Solutions to Interactivity, Engagement and Comment Reward Problems
Today has seen some good activity with solutions to facilitate user interactivity. These are real solutions to a problem. At least to me it makes more sense, let me know what you think ;)
I already mentioned the initial reasons to not support a comment reward pool as a proposed solution to user engagement and interactivity issues, in my Review of the Proposals post. But I can explain a bit more.
The initial root problem I pointed out in my review, was that comments weren't being seen by actual people to value them, and that those who have the power to reward them aren't/can't see everything. The problem wasn't because of the reward pool. The problem is how things work through individual behavior that sets the way things work, or a lack of individual behavior.
In order to reward comments that we would like to be rewarded, human consciousness is required to spend time and pay attention to evaluate the content. This is how everything in life is supposed to work, where you are responsible for your evaluations of something and judge it accordingly. The reason comments are not being rewarded is because people who do the engaging outnumber those who have the power to reward. Hence, the appeal to bots.
But with guilds and the development of trusted people, they can be delegated access to accounts to apply certain upvote percentages to comments (like they do with posts) that actually engage in the content with relevant feedback. And better yet, with functionality to delegate percentage of power to trusted user accounts, that would easily distribute the voting power each day without necessarily compromising the posting key.
I also had mentioned the problem with trying to get people to engage in an area by trying to lead them with a carrot (i.e. reward incentives), and how that can often fail because the underlying motivation is not there.
How to create that motivation?
The functionality needs to be there.
People need to be able to easily be aware of activity on the site in order to engage in the various content they pay attention to throughout the day. If it's a chore, motivating people with a carrot isn't going to motivate them where it matters because it's cumbersome to do it.
People already have the real motivation to engage and feed off each other's attention, but they need the capabilities and functionality within a marketplace (Facebook, Steemit, etc.) to be there so that they can engage in that level of virtual interactivity.
What are the real solution to getting increasing interactivity and comments engagement? (so far that I am aware of, with probably more great ideas I am ignorant of)
- comment tabs suggested by @krystle
- notifications for comments on your posts or comments (arrived today)
- @stellabelle's post on an engagement guild
- my github request for notifications of comments for posts you "watch" or "follow" (because you want to engage with that post and the future commenters)
I'll add what I said on @stellabelle's post:
The new reward pool will cut the bot economy in two and drive bots to the other economy, duplicating the root causal issue on Steemit of a lack of human consciousness that is the only thing that can actually engage in attention and comment/reward actual comments. Attention requires consciousness. We need to deal with the real issue, not just replicate the problem into another area.
The above solutions I am aware of will actually get people to be able to engage in comments, despite the concentration of voting power to reward the comments still being an issue. However, functionality to delegate power voluntarily would resolve this to some degree.
I don't see cutting up the bot economy and driving them to yet another reward pool for comments as a "solution". Real people need to evaluate comments. Just blind autovoting trusted authors won't cut it. And it shouldn't be cutting it for regular posts either. The problem with comments is just showing us the underlying issue on Steemit and the way content is, or isn't, actually evaluated by human consciousness.
I'm not saying the reward pool shouldn't be divided per various forms of content type for various reasons that make sense. But doing so to try to fix a problem without addressing the root causal factor is why I don't support this proposal. Cutting the reward pool does not address the problem at all. The proposed solutions above do address the problem though. Human consciousness needs to get involved. Not more blind bot activity that will be driven by cutting the economy and driving bots to replicate what they already do. That's not a solution.
Human consciousness wants to interact, we just need the tools to be able to do it in the virtual Steemit world :)
Thank you for considering what I consider actual solutions to the problem of real engaging in content, and rewarding that real engagement and feedback with the content creator and other commenters.
P.S./Edit: I upvote many comments at 100% for over the past week or two. Even though I can't reward much, it's still saying I appreciate the comment effort, so here is a 100% upvote :) That's one way each content creator can show appreciation for effortful, meaningful, engaging, etc. comments, rather than using all the vote power on posts.
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider:
me for more content to come!
@krnel
2017-01-19, 4:45pm
Hello @krnel,
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Thanks... and.... "Comments upvoted by SteemTrail will receive 5 TRAIL Rewards." ... nice!
How about allocating a percentage of author rewards to commenters in that post, authors could chose how much they are willing to give..which means new authors could decide to give a higher percentage and so they would get more comment/attention to their posts.
I think this was part of the proposals or roadmap?... or I dreamed it. I've heard that somewhere before. To allow the distribution from the author, but it could be something similar and not that exactly. Thanks for the feedback.
The proposal was to create a seperate pool to reward comments. I think it would be easier to use the same pool but allow authors to give a percentage of their earning to commenters.The idea that authors can chose the percentage they give to commenters or even curators is a very interesting idea to me because it gives authors new ways to get noticed. Today there are 2 ways authors can try to boost their article, by promoting it or by doing a 100% steem power post. If authors could also chose to give a certain percentage to commenters/curators then new authors could decide to give 100% back to commenters to get more attention. There are also many authors who actually prefer attention than money on some specific posts so they could also chose to give a high percentage to commenters.
Yeah I know that hehe, and I understand what you're saying, it's a good idea. I have also heard of it before, so I agree it's interesting to discuss more. If it wasn't a steemit post, it was someone else's post, or I dreamed it up. But the additional info you add here, that was proposed in the proposals I think, to allow different kinds of reward allocation methods. It might have only been suggested as an idea and not a formal proposal at the time.
These are good alternative to rewards people in different ways. If an author has the choice to do so and rewards more engagement that they want from their own rewards, I think this is not something anyone would object to implementing since it's completely voluntary to choose your own payout options. Thank you again for suggesting this and bring more attention to the idea.
Interesting post, and a good summary of the problem of determining how much attention is being applied to commenting on a particular post. I have been a member of this site for about a month, and note that the vast majority of comment consists of a few words of encouragement, but nothing more substantial or sophisticated. It seems to me that the few people who have something to say will do it voluntarily, and paying for commenting will only result in flooding blogs with meaningless robotised commenting. Not every action a human being makes needs to be rewarded for it to occur. We are not Pavlovian dogs.
.
ColdMonkey mines Gridcoin through generating voluntary BOINC computations for science...
Yup, I mentioned that in my review, either 1) not good comments or 2) not being seen by people or SP holders to upvote and reward enough, that's why it was at 1% of total rewards to commenters that month. There are some people who put more effort. I think more interactivity features would get people to put more effort into commenting. Consciousness and attention needs the tools to be directed towards new comments anywhere, like the comment tab.
Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate it.
I'm not sure I understand, although I want to. At first this sounds good: cutting the bot economy in half. But then are you suggesting that the other half of the bot economy will find a way to take advantage of rewarding comments?
This , I think I can more easily understand and agree with. I think the idea of commenting and appreciating each other can be better woven into the Steemit invitation. Five or Six months ago, i signed up, posted an introduce-yourself post, and began looking around the site. I came across articles by steemit and others that encouraged comments, interacting, and upvoting each other... At that time, one was given 10 steem for signing up. And within a couple days, I had half of that because I was being penalized for upvoting and leaving a simple "Thank You" on people's posts. Did someone see this as "spammy"? I don't know. Did someone have a problem with leaving a simple "Thank You". I don't know. I only know that seeing that I lost steem for doing what the site supposedly encouraged, only encouraged me to not come back for a while. I returned to day jobs, improv, and interacting with friends already on facebook and twitter where a simple 'great job' or 'thank you' is not met with a financial retribution, because there's nothing financial about those platforms. I've since come back to Steemit because of the content. And I also appreciate comments, even though my posts don't get many, and even though leaving them for others cuts into the time i could spend creating my own posts. This comment alone might be long enough to be it's own post. But this conversation is worth taking the time to appreciate the value of @krnel's post. And I like that my comments are apart of my profile, much like my blog. I like that steemit is different than facebook and twitter. I think that it works and will continue to work. My humble suggestion to cut down on cutting each other down via 'downvotes'. Perhaps that can be left for downvoting the bots, and not the peeps. Either way, it is my hope, and I recognize that hope is not a strategy, but all the same it is my hope, that steemit will continue to build on the positives that it first presented: To give value to creativity, community, and conversation by and for the people.
You might have lost your REP from a flag, the number beside your name, but not STEEM or SteemPower. Not a financial retribution ;)
The person might have also thought you were a bot since it was a generic message, so I can see that as possible and also why you didn't understand what was happening hehe. It looks like your resurgence into Steemit this second time around has been better. There is definitely lots to learn when money gets involved ;)
Thank you for your feedback experience.
Thank yous krnel. All my hypotheticals are hypotheticals. All I know is one goes on Facebook and does not expect any engagement, it's nice when it happens. I started out with a 'value' and zoinks it was almost gone in less than a day. This time around, I forced myself to cover my bases when it comes to 'promoting' so that in case i was 'flagged' again, my account wouldn't disappear... or, i don't know what happens. I suppose one nice thing is that forcing myself to promote, has also pushed me to be more involved and engaged. Money is nice, at the very least it puts food on a table and let's you on the bus. But it can be more easily made other ways; i focused on money when i left. The value here is not necessarily financial, but is a welcome attempt at giving creators and participants in this new online community some dignity that other online 'platforms' do not. I'm humbled and respect people like yourself and others who are far more involved than i'll probably be able to afford. I appreciate these rich conversations that you and others within SteemTrail and other groups initiate. And yes, I probably would not have encountered you interesting people, if it wasn't for a little financial incentive to give it a go. gracias amigo :)
This is a major claim, of major importance. More focus on concious judgement and moving away from the constant use of bots or pushing on the work to others will be absolutely necessary to establish this platform as a real, trustable, social media.
congrads. Great post. Upvoted
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, that is what I feel the comment section is for... the viewers opinion. Why I upvoted something usually has a reason or story behind it other than well everyone else enjoyed it too or your usual work is good so I automatically like your new work. Gives the viewer some power within the system. That is all.
I think we need to construct a system that emphasizes the content itself as much as possible, rather than creating an enviroment that's mostly due to friends "colluding".
Just putting that out there. Not sure if that's what you were saying, or if we're of a slightly different opinion on that matter.
Yes content needs to be valuable for the whole system to work. I agree with that. I am trying to learn how to properly post content and following all the formatting instructions. In time i think people will improve upon their post. I am trying to improve upon what I am uploading, though I still find it difficult but I am glad to be here. I like poetry but it's more of a hobby or something I do to relax or process a situation. I respect the people who do it professionally and defiantly agree their content should and will be better than people like mines and hopefully they will be rewarded for their better content accordingly.
Its definitely not the only problem, but i think a big part of the comment problem is just the interface.
Especially in a post with a lot of discussion, (or even a moderate amount of discussion), navigation is difficult, its usually impossible to follow all od most of a discussion without a lot of scrolling.