Thoughts On 0.17 Proposals
Thoughts about proposed changes in 0.17
This response is a little delayed, because I was a little intimidated by the number of changes. There were some that I was comfortable commenting on immediately, but other changes that I needed some time to consider.
With that in mind, I'd like to urge the development team to seek out ways to elicit feedback from the community on individual items, and implement changes in such a way that unrelated proposals can be treated as distinct from each other.
That out of the way, I'm going to post this in two parts. The first will address the changes identified as simplifications. The following post will address the new features.
Removing Over Posting Reward Penalties
I think this is a great idea, and I fully support it. I also supported the penalty when it was originally implemented to curtail an overwhelming quantity of spam... But since then, things have changed considerably. Spam is less of an issue, and the current payouts make it unlikely that it will return in force... at least not in the near term.
I'd like users to feel free to engage with the platform however they choose. "Posting too much" should not be a concern. Abuse can be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
Single Payout Period
I'm somewhat skeptical about the change of payout from 24 hours to 7 days. The reason for my apprehension is pretty straightforward... 7 days is a long time to wait. The instant gratification of a 24 hour payout is attractive in my mind. Seperating the behavior (posting) from the reinforcing reward (payout) by that much time would seem to lessen its impact.
I'm also somewhat confused by the statement that:
It is our belief that authors (and curators) will earn more by a single 7 day (fixed) payout period than the combination of 24 (variable) and 30 day (fixed).
Unless there is going to be some increase in the rewards pool, I don't see how this could be the case. I'm sure that some authors might stand to earn more, but it's not clear to me exactly who would benefit and who would have to absorb the cost of the change.
The elimination of the second payout is something that I personally won't be affected by. But I have heard from many users that they would like to be able to consider Steem an archive of their work which could be accessible well into the future. Such users would like to be rewarded for their work, even if it doesn't find immediate success on the platform.
All in all, the change to a single 7 day payout period is one that I would not be excited to see... I think it's just tinkering that won't contribute to the growth of the site, when it comes down to it.
Comment Payout Independent of Discussion
I think this is a decent change... though it is presented in a way which assumes a 7 day payout period, which I'm having a hard time supporting. For comments in particular, it would seem that less distance between activity and reward would be helpful in reducing cognitive load for users trying to stay aware of what is driving their rewards.
For that reason I don't consider it much of a simplification to move to a 7 day payout period. I think it actually adds to the overhead of site users, since it will be far less obvious where rewards are coming from.
Removing Comment Nesting Limit
Not much to say about this. I will be happy to see the nesting limit removed.
Allow Editing of Any Past Post or Comment
Another change that speaks for itself and has my full support.
I would like to see a way of rewarding users for maintaining a useful post and keeping it current over time. I think this goes hand in hand with the desire of users to be able to be rewarded for content months and years into the future.
Normalize Payout Rates
This one is a bit over my head. The way payouts are calculated has always seemed a bit arcane to me. I'm hoping this might make it seem somewhat less mysterious.
Removing Proof of Work
I emphatically support this change! I have long questioned the benefit of PoW mining rewards given the existence of Subjective Proof of Work, which distributes the currency more widely and democratically among everyone who engages with the platform.
Remove Bandwidth Rate limiting from Consensus
This is another obscure detail of the system, designed to prevent abuse. I have not yet fully wrapped my head around it... Fortunately, this change will be transparent to site users.
Thanks for reading! I hope that you got something out of this, and that it is a meaningful contribution to the discussion. Keep your eyes out for my follow up post addressing the proposed new features.
I haven't chimed in until now on these changes yet either. I do have some opinions.
I do not necessarily think the single 7 day payout will be a good thing. I think it may just result in whatever is trending soaking up 7 days worth of rewards instead of 24 hours. That may not be how it works, but it is a concern.
I was fine with the 24 hour and 30 day, but the 30 day doesn't seem to benefit much simply due to how curation rewards work. There doesn't seem much benefit for curation rewards beyond 24 hours at the moment.
I personally would like to see the 24 hours remain, and maybe change the current 30 day to 7 day. I also wouldn't mind seeing a TIP button that makes it really easy for someone to click TIP and choose to send steem or steem dollars to someone as we read their post regardless of how old the post is. We could do this currently by going to our wallet, clicking on transfer, typing in a bunch of information, and then making it happen. Yet if there were a way anyone could easily do this on IMPULSE as they were reading I bet there are people that would use it. It would extend the potential earnings of ANY post as far back in history as wanted too.
Those are my thoughts at the moment.
I've brought this up before. I think that would be a fine addition to posts. It makes sense for long-term earnings. If you like something from six months ago, send them a few STEEM. It's probably more than your vote would have given them at the time anyway.
It inspired me enough I just wrote a post on it.
Actually tipping would be a great way of still earning rewards for old posts so something that reduces the friction would be good.
I agree with that being the case right now. I just don't know how that will change when the limit is removed. I tend to think that it will increase. The other concern is about auto-voting, but I'm sure that those using auto-votes will notice that their voting power is declining and should take the appropriate steps to adjust. That's how it would work in theory. Who knows what will actually happen. I think people will be taking advantage of it until they see their votes/rewards drop.
Honestly, I have no problem with a reward limit for "over" posting. People can still post as much as they like - they just won't be able to receive max rewards for every post. With a limited daily pool, I really don't see an issue with that.
I'm also skeptical. If 24 hours is too short, then 7 days is also too long. Split the difference and maybe make it 72 hours? In reality, most posts make nothing after the first hour. Some will occasionally pick up a significant vote after several hours have passed, but the way that curating is designed, we shouldn't expect to see a lot of votes after the first 30 minutes to one hour.
Unless they're going to change curation, this extended period won't matter much at all regarding payouts. It will only delay gratification, as you mentioned, and probably become another issue that new users won't be so thrilled to learn.
I'm completely against having a separate rewards pool - especially if it's at the expense of current post/curation rewards. I think it will just encourage more comment spam and abuse/gaming of the rewards. If this actually becomes a thing, the rewards pool should be small and it should not come at the expense of curation. With curation being only 25% as it is, a 38% haircut would make holding SP damn near pointless, which then makes the entire three-token system, including inflation and interest, pretty much moot.
By reducing curation rewards further, there would be no reason for investment in STEEM/SP. This will then have an effect on voting/engagement/distribution of stake...and likely STEEM prices.
There's not really anything wrong with comment payouts right now. As I've stated many times - the issues of engagement (and consequently, comment rewards) are due to a lack of a sizable active user base. You can't expect a bunch of engagement and comment rewards when not many people are actually reading, commenting, and manually voting. We need more users, not more reward pools (or guilds, for that matter).
Even if they don't, vote power reduction carries its own penality in terms of each vote being worth less. The system reaches a natural equilibrium where anyone who votes more than the minimum amount has the same total vote power regardless of the number of votes cast.
In fact it is quite a bit less than that because of the early votes causing curation rewards to go to the author instead. (Also no curation rewards on 30 day payouts, but that is a small factor and one which would be undone by the proposed changes.)
I think I would favor a general flatting of rewards (say replacing N^2 with N log N everywhere), which would tend to increase the share going to comments without a need for a separate pool.
Agree on all points.
I have heard the N^2 argument several times lately and I think that would probably be the best way to handle things. It's certainly better than creating new pools, new voting power meters, and new incentives for spamming. That route just seems like it would make using the platform less intuitive anyway. It's already complicated enough for new users.
Good point on complicated.
Steemit should be simple to explain to people. That's key. If I tell someone about Steemit, and it's too complicated for me to put simply in a few sentences, the person won't trust it.
As a person in the sales business, the fact that simplicity is key is always hammered home every time we have trainings.
Agree, curation rewards is the main reason people buy steem power, they should increase not decrease.
I'm in favor of keeping 24/h payouts. Instant gratification is everything.
This is my proposal for comment rewards
Thanks a bunch for the comments and ideas shared. I also take a bit of time to digest the content of things, especially if there are important issues at hand or the content difficult to relate to.
I am on e of those people posting for posterity, hoping to give to the communities involved with me here on Steemit something to read even years from now and still either marvel, ponder, be entertained by or simply relive the feeling of encountering such posting as mine. Therefore, the idea of having an instant gratification reward, the 24 hrs reward, a mid-term reward, after a week, a mid long term reward and, finally a full on long term- reward would be of great interest and, of course, joy to see such processes find the light of day on this platform. Nevertheless, what is here right now in relation to the rewards, I already really like. the so-called "instant gratification" is definitely a motivation that most consider and get incentivized by.
That was my short to cents on the matter. All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Excellent point. I likewise have no idea who will earn less vs. more. I'd guess quickly that curators may earn more since the existing 30 day payout pays nothing to curators. Beyond that it is unclear.
My understanding is that votes are reset at the end of the 24 hour period currently... any votes after that currently start from scratch and hence why the 30 day payouts are minuscule.
Under the 7 day dispensation all votes within the 7 days are added to the top, with none starting from the bottom... therefore there would a substantial difference in the value the later votes add if this is the case.
As to who benefits...
How long posts will trend... will be determined by the UI and could still be limited to a short period.
Posts which receive later votes will cannibalize the rewards of posts that no longer receive votes in the 7 days.... authors of inactive posts are likely to see rewards fluctuate more as they did before 4th July and still do slightly now during a day.
Thanks for a nice summary overviewing the changes that are expected, and highlighting some of the current features. I have only been here a month, and thought that I understood the main workings of the site. I was surprised therefore to learn that there are rewards for commenting. I have always tried to comment on my reasons for upvoting, but in many cases this as consisted of a single sentence. Seems strange to reward someone for what is essentially a polite comment. From what I have seen most comments are along the lines of "nice post, I liked it a lot." We have bots voting, how long before automatic commenting appears.
.
ColdMonkey mines Gridcoin through generating voluntary BOINC computations for science...
I think the single payout period simplifies the system which is a very good thing. On top of that, users who vote with their eyes and real time will have more time available to them to dispute what posts deserve more or less rewards in their eyes. If the cultural stigma attached to a down vote is successfully diminished we should still see different content at the top of the trending page every day - as the same post for the whole week would definitely be problematic. But I think with 6 extra days of voting this should be self correcting.
What if it's @krnel who gets downvoted? Or some other favorite of yours?
LOL. Are you trolling me now?
Legit question.
From out of nowhere. Maybe you're confused because I decided to call your friend smooth out on his hypocrisy.
So, you're not answering my question.
Maybe he's confused by the fact that you flag content when you don't like the rewards that such content is receiving, but then run to the defense of your preferred users when their content is flagged for the same reason by others.
Is that not also hypocrisy? I thought that a flag was "just a downvote" and that it shouldn't be taken so personally. If that's the case that you want to argue all the time, why do you get so upset when your preferred users are flagged?
These are legitimate questions to ask, given your own blog posts and comments on the matter.
For the record - I don't use the flag/downvote for rewards corrections (or pretty much anything, for that matter), so I have no dog in this fight. I think it's petty. If there is an actual abuse, then it needs to be addressed, otherwise, the adjustments should be made on the backend to mitigate "unfairness" (whatever we want that to mean) of stake-weighted rewards distribution.
Your question and nothing to do with the context of this article. Maybe you should put your question into some context so that I can understand where you're coming from and answer it.
@ats-david
There are several posts trending. Smooth was very selective in picking that one. He was clearly voting in retaliation and the reasons he gave were clearly bogus. It was not to reduce the rewards - if it were he would have flagged the posts above it with less interaction and views.
Smooth can flag for whatever reasons he likes. But if he's going to give a reason, he might as well be honest and say "Dan is downvoting my friend so I'm downvoting his friend".
The screenshot @schattenjaeger flagged was smooth admitting that he does not care about reward distribution - hence his reasons given being a lie.
I don't think stake weighted votes are "unfair". Do you?
You can't prove any of this. All speculation.
I can just as easily say that you only support flagging when you agree with it.
How do you know what his motivations were?
Unless that reason isn't good enough for you or happens to a post/user that you support?
Your arguments over the past month tell a different story. Most of the complaints are about whales being too destructive or "harmful" to the platform because they vote how they want with their stake. If flags/downvotes aren't to be taken personally, then why do you care so much about how those flags/downvotes are being used and how is this not a complaint about "unfairness?"
You flag whatever you want for whatever reason you conjure up and that's perfectly acceptable. A whale does it, and you complain incessantly about how they should be more responsible. This is an argument built on an inherent perception of unfairness.
Then again, you don't even complain about whales in general flagging content. You only complain about specific whales flagging content that you support. If you were defending @ozchartart or @masteryoda, I must have missed that.
So, what exactly is your argument? Because it seems to me that you're not the least bit consistent.
The screenshot you flagged was smooth admitting that he does not care about reward distribution - hence his reasons given being a lie.
That's not at all what he said. Quite the contrary: @smooth said that when people decline payouts, it's like upvoting everyone's posts, including bad posts. So, therefore, it's better to take the rewards and burn them afterwards, because then bad posts won't get rewards.
So, it's the complete opposite of what you just said.
That's the same as what reward re-distribution does through flagging
There's no better way currently.
So do we understand each other better now? Is your question answered? If you check @mrwang 's post you'll see that I nominated krnel as a douchebag for his reaction to being flagged. But in all honesty, smooth was just as childish.
@ats-david
It's quite clear to me that you do not want to make the effort to try to understand me. I am explaining and you are refusing to hear. There's nothing I can do about that, I would be wasting my time by entertaining you.
I did express to both these users that I have nothing against their content, just disagreeing with the value given by the upvotes. I express that with the downvote. As expressed already, I did not disapprove of smooths downvote. Just pointed out his blatant lie. (He contradicted himself in that comment and that was inconsistent).
If you're referring to the screen shot that you posted - that was addressed already. He - @smooth - was speaking about declining payout on a post. It was not about flagging.
If that's your argument, then it's quite clear to me that you do not want to make the effort to try to understand that. It has been explained and you are refusing to hear. There's nothing I can do about that and I would be wasting my time by entertaining you.
I for one am for an 7 day reward period as this should allow more posts being displayed for longer. Before being sent to "The Graveyard" hence giving more value to readers and showing more accurately our community values. I have previously asked that the 30day payout-period-posts not lose their "Rank" but rather be Featured such as a Magazine type website. Perhaps with a more "Full page" compared to the current single file graphical representation. I fully believe that the fact that some brilliant post that only lives for 24H is the sole cause we have not yet reached our goal audience. Or at least 100 000 active accounts regarding votes(curating) And preferably not via bots or "copy-cats" of other users but Individual and sincere actions. Otherwise, this site could very easily become brainless. In my opinion, the reputation system should also be questioned and altered with math to more correctly interpret our communities opinions. Our new weighing system could use an ELO system or and Avg. of the current users, and target (a number? ) 25 with the maximum of 75 as we have now. Systematically reducing or increase the reputation of users would then vary based on the systems total change/weight.