RE: @roelandp what did you do with the $3683 you made last week?
The problem is amount of money you get for SteemFest and few other things. Minnows who are trying their best and getting only pennies for it, what should they think about it? Honestly they will think it's bullshit. I'm not saying you shouldn't be payed for your contribution, but amount you receive minnow with hard work on Steemit every day wouldn't see in million years.
There is too much difference between whales and minnows. Basically minnows must work hard every day to get pennies, in same time witnesses and whales almost don't have to do a shit to make big money. Even when witnesses/whales do something they get over payed big time.
If you witnesses don't understand that is one of reasons most of Steemians give up from Steemit, that is the problem. Just look at number of active accounts on Steemit, it's less then 20% of overall number of accounts. Most of people give up because they don't see it as fair eco-system. Why should someone work hard every day for pennies and in same time look at people who do little bit for far more money?! If we want to build fair eco-system, we can't have this big gap from from whales and rest of community.
I'm not attacking you, but must say honestly that you or anyone else don't deserve this kind of money. Not saying this because I'm minnow in pennies, I'm saying this because it is the truth. The gap between whales and rest of community is toooooo big, so minnows wouldn't feel like morons after their hard work. Also, that gap creates situation if some of whales don't notice you, you will be in pennies all the time and after some time give up.
at least you get pennies. im trying to figure out how to even do that.
@neo-wiza have you been to steemfest?
The main purpose of being a witness is supporting and maintaining the chain. If there would be no witnesses then there would be no Steem. It is the same as burning down the instagram datacenters. There is a need for it because this is how this blockchain works.
The amount of STEEMPOWER being rewarded to witnesses is fixed in the blockchain software which you can see here:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/blob/67dd4bf2f387bded0c5d480006e7e97965c4f340/libraries/chain/database.cpp#L1842
Every day for the new steem created:
Back in the days, (e.g. when @nextgencrypto was actually a witness if I recall correctly a top 19 witness) the payments where 5 times higher. I guess it is where he gained his steempower from. He also supported SteemFest 1 in Amsterdam.
When I became a witness about 3/4 weeks in a hardfork was implemented to drastically lower the witness-rewards to what it is currently. Now with the current prices one could start a campaign to lower the witness prices more. That might be a better discussion instead of singling out a single persons and guessing he doesn't work for his money. To me saying that SteemFest is just a 5-day event (not saying you say this) is literally stabbing me as I know best how much time i put into it.
Re your post of people leaving the platform... Where else can they go? Back to facebook? Twittering for the likes? I would like to emphasize the beauty of the Steem chain more over other 'social networks'.
-- Being blocked or firewalled for example facebook & twitter in china
-- Being censored for example facebook or twitter
-- Need to pay for hosting & maintenance
-- Being data mined and sold (every big 'no such thing as a free lunch' social company from sillicon valley)
Hi @rolandp, just a minor comment about your last point:
Steem does not avoid social data mining, on the contrary, it helps many more organizations do that, as the database is completely public. The advantage si everybody can, not a monoly, and everybody knows they can do it, being concious of the fact.
Best regards
Pablo
Don't know why is important was I on SteemFest.
I didn't say you don't deserve money for organizating SteemFest. What I'm saying you are receiving too much money for SteemFest + witness work. Nothing personal, will say that to any witness in your position. Most of people can say to you similar story about their blog in pennies...Do you really think I need 5 minutes to write article and after only get pennies for it. That is literally stabbing me as I know how much time I put into it. At least you get more than good deal for your effort about SteemFest compared to bunch of minnows getting pennies for their hard work.
About people leaving platform... Don't say Steemit is working properly when 80%+ (close to 90%) of people leave platform. Not saying it's all because unfair money distribution, but in my opinion that is main cause. Yes, people could make bigger effort to make better articles (including me), but when they see they are depended on whale votes, most of them don't want to give continues effort because they don't see it as fair system. Like I said there is too big gap between whales and rest of community.
The problem is most (if not all) of whales didn't get their SP by blogging and they don't know how hard is to produce great article on continues basis. They accrued SP on various different ways and in fact they are hidden hand ruling Steemit. Most of them don't care about anything else then making easy money thru Steemit. Don't say all whales are the same, but it's obvious the gap between whales (non bloggers) and minnows who should try hard every day is too big. If that isn't the case 90%+ of users who joined Steemit will still be here.
I think you are mixing up witness & whale. I am not a whale. I am a witness. I don't expect to get money for organising steemfest through my witness pay. I started steemfest because I feel the community needed a place to get together in real life. That takes a lot of time organising, about half a year fulltime with crazy working hours and rest of the year parttime. I was already organising the event and only later became a witness.
When I started becoming a witness the steemprice was 0.09 ct. I decided to heavily invest in hardware to become very reliable at almost break-even pricing. Then I was also not complaining when witness pay got lowered 5 times with the hardfork.
And yes now the prices have risen, so one might opt to lower the witness rewards (which are currently (only) 10% of the platform's new steem creation), but I feel witnessing and keeping the platform stable & reliable is an important job. If steem's blockchain would not work, there would be 0 people here and this whole experiment would have not even taken off.
Additionally with upcoming releases around Hivemind and SMT the platform would gain in interest and usage and being a stable producers would even be more important as external entities start building on top of SMT features. This could lead to even higher prices of Steem but also higher costs of node maintenance. Would you then opt for less pay because it is simply too much for being a witness, however it is thanks to stable producers (partly) that such an increase would have taken place in the first time?
I have to agree with you that Steempower and Voting is being used in all kinds of various ways which one can find abusive, however I see it as a creative way of using the platform's possibilities. One could see a voting bot as a Mine Pool. If things would need to be changed in preventing that behaviour (which is difficult one to solve - we have many discussion about this) it should be done through a Hardfork (same with lowering witness pay).
Having said that, I will definitely give an effort by changing delegations and doing something about this as far as I can, as suggested in other replies in this post.
About people leaving the platform, this is mainly through false expactations because of the threaded $ sign below each post, IMHO. I wanted to suggest that the problem is not so much whales getting the money not through blogging, but people expecting to earn money by writing, instead of enjoying the option of having a free social media platform where users are not being data-mined, used as the product of the freemium platform, where there is free speech without restrictions and which can simply not be blocked anywhere in the world and then having sometimes a (little) reward in crypto on top of that.
If you are top witness, you are automatically whale.
I appreciate everyone's effort in supporting Steemit community, from investors in hardware to early investors/entrepreneurs. But argument 'I invested in Steemit' can't be valid forever. People that invested in Steemit got their money back many times. Now they expect they should enjoy without much contribution (especially in blogging) and rest of people should try their best every day for crumbs. That's not gonna work from perspective of minnow, I can say it with 100% certainty.
Yes, the whole experiment wouldn't work. But also if no one is blogging the whole experiment wouldn't work also. That is why those whose blog deserve more then they receive now.
It's like somebody build company and say to workers 'Hey now you all gonna work hard every day for crumbs and I will take all the profits because I invested in company and also I'm paying for electricity and other expenses.' Yes you did invest, but morally it's not gonna work. That's the way our world is run today. Banks create money from nothing and they can buy anything. After that they can say we invested and you peasants work for crumbs. And the bullshit is created.
We shouldn't create that from Steemit. From minnow perspective it look it's that way.
I hope Hivemind and SMT will make things better, but my hopes are low because the problem of big gap between whales and minnows will stay.