On Guilds and Managing Expectations

There have been some discussions of guilds lately that have left me quite unsatisfied, to say the least.

I have read the criticisms and I’ve seen the responses. I’ve been involved in several discussions myself, both publicly and privately. I’ve spoken with guild members and those who have critiqued them. I’ve looked at the user statistics and I’ve seen the effects of curation. I’ve even posted several times in the past about the problems that continue to plague Steemit.

There is a discussion to be had. But first...

A Quick Word

Before I get into the arguments about the guilds themselves, I’d like to address something that I continue to see when any discussion like this begins.

The most disappointing aspect of a lot of the issues discussed on Steemit is the near instantaneous reaction to anyone asking questions – and the consequent framing of the discussion as “good” users vs. “bad” users. The attempts of some of the guild members to portray anyone with doubts about the effectiveness of the guilds as “jealous,” “trolls,” and “witch-hunters” is certainly nothing new. However – as I have mentioned several times in the past – this reaction is actually more toxic than the users raising the actual questions.

There is no way to have a healthy debate about a topic when the first reaction is to call people names and to try to impugn their character. By framing the argument as, “You’re just jealous,” or “We actually care about Steemit,” is – quite frankly – a coward’s response. It is nothing more than an attempt to silence or denigrate others. There is no value in it and there is no redeeming quality among those who insist on arguing in this manner. So can we please stop with the notion that differences of opinion are necessarily “trolling,” that everyone who disagrees with you is “jealous,” or that interpreting the available data is actually a “witch-hunt?”

When such accusations are made, especially against respectable, highly-reputable, and long-standing members of the community, it doesn’t actually help anything at all. It’s divisive, it’s childish, and it’s completely unnecessary. If nothing else, it only adds to any suspicions and invites further criticism. Your best bet is to have an honest and open discussion. If you’re simply not capable of doing that, then kindly excuse yourself from the interactions.

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A Critique of Guilds

Before I begin, I want to make this clear:

Any user can use or delegate their stake however they wish. I have never advocated forcing anyone to use their stake in any particular manner. Any arguments made are simply arguments for the purpose of discussion/debate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with talking things through and finding a general community “consensus” on a given issue.

So, please spare me any retorts about “It’s their stake and they can do what they want.” Yes. We’re all well aware of that. That does not mean that we can’t discuss anything. And as long as the discussion does not devolve into personal attacks and flag wars, I don’t see how it does any harm to any individual users or the platform in general.

That being said, let’s have a look at one of the original statements about one of the main guilds – in this case, Steem Guild. This is from their initial post that announced their project back in early October:

Steem Guild was formed primarily to support established creators of quality content who still need assistance to generate their own following.

Project Curie is able to find great content creators and support them. But after those first votes, Curie must move on to support other new authors. What happens to those who continue posting great quality content on Steemit, but are not able to make more than $5-10 per post? Many authors become frustrated because there is a gap between Curie and becoming fully established.

Steem Guild hopes to bridge this gap. Authors whose previous posts have complied with Project Curie guidelines and who continue creating good content can receive ongoing support through Steem Guild. We believe this will help with retention and morale on Steemit as well!

The stated intentions of Steem Guild were to support authors of “quality content” that were not “fully established” and needed help to “generate their own following.” On the surface, this sounds like a good idea. Finding valuable content and rewarding the authors of it is a noble effort for any user. I don’t think anyone would really dispute that. After all, that’s what pretty much any person on the platform does on a daily basis.

The goals of Curie and Steem Guild have been to find content and authors that have been overlooked or otherwise lost in the crowd. It’s great that people want to dedicate time and resources to doing this on a routine basis. But how exactly are they defining the terms being used here?

What constitutes “quality content?”

What do they mean by “fully established?”

How do they “generate a following” and how large must a following be in order to be sufficient in the eyes of the guild?

Furthermore – why was there even a dollar amount discussed in the original post? Who is to say that the content deserves more than $5 or $10 in the first place? Why are those prices the threshold? Is there a minimum post value that users ought to receive? Is $5 or $10 per post not sufficient for any given content that is deemed “quality” by some users?

In a decentralized free market, these statements don’t even make sense. We know that value is subjective. We know that Steemit was created based on free market principles and stake-weighted voting algorithms. We know that there will never be equal outcomes for rewards. We know that social media is largely based on the size of your following and the ability to market yourself to the masses. Not everyone can do that. This is understood. It’s one of the reasons that most bloggers don’t make much money from blogging.

But in the guild’s quotes from above, they seem to be trying to either ignore these factors or they are trying to combat them. A lot of time and resources are being devoted to the project, with the ultimate goal being: “We believe this will help with retention and morale on Steemit as well!”

So, what about retention and morale?

Currently, Steemit has over 132,000 accounts. Only about 9,000 of those accounts have been active over the past week and over 13,000 have been active over the past month. Most of the accounts in these figures are automated voting accounts and other bots. The active authors per day is near 800 for the last 30 days. Based on current Steemd.com data, in the past 24 hours, there have been around 5200 active accounts and under 900 of those are authors, according to steempunks.com. So, only approximately 15–17% of the active accounts are authors.

In their most recent post, Steem Guild claims the following:

Several staff members spend 10+ hours a day to help the 350-400 authors we are supporting on a regular basis.

If the average number of authors per day over the last 30 days is 800, then the guild is supporting approximately half of those authors – assuming that they are the same active authors and that the guild’s list isn’t being actively updated to remove inactive authors. Think about that for a moment and what the stated intentions of the guild are.

They are supporting half of the active authors on the platform. And it should be noted that this is only one guild.

If the guild’s list is being actively updated to remove the now inactive authors, then their goals of user retention are not being met. Why would these authors be leaving if the guild is actively supporting their content? Perhaps the issue isn’t entirely related to money.

So the effect of guild voting on user retention appears to be insignificant. The number of Steemit accounts continues to increase, but the active user base is not. Despite Steem Guild being active for the past four months and Curie being active for about six months, user activity has shown no improvement. If I’m not mistaken, it has actually declined over this period.

Morale is another question altogether. I don’t see any evidence that the post rewards from the guilds have any significance on the overall morale of the active user base. Sentiment seems to be the same as it was in the fall – after the relatively large STEEM price declines. There are still many of the same issues being discussed and many of the same concerns, most of them unrelated to prices and payouts. Other than anecdotal evidence from some of those users receiving guild votes and others that find little value in the guilds, there is no reliable data to prove this one way or the other.

Subjective Value and Gatekeeping

In their announcement post, Steem Guild provided a list of guidelines for their votes. Here is that list:

1. Authors must be producing consistently good content which improves Steemit
2. Original content with no material that is plagiarized or generated by word spinners
3. Authors must have low lifetime rewards
4. No Steemit related posts
5. No controversial posts
6. No polarizing themes or subjects (such as politics)
7. No posts that are just one photograph
8. Must cite sources for any non-original content (text, photo, video, etc.)
9. Maximum rewards: 1 post per day per author
10. Preferably people who have been in Steemit for at least 1-2 months

Looking at this list, I can’t help but notice the completely arbitrary/subjective criteria for voting. It has me asking more questions.

What is “good content which improves Steemit?” What is the criteria for measuring this “improvement?”

What exactly is the number being used to measure/compare “low lifetime rewards?”

What constitutes “controversy” and “polarization?”

These are arbitrary/subjective criteria for evaluating content. It would be easier and more straightforward to simply say, “If we don’t like it, we won’t vote on it.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. But on a platform that touts itself as being censorship-resistant and decentralized, what value is there in stating that any arbitrarily-defined “controversial” or “polarizing” content will not be rewarded? How can one definitively state that such content isn’t “good” and won’t “improve Steemit?”

The notion that controversial subjects and good content/improving Steemit are mutually exclusive isn’t a good precedent to set. But by the nature of their own guidelines, this is precisely what Steem Guild is telling the user base. If you write about certain topics or have an opinion that isn’t mainstream or popular, then you will not be supported.

The retort here from Steem Guild is that the largest stakeholder supporting their efforts – the CEO of Steemit, Inc. himself, Ned Scott – doesn’t want to attach his name to controversial posts. That’s certainly understandable, but the question remains: What does this tell the community when the CEO of Steemit apparently believes that unpopular or controversial topics aren’t worthy of his support or the support of the guild? I’m not saying that this is what he necessarily believes, but this is how the guild and their guidelines are perceived. When you attach your name to it, that is the inevitable result.

Having this arbitrary criteria also allows guild members to simply ignore certain users – regardless of the individual posts that they create – and deem the users themselves as “controversial,” thus not adding them to their curation list. They can essentially act as gatekeepers, selectively ruling out an entire class of users or those who these few guild members simply do not like. Again, I’m not saying that this does indeed happen, but to believe that it doesn’t happen or can’t happen is a bit naïve. All of us have our own feelings and preferences on both content and users.

The guidelines aren’t just a matter of who gets upvoted. It’s the perception of the guild backers and how their delegated power is used that becomes part of the discussion. When it involves the CEO of the company behind the platform itself, the voting can be perceived as much more influential and an indicator of what type of content is approved of and rewarded. It can actually distort the market and dictate preferences, given the automation in the system and the endless returns sought from curation.

Having an author list adds to this distortion, since the odds of a certain user’s post being upvoted by the guild increases in their favor once they are added to the list. Curators will see this as an easy way to increase their returns and upvote the content, regardless of other factors. And there is no indication that Steem Guild actually avoids posts that have already been upvoted by other whales, so it’s easy for such whales, trails, and/or other curators to preempt the guild votes.

So, depending on the content of their selected authors, the guild can actually stifle growth in certain categories and make other categories that would otherwise be unpopular – because most people don’t find them interesting – a much more lucrative investment of one’s time. In other words – the guild’s voting guidelines and behavior can create artificial demand for content that just isn’t popular. This can actually make Steemit less attractive to potential new users and the existing user base, thereby counteracting their stated goals.

Again, this makes the guilds the de facto gatekeepers of “success.” It isn’t organic growth or natural discovery/popularity of users and content. It’s actually centralized or “corporatized” growth (literally, since the CEO is the main backer of Steem Guild). The power to practically make or break users or topics on the platform is held in a few hands...and it’s completely subjective by its nature.

Volume and Quality Content

As stated earlier, the number of votes per day vs. the number of active authors is one of the main issues. The fact that so many authors apparently “need” guild support is more of an argument for the arbitrary distribution of the daily rewards pool than it is about retaining users or finding quality posts. There is no compelling argument that there are hundreds of posts per day that are “deserving” of a specified amount of rewards.

As far as I know, Steemit was never intended to be used as a universal basic income for all of its users. In fact, the stake-weighted voting system and the voting algorithm explicitly demonstrates that it was intended to be the exact opposite. Everyone isn’t going to be a “winner” and we aren’t supposed to be. Not everyone produces great content and we know this. Not everyone likes the content that is popular – and we know this as well.

Regardless, Steem Guild has been regularly voting on about 150 or more posts per day. Some of these posts haven’t been very good, subjectively speaking. That’s not surprising, given the number of votes and the number of active authors and posts.

The sheer volume of Steem Guild votes not only appears to unnecessary, but it crowds out a lot of other curators seeking curation rewards. Furthermore, the frequent early voting of the guild doesn’t even give curators a chance to actually curate content before upvoting the authors. If the idea was to support those who are slipping through the cracks, then the guild is denying any opportunity for this content to be discovered organically in the first place by voting early on the posts. Recently, Project Curie has adopted new guidelines for finding “undervalued” content, which allows them to vote on posts beginning at 45 minutes. Based on their intent, these voting practices from the guilds are contradictory. They don’t appear to be in line with their stated goals for discovery and rewarding content.

If selected authors are continuously voted by guilds within an hour of posting, then they’ll never have the chance to actually receive reliable feedback about popularity, value, and follower growth. They won’t know if their success has been achieved because the user base actually enjoys their content, or if it’s simply a result of curation reward-seeking due to reliable guild voting.

In my opinion, the volume of guild voting appears to be far too high, given the user statistics.

A Very Sticky Situation

Now we get into the aspect of self-voting, which has been a very touchy subject, for obvious reasons.

One of the main objections to Steem Guild’s operations has been the self-vote for the “staff” of the project. Naturally, any discussion of this rouses the emotions and it often ends up with name-calling and hurt feelings. Nevertheless, I’m going to dive right in. There are some things that need to be said and opinions/options that ought to be considered.

How much should curators be paid?

This is something that is addressed in the code. Every user is able to curate content. Every user’s curation rewards are based on how much stake they have in the platform, as measured in Mvests, or Steem Power. The more stake you have, the more rewards you can earn through the curation of content. This is hard-coded and applies equally to all users. If you want more curation rewards, you can increase your Steem Power or you can improve your curation tactics. Your payment for upvoting posts is a percentage of the final post payout and is based on your stake and the timing of your vote.

The curators for guilds believe that they deserve more money for their curating efforts. I’m not claiming that they do or do not. I only want to address the arguments that they make for this and the options that have been chosen.

In several discussions with Steem Guild and Curie members, the common justification for deserving more payment goes something like this:

We spend a lot of time on curating because we have guidelines to follow. We couldn’t do this without being fairly compensated for the extra work.

I completely understand what it’s like having to abide by certain guidelines. I do that myself as a manual curator. In fact, most of my curating habits are similar to those of the guilds. I spend a lot of time on Steemit and read/curate a lot of content. But here’s the problem:

These guidelines are self-imposed.

The guilds themselves have created these guidelines and they willingly choose to abide by them. Imposing rules on yourself and then using that as justification for needing extra pay makes no sense. In the case of Steem Guild, this pay comes from the rewards pool in the form of self-votes from the guild on the individual members’ content. What they are essentially doing is collectivizing the costs of their own project. You, the average Steemit user is “paying” for their efforts, regardless of whether or not they are supporting your content and regardless of whether or not you support their project. You have no choice in the matter as a non-guild user.

In the case of Project Curie, the guild publishes one daily post which is then upvoted by the community - which may include its members/supporters. While it’s still not ideal and may include collective participation, it’s only the one post per day that gets upvoted.

This is the glaring difference between the two projects: The Steem Guild staff has been benefiting individually and directly from self-voting with the guild’s power. This voting has been consistent and has occurred on multiple staff posts per day. And while voting at approximately 25% power on nearly all guild-selected non-staff posts, they frequently voted at 80–100% power on their own posts. Each of the main members of the guild were pocketing hundreds of dollars per week as payment for curating content – something that virtually no other user on the platform can pull off from curation.

To highlight just how much this has benefitted them individually, please take a look at this image captured from Steemwhales.com:

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As you can see, five of the top six earners on the platform over the past month are Steem Guild members. This is a direct result of their self-voting. And it isn’t an insignificant amount of rewards either. They are doubling the rewards of the users just ten places below them on the list.

It has been stated that this is the agreement made between them and the whales who are backing the project. As I said at the beginning – that’s their prerogative. It’s their influence and they can do what they want with it. But the question to ask is: Is this right?

Can these types of “payments” be justified, given everything that has been pointed out here? Are they returning that much value to the platform to justify turning them into whales themselves? Is it right for the CEO of Steemit to delegate his power and upvote these specific users in this manner? I’m not saying that this is abuse – I’m asking if there is a better alternative and if these “payments” are really necessary for the curation work being done.

One more thing I’d like to touch on is related to the guidelines from the guild. I want to revisit this one in particular:

Original content with no material that is plagiarized or generated by word spinners

One of the unfortunate consequences of self-voting for payment can be pressure to create posts in order to receive their “fair share” of compensation. It’s no surprise then that the quality of content can be diminished over time, or even result in unoriginal or plagiarized content. This was exactly the case for one of the Steem Guild members not too long ago – as demonstrated in this post: The problem isn’t that life isn’t fair, it’s that we believe it should be!. (The title is ironic, considering that the guilds are trying to make rewards distribution more even or fair.)

This is not an attempt to call out or shame this specific user. I actually think that it was handled relatively well. But at the time that the plagiarism was caught, the post was sitting at the top of the trending page and around $250 for the pending payout – and still received over $50. The question here is whether the payment options put too much pressure on the members to produce content, whether the content is actually deserving of the payouts, and whether self-monitoring can be trusted when that much power over rewards is involved.

These are the kinds of issues that demand attention, whether you agree with the overall effectiveness of the guilds or not. However, this is one of the most sensitive issues to discuss because one side sees the discussion as an attack on their potential earnings and the other sees the behaviors as a form of abuse. The good news is that a reasonable discussion can in fact take place.

Yes – I do Have Solutions

It’s not all criticism. I do in fact have an answer to the payment issue for Steem Guild, which, as stated, is probably the most controversial aspects of its operations. Of course, some people may not like this idea because they’re used to receiving relatively large amounts of rewards. But here is one solution that can be implemented right now and is the most equitable and “fair” solution for both sides. This was actually suggested to @ned by me – ten days ago. This is not a direct quote, but the overall suggestion is the same.

Stop the self-voting of guild members, especially at voting powers above what is used for nearly every other staff selection that is upvoted. If they’re going to vote at 25% for other users, then they shouldn’t receive more than 25% votes for their own posts. Ideally, the guild members should set up their own voting trail so that they can front-run the whale votes from the guild. The staff will be earning curation rewards just like every other user on the platform, but with their own stake and the stake of the whales that follow, they should be able to earn a relatively large sum of SP per week. This will also incentivize them to not upvote content that has already been upvoted by other whales and guilds – which would mean that they are truly discovering the content and authors that need the most help.

The other suggestion would be to pay the members directly from the guild’s whale accounts. This can be based on the SP that is gained per week. Currently, Ned’s account alone earns anywhere between 150 and 400 SP per day. Add in the other whale accounts, and any payments for curation should easily cover the efforts. This can also be used in conjunction with the preceding idea of front-running the whale votes.

These changes alone would probably end much of the criticism.

Regarding the volume of votes and quality – they can simply reduce the amount of guild voting. The user numbers really can’t justify the volume. What would be better than trying to upvote every dissatisfied user would be to manage their expectations on the platform. A new user without a following shouldn’t expect huge rewards, especially if their content isn’t attention-grabbing and of a particularly high quality – and especially if they aren’t making much of an effort to connect with other users and market themselves.

This is social media. It requires being social. It also requires being popular if you want more attention and rewards. The guilds can’t make everyone popular and rich. It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality. As users, we need to acknowledge this and stop pretending that the relatively minimal amount of daily rewards can be equally shared.

If we want equality, then we’d each be receiving about $2 per post, per day. If that’s what we all prefer, then let’s change the code and make it happen. If you can understand how that would never succeed, then we need to accept that payouts – like life – won’t be fair.

This is Getting Too Long

I invite any comments – whether you agree or disagree. Let’s have a civil discussion and see if we can’t figure out better ways to tackle user adoption, retention, and any perceived unfairness of the platform. The current methods don’t appear to be working, despite the efforts of guilds. Earnings may not be the actual problem. So, what is?

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I have not proof-read this. It’s mostly off-the-cuff. Please excuse any typos or rambling. I might edit.

Follow me: @ats-david