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RE: THIS is how we save Steem.
People don't donate.
This is pretty objectively untrue. If it were, Patreon, Youtube live, Twitch, DLive, Kickstarter, Gofundme, etc to name a few wouldn't be a thing. These are billion dollar industries. You're basing this idea on Fundition?
Fundition has 280 daily active user. That's nothing, as in statistically insignificant. Insted check Kickstarter if you're not convinced. I've run a successful Kickstarter campaign so I can tell you for certain, if you offer people something they want, they will support you.
But the draw of Steem - at least for an impoverished person like me - is that I can contribute even though I have no wealth. All the donation-based things are for wealthy (to me) people to support content creators. As you say, most of the whales are pretty passive - most of us here on Steem are probably not wealthy. Most of us cannot afford to buy in with fiat. I haven't been able to do so once, but I HAVE bought groceries and paid my electric bill with SBD earnings, and powered up as much as I can. The user base, I'd wager, is far more folks in my shoes than in the this-is-a-fun-hobby-and-let's-throw-a-little-fiat-at-it people. My upvote is only worth a few cents now, but at the ATH I was almost dropping quarters even though I was a total noob plankton at the time. I'm happy to build my SP and throw my pennies into people's jars, and would be ecstatic if I was dropping quarters (or more, now, if the price was the same as the ATH) again; I will do @treeplanter votes (it makes my donated Steem go further and contributes both to tree planting and giving an even bigger upvote to the recipient, in small increments I can afford), etc. But if the whole premise was "contribute money to all the creators you like," I wouldn't be able to afford it. The bonus of Steem is that everyone can contribute and build, even if you start with nothing. That it's different than the Patreon model. At least, that's from my view. We don't need another Patreon, we need a way for poor folks to support each other no matter what the rich folks decide is "worthy."
I think of this far more as a way for us to build a real universal basic income for people. And that's another wonderful thing on Steem - @steembasicincome - you build your income and other people's incomes, because you automatically are buying shares for yourself and someone else. My poor self does a contest pretty much every week giving away SBI, and it helps the winners and me - it's an investment in both our futures. It's mutual aid in a whole new way.
The poor folks are the ones who need Steem. So that's my partial answer to your question. :)
@phoenixwren, Nothing I'm proposing would change any of that. I'm not talking about removing the functionality of upvotes or changing that system at all. I'm talking about adding features. You'd have nothing to lose and everything to gain from what I'm suggesting.
Also, you're not correct when it comes to demographics here on Steem. The majority of users are from wealthy countries where people can definitely afford to donate a few cents, but that's actually a bit irrelevant.
You could participate or not participate and regardless of how poor you are, one of the great things about Steem is it can be broken down to the thousanth .001 Steem. So even if all you could afford to give someone is .001 Steem, that could be really helpful to someone, and if you can't afford that, you'd still have your upvote.
Main point is, I'm talking about adding features, not changing what we already have. Thanks for commenting :)
I come from a wealthy country - but I live way, way below poverty level - I'm disabled without a disability check. Coming from a wealthy country whilst being super poor can in some ways be harder, because it costs so much more to live, so location isn't indicative of wealth level. There have been homeless Steemians, and would-be-homeless-if-not-for-help-I've-gotten-from-so-many-people Steemians (me), here in "the wealthiest nation on Earth" (the States). Maybe you're right and it's not the majority between us and the Steemians in very poor countries who are also struggling, but there are a lot of us.
I didn't interpret your idea as taking away upvoting, but as shifting the focus to donations, whereas I think upvoting should be the focus. Because as we slowly build our accounts, us poor Steemians could potentially support each other, regardless of donations, and without feeling like charity cases.
I don't think the system is perfect as it stands, but I think it has potential.
Understood, but the point I made still stands. I think a visual aid would probably help in this case, but to keep it simple, upvotes would look and work exactly the way they do now, there would just be the addition of visual feedback connected to posts and comments that shows who and how much people donated. It just increased people’s options on how they want to support people. I’ve done a mock up I. A previous post that shows how it would look, but in terms of the user experience, it wouldn’t change that much.
When I talk about shifting the focus, that mostly has to do with marketing. So when we say STEEM is a platform for supporting (insert whatever you want to support), we back that up by having a wealth of options and different mechanisms for people to support one another. The upvote system here is amazing and a huge innovation for sure, but by itself it doesn’t work for the majority of users and it probably never will.
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Ah, I see. I wonder if such a thing could be integrated with tipu, since that's kinda what tipu does, there just isn't a special spot for it aside from a comment?
It would dramatically expand the functionality of anything having to do with rewards or payments, as it would also be something that could trigger actions on the blockchain ie "If x does y donate z steem" I guess the downside of that is it would require peoples active keys, but lots of people use their active keys for stuff anyway. It's less secure though.
I am talking about the behaviour that is found on this blockchain.
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Again, all of Steem has less than 5k daily active users. This is about attracting the mainstream and taking Steem mainstream by solving problems that affect lots of people. If we can provide a better service than the platforms that are doing this, the people that are creating content and donating on those platforms will want to move to this platform.
Although your point is that the size of the sample is too small to truly measure user behaviour, I respect it, but I believe it should be enough to have an idea of the outcome. Hopefully the attitude I refer to won't see itself replicated in the masses of new adopters once it happens.
I agree on everything else with you @midlet.
Have a good day
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You too, thanks for commenting 😊