Top 10 annoyances of the SteemIt platform - PART 2 (technical overview)
After using the platform for a few weeks i have thought long and hard about improving the technical implementation. Below you can see the 10 main problems i currently have with SteemIt on a technical level:
1. Everyone is desperate for whale attention
A vote from a whale (rich person) shouldn't mean that the post is almost guaranteed to become trending! The factor that SHOULD mean anything is the quality of the post! So let's hope it evens itself out when the whales have powered down for long enough and/or sold some STEEM, otherwise something has to be done.
2. Voting power algorithm
Users can vote WAY too much. This makes it possible for people to follow the whales without even reading the content of the blog at all! I suggest to tweak the algorithm so it's more like this:
3. Static voting weight
Currently every vote has 10000 weight to it if i understand it correctly. If you compare this to an investment it would translate to giving everyone a million dollars but only allow them to invest $1 in every stock in the world. Users should be able to set how much % of their total voting power they want to invest in a certain post. This way you can have a real curation strategy contrary to the sheep strategy everyone has to follow right now.
4. Down-voting is disadvantageous
Currently almost nobody is using this feature, mainly because instead of down-voting a trending post that is low quality, people will actually up-vote it to get a piece of curation rewards.
I suggest splitting curation rewards into 2 parts: up-votes and down-votes. This way people can make curation rewards with down-votes as well! This way people will ACTUALLY vote based on the quality of the post, because if you down-vote a high quality post you will get almost no rewards, just like when you would up-vote a low quality post you would receive always no rewards!
5. Reputation system
The current implementation of the reputation system is not about someone's reputation, but in fact just a representation of how much money they made. The amount of money a post made has almost nothing to do with the quality. You can read more about it in my article The current SteemIt reputation system is NOT a reputation system!
6. Reverse auction
It's EXTREMELY annoying that you can't vote on a post whenever you want! There are numerous implementations that completely eliminate this system. One implementation can be read in my article SteemIt voting algorithm problems and solutions from a programmer's perspective.
7. Up-voters receive rewards from their own vote
Up-voting content should only be because you think it's smart to invest a portion of your limited voting power into it. If your vote is worth $100 you can just make 4 shit posts each day and make yourself an easy $200 cash and $200 worth of steem power even though your posts are extremely low quality. I suggest not rewarding a curator for his or her own vote, but rather split it among the other curators!
8. Payout periods
It makes very little sense to have only 2 payout periods! Let alone have one of 12 hours and one of 30 days. Having to hit the jackpot in the first 12 hours is TERRIBLE! Having to wait for a whole month on your money is also TERRIBLE! I suggest just doing the payouts EVERY 24 hours after the creation of the post, forever. You can't deny us the possibility that our content will be found and appreciated months or years after creation. Disabling payouts after 30 days is TERRIBLE!
9. Trending algorithm
For some reason posts with 100 votes and a total reward of $0.50 are much lower on the trending page than posts with 30 votes that shows $500 in rewards. This has to be improved!
10. Editing algorithm
You can edit your posts constantly without negative consequences. In fact it has a beneficial one: your post stays "active". The second part of the problem is that it increases blockchain bloat. I suggest limiting this to one edit every 30 seconds.
Hmm well I agree with 3, 4, and 10. Sorry I like upvoting my own posts and I like that my steem power means something. If they ever implement socialism here, I'm powering down.
Your voting power should mean that you can reward others more. Giving yourself $500 a day just because you are rich makes no sense. The whole vision of SteemIt is that everyone gets paid, currently only whales and some lottery winners get paid :)
Naw you just got paid see? hehe, well your vote is more effective on others then you use it on yourself.
The vision isn't that everyone gets paid, but that the best (whatever that means) stuff gets paid.
great post! I don't agree with all 10 points, but with the most.
To 1: Yea I fully agree with that, reputation should be key, not steem power. Steem power could help get reputation, at least until we have no way to verify accounts... I think about reputation like a liquid democracy system. Just imagine you could delegate your voting power...
To 3: I think the blockchain itself should allow allocating your voting power as it is outlined above, but the steemit plattform should still be easy to use. For usability I would suggest the following:
to 8: the 12 hour period was introduced to allow more posts on the trending page. but I agree 24 felt better, but then the payout algorithm should not reward that much exponentially and posts should be displayed more fair in the trending page. One way would to choose them according to their votes like in a lottery on every reload.
I like the second one month payout, so that you have the change to get something also little bit later. maybe voting could stay open all the time and the payout could be made everyday? But of course then the exponential payout algorithm would have to change...
to 9: Currently we have no way of verifying accounts, so the only thing we have is reputation and steem power. The vote count itself means nothing because they can belong to the same person. otherwise see my lottery suggestion above how to make the trending page more fair.
More details about how we could improve voting and make steemit generally more fair i outlined here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcurus/tagging-and-flagging-hidden-by-a-whale-how-to-evolve-further
No offense please, but I see you have upvoted your own post :P
Obviously, otherwise your steem power is useless. You don't seem to understand the system, which is obvious with your -6 reputation.
By the way, what can i buy for those $0.0015? A house? A car? And what can rich people buy after upvoting themselves? An XBOX!
the point @calamuse056 is talking about is not that you should not be able to upvote your own post, the point is, that you should not get curation rewards for it!
Wise thought, i like most of all.
But not sure what a whales or wide range community will see this post.
Like same happen with my posts
I'm trying to get this post to the developers, if anyone knows how to reach them (besides steemit.chat) it's highly appreciated!
I'm a sheep! Meeh
I don't recognize you in the herd. Which one are you? :)
I'm the only black one, how can you not recognize me?
Ah i see you now :)
I agree with all of your points! Thanks for doing this work. Have you checked out the steemcolab? There is a slack channel.For collaboration,with whales excluded.I think you have things to add there.I just joined myself,hoping to help others make money and find ways to support good causes,like environmental work,charity,art,etc.
You mean just use the tag #steemcolab? Or is it a chatroom or something?
There is a slack channel,(with chat)you need to ask for an invite.I just joined a few hours ago,as a total noob,it´s my first time on a slack channel.
What's the procedure? Or can you invite me?
Just read this post and follow the procedure there. https://steemit.com/steemit/@gord0b/steemcolab-a-collaboration-steemit-community-comment-to-join
I mean the procedure to join that Slack thingy.
THe precedure to join the slack thingy is to get an invite in your e-mail. You reply to to the post that I linked,then send an e-mail to [email protected] ,or post your e-mail there in his post,to get the slack steemcolab channel invite. It´s worth it,I´m sure.
why you exclude whales? @calamuse056 he said slack channel :)
Your suggestion 8 is what we had before and it isn't any good. The current two payout system is significantly better than your proposal.
You misunderstand the reputation system. So I disagree with 5 as well.
Points 3, 9, and 10 are all good IMO and significant improvements should be made there.
We had daily payouts before? As far as i know we had ONE payout before, not a daily one. Right now you have 12 hours + 30 days and your content that you could have worked on for 10 years will never ever be able to make any money after that? That makes absolutely zero sense. Imagine Youtube disabling ads and voting on your content after 30 days, how ridiculous would that be?
visit http://steemwhales.com/?p=1&s=pr and then think about it if i'm the one that's wrong. It's literally a popularity rating, NOT a reputation rating! It's like giving PewDiePie the power to overrule Obama. Are you fucking serious?
Hello, you're making some good points there, but #2 would probably destroy Steemit - whales already only scarcely upvote so decreasing power so fast would make even less people get payed and start packing.
It's interesting to hear some criticisms from a programmers perspective. Many of these I hadn't thought of, but they make a lot of sense.
Most of my criticisms so far are just about more basic social networking needs for the site like private messaging, profile pictures, and a way to set the feed so that we can see posts from accounts we're following. That last one is really important, what's the point of being able to follow anyone when I can't easily access their accounts or posts?