I'm posting this comment as my own post because (1) you may not be aware of the proposal changes post from @steemitblog, which you can now be aware of and go read, or (2) you read it but before I commented my review, or read it but missed my comment or didn't read it, etc.

Originally I wasn't going to post this on its own, but @beanz suggested it and I realized my review can be understood by more people this way, and it can serve to demonstrate a point.

Don't upvote this post if you don't want to, since the content already exists as a comment in another post. It's all good. But I want more people to understand what I am saying.

This content has value, so I'm not doing "Decline Payout". Don't upvote it if you don't think it deserves any rewards, that's all :)

This post will demonstrate my point of people's own engagement to reward content (including comments) is the problem, not how the reward pool functions to allocate rewards to comments. My post will get more rewards than my comment, simply because of how individuals "engage" in the platform without their consciousness to actually engage in it (i.e. bots), which is why comments are not rewarded as much. It has nothing to do with the rewards pool. This post will prove that. And if my post doesn't get more upvotes than my comment, then doesn't that prove that comments can get more rewards than regular posts? Either way, the rewards pool isn't the problem, is it?

Here is my original comment if you want to reply there as well or instead of here.

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Review of Steem 0.17 Change Proposal Introduction

Removing Over Posting Reward Penalties

It has the psychological impact of discouraging engagement and adds unnecessary complexity to a system.

I disagree, keep it. It's a measure to make sure people don't just try to spam endless posts to try to get rewards. Floods of content to try to maximize potential payout is a good reason to have a limit.

In my experience writing, I would really struggle to get more than 4 posts out in a day. Unlimited posting will promote exploitation for rewards. Maybe increase the limit, but not unlimited.

Honestly though, I see 4 as a good number to post each day. Someone else posted recently about how they even think 4 is too much and already promotes people to post useless things to get rewards. I disagree with them on 4 being too much. It seems a good limit. But increasing it slightly might be good to try.

Single Payout Period

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).

Yes, this allows for more combined voting to aggregate. But then the reward pool is a total of 7 days. The trending page on steemit would have to still change every 48 hours or something, or else that content would be promoted longer until maximum saturation from the community visibility.

Comment Payout independent of Discussion

Under the proposed changes, all comments and posts would be paid exactly 7 days after they were posted.

As long as it's not rewards for people who just say "thanks", "nice post", or other tactics to just get rewards while not actually adding anything to the post in terms of discussion related to a topic, etc. I don;t know how you prevent this. I would not be in favor of this feature either, since it promotes spammy behavior to get rewards, just like no post limits. Or was this to be based on SP weight to the comment to validate it against bots upvoting comments as well?

Removing the Comment Nesting Limit

With the proposed change to make all comment and post payouts fully independent of each other, we can remove the nesting limit.

Ok. But does that mean it just keep going sideways? Why not nest replies in the same level of the parent after the initial first comment as other comment apps do? If 6 is the issue, then maybe a larger cap is better (like 12?) than unlimited nesting depth?

Allow Editing of any Past Post or Comment

We propose removing the restriction on editing of past posts.

Ok. Maybe a limit after 30days or 60days? Someone could remove a post with an edit, and post it again later to get rewards again... just saying.

I see a lot of complete removal of limits, rather than an increase which serves to keep things within respectable limits. I think larger limits are better than unlimited which can be more problematic. If people could control their behavior more rationally, then sure unlimited everything, but we still need rules and limits on certain things for now as I see it. The editing thing isn't as much of an issue since they could happen to be found out, but it's still something to consider.

Normalize Payout Rates

Under the existing rules, paying one post changes the potential payout of the next post. This introduces an undesirable sequential dependency among posts that prevents parallel execution of payouts. The proposed change would ensure that all posts paid out at the same time will receive the amount of STEEM per vote.

As I understand it, this means the posts that currently get paid out at the same time, don't actually get the payouts at that time, due to each previous one changing the reward pool total and thereby affecting the next post payout. If so, then this would mean they all get rewarded the amount indicated at the same time, and then the reward pool adjustment would propagate to all the other posts afterwards. This sounds good.

Removing Proof of Work

Removing it will allow us to focus our development efforts on features that actually do matter.

I agree. No need. Unless it means other consequences I am not aware of.

Remove Bandwidth Rate limiting from Consensus

Not sure I understand this part properly.

Multiple Arbitrary Beneficiaries to Reward Payouts

Whatever website or tool that is used to construct a post or comment will have the power to set how rewards from that comment are divided among various parties.

This means that if you post via Busy.org that your post will share some of its rewards with Busy. If you post through the various phone and/or desktop apps then the app developer will be able to claim some of the rewards.

That seems fair. So long as the website must disclose this somewhere obvious ;)

Independent Comment Reward Pool

In the past month only 1% of rewards were paid to commenters

comments are not competing against other comments, but against the top bloggers.

encouraging higher quality comments will make the platform more desirable

Yes, more relevant comments on the post in question indeed. That adds value by adding more information to the topic, and people will value it and upvote it since it does add something relevant.

But, I don't agree with the next part.

We are proposing that comments be allocated 38% (golden ratio) of the current reward pool

If the comments are good enough to be adding valuable content to the post as a comment, then why can't they do the same by talking about a topic in their own post? Instead of putting the time and effort for a short comment, they amplify that to make a post of their own?

If someones does write a good comment, then it will be rewarded if people actually engage the content as they should, and not just upvote trails or autovote, etc.

The problem isn't the way the comments compete with main posts, it's the individual behavior and the level of engagement in the platform determined by collective behavior of all individuals. If people read comments like posts, then they can value and upvote comments just as much as posts, if the comment has value to them just as a post has value to them.

Comments add content, just as posts, except someone is choosing to post it as a comment, and not a blog. That is their choice to reduce the visibility and how to get upvotes from people who look at blogs mostly, and those that autovote or follow trails and don't look.

This is an issue of individual behavior on the platform overall. The comments should compete with blogs. If people don't want to reward commenters because they aren't reading, then commenters won't comment, and that is a problem with the individual people not reading and rewarding them, not with the platform and reward pool.

Get people to engage the platform,posts and comments, by opening their eyes to their behavior, so they begin to actually engage the platform to make it more active, rather them relegating their activity to bots or trails alone.

The reason commenters were only rewarded 1% of the total rewards last month, is either because (1) the comments weren't that good, or (2) the comments weren't seen by many people, because most people don;t actually engage in the platform as a consciousness, because they are passing off their responsibility to engage, view, read, judge, comment, upvote, etc. to bots or someone else. That's abdicating responsibility in engagement in the platform. That is what hurts the platform in terms of engagement, not the commenters who post content as comments getting rewarded from the same reward pool as main posting content that has higher visibility.

The visibility of comments comes with attention from consciousness, not bots. People themselves have to start reading comment if the commenters expect to get rewarded. Changing reward pools will solve nothing. Individual behavior is what needs to change in this respect.

For example, this is a relevant comment, which adds value to this post. If people don't read it, then I won't get an upvote for adding content of value to this topic. It's not really an independent topic I can post about myself, so I should really just keep this as a comment and not make my own post. But since many people go with trails or bots, then my chances of getting rewarded by the community on a comment, are less than on a main post where main posts are (1) more visible to the community overall and (2) actually in upvote bots and trails to upvote.

If bots and trails included comments, then the problem of separate reward pools is not so much of an issue since more "attention" via upvotes would be given to them blindly, as is done to regular main posts.

I took over an hour or two to make this comment post (I think), and I did it not to get a reward, but to add value and feedback to the topic that is of interest to me (and others). This is how things work on "attention economy" focused platforms like FB, etc. There is no "monetary" reward to supplant that importance of honest valuations and engagement content for the content itself, not the reward you get from curation, etc.

It will increase rewards to the few commenters who do comment, who will get a large reward for their comments when not many people upvote them by comparison to main posts. This does not solve the engagement issue of individuals to put their consciousness into the platform more. It will insensitive them to get rewards by commenting though, just like people try to get rewards by posting. Incentives to rewards for long term behavioral change are proven to be ineffective and backfire.

Incentivizing rewards tends to reduces intrinsic motivation and doesn't target the real problem, often making it worse because the real problem is never dealt with.

How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation
Why Incentives Don't Actually Motivate People To Do Better Work
Why Financial Incentives Don’t Improve Performance
Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective -- Even Harmful

Separate Market and Rewards Balance from Checking and Savings

These micro-payments suffer from rounding errors and add tight dependency on the order of operations between rewards payment, market operations, and transfer operations. In order to support the goal of encapsulation we want to treat rewards and market operations as-if they were independent “side chains”.

Sounds good. Although maybe someone can explain it in greater detail to make it more understandable for me. I'm not sure I grasp what the rest of the section fully means.

By separating market balances from checking balances we can accelerate the market evaluations and allow the market to be processed independently from transfers.

Does this mean transactions don't affect the price of the token? And they do now? I'm not too clear on that part. Thanks.

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Well that's my review/commentary for the changes. Thank you for your time and attention ;) Peace.

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@krnel
2017-01-10, 5pm