Let's be evil for a minute

in #steem6 years ago

One of my most effective methods in system design is to temporarily assume a goal that is opposite of the ones I want, and explore what a system designed for that goal would look like. This can help us understand more about how the system work, as well as helping us avoid well-intentioned mistakes and bad actors who pretend their goals are similar to ours.

So just for the space of this post, I'm going to set a villainous goal: I want to prevent new authors from gaining a foothold on Steem. How should we go about that? My proposal:

Increase curation rewards

Author rewards are available to everyone equally, while curation rewards are directly tied to Steem Power. So the more of a post that goes to curation, the more of its rewards will go to existing users, particularly orcas and whales. Even as a dolphin curation isn't a notable source of income, and wouldn't become one if it were doubled or quadrupled. That means we can move income from the posting class to the whale class easily just by increasing the percentage of a payout that goes to curation.

Superlinear rewards

"Superlinear" is a weird word and not especially clear, but what it would mean on Steem is that a vote would have more value if it were cast on a post that had more votes. Essentially we're incentivizing voters to vote on authors who are already popular, and disincentivizing them from voting on anyone new. The least-valuable votes cast will be the ones from people who find new authors to support, which ought to make sure there are as few of those as possible. But there will always be some people like @thedarkhorse and @davemccoy who actually like doing that, and we need to find some way to punish them too.

Synergy

Fortunately these two proposals work really well together. By making votes more valuable when cast on popular content, and increasing the percentage of post payouts that goes to curation at the same time, we can make sure that voters who stick to reliably-popular content grow their accounts and become more powerful on the site much faster than those nasty people who seek out and support new posters.

In fact, we can pretty much guarantee that iteration of the incentives in this system will eventually lead to almost everyone on the site voting on the same ten posts every day, because their rewards will depend on it.

If you're already a top author on Steem, congratulations, your income is about to go up dramatically. Unless you do something that drops your posts out of those ten, anyway. You'll have to make sure you never say anything just a little bit wrong, because if you're not in the top ten, you're nobody.

If you're not already a top author on Steem, well, sorry. You're probably never going to be, but you can put a ton of unrewarded effort into trying, and maybe if you're incredibly good and incredibly lucky you'll be able to acquire the earnings and anxiety of being one of the Chosen Few for a while.

Wait, did we just turn Steem into Youtube? That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Everybody celebrate!

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That's disturbingly accurate. And there's this witness strongly pushing for increasing curation rewards.

I have a tiny hope that the people who really want this will hardfork (in the real way) and leave the rest of us alone. They seems to believe so strongly that their method will give more value to the currency, maybe they could be convinced to go do it somewhere else.

Many people are talking about increasing curation reward percentage, I agree with you, richer will get richer, and authors will be discouraged.

Not going to lie, I mostly vote on #utopian-io development posts to get more SP rather than finding good authors and vote them. My vote value doesn't do much for an author at this moment, but earns me good curation rewards from #utopian-io. So, I prefer to support people with small donation.

Hopefully we will get your vote up to the point where you can use it more effectively.

Sometimes this platform seems like a dream jailbreak away from YouTube, Fb & the likes. Sometimes it seems hopeless. Especially coming across article's like this. An article like this can smash the mindset of a hopeful minnow. I believe it's entirely accurate. You only have to look at the trending page most anytime to realise something's way weighted.

I hate euphemisms that conceal class or wealth disparities. All this minnow and redfish nonsense is designed to make the poor feel hopeful.

Hopefully yes. I look forward to that day. Thank you for your support. :)

Sorry but for the fraction of pennies you are earning you are missing out on real engagement which increases the chances of gaining real followers, the type that actually give votes for free on a regular basis. You are also missing out on getting some nice upvotes on comment you leave while visiting humans posts. @surpassinggoogle for example visits his many followers posts and will reward all the comments on some posts with nice upvotes. Have had $1-3 in earning just on a couple comments multiple times from him alone in the last 30 days. Plus he visited one of my posts and gave everyone 50-60 cent votes. That is just 1 example, but how much curation is needed to offset 1 vote like that?

I gave up 100% on curation and just vote for what I like. My curation rewards are 83 cents per 1000sp per week based on Asher's Curation League stats. This isn't crazy high, but without front running bid bots I think that the most you will run is around 1.50 sp per 1000. To do that you need to sacrifice other earnings and I can earn way more then that that extra .70sp by engaging with others during the week.

And lets face it, if we all wanted to just maximize our earnings we would either lease our SP or use services like smart steem to sell all our votes. Curation rewards in terms of SP is just so minor it's not the place to focus efforts. Use Curation to find quality bloggers and help them stay active on Steemit. More bloggers that stick around the higher the value of Steem and we all win!

Hi @thedarkhorse, do not get me wrong please. I highly appreciate what you and others from @abh12345's League 2 are doing including people like @davemccoy and @tcpolymath.

As a novice developer, I spent most of my time learning about STEEM or developing and maintaining projects I already developed. From development posts on #utopian-io, I can learn a thing or two, thats why I check those posts regularly. But that doesn't mean I do not vote for others, I run a small trail as @bdcommunity for Bangladeshi authors who produces good contents, also work as a support and developer for @steemitbd, another Bangladeshi support platform which educates new users and supports quality content creators.

Again not saying what I am doing is right. Many introverts like myself may not comment and engage in conversations on a regular basis but can find other ways to support the community. I hope you'll understand.

I completely 100% support both of your approaches. Each one is appropriately tailored to your own skills and goals.

So diplomatic....and correct.

Not going to lie, I mostly vote on #utopian-io development posts to get more SP rather than finding good authors and vote them.

This is really the comment I was addressing and hope it didn't come off wrong. There are just so many newbies running around soaking up information and they read a comment like that and think, I will only vote for XXX and that will make me the most money. Yes this happens all the time, you should see some of the discord messages I get.

It's just SO hard to earn anything on curation and actually the larger authors like utopian have so many followers and 0-5 minute votes that you aren't earning as much as you might be able to on lessor known authors. They never pay anywhere near 25% curation on those posts. Just take a minute and look at that one day.

If your looking for curation earnings you could consider a 15 minute vote give or take on my contest. It tends to pull in a couple pretty good votes after the 15 minute mark so I wouldn't go to much past that. Then check your earnings to see if it was beneficial. Who knows maybe you find a way to earn more and support newbies ;)

I will be posting the winner post tonight at 12:01am my time (Chicago) if you want to see what the curation earnings would be. I have been propping up these posts with a single $5-6 vote that comes in after 30 minutes so that alone boosts the curation.

Also sounds like you have a lot you are in the middle of, know the feeling. Best of luck to you either way and sure I see you around. Oh and don't be shy...it's the internet nobody can bite you here. Lots of great people who want to see each other succeed so find them and stick with them. Their support goes a long way.

I was emphasizing on the word mostly in my first comment. I am sorry for giving off a negative vibe. I know you are topping the Asher's engagement league, you can find me on the League 1 there (not in the last one though). I earn curation by voting development contributions I like and believe can get a high value upvote from @utopian-io, which enables me to learn and earn at the same time.

Actually my projects take so much of my time that I have very little to explore good contents. But I get help from some friends who find those contents and we upvote. Hopefully one day we will be able to give bigger upvotes as we grow bigger.

Oh and don't be shy...it's the internet nobody can bite you here.

Thats just me but it is changing. I am trying to engage more and more.

I loved this hahaha. recently I was reading a discusion on a discord server about this theme. It's a controversial subject. You put it in interesting and funny way. I think this proposals would discourage many people

I really hope so.

As an author I really would not be to happy about that. Unless there increased cut also increased value of steem by at least that if not more. Since we are tethered to BTC like a brick around our ankles I'm not quite sure about that one.

As someone who keeps bumping slowly into trying to find undervalued authors. Well things get interesting.


When I’m able to bring value to a post from my own curation efforts.

not.png
When I’m not able to bring value to a post from my own curation efforts.

Unless there increased cut also increased value of steem by at least that if not more.

I see no reason to believe that the proposal would increase the value of Steem at all. In fact if Kevin is right that it would shut down delegation-for-profit I'm confident it would cause a sell-off and crater the price.

The most encouraging thing about this post I can find is the 4th tag. Gives one a sense of hope. Also a great reason for putting off an introduce yourself post for another few months :(

Well, at the moment this is just a very bad proposal from a few users. It's not getting much traction, and no one is putting code behind it, and hopefully we can oppose it effectively enough that it never becomes a serious risk.

Looking back, way way back, people have been exploiting the system for personal gains, regardless of what that particular system was, but especially when “money” is involved. These people will NEVER stop, go away, or anything else. They just keep taking. There like bullies. As long as their numbers stay low and they don't “organize”, things should work out for the greater good. Historically, a revolt is in order every now and then. But for now I’m going to just keep doing my thing, keep informed and hope for the best.

Best wishes for my fellow Steemians,
ill fait to bullies.

But for now I’m going to just keep doing my thing, keep informed and hope for the best.

An excellent strategy.

Really Steemit and DTube is the best alternate Option for Blogger and Youtuber.

Author, you are a wonderful writer. I'm also an interesting writer
By the way.I subscribed to you .. I want you to subscribe to me too

You got a 30.69% upvote from @ocdb courtesy of @tcpolymath!

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