RE: On Guilds and Managing Expectations
The argument that those members are worth that % of the reward pool is nonsense. That they're entitled to a developed economy's middle class 'pay' is ridiculous.
I think that's the most ridiculous aspect of this as well. You have a handful of users who believe that their curation efforts deserve a weekly wage of hundreds of dollars, while everyone else's curation efforts get them a very small amount of SP rewards - a few dollars per week, if they're lucky. And as I pointed out - the time and energy that they have to put into curation is entirely due to their self-imposed guidelines. If the curation rewards are not worth the effort, then don't do it. But collectivizing the costs so that they can essentially have a "living wage" is absurd to me.
Steemit isn't supposed to replace your full-time job, unless the price happens to rise and we all get rich, or you earn enough Mvests to curate and power down your weekly rewards to live off of them. Other than that, you probably shouldn't quit your day job.
Looking at the top trending authors of the last month and seeing that they pretty much all come from the Steem guild and are self voting is a red flag.
That's one of the first things that I noticed after speaking with one of the guild members and seeing the first update post. Then I realized why I was hearing some of the grumblings behind the scenes. It was just a poor decision in general to make that the "payment" structure and to continue it, especially coming from the CEO of Steemit and the things that had transpired last fall and the recent issues with Dan's flagging. It just doesn't look good - and perception is reality, unfortunately.
On a micro scale I've had some some great conversations with the Steem guild guys. On a macro this just looks wrong. I mean 'payment' for curation to the extent that you're in the top 10 of rewarded authors?
Not an appropriate response, if anything, Steemit Inc should provide a cut of curation rewards as you stated above. The trending page is one of the only marketing tools available. Stepping back from what I know, it looks like there's something wrong at first glance.
Curation should absolutely be on par with writing in terms of payment. In fact, at its inception thats exactly how the reward system worked. Curation and blogging rewards were equal.
Now, the ratio is something like 8:1 in favor of blogging. (its 3:1 theoretically, but actually much more lopsided than that in reality because a big part of the curation reward goes to the reverse auction).
The problem isnt that the curators are getting too much, its that theyre being paid in a dishonest way.
And also, payment thats being represented as rewards on a post. That is to say, its represented as endoresment of the quality of the content. If that content is relatively high quality (and @hanshotfirst is a great example of this) thats not so bad. If its the wikipedia entery for giraffes cut and pasted and on the top of trending, then yeah thats pretty bad.
[nesting]
In other words, since this is all widely known and has been for some time, the actions reveal that the stated goals are not an accurate description of the actual goals.
Can't agree that payment on a post is 'represented as endorsement of quality'. It isn't always. It is simply expression of a view that the post or author should be rewarded by stakeholders. For example, it is perfectly legitimate for a post reporting on work that adds value to Steem to be deserving of rewards even if the post itself is poorly-written (in fact I find such a post more deserving than a well-written post which does nothing else to add value to Steem other than grace us with its presence, which I doubt adds much value, if any).
As you mentioned elsewhere it may be that these Steem Guild 'payment posts' are in some way dishonest, in that they don't simply say "vote for this post to support my work as a Steem Guild staff member". That's another question, but I wouldn't find anything wrong with the latter approach.
I see your point, though i think there's a difference between a post being rewarded because the author is describing the desirable actions he took (for example, the dude that put up that billboard last summer) and a post that gets an arbitraty upvote based on the author being entitled to a freebie.
Well, to be really honest they would have to say something like "ned gave me his vote to use on anything i want to support my work on steem guild, and im using it on my own post because thats just how i roll."
That said, honesty aside. Yeah, a whale can absolutely upvote bad content to reward good actions that are entirely unrelated to the merit of the content you're upvoting.
And yeah, a whale can absolutely support quality content on steemit.
But not at the same time. At least, not as long as the reward pool is fixed. Which is the whole problem with these guilds. theyre paying curators to cast small percentage votes on other peoples good content by casting large percentage votes on the curators bad content.
The result is a net loss for the good content.
--note (some of the beneficiaries of this are pretty cringeworthy. Some are pretty OK... but even the good stuff, the point of the program and votes as pay for curation is that these posts are getting votes that they otherwise would not merit based on their quality in a vacuum. This must work at cross purposes to the stated goal of these guilds)
Same here. And they have been quite respectful. However, not all of them appear to able to conduct themselves appropriately.
Right. And it's not just one account. It's five...and they're in the top six over the last 30 days. I don't know how much more obvious this issue can be.
It doesn't look good because it isnt good. And it really never has been.
At the end of the day, whether its an automated "bot list" or "featured author/hidden gems" or steem sports (old version) or whatever, the problem is that its a redistribution and management scheme where the redistributors take most of the money.