Curation: Why It Needs To Change
Lately I have been writing a lot about changes that I feel would benefit the new users of steemit through personalization and achievements. This is part of a line of thinking I have had about humanizing steemit. With reading a couple posts today I want to visit and express some thoughts on curation rewards.
My thinking in this post is all from a single thought what can humans do that bots cannot?
The Problem
The problem isn't that there are bots, the problem is that to complete with them you incentivize bot-like behavior.
There's a 30 minute timer.
The closer you get to the 30 minute mark the more of your vote reward you get to keep.
Voting gains you additional rewards based on votes that follow.
Often I love simple, in this case there's a part of me objects... it's this little idealistic voice that whispers to me...
Heart
I hesitate to say successful, but I have worked on getting the quality of my work up and have started to see the occasional post get a decent return. Having achieved a little (wee itty bit) of success and a drive to create something, I think I could safely say that it is a personal thing.
Nobody is giving us a topic and a deadline. For the majority of users, we need to have an idea, type it up, read it, change it, read it, change it, read it, think about it, change it.
Even picking the right pictures to use are tricky! I've had high quality posts (my opinion) which I know (feel?) didn't do well because the headline and the photo, while separately were great, when combined gave a false impression of content.
I am saying it takes time and you invest yourself into a piece, it's personal to produce. So why make the process of curating anything less?
Curating
their relative worth in a way that can scale to an unbounded number of people
Currently the model we have, by it's design, is geared to reward authors. As a result of this new users are expected to enter as authors, which gives us a choice. Do we reward low quality work in the hopes they improve and stick around, or do we let them just walk away? I am proposing an alternate earning opportunity that is important and achievable.
To say the authors are the ones providing value to the site is accurate, but the system rewards say that you have to be a good author before you can effectively curate. It is true that writers will probably make great curators, but less true to say great curators have to be great authors.
Humanizing Curation
We need and want new users to join, and who are we writing to if not existing and potential readers? So again, the question I ask is what can a human contribute that is not easily mimicked by a bot, and the best answer I have is quality relevant comments.
As a solution, it'e the most appealing. My first post to gain any traction, which also happens to currently be my best paying post to date, received 0 comments before payout. It quickly led to my next post Did I fail, or was it you? Maybe I am projecting what I want from a post onto others, but I think an equal measure of quality is the conversation it inspires.
Let's move the curation rewards in that direction. Something I have heard as a criticism of steemit:
It's True
I am not saying the total value of posts are less on other sites, I am saying the writers earn less because they (purchaser) want a profit (of course) and they have a reader base to get a return on what they paid for the piece.
The fact that we can get rid of (or perhaps become) the one part, doesn't mean the other isn't absolutely vital. Quality curating and as a result promoting your work, is vital to what we are doing here.
Identifying What Contributions Are Needed
We keep looking to bring in new content providers the hope being their subscribers will follow.
I have become less sure this will be the case.
Content and material can be viewed by anyone with or without an account, additionally the content is often repeated on their other forums. They will come over to take a stab at blogging for bucks sure, but we see the results of these attempts with accounts going inactive.
Let's Go After Readers
The site rewards participation, let's not limit the form that participation takes. Using sites like www.swagbucks.com as an example, people are more than willing to do some of the work needed for small, yet reliable, rewards.
I am intentionally hesitant to give specifics on what this looks like. Often when I have talked about changes to the mechanics of the site I have been missing pieces of information. So I want to suggest options and explore them with you.
Comment Driven Participation/Curation
Okay, in a nutshell. 50% of the total reward is guaranteed to the author, the rest is up for grabs.
THIS IS NOT DONE IN A WAY TO COMPLETELY TAKE FROM THE AUTHOR!!!!
Trying to keep the concept simple, any vote cast anywhere under this post goes to the post total. Comments no longer have their own independent value that's separate.
Simple. Any vote is a result of the authors post.... period.
When this change is made, we have a new way to vote. Any vote on the post anywhere IS a vote for the post.
Curation comes into play through where support is given. If I click the upvote simply as we have it today, nothing changes. I am supporting the author, and receiving my "fee" and my vote is strengthened by every vote behind it.
If I were instead to upvote a comment instead, I am still tipping the author (now 50% of) but through the comment.
If I vote for a comment from someone, the author is considered tipped. What I am doing now is supporting someone who also supported you, by adding my voting power to theirs. The same curation stackable effects, but with a multiple options.
Do you vote for and through the author thinking others will absolutely love it also?
Do you vote for an okay post through a great comment hoping others choose to do the same.
Do you try and make a great comment so people pile on granting power to your vote each time.
Taking the guesswork out of it, could vote multiple times for the curation reward. It makes little sense to do so, really the only vote that adds to the total you are competing for is the first one under that thread. Essentially it would be like voting two times without double tip to the author, just want to place two bets on the results. Maybe it pays off if you happen to be early in....
Hey, If you want to gamble with your own vote through your own comment only...... you get the same curation reward you would anyway without the after votes. Split my vote, it becomes the average between the two (or three or four???), could still be worth it.
Human Operated Model
Severely outdated and in need of an upgrade. From the whitepapers:
If there is a discussion brewed in your post, it is ultimately going to benefit your post as a result of the activity. A distribution that reflects that promoting of your post is worth it with followers receiving support for supporting you!
Bots, they have their place... if every vote was to the post total though I would think they would start to point to human curators already doing well. The new reader has their comment and reward increased with every tip to the author given through them.
Micro Tasks for Micro Payment
It encourages activity and rewards meaningful quality participation. I see what those people put up with on swagbucks to make an extra hundred for the week or the month.
If a problem of the site is users, we can keep them around by rewarding their efforts that support our efforts.
P.S.: Incidentally, wouldn't this put the focus on the authors to continually improve their SP as a means to sweeten the starter pot the readers compete for? We don't need to try and convince new users to invest as much, we incentivize the authors to do so. It follows a freemium model, new user are rewarded on the free level of play, and premium recognition has a price tag.
This post was an alternate proposal to @caleber24p's post here (very worth a read if you haven't)
Revamping Curation Is The Way To Increase Steem Power Demand
Heart: http://socialmediaimpact.com/american-heart-month-goes-social/
I love this so much. As a hard working curator, and shy author, I try to boost posts I believe in by writing engaging comments. Sometimes, I can't bring myself to upvote because of the quality but can still commment to let the author know I appreciate the topic, their perspective etc. My intention is to get more eyes on the post and I'm not rubbing my hands together hoping for rewards. So many of your observations, ideas, and wording here are simply brilliant. May this post make waves!
I know. I have written a fair amount myself. My first post that paid decent, and is still my highest paid to date, had 0 comments by payout.... I hated that lol. The comments support the author in many ways, and promoted the post to boot. It has a real value!
You're like me. I'd rather have a great conversation in the comments than have my post bet on by speculators or boosters who didn't read it. The community is strengthened by conversations and the more new users feel they can chime in, the more they'll feel the joy of participation and get ideas for smart posts. I expect, if implemented, your proposal will reward authors who are starting good conversations with their posts and who are kind enough to reply.
I am trying to think just like that..... What can the focus be that gives humans an edge over bots. I think this adds to the quality of a post, and a bit will find it very difficult to accurately predict.... Although they still function and receive some reward, just prioritized human participation...... Weird right? Lol
I don't understand bots well enough. Pretty sure one commented a semi-random meme on one of my posts and I responded. LOL. (not)
I've been focusing my attention on how to raise the level of conversation so there's less incentive to mention boobs or other things that may do well for the author but make Steemit look click-baitey to outsiders. When readers reward authors for well-cited research, heart-on-sleeve clarity, excellent writing, etc. we'll see more of those qualities than we already do. My bet is that a bot could detect some beneficial qualities and even post comments that spark discussion. Ultimately, though, a new user who finds themselves pouring out gratitude to a bot will feel like an idiot when they figure it out. It makes Steemit seem fake and money-grubbing.
Passionate disagreements create good dialogue, but ranting is already too rewarded here. Giving all comment rewards to the author would discourage flame wars as well as encouraging "say more about this part" comments. I think it's a good direction.
I hope it's okay, I just promoted this article on chat in the promoted channel. Needs more views!
Thanks for posting. I agree with you. I added what needs change in my opinion:
problem 1: too much plagiarism
https://steemit.com/plagiarism/@steemokto/plagiarism-is-it-legal-to-earn-steemdollars-by-posting-other-peoples-content
problem 2: no sources to media and text from other autors/designers
https://steemit.com/quality/@steemokto/adding-a-source-is-a-matter-of-quality-and-respect-for-the-original-author-or-designer
I agree with both of those as well. There is a quality of work expectation which includes professionalism. I just think that takes some learning and want to reward other participation as well. Thanks for the comment :)
I agree with you! I came here to read and learn not necessarily write!
Right? We don't need a million authors, we need 999, 000 people who love to read and discuss!
Maybe a curation reward for commenting rather than just upvoting, not so easy for the bots.
That was the direction this takes. Wanted to think of how that looks. "great post. Upvoted" or similar is easy for a bot to do. I thought this rewarded the author through a comment, increasing their portion of the 50% curation rewards.
Also, having the entire post total in a lump sum, doesn't give a visual indication which comment is necessarily leading, you either have to have a bot follow a human... who is reading and commenting. It definitely was intended as you said, move it towards the comments.
I came here from another site that did something like that. It resulted in a lot of canned comments. As someone who values comments, that was worse, because I had to read past all those comments to find the worthwhile ones. If there was a fast way to weed out and block canned comments, I like this idea. Or some combinations of comments and upvotes.
I considered that, why I thought a good solution was to vote for the post through the comment you like. Made reading a part of it.... May need tweaking for sure, just thinking is all :) a canned comment under how this is intended to be would be nothing though..... Just offers additional rewards for comments that other voters agree with was intent
Oh, I didn't pick up that aspect, where you are choosing which comment to vote through - even though you have it bolded and italicized. I can see how that might work - and it would encourage people to get comments onto posts pretty quickly.
Yeah, it needs fleshing out still. I am sure there's stuff involved that make it hard to implement.... And I could type it clearer also lol
would this work with the 5 votes thing? I've seen the number of votes drop dramatically on comments since the announcement.
overall I'm on 2 minds wih this one there something about it that's bugging me but I'm not quite what sure what it is yet.
(it's really bugging me that I don't know what's bugging me. I've read it 6 times trying to work it out )
The mechanics would work about the same, and I think it would work with the votes thing, especially as any vote you place rewards the author, so really wouldn't need to vote for the author and a comment you love... Just support the comment (which strengthens THEIR vote) and that support of the comment rewards the author.
There are a couple things I left out which would be an effect of the change. For example, flagging anything removes from the total post value. In my mind, it's good and bad.... Definitely want to have reasons for doing so clearly stated.
Also, streemcleaners.... They couldn't get a reward from comments on a post realized to be plagiarist..... But that's solved by a separate post explaining the situation.
Let me know if you figure it out, there's things I overlook all the time lol
I think it could just be that I'd rather see more rewards for commentors than curators, rather than any one particular thing in your post. It takes more effort to comment than upvote. I think i'd much rather see the other 25% split between commentors (obviously those comments with more upvotes would get a bigger slice of the pie)
That was my goal as well. I was thinking how is this accomplished? With the change to 5.... I liked supporting the post and author through the comment. One vote rewarding both....
I tried to think about it from that angle also.... In my head I wanted to see a) votes conserved b) create a situation where bots aren't able to double their curation rewards.
So yes, essentially powering up the rewards of a comment based on votes for that comment, without requiring a second vote for the comment
with the rewards for all upvotes pooled together i'm sure somethng could be put in place so that only the first counts towards curation rewards.
once i understood how the 5 votes actually work, the number of upvotes I give out has actually increased, my vote at full power is only worth a cent, so there's no point me giving that out more than 5 times anyway. so i simply vote at 10 - 50% the rest of the time and my curation rewards have increased. hopefully once everyone works this out we'll see more upvotes on comments again.
I agree with you after further thought this exact idea isn't a way to go entirely. I do like how it starts to shift the thinking though and stand by that :)
Ultimately it increases the reward to good, manual human curation..... All I want to see as it is needed...... If we want 100,000 authors we need a million+ readers, needs rewarded
Hmm, seems to be part of thegame, will have to work on figuring this out more myself.
It's inspired largely by thegame thinking for sure. It is just how can human participation (which I argue is desperately needed) be given an advantage over bit participation.... And how can reader participation be rewarded for quality
Seems we need to make redistribution portals. Steemit is a system and systems work top to bottom. Unlike humans which also work bottom up. This seems to be largely misunderstood or something.
Seems to miss a common point.... Authors are worthless without readers. Readers should be rewarded. Seems simple to me.
I agree.
This seems like an article you would be interested in :)
Human vs. Bot Curators - Introducing Human Competition into the Equation - Allow Whales to Delegate Curation Power to Dolphins and Minnows
Very. I think it accomplishes the goal by ultimately redirecting the bot to follow human curators... Giving up a portion of their power and reward in return