Curating responsibly
Of late, I have seen a ton of grievances about the Trending page and perceived unfairness in how rewards are distributed. The whale-no-voting experiment and SP delegation were intended to make things more fair, but instead it seems to have had the opposite effect on more rewards being concentrated on the top 1% authors.
Allow me to state the bleeding obvious. This is, of course, the expected effect of a completely free market. Particularly in the case of free market curation of creative content, things have always been like this. It's a popularity contest, and the winner is not necessarily - almost never - the highest quality.
A word about quality first. Quality is subjective, of course, but a general objectivity could arguably be formed when enthusiasts (not authorities) in the field form a consensus. More importantly, quality has absolutely nothing to do with the perceived effort. Genius can strike in moments. A brilliant meme that took 5 minutes to make is absolutely worth as much in the field of memes as a movie trilogy that took a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to make is worth in the field of cinema.
The American free market is arguably more regulated than Steem. If popularity were to truly equal quality, Justin Bieber and Fifty Shades of Grey would be the finest works of their respective medium.
What bothers me, though, is the widespread trolling and hate speech surrounding Justin Bieber. Similarly, a lot of people (mostly privately) seem to be upset by the top authors. That's grossly unfair - the authors are doing nothing wrong.
Instead, blame the curators, if you must. A free, open market was always going to devolve into the popular authors getting all the votes, with everyone else fighting for scraps. But at the same time, it's up to the market makers to make it a better market.
I believe that we can make a better free market, and that's what I wish to engage the community in discussion. As I see it, we have four options -
Curate at will. Vote on whatever you find. At a macro scale, this will inevitably be mostly Trending posts and popular authors.
Vote for your friends and people you follow.
Find good curators and delegate SP to them / follow them.
Those are of course what most people do, and will always do.
However, given that we are early adopters, here's an idea - we need to curate "responsibly". Currently, that means curating content that brings value to the platform. Which means curating content which will appeal to the mainstream audience. This means we should control our votes on posts about crypto, Steem, our friends etc. Vote on content from newcomers in popular topics. (And earn more curation rewards while you vote on undiscovered posts) Turn off those auto-bots on popular authors - they don't get you significant curation rewards anyway. Vote on established bloggers/vloggers who are new to Steem and have a significant follower base. Vote for engaging posts about movies, music, sports, gaming. Vote for engaging memes, linkshares, personal rants. Continue voting for active developers as they bring a lot of value to the platform.
Look at the Reddit page today. That's the kind of content we need on the Trending page - stuff that your buddies, your grandma care about, and not just what Steem geeks need.
I hope you get the gist of it. It's just an idea, something to think about. Let me know what you think!
At the end of the day, curators decide. The no-whale-voting experiment (which I affectionately call abitgate) has proven that this community can rally together in a united manner. It's up to us to decide how the platform's rewards are shaped and how attractive it is to the mainstream. Let's not underestimate how important first impressions (i.e. Trending page) are.
well said, I would like to also suggest that you have a read before you vote, not just vote on the name.
There are a few who seem to be about volume rather than quality, and they get the vote because their name is on the screen all the time rather than the quality of their work.
Good suggestion :) It was so obvious that it never occurred to me. I did mention turning off those autovoting bots though.
I have a thing about people getting megga votes but when you read the 'readers counter' at the bottom of the post only 3 or 4 people have actually read what the post is about.
It could be that a curator read it, and they had a large trail following them. That's fine, as long as those who are following are aware of the curator's credentials.
must be a sign of old age. it's like voting for a politician without knowing what they are standing for because Fred is voting for him.
If the curator reads and leaves a remark at the bottom any followers can see it when they read the post.
at least do the writer of a post the decency to read what they have slaved over, if you don't like it don't vote, but at least it is an informed position.
The meat works have a tame sheep to lead all the other sheep into the killing gate. He gets spared to do it again, the rest taste nice with mint sauce.
Know what you are doing, or is that an old man's thing?
Haha - no, your concerns are valid. In this case, they trust Fred. The followers trust the curator. Or so I hope :) Certainly, it's not as dire as your tame sheep slaughter metaphor!
They wouldn't taste as good either, mint sauce or not
It's probably best to not worry too much about what's trending or what other people are getting for their posts. For those who want to become wildly successful on Steemit, basic marketing practices will go a long way.
Absolutely. It's a fairly easy game to play too, if you wish to play it. Befriend whales, write consistently, and you'll inevitable get on the trending page. However, this post is about the curators, not the authors.
(This will get a lot harder with Hardfork 19 when whales will no longer have a dominant influence.)
I definitely get irritated by the "quick, let's upvote this whale before anyone else so I can get a big curation reward!" upvoting. I would say read every article you upvote. And I have noticed that I have to put in serious effort to go find the new people and upvote them, because that part doesn't happen automatically. Still, though, I don't think there is going to be much change in how people curate, so it's good for the minnows to know that if they want to put in the effort to promote their work, it won't be too difficult to start reaping rewards. Even though I personally don't do that much, it's nice to know that I could start anytime, and that helps me to not worry too much about my post rewards.
I hope curators realize that playing that game is not lucrative in terms of curation rewards. With popular authors, votes start coming in from the first minute, at which point you're forfeiting up 90+% of your curation rewards. Piling on the votes after they have trended is even worse - that leaves you with absolutely nothing. Same applies for a lot of autovoting bots coming in at 20 minutes. Indeed, it costs you voting power instead.
Instead, it is thousands of times more profitable to vote on new, undiscovered posts, and then getting the word around about them. That is not always possible, but a middle ground can be found - voting on "middle class" authors is often much more profitable than the regularly trending authors.
More about this here - https://steemit.com/curation/@liberosist/mind-your-votes-ii-a-guide-to-maximizing-your-curation-rewards
I briefly tried to play that game a couple times, and you're right. It doesn't work well. I just upvote stuff I like. If it happens to be trending already, then I upvote it. If I like it and it's undiscovered, then I also upvote it. I'd love it if that's how everyone upvoted, and then if a lot of curators made a point to look for undiscovered material. I don't see it changing too much from the way it works now, though.
That's the best way to do it, though I'd recommend thinking twice about upvoting a Trending post. The voting power saved could be more effective voting on undiscovered material.
Hi Liberosist,
Your totally right,
For Steemit to expand and encourage newcomers,
the curators need to upvote different kinds of content.
Newcomers are leaving Steemit because they aren't getting noticed.
We need to spread the love and help the Steemit community expand equally.
Thanks.
Newcomers shouldn't leave Steemit because they aren't getting noticed. That's squandering an opportunity. Instead, they should engage with the community, be patient, keep writing good material. Eventually, they will be noticed. No, 99% of us will never get to the Trending page, but we don't need to, as long as we can form our own niche. Unless they are egomaniacs and think they're entitled to the Trending page, in which case they should totally leave Steemit. :)
Steemit's curation is actually a lot better to newcomers than the likes of Reddit or Twitter. It is so good, in fact, that there's hardly any good author that has gone completely unnoticed if they stuck around for a few weeks. Can it be better still? Sure.
Wanna get rich on YouTube, post a stupid Cat video and get a billion views. I was hoping for something different here.
In my short time, less than a week; I see two things, a mutual admiration society between insiders/whales who reward each other and their designated favorites, by what appears to be automatic BOT voting?
Secondly I notice attempts to garner good press and favoritism by rewarding known content creators/influencers who might migrate or promote Steemit.
I joined because of Jeff Berwick, The Dollar Vigilante reporting he had made $15,000 in his introduction post. Later he posted about this amazing success in another post and received another $9,000+ pay off or pay day.
His total winnings to date appear to be around $35-$40,000 USD not bad. In fairness, Jeff posts a lot and has some great information on YouTube. He also has some rewards that are low, like a $1.25.
Hopefully I'm 100% wrong.
That was a long time ago, the community has been slowly maturing since the time dollarvigilante joined. You're absolutely right that there's collusive voting, but I have some good news for you. With Hardfork 19, the influence of whales will be diminished by an order of magnitude. Currently, it takes 10,000 minnows to equal a whale. After HF19, it'll be just 100 minnows. So insider/whale/collusive voting will no longer be effective.
Of course, now it's up to the minnows and dolphins to curate responsibly - which is why I made this post.
Also, as Steemit grows and matures, all of this will go away.
I thought those were the good guys. It's the Decepticons that are bad, right?
Haha, I probably meant auto-vote bots. Decepticons is such a weird name by the way, sure they don't call themselves that?
Being someone who dislikes 90% of what's popular online I have to both agree and disagree with you on this. Yes, having mainstream topics on the trending page will entice more mainstream users to the site but since when is mainstream good? Personally I think people should vote on things they actually enjoy instead of worrying about curation rewards, or if other people will enjoy it. But, I'm still only a week old here so I don't understand the ins and outs of this place.
I dislike a lot of what's popular online too, but my suggestion was as curators we owe the community a greater responsibility in this early phase, despite our personal preferences.
Even if I were to be selfish, this is how I look at it - I can only curate for a niche once the platform gets mainstream attention. Without that mainstream attention, there won't be enough stuff I like to begin with! So, for now, I vote on engaging, popular stuff. I won't vote for shitposts, to be clear. Once the platform has matured, I can switch focus to voting on niche stuff. That's not to say I don't vote on stuff I love - of course I do, and I resteem them too.
I understand that, and for the most part I agree it has to be done. I'm even slightly hesitant about telling my friends about this site until there's more content that they would find engaging, and they are certainly more interested in mainstream culture than I am. And, you used a good word in that reply, "selfish", I hadn't really thought about voting for the things I enjoy as being selfish, I thought about it more as a sharing my interests and passions with other people, but there is certainly a selfish aspect to it when taken in the context of being in the early stages of building a more prosperous community. That being said, it's not something I personally have to worry about too much right now since my votes are fairly worthless, haha.
(and here comes more of my selfishness, it's all me, me, me, haha)
But, I guess the main point of my first comment is that either way, if things stay the same or if things are geared more towards a mainstream market, I'm going to have to actively seek out the things I actually enjoy, and that's fine with me, I've had a lot of practice over the last few years.
I'm with you there, I'm kind of embarrassed to recommend Steemit to my friends. They'll go running far away when they see some conspiracy theory or some crypto geeky posts on Trending.
The good news is Sub-communities are coming within a month or so. It'll be like subreddits on Reddit, so you can find your own niche and be active there. That's what I intend to do.
Haha, my friends have no problem listening to/reading conspiracy theories, if they did I probably wouldn't have any friends. But, yeah, the crypto stuff would probably put them off.
That is good news, I look forward to it.
This seems like as good a place as any. I'm really liking the content you've been resteeming. Thank you.
Glad to see someone enjoying those resteems. I'm concerned that I may be going overboard with them :)
This is spot on indeed! Especially on the time effort I often hear too -a great shoot is a great shoot and does not need to be prepared over days. The rest is also well thought and i agree with 99%.
Excellent points about quality and the free market! Thanks for another thoughtful post.
Icredibly true @liberosist! Thanks for sharing