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RE: Proposal to make spam less profitable
Tim, this is a terrible idea. Wanting to reduce spam is a noble goal, however doing that through limiting the potential for comment rewards doesn't seem like the right way to go about it (especially with your suggestion of 0.5 or even 1 SBD!). It may help discourage spam, but at the cost of also discouraging legitimate discussion and harming the future of the platform.
I agree with you here. Reducing spam by making it less lucrative is a great idea. But this proposal is just another symptom treatment that ignores the actual disease.
Spamming can be more easily and effectively handled by blockchain protocols that were already working in the past. And they can be handled by actually applying bandwidth restrictions that were meant to explicitly deal with spamming.
Rounding rewards from $0.10 or $0.50 (or even $1.00!!!) down to zero isn’t a solution. Most users would be making nothing from interactions at that point. And without rewards, this place would be “dead.” Sad, but true.
How about we roll back full linear rewards (and find a better alterative to n2) and delegation (the two things that make spamming lucrative and reduce accountability and the engagement from “invested” users) and tighten bandwidth restrictions so that both comment and wallet spammers aren’t able to run wild with their scam promoting and block bloat? And at the same time, perhaps STINC can halt the creation of massive bot-nets via their sign-up process?
Tap-dancing around the causes of our many problems here won’t fix anything. They need to be confronted head-on. To do that, the sources of the problems need to be identified. But to do that, there needs to be an honest conversation about it...where criticism isn’t automatically/reflexively shut down in favor of endless cheerleading.
Boom that there is a good solution. raising it to .20 and even 1 dollar is just anti plankton.
So you are telling us to hold on until a nice whale takes notice of you but keep posting you'll get there eventually. Shakes my head.
yeah this is the most ridiculous idea ive heard in awhile. lol talk about repelling all new users to the platform.
Exactly! This is why I support your witness.
I had an idea on that one a few days ago:
https://steemit.com/steem/@krischik/seven-upvotes-and-no-payout
My own existence is a testament to the problem with account creation through steemit.
Amen!
No one is censoring messages in this method, so there is no cost by applying a higher dust threshold. There is no discouragement either. There's only a 'quality' threshold before financial rewarding occurs.
The risk here is that insightful, value-adding comments won't get rewarded financially if they are not seen or upvoted by people with enough SP. I don't think that's a problem, those insightful, value-adding comments do get rewarded in other ways: relation-building, follower-growing, meaningful discussion, etc.
The problem with spam is that it's done purely for the financial incentive. Remove that incentive and you will drastically see the level of spam drop.
@timcliff: I really like the idea, but the actual value of the dust threshold (whether that's 0.1 SBD, 0.5 SBD, or any other value) should be part of a permanent discussion and always open to debate as the situation on the Steem platform changes.
Of course there is. I would be discouraged enough to leave the platform for https://www.minds.com
Which is the reason I would leave for Minds. Minds is better at all of those. And soon Minds is getting a cryptocurrency as well. And as beta tester of that cryptocurrency: It looks like rewards for small accounts will be better on Minds.
Looks like their view-count and vote activity is already higher on some posts, and that's even without the crypto distributions attached? Wow. The site layout and the content doesn't seem too bad either.
Well, just to play devil's advocate - let's say we set the threshold to 0.10. If a comment doesn't receive enough votes (either from a large stakeholder or several small ones) in order to reach a 0.10 payout - is it actually adding sufficient value to the network to warrant a payout?
Yes, it is.
The value of the network is in the social interactions that occur.
What you're proposing is for everybody but the bigger accounts to get rekt. The big accounts already see their farts going over the threshold, while the entire essays by the small fish can't get over 0.01 a lot of the time.
Basically, your position is that only the big fish provide the value to the network. The rest of us don't count.
With the rep of 72 and 56k in SP, your experience here on steemit is definitely something most of us don't experience. As a member of the steemit's fledgling sports betting community, I've seen a ton of conversation taking place where the total payout doesn't go over 0.10. The real people having the real conversation. That is the real value of the network in my opinion.
Setting the limit at 0.10 is equal to pissing on the small fish. Make an account that can't be traced back to you and join one of the smaller communities here, see how much the upvotes you're getting are worth.
With such a terrible retention and engagement rates this platform has, you want to make it even worse. Try to remember what it looks like to be a small fish just starting out. Yes, 0.10 and 0.01 makes no difference, but it counts. It's a feedback you get, it's a sign you're doing something right. And if you can't remember (if you were always a big player), try to imagine at least.
As a relatively new user I can confirm this. In the beginning it is very hard to stay on track at steemit, because you are not very much seen in the first place and the UI is not very easy to use. I think it would be much better to think about ways to motivate and reward real people and make them contribute content than to get new barriers in place.
Appreciate the feedback :)
You're most welcome :-)
Sorry I took such an offensive tone. I've calmed down a bit after having a discussion with @tarazkp in the comments below.
The worth of the platform is in the number of real people having real discussions no matter their SP. What is the FB but a place where hundreds of millions of people are having discussions? Do their investors want fewer people on their platform? I think not.
I know, steemit is not the FB, but it isn't a knockoff of the medium.com either. Steemit is a different beast altogether, making it into medium or fb is a mistake in my mind.
Would you, as an investor, want to see a lot of real people creating real communities around their interest or a bunch of weak, artsy fartsy, attempts at writing by the second-rate authors (most of the medium.com)?
Of course, there are different schools of thoughts on what steemit is or should be. For some, it is just a prop for peddling STEEM/SBD. For them, a cheap knockoff of medium.com does the job.
I think that is the most shortsighted attitude towards this platform.
This thing can be huge, but the key to the platform's sustainability is the people that believe in it, the people that find it worth their while to invest their time and energy here.
The content is secondary in my opinion, it's all about the people. There are entire libraries of pirated books written by the most talented and intelligent humans that ever lived. You know how much people bothered to download them? You can count them on fingers. It's all about real people having the real conversations and meaningful discussions.
Spam is A problem (every platform has it), but engagement is THE problem this platform has. Cheers!
Well said! The main value of facebook is generated by the huge number of interacting users (I don't like facebook, but that doesn't affect the statement above).
Well said. I just got my Steem coffee mug and I just found out I can only vote at 100% once every 3 hours so my vote is not a lie - or else only vote on popular content. What a buzz kill.
You should find me on Steem.chat or Discord. I may be able to help with that.
Just sent a DM to @ats-david [ats-witness] on discord.
EDIT: I've tried to contact you on steem.chat, but weren't able to. Anyhow, I'll drop a link on discord on something I'm thinking about doing in the near future. I would appreciate your feedback on it.
I like to encourage the readers to comment my articles by granting their comments 1 % upvotes (depending on the STEEM price that's about 0.1 dollar). I would consider it as counterproductive to void these small upvotes.
Instead of that one could limit the number of posts + comments per day and user which are qualified to earn money (that would be an incentive to make 'good' comments instead of many). In my opinion it was a big mistake to increase the number of four fully rewarded posts per day and user to 'unlimited'.
I'm only 69 days old on Steemit. So there's LOTS I do not know.
What I have already figured out, quite early in, I may add, is that unless someone has $$/SP in their account, or one/several benefactors who do, content posted sinks fast.
What I already know is that many red fishes post their hearts out publishing good content, get some $0.00 upvotes from a small growing fan base and their posts NEVER even reach $0.01.
Are you saying that in an environment such as this, the $$ value of a post is the ONLY indicator of it's 'true' value? That $0.00 upvoting by non-big fish community members, because it has no financial value, has no value at all?
I'm truly confused here. I truly felt Steemit was a place where there was hope to work hard, meet and greet other community members via comments and slowly advance without a lot of money.
Then I realized it's necessary to get to that 500 SP level fast. Fine. A good goal to work towards.
Now?
Small peeps adding to the good content pool that will forever keep Steemit's SEO value high, now can't even collect the little few cents they may miraculously earn without the help of bots... just several $0.00 and $0.01 upvotes adding together?
The 'real' world already lacks vision and compassion and says most of the 7+ billion on the planet have no 'value'. I don't need to be on a platform that makes it plain as day in policies that work against the little person. If the 'poor's' content has no value, then maybe the poor don't need to be publishing here.
We can all find some other way to express our gifts, passions, make money then find somewhere to invest our money.
All most of us are looking for is a place we can share our talents, build a base of followers and advance based on a system that's constantly evolving to support, not sabotage that.
I may be looking at this the wrong way but does the fact that you @timcliff are making almost 100 sbd a week by delegating to minnow booster make you apart of the problem as anyone can buy upvotes no matter how spammy their posts are? Don't hate me for asking but it seems a bit hypocritical.
I do lease my SP to several users, but I have vetted them to ask what they plan to do with it, and I would remove the delegation if I found it wasn't being used in ways that benefit the platform.
Fair enough, it is in the best interests of us all to see the platform succeed and personally I'm not worried at all by the fact that we have a lot of spam earning a few cents here and there if it keeps those people engaged in the platform. Maybe when they have been here for a while and they realise that its in their best interests too for the platform to succeed they will try to improve their input and see the value beyond a quick buck. We are all on the same side.
0.10$ would mean 10 or even 20 minnows (new users, whatever) upvotes, at 100% Voting Power. If one does make 0.09$ by getting upvoted by 15 minnows, it will mean that its content is not worth anything, this is what you propose?
Well there is a perspective that they are not adding financial value to the platform. Will a conversation that is had between 15 minnows attract any new investors to the platform? Will it do anything to cause the price of STEEM to go up?
I am not trying to say that conversations among minnows are worthless, but I am asking you to think of it from an investor’s perspective.
Curious your thoughts.
I think you need to separate a few things here.
Users
Investors
SMT
Tons of minnows interacting with eachother causes the Alexa Site Ranking to go higher. Which shows up more in search results. Minnows and people with almost 0 steempower add a lot of value in views/shares/word of mouth to interest more people to come into steemit. What if you had almost no minnows and everyone was just a small dolphin up to a whale? Do you think any investors want to come to this platform and see a bunch of dolphins and whales upvoting eachother for absurd amounts of money?
Investors, who and what do they want? heh. I think a supar majority of the whales/dolphins/minnows here have never bought any steem, so I think this is more of a thing to focus on for the future.
Which leads into SMTs, this is what investors are going to come here for. Looking at how successful fund raising is for ERC20 tokens on Ethereum blockchain, that is what investors do/care about. I don't think that you can have any kind of success with SMTs if you only have a few thousand dolphins/whales on this platform(vs millions of minnows).
I would take millions of minnows all day everyday over a few thousand dolphins/whales. Investors would to. A few thousand people don't make steemit(or the steem blockchain), they just earn the majority of rewards.
I hope my reasoning makes sense in this regard. Just trying to say that investors won't care about a platform that doesn't have millionws or tens of millions of users(minnows). Minnows are largely users and they won't ever earn much, but they still have a lot of value in many other ways.
Thanks for your question, it is a good one indeed and I was actually waiting for it. Let me answer it with another question:
Does the over 2 billion users of Facebook bring any value to it?
Actually they do, and they make it one of the most successful social media of this world, and we all know that it is a lot of lame content over there and a lot of misinformation. But economically speaking, with an increased number of users, comes a greater value of the platform. There will be advertisers who will pay for their content to be seen, there will be companies that will want their product to reach this market and this society that we all represent, and it will come with an increase in the price of Steem. There were a lot of them who took advantage of this blockchain in order to increase their popularity, and I am sure that there will be more if the Steem user base increases. My personal belief is that Steemit Inc. should focus more on this type of income that could sustain both the company and the blockchain on the long term. If a SP delegation or upvote could increase one's visibility and considering how much are people paying for that, think about it more when the userbase of Steem will be ten times higher. Or one hunderd times higher. If you can visualize that, well it will be just 5% of what facebook has right now.
I hope I have answered your question and excuse me if my answer is not that complete or correct gramatically speaking, I am writing this comment on my phone, at work :)
I am a redfish (here). I invite you to see who follows me on Twitter at BRIX617 and on Facebook brix.boston. Then ask if it would attract investors.
That said, I would not dare invite my celebrity, ecommerce, and science friends here now knowing how some of the others have been so deeply criticized, attacked, and received. At least not at this point.
Investors aren't going to just drop a million of their own dollars into this and walk away. No, they're going to want to leverage their investment and use the platform much the way the likes of Jerry Banfield, Joe Parys, and others.
You never know who someone is OFF steemit or how much money they have in real life. Thats why it's wise to not let ones steem ego control every decision.
♥️
What do you think are the main things keeping people from investing?
That's debatable. In the real world the biggest proportion of the populous could be called minnows, yet they are the ones that keep the money engine running and pumping the money back up to the big companies at the top. Cut off that population and where are the companies?
There are many legitimate reasons for commenting for a post or for a comment (like me, now) on steemit.
There are times where comments can be more lengthy than the posts themselves!
In my opinion, there can be a character limit to avoid short sometimes meaningless comments.
We should focus in educating the users entering the platform and adding more support to them right from the beginning. (It took me 2 months to figure things out with loooots of search)
Also by making it easier for honest people who wish to join and cannot or need support and have to ask it through (non so legitimate) facebook groups (where everybody sells and buys fake accounts, sbds etc)
Dear @timcliff please do not get me wrong, I very much appreciate your efforts and work and you have also helped a friend of mine in the past...
But please, lets focus at
I am at your disposal if I could be of any assistance
Thanks :)
This is a great comment especially
It is hard enough not worrying about will my post just turn to dust now and if it is raisedd even further it will just send the message without money you are a zero.
I have votes with 7 upvotes and 0 payout. How many upvotes would you need?
https://steemit.com/steem/@krischik/seven-upvotes-and-no-payout
Wrong question: Will the network be adding sufficient value for me to stay.
You are removing what make your network unique (monetisation for small accounts) while the competition (https://www.minds.com) is catching on.
Steem is a stake based systems. Votes from users with more stake are worth more.
Nobody is really entitled to rewards here. There are (unfortunately) lots of users that do add value that are under paid. Getting noticed is really one of the big struggles here. It is going to be the same on most platforms though. If anyone can just show up and start earning tons of money without adding value, then that is probably not a sustainable system.
Which is not a bad thing. For example on Minds all votes are the same and I am not sure that's a good idea. We see how that goes.
I am a bit on the middle ground here: I think a stake bases system is a good idea but I am unsure of an unlimited and linear stake based system because that is very difficult to balance.
exactly true