Proposal To Remove Up-Vote Option From Feeds
Having the option to up-vote articles on the feeds without having to first click on the story is bad for Steemit. If you look at a lot of the whale's articles on here, they have way more votes than views. How can we say that Steemit is about quality content when so many curators don't even read the articles they are curating? Furthermore, many of the authors that consistently get three figure STEEM payouts are not very good writers. It's disappointing when I find a brilliantly written article that gets 6 votes and only 4 views. What a waste of good content! It's clear that there is something fundamentally wrong with this system.
As a community we need to realize that this platform is only going to make it if the content is REALLY good. For this to happen we need to find a better way to incentivize curators to do the job they are intended to do. What I propose is to remove the up-vote option from the feeds and only keep it at the bottom of the actual article. To take this a step further, a countdown timer could replace the vote button for the first 20 seconds or so that the page is open. This would force people to actually read the content they are curating and make a conscious choice to up-vote it.
It would be great to hear what you guys think about this idea!
I agree with what you've said wholeheartedly. I have carefully read your post just like I do with almost every post. I never upvote a post without actually clicking on it and reading it. If I think that the post was well written and is meaningful/relevant, then only do I upvote/resteem. Also, I make sure to leave meaningful comments.
I propose that in addition to having an upvote option, we should also have something called a "substantiative" rating. This means that the post was actually engaging and is good, quality content that meets the standards of the steemit community/platform.
I've been on steemit for almost a month now and I have very little to show for in terms of financial gains/rewards. Most of my posts are well thought-out and written with a lot of effort. People don't bother reading them and just upvote based on the title of the post without actually reading it.
So, now I've stopped creating lengthy posts and have stopped putting in effort to actually write good, detailed, lengthy posts.
Omar,
This site needs more curators and authors like you. It's unfortunate that you've stopped writing lengthy posts because you are not rewarded for your best work. I too have noticed that I get about the same rewards if I post a random pic or a link as I do when I spend hours writing a really good post. I really don't care about the financial rewards too much, but I would like to be engaged in an active community. I would rather have someone read my whole post and engage in a discussion like you did than someone upvote me for a couple STEEM. Getting more upvotes than views is actually discouraging for me as an author because I know they really don't give a shit about what I'm saying. Also, when I click on a trending story that has made a lot of STEEM, I want to know that it's actually going to be worth reading. The substantiative rating is a good idea, but I thought that's what upvotes were supposed to mean in the first place!
I agree with you that we need to have an active community of members. According to what I know, there are about half a million accounts on steemit. Out of that many users, there are only about 10,000 active users. Even among these 10,000 active users, I think the real number of daily users who actually read through a fair numbers of posts, do some decent curating, and post something decent is probably closer to 2,000.
Also, the whales get almost like "automatic" upvotes for whatever they post. When I click and actually read their posts, I don't even find them to be worthy of an upvote. That may be just my opinion, but I have often been told that I have an eye for good content.
There's so much that's not right with this platform. However, I do see some positive things which is why I still continue to post. I have gotten some level of interaction because of posts. I've noticed that if I interact with the few members on here, who create meaningful posts, by reading their posts, many have reciprocated.
I'm like you in a way that if I've taken the time out to write something meaningful, then I should have some kind of audience that actually does go through my posts by reading everything carefully and leaving thoughtful comments. It's not always about the financial rewards, but if I am going to invest my valuable time into something, then I should be rewarded accordingly. It's only fair, I think.
I was just thinking about this before I saw your post.
The focus should be on the quality of the content & community, not on maximizing payouts (when money gets involved it becomes very hard for people to focus on anything else).
The only time I up vote without clicking is when it's a meme post, and I can see the whole picture from the feed.
By the way, on this post alone that you've got, I saw 3 quick upvotes even though you had 1 view.
Whether or not this is a good idea (I'm honestly undecided), it's not actually possible. Bots vote directly on the steem blockchain, not through an interface like steemit.
If you took away the option to upvote without opening, you'd incentivise more bot voting, not less.
Glad you're thinking about this stuff though. It's beta, and we need all the clever, creative thinkers we can get.
Ok, so maybe bots can't be stopped. Can we at least incentivize good human curation? What percent of curation rewards are given out to bots? I don't want to be part of a project that is rigged by robots. If there isn't any room for human intelligence on this platform, then I'm out. I thought this was supposed to be a Proof of BRAINS algorithm.
We can't know, the blockchain doesn't see a difference.
Bots are just an extension of their human programmer, and can't be as smart in the moment as he is, he can only program them for so many potential scenarios.
I don't think it's as big a problem as people think.
If we ever get AI right, it might be a different story, but it's no worse than somebody having a buying/selling bot on the stockmarket.
We use computer programs to automate things for us all the time, this is just a continuation of that. (We're not having this conversation face to face for example)
Ok, sure. So it's safe to assume that the best curation being done right now is by humans. I think it's also safe to assume that plenty of unhealthy curation being done by humans. All on the website's interface. So why not structure the interface so that human curators are more likely to be using their skills for good instead of just mimicking what the bots do?
Curation is subjective. What you think is quality I might hate, which makes it difficult to judge what failure and success look like, and also makes it dynamic.
What the current SP holders love right now might be repugnant to those who hold the SP a year from now.
I've previously suggested that we move back to a 50/50 author curation reward split, which has just been also suggested by blocktrades today, and met with lots of enthusiasm, particularly from Ned.
This would make quality curation more lucrative than self upvoting, and go a long way toward rewarding quality.
I agree that there is some subjectivity to writing, but quality is easy to recognize. In school there is a big difference between an A paper and a D paper. If you had ten people read both of these hypothetical papers, the majority would be able to tell you which one was better. It doesn't just come down to the subjective bias of the reader.
I agree with you that it might be good to go to a 50/50 split with authors and curation. If we do do that, we need to structure the site so that people are chasing quality, not just being at the bottom of a dog pile. The only way people can discern what is good content and what isn't is for them to actually read the content. It's better to have educated voting.
You have a point but i think encouragement to manual voting is necessary. Content being overlooked is a demise of steemit. Also the system is dominated by blockchain related content. I believe all tags should grow equally fast.
I agree with the issue being an issue, but you can vote through a command line or make your own UI and vote that way, etc etc. You can even vote through a bot, which is what is done a lot. It's more complicated than tweaking the steemit.com ui.
I agree. This is the same problem that Niume had. You could have 100 likes in one day but then end up with 3 reads because people were using likes for traction on their own accounts. However Steemit seems to be different in that you are not notified when you are upvoted.