Another way of looking at discussion incentivization
One of the proposed upcoming changes to the platform is creating a separate reward pool for comments. The goal is to incentivize users to have more and better discussions. While monetary incentives are one way of looking at this, it might not be the most efficient at this point.
I just left a comment on Github about this:
Lack of comments is UI problem because notification system is still weak. If I find an interesting post and leave a comment, I don't get any notifications for discussion that happens afterwards if nobody comments my comment. There might be dozens of great comments but I will be unaware of them because I don't usually check same post several times. I just read the post once, maybe leave a comment and move on to other stuff.
On the other hand, lack group functionality in the blockchain is also preventing high quality discussions. Currently Steemit is just a publishing platform. If we want to be also a social network, we need to let users to form communities.
If we want Steemit to be a platform for meaningful discussion, we must find an answer to this question: How people are going to find like-minded users? Searching for old posts is not a great way because you can't even reply to an old post. Best thing you can do is to find interesting authors and follow them and hope they will post something in the future that will ignite good discussion.
Tags can help, but they lack very important feature: users can't follow a tag. I've been thinking about this lately and came to a conclusion that "join community" is necessary if we want to have communities in Steemit. Following a tag would be one necessary step to that direction.
Another necessary feature for communities is exclusion of unwanted users. Otherwise good communities will be poisoned by spammers and trolls when they become successful.
I've written about this few times:
Feature proposal: Ownable tags (tldr: if somebody owns a tag, they can decide who can post using that tag which is exclusion feature; in addition to that owned tags should be followable which is the "join community" feature)
Feature I'd like to see in the roadmap: Steemroom (group functionality in the blockchain) (steemroom is great name for group functionality)
This relates very much to a problem that I haven't seen getting much attention: too much noise. Among many other things, it causes good discussions to disappear so fast that many times they don't even get started.
Better notification system would tell the user about discussion that he probably will enjoy, thus making the user experience nicer. I want the system to tell me where the discussion is happening instead of me having to go and actively search for it – there is so much noise that it's pretty hard.
Group functionality would reduce the noise because users could focus on groups of like-minded people instead of this chaotic bunch of individual posters. In the current system it's pretty much about good luck than anything else if somebody wishes to find meaningful discussions.
So yeah, I am also critical of having a separate reward pool for comments. Better notifications and group functionality would be much more efficient ways to create discussion.
That is exactly right. The problems with commenting/interacting are due to two main factors:
Shifting money around isn't going to fix either issue and it won't encourage adoption/investment, especially when it comes at the expense of blog post and curation rewards. Fix the UI issues, then work on attracting/engaging more users. We don't need more tinkering with reward distributions for the 1000(?) active human users and even far fewer people who actually regularly engage and comment.
I agree that UI functionality would make some major improvements in engagement and the ability to create communities of interest. I would just hope that development eventually comes around to incentivising commentators at some stage.
It's on the table now because it is a backend development stage. UI development is further down the road. Not dealing with commentation rewards now might be missing an opportunity.
Well, I don't see an issue with comment rewards. I continually see plenty of comments being rewarded and lots of engagement on engaging posts. I don't think there's an issue at all with engagement or comment payouts. The only problem that I continue to see is a lack of users, which then either creates or exacerbates other problems.
They need to focus more on UI development rather than tinkering with the rewards, which is not the actual cause of the issues and complaints.
I agree. The UI is where the work should be done - I would like better notifications. Perhaps even the choice to organize the list of people you are following by most recent post (excluding a resteem) might be nice. (With a toggle between alphabetical or by most recent post sorting) I miss many posts that get overlooked in the feed from the people I like following. This could be helpful if you read something but don't remember who posted it but want to find it quickly to make a comment.
Another example is that since I'm commenting to a comment I don't think the original article writer will be notified about this comment. (Please correct me if I'm wrong) If this is the case I think this should be changed too.
Yes, that's correct. Unless the comment is made as a reply directly to your blog post or comments, you won't know until you look at the comment/thread again.
Yep, that sucks.
well said
For me personally I have installed the esteem app on my phone, each time I get a follow, mention, comment, and so on it chimes and I know to reply. Without the app refreshing your replies page accomplishes the same thing. I was excited to see the reward pool for comments because I know of one individual @arthuradamson who would greatly benefit from such a thing. His comments are as good or sometimes better than the actual post. It will be ironic if you do not see this I must say but I am curious if that is or is not being added as a feature.
Own-able tags sounds like a no go to me, whales would just by them all up with the intent to resell leaving everyone in a bidding war.
Whales want this platform so succeed so I think it's highly unlikely that they would just hoard all the tags only to sell them later. Some of that would happen, but there are lots of words in the world, they can't buy them all. There will be plenty of them left to normal users. And the tag won't become valuable just because of the name, the owner has to make an effort to get people to follow it. Worth of tag comes mostly from the amount of users who are following it, not from the name.
Without ownable tags/steemrooms, how would you exclude unwanted users from groups? I think exclusion is very much needed feature, groups can't function properly if anyone can join and do whatever they want.
I have always viewed hashtags as open and not able to be owned by anyone. We have seen this effect a few times when corporations use them and then society responds with their own version. A great example is what the NYPD tried to do and how it backfired. What your saying sounds a lot like how the DNS system is currently setup and I am not a fan. Currently in a udrp case for my company because of someone cyber squatting a branded URL of ours.