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RE: A Different Approach to Curation: Quality Based Consensus and Quality Discovery
Ok, taking out all of the stuff I do not understand, I think this idea has some merit if it was able to be reviewed by people who understand the algorithms.
I am for experimenting with anything that will drive quality upwards and encourage manual curation of content as I think it will be a defining factor in Steemit's future position.
I agree that driving quality upwards will determine the future adoption on the site. People are attracted to quality like moths are attracted to the light outside of my house. I'm not sure that the algorithm works or if I'm missing something, but I think the idea of incentivizing the discovery of quality posts is worth looking into.
I disagree with this btw. While I most definitely want the average of discovered quality to be higher, to tie it to the future adoption of the site is blindsided and elitist.
Last time I checked gossip rags and tabloids still sell more copies, and have more site visitors, than the Financial Times and the WaPo.
TMZ, and back in the day, Gawker most definitely also had many more page views than say io9.
That is not to say that we may not want to prefer to see higher quality, but that's the usual struggle. And also freedom we have, freedom to dig deeper and discover.
A quick look at Alexa's Top 50 sites in the US validates this. Platforms with a very broad reach, and lots of irrelevant drivel, do rank very highly. Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter all are sites with lots of useless drivel on them. That was a key in their adoption btw, the freedom to post anything. See also blogspot and WordPress.com, tumblr too.
The adoption will eventually be triggered by the ability to both earn and spend on site, without needing to convert to fiat.
I get and understand where you are coming from. Perhaps "quality" is a bad way to look at it. Interesting content drives the eyeballs regardless of quality or not. Perceived quality is only a small portion of that and I probably overstated the importance of quality content.
That being said, I designed this algorithm in the first place because I wasn't content with how places like Reddit and other sites organized their posts. I wanted a supplementary filter that could bring stuff to the top outside of memes, clickbait, and ideological trash.
Maybe you're looking at the wrong model. You are also looking at discovery platforms. Platforms where, most often, the popular vote decides (not that simple in karma and everything but most definitely an element).
Maybe you should build around an interest engine. Steemit itself is the Everything Bucket.
In means of visibility, content shown, Steemit is to the Steem blockchain what the Google Index is the Internet. It has it all.
Curation is the oldest thing online. We go all the way to the Yahoo! directory, then DMOZ and of course thousands and thousands of manual curators, some of the more popular ones being Jason Kottke, Andy Baio, John Gruber and also BoingBoing.
The rest, Google has spent thousands of years of development in trying not to be gamed anymore. Yet, SEO is still a very thriving model.
I'm thinking that a more correct approach than trying to rank/weed out what you perceive as trash but may be the only thing many thousands of others care about, is to build an interest engine.
And I mean that almost like Quora, where one can follow specific topics. Within each vertical, then sorting can be done. But not on the Everything Bucket. Yet, Communities are coming and they will make following topics, and content verticals, easier. Let's see if they will improve how we feel about poor quality slash noise.
I for one, here on Steemit, I would be happy already if I could just exclude specific topics/interface sources and heck... languages too. That doesn't mean though I'm not waiting for a platform which caters better to my needs. See also my reply to denmarkguy slightly below this one. :)
This is why you should submit to utopian.io as it is more likely to be seen by those able to look into it.