls to speak out though, although I think it's misdirected. Definitely appreciative of courageous folks. If everyone's non-confrontational like me, the network will be taken over soon enough..
Nope not %, just a simple static amount of Steem. For example, 8 Steem per approved curation. This amount is the same for community submissions as well. However, this amount is to be lowered over time as more "unnecessary" stuff gets automated, which is pretty soon :)
Yup.. although I'm not a big fan of governments, I see this happening between Malaysia and Singapore. Singaporean civil servants are fairly paid, compared to Malaysians. Guess which country is way more corrupted?
I have a few friends who joined, and I actually tell others that I wouldn't want to be the one suggesting or voting on their posts..
In many circles they pay people lots of money to separate the wheat from the chaff. I know a guy living smack dab in the middle of downtown TO, and he curates documentaries for a living. He loves it, because that's who he is, but it means he spends 90% of his working life watching shitty movies.
Who's actually paying you guys. Like, where does that 8 sp a post come from?
Lol.. didnt know its a thing.
Mainly from the whale's curation rewards and the daily curie posts
So the curators are like barnacles then ;P
I hope you are not referring to me. I opted out of SG votes, which is the opposite of entitlement. I also did so with no drama, or attacks, or anything like that, since I, personally, had not suffered because of the guilds.
Opting out simply seemed like a thing I wanted to do.
Nope, not directed at anyone in particular really.
I just read over some posts and comments without looking at names of accounts pretty much. (I don't want to be avoiding voting on accounts just because I feel like there's a beef between us, people shouldn't be punished for disagreeing).
Remember reading your post and thought that it's a well articulated decision - you understood it well enough without all the vilification. Ppersonally I think you're a great community member and have shown it in your interactions and posts, and should be supported while the volume on this network is still too small for any good representation of true market value. Just think of it as a way to be able to help other accounts out when you've gained your own SPs..