Does the 7 Day Payout Period on STEEM Still Make Sense?
Esteemed Steemians,
Following the recent discussions around new 3.5 day upvote policy soon to be enforced by @grumpycat (which I generally think is a good thing), I was wondering about a more general issue:
What is the rationale to limit the payout period to only 7 days? And does it still make sense?
I mean, it's great that authors get rewarded for their posts at all, since most existing social media platforms do not have any comparable reward system like STEEM. I also see how the newly enforced 3.5 day policy enforced by @grumpycat makes sense, since much of the social media content is forgotten after that period. But after all, the post will stay on the steem blockchain forever after the 7 day period. If an author publishes a quality travel post, a great tutorial, a restaurant review, a piece of art, music video, etc. and someone discovers it three years later via Google, it is still valuable. However, at that point, the author does not get any reward anymore and there is no point in upvoting it anymore. Doesn't this policy even encourage to post only content with a very short value lifespan? Why would authors spend hours writing quality posts for steem of they only get a share of the value it creates in the first 7 days? Could this in the long run favor more ephemeral content on steem, rather than high quality content with a long lifespan?
For instance, take a look at this very interesting article by @ilyastarar that explains the steemit reward system. I found it on google when I searched for "steem reward system", and I found it very helpful. Other users will likely find it helpful too. But the post is already two months old, so with the current reward system I cannot appreciate @ilyastarar's great article with an upvote - it would have no value.
I think the central question here is: Do we want STEEM to be Twitter (with content being relevant for only a very short period of time), Wikipedia (with content being relevant for a very long period of time), or something in between? Depending on this, the reward system may have to look quite differently.
The 7 Day Payout Period could also also a potential threat to the competitiveness of the platform. Other blockchain-based social networks like WildSpark do not impose such a period, which could make it more attractive for users.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Does the 7 Day Payout Period still make sense or does it need a rethink? Share your thought below in the comments.
#steemit #steem #question #discussion #rewardsystem #blockchain
I totally agree. The 7 day period really kills it for content creators and makes the STEEM blockchain vulnerable to forks and other competitive networks.
Why forbid people to use their votes on old posts? That really makes no sense
Hi Raci, you may be interested to read also a recent side analysis which relates in part to the 7 days windows by @miniature-tiger. https://busy.org/utopian-io/@miniature-tiger/an-analysis-of-lost-votes
I also think that the 7 days is a restriction that may create frustration from content creator publishing value from long-term information. For some topic, i sometime see a content creator reposting updated article and deleting the content of previous one. That's the only way for them to re-issue and gain some reward again but i'm not sure how far this can be seen as an abuse. For those sharing their artworks like novels, painting, music this is even more difficult.
I don't understand why we don't see much more hot news journalism onboarding and creating content directly on the blockchain. Steem looks like perfect tool to gain rewards and stay independent.
Hey there @dbddv01 thanks again for your valuable thoughts and for sending me this. I found the article really interesting to read and dropped my thoughts in the comments there.
In order to come up with constructive idea here : I think it should be possible to test out and simulate the effects of various configurations of the payout period (e.g 7, 30, or 90 days etc). Maybe this could be a feature of the new smart media token
I think you have a great point! I think that you’re right that very good content is timeless, and blogs like waitbutwhy and others that do long-form content as well as musicians and filmmakers do deserve a way to monetize in the long run. But maybe it’s wrong to look to Steemit for a solution. Every social media encourages a certain kind of content- Twitter very short and quickly consumed, Facebook a little longer, Quora or Tumblr longer yet. What I sometime picture is something like an embed button you can put on everything that lets you monetise all sorts of content. Kind of like Flattr was trying to do years ago but in a tokenised system. Anyway... nice to see another Copenhagener on here!
Thank you for your interesting thoughts. I do find the idea of combining different approaches from different platforms particularly interesting. One of the main advantages of blockchain is the decentralized architecture, so it should be possible to tie different economic mechanisms with corresponding lifespans together into one integrated platform.
Maybe you’re right. It seems like a big challenge though. Another thought is to pay by consumption rather by upvoting. Seconds seen in a video, scroll-spying etc. What kind of content do we incentivise with a upvote-system, and is it the type of content that we really need?
Oh and likewise great to see other Copenhageners around here. We should organize a meetup or so soon 😊 @meanmommy33 is working on this with @copensteem
Very interesting thoughts Raci.
I do see your point about the 7 day payout period . That is the one thing that at first i found unattractive of steemit. However, i have changed my mind about this now.
If people got rewarded for as long as the post is outher on the web... and if this articles do so good , like the ones that make more that 200 steem backed dollars.. and after the 7 days keep collecting... it might hurt the Steemit ecosystem. Not to mention that people would create less contend on a weekly basis.. since what they have already posted is still generating income. This way.. with the 7 days limitation, they have to keep creating content .
I agree that people should still get rewarded but maybe in a different way.. i don't know... like a monthly fee depending on how much it made during the 7 days period?? i don't know.. lets say a 30% monthly fee? like royalties .. i don;t know haha.
I am runaware of this 3.5 day thing you mentioned about @grumpycat... what is that about?
Thanks for your reply and the interesting thoughts @soykatonline. I do agree with you that the reward system needs to be sustainable and incentivize the production of new content on a regular basis. I think the steem reward system is doing that just fine. I just think that it is a major shortcoming that high quality content does not get rewarded in the long term, while medium quality content sometimes gets higher rewards. This sometimes depends on the reputation of the author, which is a different topic (I do think that the reputation system on steemit is quite sophisticated, by the way).
I personally do see great promise in platforms like www.wildspark.me which seem to encourage value distribution over a longer term period. Once you generate a wildspark link, you keep profiting from people sharing the content. I actually think that this would be very interesting to combine with steem - you could use wildspark links to curate content on steem. However, at the moment, this is technically not possible.
I do like your idea of introducing a royalties-like structure, I will have to think about that :) sounds good!
The 3.5 day policy by @grumpycat that I mentioned earlier is about a new policy that upvote bots are not allowed to sell upvotes on posts older than 3.5 days, otherwise it will get severely downvoted by Grumpycat. It seems like @grumpycat is some sort of "bad cop" on steemit, enforcing the more controversial policies that prevent behavior that hurts the platform in the long run :) check the article I linked above for further infos.
I totally agree.
It seems like this @grumpycat guy is too extremist ... i mean, why should he decide for everybody else .. just because he has that much power? i just checked his account and holy cow! he has an account value of $3,832,114.29 .. i am sure he can down vote good .. but... i think maybe there should be a whale meeting where they all decide together what to do.. not just take matters on his own hands. I haven't used many bots... i am not very sure of how to use them well, so i really don't use them.. i don't know how good or bad they are... but i do think it should be a decision made by many, not just one person.
I don't think limiting the payout to 7 days is a good idea. It shifts the voting power from content to $. I thought steem was supposed to be about good content. It seems silly that an author can write a short story and publish it with a publishing company and be paid royalties forever. If that same author posts here they are limited to a 7 day period. Find your audience in 7 days or you wasted your economic incentive...
I absolutely agree with you on that point. It does not seem to be a reward system that incentivizes long-term value of content. Would it make sense to abandon the limit altogether?
I don't have a lot of experience yet as i am only on steem network for 2 days. If you make the reward system longer than 1 week, then we would need an algorithm that would only give monetary credit for the upvotes in the last week. We would need a feature like this or else you would get paid every week for week 1 upvotes.
Thanks for your thoughts. And welcome to steem- looking forward to your updates 😊 did you write an #introduceyourself post yet?
Good post ..
I like your posts ..
👍👍👍
thank you :)