WHAT IF your payouts directly correlated to your daily efforts on Steemit?
Sometimes it's fun to share WHAT IF scenarios and see what kind of feedback one might get in return. In this post, I am putting forth an idea of how to level the payout playing field for all active users on Steemit. While this presentation is my own, I am directly influenced by the ideas of three people. Their posts are linked below.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/01/06/21/42/light-bulbs-1125016_960_720.jpg)
Nearly a week ago, @timcliff proposed an idea for an Esteem Score which has gripped my imagination since I've read it.
Introducing The Esteem Score - Proposal to Add Gamification to the Steemit User Experience
He cited @charlieshrem's idea of Social Capital where Charlie wrote: "Real Social Capital has no bias, you don't need to be rich or poor, good looking or bad looking. In the digital age its about the knowledge you have and the contribution to bring to a community or society"
He even went into how distribution of STEEM would work - which, honestly, I felt was a bit complicated. But that's not saying much because I really don't have a true understanding of financials and their working cogs, if you know what I mean.
Collective Social Validation
But then Tim also cited @dragosroua's post Can Reputation Be Evaluated And Rewarded Directly With Money? where Dragoș translated "social capital" into "collective validation."
He begs the question: What is reputation? and further explains
"To a very large extent I agree with the definition that reputation is the size of our social capital. The more we are endorsed by other people, the bigger the social capital."
He writes a compelling argument about how we vote for content and not necessarily people.
Even Tim states:
"The current reputation system that we have is largely driven by the quality of content that users produce. We don't have a great measurement for the quality of people."
I could probably argue against it, but I won't because I happen to agree with their assessment for the most part.
Clearly, I am not a witness and I'm not savvy in tech or cryptocurrency, but the one thing I have in common with these three is Steemit-On-The-Brain.
Level the playing field
One of the largest complaints I've heard in my four months on Steemit is how the distribution of power goes to the very few. And now I hear grumblings of how the new hardfork may make it very difficult for late adopters to earn Steem Power, giving the early adopters a significant edge. Apparently to some, earning our rewards and putting in the time and effort makes us greedy little bastards, but I digress...
This is exactly the push back that had me thinking WHAT IF.
Taking Charlie's idea of monetizing our social capital to attract investors; merging that into Dragoș's concept of endorsement, and mixing in a healthy dose of Tim's esteem score - I thought:
WHAT IF we had a clean slate every day?
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/05/31/14/31/quote-791953_960_720.jpg)
What if our Esteem Scores reset at 00:00 UTC every day?
We would have:
- 24 hours to create, curate, and comment.
- 24 hours to build our scores.
- 24 hours to accrue upvotes and comments.
There would be specific payout levels based on your accumulated Esteem Score.![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/03/23/19/09/hierarchy-96186_960_720.jpg)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/03/23/19/09/hierarchy-96186_960_720.jpg)
Essentially, everyone gets awarded equally based on their daily personal activity.
Naturally, people with a huge following may have an edge on earning, but this is not a pyramid scheme. Anyone with a lower reputation score can surpass anyone else based on their activity. And sometimes people with huge followings and high reputation scores actually take the day off. Imagine that?!?
And in this idea, even if you have bots curating and increasing your Esteem Score, you may not get to a higher payout level as someone who is actively engaged with the community on any given day.
The power of your upvote should still be associated with how many vests you have, but I believe this will promote responsible curation.
You would earn X amount of esteem points:
- per comments given and received over 120 characters long
- per upvotes given and received
- per post
The weight of each would have to be determined, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to say right?
Final Thoughts
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/03/25/16/35/hypnotic-297485_960_720.png)
I've obviously got Steemit on the brain, but it's been nice to imagine the What Ifs on how to improve the platform even if it never comes to fruition. I personally love this concept and I wonder how an idea like this might be received. In any event, I wanted to get this idea out of my head and on the blockchain.
And now for an important announcement
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/14/17/22/note-34670_960_720.png)
Check out your witnesses
I mentioned three witnesses who are actively involved in the well-being of Steemit and the user experience: @timcliff @dragosroua and @charlieshrem. For what it's worth, I fully endorse these guys and hope you will consider them during your selection process. Witnesses are a vital part of the Steemit ecosystem.
Please read Tim's Witness Voting Guide
Vote for your Witnesses here
You have up to 30 votes. Vet your witnesses. Visit their blogs and ask them questions. Vote responsibly. Every single one counts.
[EDITED] Picture attributes: All of the above pictures are from Pixabay. Creative Commons licensing. No attributes necessary.
![]() | This is a 100% STEEM POWER post. |
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Your comments, upvotes and shares are always appreciated.
Thank you.
For older content, visit my Steemit blog page
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This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Nov 26. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $9.97 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Nov 26 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
assessing quality is not too difficult - screenname does it all the time. But being told you have a quality post and being paid a quarter is nice for the encouragement, but not for ensuring the stickiness of users. In other words, that nice shout out and a quarter will get you a phone call (well today, maybe not) Wouldn't it be nice if the whales could take screennames list and actually pay the content writers what they really deserve. That way we wouldn't be constantly losing good writers who spend hours writing content to earn...well, a quarter
The problem is the subjectivity of "pay the content writers what they really deserve."
Screenname's most undervalued posts blog is also a great tool. But if you look through the archives, many of those writers are the same throughout the week. Why? Because they got on a bot list or two, or maybe on someone's Streemian trail with a lot of minnow votes - which are great for upvote numbers, but not great for earnings. And how does one get on the trail radar? By posting consistently and interacting with the other community members. Sadly, that doesn't always equate to quality but leans more to a popularity contest in my opinion.
No matter how it's played, it's still a numbers game. Even this brainstorm I presented still has a popularity factor to it, but I don't think it's as severe as what's currently in place.
But look at the numbers on this post! 45 cents. 89 votes. 40 COMMENTS! I think this may be the closest to a 50% comment to vote ratio that I've ever had. That is very encouraging. The earnings??? Meh. Not so much. LOL I stay in my happy place by not expecting any.
you're right...you've thought about this a lot and I defer to your wisdom here :)
You know the clip art with the black circle line? Were you trying to hypnotize me? Yes.....master!!! lol......well....I like what you wrote and I like the idea of a fresh piece of paper everyday to encourage activity....but I'd have to give it more thought. It would depend a LOT on the content that is put out everyday anyhow right? Some might just type their 120 words or a paragraph and a picture and say, "there, done." I don't know. But you gave me something new ish to think about. Thank you.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/steemd-com-user-stats-11-26-2016-scrnshot-showing-user-activity-breakdown-distribution-stats-41-inactive
Thanks @barrydutton - I looked at this and also went to the steemd.com site - I don't get it? It doesn't tell me how well I am doing only that half of the people on here are active and less than half are not.
This site is one of many as you know, they can get lost in the swath of info on here LOL
This site is not about YOUR stats etc. specifically, it is about capturing the data of the whole pie, the aggregate of all of us and for that, it is super useful.
One of the best sites to check your own stats against the herd you may already know but if not --- go to Steemwhales.com ----many of us use that daily. Click on the column headers to resort rather than using the drop downs. Quicker.
Then type in your name in the search box. That's likely the best one to use for what you are talking about. There are some others that do other things also. Hope that helps.
Oh wow....I'm looking at that right now. Thanks @barrydutton. Maybe I'll learn something.....or.....
I see your name on here so much, I just assumed you knew a lot of that, like I do with others, also because I know I know so little lol.
here is a list I have compiled in my drafts to use and help others do same. Paste this into a draft and use it or open up a sep. browser and pin them all to start pages to save time when you open THAT browser, I finally did that y-day. This list if you keep it around will REALLY help you out then. I hope others reading feel the same.
steemstats.com
steemdb.com
steemd.com
steemwhales.com
http://steem.cool
https://steemwatch.com/eventstream
http://steemtools.com/
https://steempixel.com/ -- Image Tools for Steemit.com
steemit.chat -- separate account / page for the chat function only
steemverify.com
I now have you under my spell mwahahahaaaa!
Oh gosh, I don't think I'd like seeing Steemit as a glorified form of Twitter. LOLNo, the 120 characters is geared toward quality comments. It would decrease the amount of "GOOD POST" comments and hopefully promote actual responses.
If Steemit was a glorified Twitter what would it be called? Steemter? Sweeter? I got that you were talking about the comments. I was tongue and cheek saying some people only write 120 words on their posts which to me is not quality and say "there, done". So I should say what I mean and take my tongue out of my cheek and speak like a young errr old lady that I am. So confusing....but that is a symptom isn't it. I'm punch tired silly. Going to bed. Have a good evening @merej99
Did I mention I'm an Aspie? LOL I'm usually good at picking up on the tongue in cheek stuff -- but not all the time. XD Rest well <3
Hey @merej99 - cool thoughts :)
Changing the reward scheme entirely would probably be a big deal, but I wonder if they could use a small part of the reward pool each day to pay for something like this. It would be fun for there to be a daily competition where users are rewarded for their contributions.
@timcliff if changing the reward system would be difficult to do, this would be an ideal thing for a guild to potentially become a the bootstrap solution. Perhaps a new Steemit Guild could fill this need? I would imagine active registrants would be willing to contribute to crowdfund his solution. I'd like to see a bit more fleshed out on the idea, but I would be interested.
Having an additional user reputation score, instead of only a post/content reputation metric, is interesting.
Wouldn't it not be equal if everyone doesn't get the same amount? Maybe reword that.
But interesting idea for sure.
Hmm... You're right. The wording is a little off there, @krnel - it's more like everyone would be on the same metric. Earnings would obviously be different.
I think this is food for thought for sure! However, I do like the current system because it allows for things like vacations and such. The past two weeks have been filled with travel and holidays and I've only made a few posts and have had very little time to curate. It was nice to be able to post and still see some interaction and results on my posts during that time. And, now that life is slowing down a bit, I'm resuming my reading, upvoting and commenting. I wonder what a meshing of the current and new systems would look like?
I recently took a complete month off on here so you make good points I had not thought of
I have to reply to you here bc the other chain's limit is up. So I did learn that much - 6 deep. Thanks for all those links. Really appreciate it and any help. I am on here a lot....I reply mostly and write a few posts but that's about it. I would like to do better than I have been doing. Thanks again.
Awesome! TY for LMK that it helped you!!!!!! I helped! LOL, beauty! I compiled that list as I went from people online here and there, seeing things. Now you can send that list to people too! #Steemit101 -- that is a # I started and kept using for things like this.
I started a FB group by the same name too, with things there -- just LMK who you are if you join, I don't let everyone in, I admin a few pages, too many fake spammy ppl. as you may know
I think that's the beauty behind the idea. Let's say you did go on vacation but you used voting bots like SteemVoter to keep you actively curating. You would still be earning daily esteem points and being awarded. It might not be as much as posting and commenting, but it's still something.
I need to read up on this...because the uninformed me feels like voting bots might be a bit like cheating if one didn't actually read the content and enjoy it or find it useful.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I use it very sparingly, auto-upvoting only my most consistent quality content creators and accounts like steemsports because I usually check my account on Steemd to see what was upvoted and follow up with a comment. Everything else is manually curated. If used responsibly, I think it's a great tool. But like anything else, it can be abused. Definitely look into it. I'm certain you have at least 10-20 people that you auto-upvote before you read their content, right? Food for thought :)
I don't auto upvote before I read content....maybe that's why my steem is low...slow on the uptake perhaps for moi. Maybe I need some help with the way I do things. Ya, probably.
What you're doing is a very good habit to keep @countrygirl. I use the SteemVoter bot much like I use TweetJukebox for Twitter. For me it's more efficient. I get my vote in and then I scroll through Steemd.com instead of the NEW tab searching for their content later.
I just checked my stats on SteemStats. I've had 32 votes in the last 24 hours. 9 of them were auto-upvotes. What's that...about 1/3? I don't think that's a bad ratio to keep up with my faves and still get curation points. It's something to consider :)
I have no more room to answer you....tsk. What you wrote about Steemstats and the bot getting 1/3 of your upvotes....yes that is something to consider. I will have to figure out how to use it maybe....maybe. Have to get over my usual guilt. :) (I bug me sometimes). Thanks for all this great info tho. I seriously appreciate your Steeit brain.
I agree with you on that too @rebeccamorgan.
Oh -- UV and RS for you also.
Do not feed the trolls girl lol. Your time is valuable. To lots of us and to yourself, if you know what I am saying.
Anyways, TY for the replies, I appreciate them and you.
I only give the trolls sweetbreads. In hindsight I'm certain it's a form of passive-aggressiveness but I have to get my kicks somewhere! LOL
LOL. See I missed all this for days. #SmartGirls
Congratulations, interesting post my great friend @ merej99, I throw several important ideas on the table, surely they will be very well received, as it is always a pleasure to read your notes, thank you very much for sharing them
@jlufer - throwing ideas into a think tank no matter how crazy or out of the box it may seem leads to potential growth and spawn of even greater ideas and initiatives. Maybe someone will run with the idea? It certainly would be fun to test.
Excellent idea! The present method is too arbitrary and relies too much on chance. If a post is not spotted in time, it drowns regardless of its quality.
Exactly. Even the best posts rarely get viewed past 24 hours anyway. This just seems to be a simpler and fair distribution of STEEM. But, as I mentioned in the response to lpfaust - there could be a way to build in bonuses for those who are building their reputation score. Yes, it gives them a slight edge in potential earnings but at the same time it doesn't exclude anyone from achieving that level in a timely manner.
Good stuff, this directly relates to something I saw you write earlier in the day on this, that it was on your mind. I commented there. I just sent you a PM on the steemit.chat too. I don't hear from you anymore!
Great post. I have been mulling over the 24 hour thing since you mentioned it on that other post hours ago.
Hi @barrydutton - fear not. I've been taking my time "rediscovering" people and finding some new gems. Actually, I spent last evening engaged with a troll. It was quite fun actually, but time consuming. LOL
FYI - I am rarely on steemit.chat It's a time suck that takes me away from Steemit so I literally may not get those messages for days...weeks? Come to think of it - I rarely visit Twitter or FB either. Maybe I should have a point of contact that I check regularly. I'll be better about it after NaNoWriMo is over. ;)
I wondered, about the chat thing too, that's why I advised you here, I sort of see that myself how it could be missed and a time sucker. I am glad you are not mad because I called you one of the #SteemitElders lol! At least you know I value your input and missed you!
I have put up a couple beauts lately, (IMHO) so I wondered. Even to get a laugh out of you and others, I love that part. Keep up your good work. Your brain is huge!
LOL - once you get to know me a little better you will find that I am not easily offended.