RE: Curation Rewards and Voting Incentive
Hi @dantheman,
Glad to see you’re keeping a close eye on the curation rewards and your analysis is a very fair reflection of the current landscape.
I agree with your assessment that curating for profit isn't the province of 'minnows' and is really only viable for whales and dolphins. Those with low SP should post and comment for profit and vote for pleasure. However even as a dolphin, it is difficult for real life human curators to compete with bots and make the enterprise profitable. I've spent the last two weeks curating incessantly and experimenting with ways that human curators can earn decent rewards. I may post on it at a later date.
All I will say for now is, it isvery hard work and takes a certain mindset to be able to consume content (early and fast) and execute a strategy to stay one step ahead of the bots. I was "winning" (if that's the correct way of looking at it) up until a few days again, however some of the bots have revised their strategy are putting on 'the squeeze' (you may notice some bots voting earlier on content today than they did say last week).
As a human curator, I have human commitments and limitations that make it hard to compete with a well created bot. I'm resisting the temptation to go down the route of 'coded curation' (even though I'm confident I could define and refine rules to maximise rewards programmatic-ally). To my mind that would defeat the purpose.
I'm still clinging to the ideal that humans can use their own senses to curate content and profit from it. However I fear you may correct and this may become the province of bots and algorithms. If true, the issue I have with this, is that algorithmic curating could lead to algorithmic content creating, with people tailoring their creativity to feed the bots. We could then get into some weird AI loop of manufactured content creation and curation that is divorced from the artist/ emotional/ intellectual expression and enjoyment that makes us human. This would be undesirable in my view.
I hope I'm wrong. Wherever you have human activity it seems it can be invariably done more efficiently by robots. Maybe we are dawning the new age of 'bot art' that actually enriches our human existence, who knows. Or maybe more simply, bot creation and curation can co-exist with its human counterpart with both sides being able to prosper and grow. I'm hoping the latter.
Excellent comment. This idea of algorithmic content creating is a potentially huge problem, surely. It's possibly analagous to the high frequency trading on the exchanges, which has fundamentally altered the nature of the markets. To everyone's detriment. Whenever you remove the human emotion from something, and replace it with automated efficiency, you lose something important. You lose the soul of that thing. An automated bot creation/curating system would get boring very quickly, and that would be the end of that. Except for the bot owners.
I'm going to follow you, and I hope you consider writing a story based on this single quote to elaborate. It's a lot of food for thought that can guide us out of this smoke.
Thanks. Hmm... maybe I will see if I can pull something together. The problem I see here is the conventional 'logical' brain ruling over the 'heart' of a subject. We are in an epoch where logic triumphs, but the price we pay for this efficiency is brutal. Not always, but often. The pendulum will swing back. Eventually. :)
The other issue is that bots can't give FEEDBACK. WHY is a post not good? That information is invaluable.
Exactly right. I've seen this happen twice before on other sites that I wrote for, several years ago, that no longer exist today because once everyone learned the process, the sites became nothing but link spam. I think its important for Dan and the other whales to make sure that this does not happen.
Creating bots for curation rewards seems to me to be the exact opposite of seeking value-generating, "quality content." We're already seeing how whale votes and bots are creating and skewing "trending" content. I'd really hate to see what happens when most users start posting simply to attract bots for rewards because their original - actual quality - content has been consistently ignored or buried by actual low quality content. Assuming that such users even stick around for that kind of potential atrocity.
Well it is obvious that while this platform is a potentially revolutionary social media platform as well as an economic one it is also a "game". This is not bad or good just the way it is. Ultimately when dealing with humans there is no way to have any "fair" system because humans try and manipulate it in the many ways they do and this influences everyone else. SO all we can really do is the best we can do. If playing the game to make as much money is possible is your purpose then go for it. Or like my self I can curate the most valuable content I can and hope I get compensated. If not I am fine with it because I am living the truth of my ideals~
I wish everyone here the best as this truly is an awesome platform to be playing on!