5 Votes Is Not Enough
If you haven't read about it yet there are some big changes coming to Steemit and Steem with the upcoming release of v0.14.0. You can check out @steemitblog's full post about it here https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/announcing-steem-0-14-0-release-candidate
There is quite a lot being changed but one of the biggest and most controversial changes being proposed is to limit how many upvotes you can do before having your voting power drastically impacted. Here is what they said:
Target Votes of 5 per Day instead of 40We are changing the target number of votes per day from 40 to 5 so that more people keep their voting power below 100%. The purpose of this change is to rebalance power toward normal users and away from bots. You can still vote as often as you like, this change merely impacts the speed at which voting power is consumed.
Where is this arbitrary and seemingly low number 5 coming from? Is there any analysis or math that was done to reach this number or was this just chosen randomly from a hat?
Why is limiting engagement activities an acceptable solution for this problem? Posts and Upvotes should be encouraged not discouraged. Personally I think this will be disastrous to a good user experience. Steemit seems to be addressing issues by becoming more and more like a freemium gaming app. You can only do so many things and then must wait while sitting on your hands for an arbitrary time to go by before you can do anything again.
If users fall in love with Steemit and want to create content and upvote all day long they should not be getting so heavily penalized for it. Capping user activity should not be the go to solution for dealing with undesired behavior from bots.
The number of posts a day should be raised from 4 and the upvotes should not fall to 5.
No one wants to use a voting weight bar to manage their voting power. That is annoying.
Please stop throwing users under the bus so easily. These answers seem lazy and counter productive. I'm sure this community can figure out better ways to combat bots without resorting to cutting our own legs off.
I'm going to answer here the reply you made to my comment.
You said 5 votes would disincentivize engagement. I'm not sure about this. Actually there is close to 40 votes a day to be cast and we make vote on stuff that we don't care much because we need to casts so many votes and we cast votes on stuff, the title didn't even entice us to read.
Knowing we only 5 votes to make, will lead us to read only the very best article and not lose our time with other less interesting articles. We will try hard to find that 1-2 gems that haven't been discovered yet and be greatly rewarded for it afterward.
If someone want to cast 10 votes then this person only needs to vote with 50% of their power 20 votes, 25% of their power etc...
"and we make vote on stuff that we don't care much" " not lose our time with other less interesting articles"
Woah backup, why is that not valued? Users spending hours on the site sifting through content is a good thing not a bad one. Why does middle of the road content not get any love? Content is very subjective to begin with. This system will lead to less good content getting discovered because people will be too stingy with their upvotes saving them for themselves and their close friends. Mediocre content is what social networks are built on, out of all that shit rises some gems. Those gems will not be found under the new system because many will not want to dilute their voting power since they used that on themselves and a friend. They just won't vote.
I don't want to have to think and do math with my upvotes and I'm willing to wager a majority of social network users would agree with me. This is truly an engineer's solution to the problem. Add more settings and more clicks keeping building out the interface. Sure it will create far more granular control but it's too complex. Upvoting should be a one-click process. If you like something you upvote it, end of story.
I understand that it's an effort to combat a real problem and you guys are working hard. I don't want you to think I don't appreciate that but it is my opinion that this is the wrong way to go about it. I think these solutions are becoming too advanced and adding too many extra steps for users. Just having the message out there that something happens if you vote more than 5 times will be enough to scare users from voting more than 5 times.
Keep in mind that for this project to really take off and change the world it needs to be adopted by less than savvy people. The biggest problem with Steemit growing right now is that it's so damn hard to use and understand. Things need to be simplified and better explained in an onboarding process.
"If someone want to cast 10 votes then this person only needs to vote with 50% of their power 20 votes, 25% of their power etc..."
Normal users don't think like this. Developers / engineers and the rare highly invested power users (whales) think like this. These types of solutions drive users away.
Maybe I've got the mission of Steemit all wrong. Is this supposed to be a platform that will be adopted by masses of people and upend social media as we know it or is this a place for IT savvy power bloggers to make money?
If the goal is to create a site for elite content creators first and regular people second than this solution is heading down the right path. If Steemit is trying grow and attract more minnows and grow them into dolphins the user experience needs a much larger priority in the thought process being used for these solutions.
I think there is a better solution to found. Something that doesn't add more clicks and settings for the user. Something where the user can intuitively upvote what they like and not think more about it. Bot masters will always exist and will always try and game the system. Let's not hobble the user experience fighting them.
First I'm not a Steem dev or part of Steemit, I'm just a simple Steem user.
The new rules will be advantageous to smaller investors, not the other way around. That is what is stated and wish, so if it was realized not to be the case then we have all the reasons to think this will be changed. Right now big investors can delegate their curation to other people. They have the time, know-how and the incentives to set in place those practices as this pay them a lot of money which isn't the case for small investors.
Steem can be seen as a really fun job. We doesn't expect anyone to know anything on day 1. Sure Steem is a complex thing. What is the percentage of people who understand the money creation system currently in use in the world?
We will need to teach people how to use Steem, this is a fact. Those who aren't interested at first won't be first to benefit from it. We shouldn't force teach them or force them to use Steem.
Steem is a good monetary system and there is already a lot of people recognizing this and benefiting from it.
We have a major divide in how we view Steem/Steemit that I think is the crux of our disagreement. You are looking at it as an investor and I am looking at it as a user.
I think you would do better as an investor to not think about it like you are. You won't reap much as an investor if the platform fails to grow and gain some sort of mass adoption.
The value potential of Steem is not in the crypto-currency it's in the social network. Building a better social network is better for investors. Why are bots bad? Because they harm the human experience and so further harming that experience shouldn't be the answer since that only compounds the problem.
"Steem is a good monetary system"
There are plenty of better monetary systems available, being a good monetary system is not Steem's market differentiation.
Thank you for taking the time to state your concerns, I don't pretend to hold the truth.
I'm not sure there are plenty of better monetary systems. I won't debate this here now.
Also the new rule is going to affect bot more than human. Another thing I would love to point out now that I've reflect on the matter a bit more, those who will read the most and apply themselves to do more curation will still be advantage over others, that won't change.
Right? Having problems with User Adoption, limit them on posts and votes!
Results, less reason to read what is out there, less reason to spend time on Steem, doesn't change the power votes at all, just how they are used.
How can I decide to invest in a currency that hasn't defined it's self yet?
I think you are missing the point of the five vote limit before reducing the power. Look at this theoretical example.
There is a total daily reward pool of $5000 SBD
@ned votes at 100% power 40 times each vote uses up 100 dollars leaving $1000 dollars...ever other vote would only be worth $1000 total.
The goal is to actually make the first 5 votes or real active user worth a lot more then they are now. The value of our votes come out of a pool of SBD based on sp. The more sp the more you can pull from the pool, by changing the power reduction rate more money will be left in the pool for lower sp users.
The goal of this move is to decrease the impact top users have on the pool. While still allowing them to greatly impact the value of 5 post.
I actually think its an amazing way to spread the power around.
No I'm not missing the point. I just value user experience and embracing users wanting to create and participate. I believe there are more elegant solutions to the problems.
I feel like Steemit has made it to where if one of the "cool kids" (aka the small fraction of users on here whose votes actually matter) upvotes your post, you are then considered one of them. It's basically our upvoted literally don't matter and don't make a shred of a difference while if one of the very few users whose do matter, suddenly you make money regardless of the actual value your story has.
Shouldn't everyone's likes have equal power and the pay is based on the quality and actual value each story gives?
The funny thing is that I have a sizeable YouTube audience, far bigger of an active audience and subscriber base than the users on here whose very first posts are "just so happening" to make them thousands of dollars, like of whom $15,000 in only 12 hours, whose work I follow and like as well.
I don't want to reveal my YouTube and Twitter name for a number of reasons. For one, I want to test this out before I mention it to my audience. In fact, I may not mention it all to them if I learn that it won't be of any benefit to them. I could make money by announcing who I am but it would not be fair to my fanbase who likely may make a fraction of what I could because of my subscribers? I don't know. That's what I'm hoping to learn here.
I totally get what you are saying about the "cool kids" and becoming one of them. I only started gaining a little traction with my posts after joining 3 other communication platforms to network and promote my articles on here. I've met some really cool people and had a lot of fun doing so but I'm not the normal user to base things off of. Having to join other platforms and forge friendships elsewhere to gain traction here is a big problem. Making people more stingy about their powerful votes is not going to help. I think this new voting system will just make the issue worse.
This system is not going to help the good posts of small minnows gain traction it is going to fortify the positioning of the elites that have already forged behind the scenes relationships and collude with votes.
Let's be real most of the shit on the front page is not good content and if upvotes were weighted equally those articles would probably never make it to the front page.
I wish I was wrong about this stuff but your tale of holding off on bringing in your fan base just shows that sadly I'm right.
That is why steemit is still beta, it is always changing
Yes but it doesn't seem to be making changes with much forethought into user experience. This seems to be the classic problem with engineers at the helm. They don't tend to think about the casual user and intuitive use.
It is still in beta and I like the rapid pace of change but I think there needs to be more thought focused on how real users get impacted and not just bot masters. As far as I'm concerned creation of content should be unleashed. Let the mediocre content spew from the firehose and let curators actually do some work for their rewards.
Not just engineers either, but politically non-neutral people at the helm. The vibe of the site is not warm and inviting.
I've tried to no avail to get others to take a look at the site. I've shown them my money in exchanges where I've traded for bitcoin from the Steem Dollars I've earned and then they take a look at the site and just pat me on my head and say carry on young fella. Enjoy your kryptonite money...
The site is cold and uninviting. There is no good reason why this site has to look like github. Crypto fans are going to come anyway, but for goodness sake could we at least get a little color on the site? A few pictures of actual humans, perhaps? We want to attract more warm bodies, not robots.
Had to vent, sorry. Just upset that a site I really want to succeed is not doing nearly as well as it should.
The political slant on this site can be a definite turn off. I hope it will change over time with the arrival of more people but we need those people to stick around. The look and feel are bad, the system is only getting harder to use while basic features like profile pictures still haven't been done. Luckily it seems that @dan & @ned have finally realized their shortcomings and are looking for help @steemitjobs now has three jobs posted.
Hi @doctorstrange, I saw you commented on a few of my posts so I went over to check out your profile (see commenting works!). I gave you a follow but noticed you haven't made an actual post in 2 months but have been commenting and upvoting a lot.
So what's up? I'm curious. Are you the alter ego of another higher profile username on the site? Is this your commenting account? Did you just give up on posting? Seems weird seeing that your last post made $36SBD. It's okay you can tell me I can keep a secret ;)
Steemon!
Maybe...
The short of it is that this account had been stirring the pot since I arrived, trying to let it be known that the earlier that we faced the truths of what is wrong with the system the sooner we could come out of the beta stage in a strong position.
Instead we kept giving out huge payouts to playmates, pretty women and crypto-anarchy "celebrities" while real users would get crumbs. All in the hopes that these leeches would bring new users to the site. The attrition has been high and getting people to come to a site that is as inviting as a sheet of white paper has been a struggle for me and my friends. My friends are financially successful so they can't be bothered spending a few hours for 15 cents.
Just appealing to anti-establishment fans is a recipe for disaster. Even crypto fans are down on the site, so you must look elsewhere for users.
I had at least 10 articles lined up to write and simply got fed up with the head in the sand approach to dealing with fundamental problems with the site. I'm too idealistic and believe that the core idea of this site can be successful, so I devoted my time to cleaning up plagiarists and charlatans selling snake oil and nonsense.
Unfortunately for myself I squandered literally hundreds of hours over the last two months commenting for very little payout (which has become even less since various changes to the site have been implemented) so I've been doing other things.
I'm not bitter that I didn't create more content when the getting was good, but what I am bitter about is that the site has made improvements and started to reward those that were critical instead of just calling them whiners and "jealous" (though they mean envious and that conflation bugs me, ugg). If we would have tried to root out the issues from day one and listened to the real beta testers that were trying to bring the problems to light, then we could have fixed the problems earlier. Now it seems it's too little too late.
It is very frustrating seeing posts that don't deserve huge payouts get upvoted while so many other deserving posts get pennies. I quite simply don't have the time to waste any more. I tried to help as best I could, but it's utterly pointless.
Sorry for the long comment. It's what I'm good at.
Cheers and keep up the good work.
p.s. That one post I made was about a catfish user, but when I went to post my article it sent my rough draft instead of the final version so I had to delete it and I just gave up. Like it was a sign from the Steemit gods!
While that user may come back and post again, it's another case of someone coming to the site, taking a paycheck then never coming back again.
The voting power bar is kinda cool, but 5 up-votes seems like nothing to some of us investing a lot of time into steemit. I don't know though, it's to technical for me to have much of an opinion.
Limits should not be on the mind of those creating and participating.
Upvoted @lily-da-vine
Why limit it?
Not sure if you've read further into it, but the idea is to minimize the number of votes at full power from 20, which is what it is now, to 5. This has no effect on people with less than 300 SP (as to adjust voting power via the UI requires that as a minimum to appear, unless you use the CLI_wallet). You can vote as many times as you'd like. All this changes is the number of votes at different voting power percentages. As an example, you can make one vote at 100% voting power, followed by 80 votes at 5% voting power.
We had a long chat about this in IRC I don't believe the human experience should be harmed so much for the sake of killing bots. To me this is another step in a pattern of anti-bot solutions that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
5 votes will definitely keep me from being here as much.
The amount of influence your votes have doesn't decrease that much. You and I don't have a lot of influence yet, so when we are voting it really doesn't matter. We're doing it more for show than anything. Hopefully it won't confuse people so that they start voting less because it won't have a major impact on most voters, but it will do something to bots.
Still, I think that they should solve this issue with another method. Then again there are so many things that need fixing that they shouldn't overthink things to get them perfect. Hopefully this will have the intended effect and won't be as bad as some of us assume it might.
Cheers
They need to reverse it. Keep it the standard voting system and offer a "power" voting option. That you can trade 8 votes for. I know that's essentially what they're doing but it'll feel less like you only have 5 votes.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately there are so many ideas floating around that good ideas will slip through the cracks. I don't envy the creators of the site. They have a difficult task made all the more difficult by stubborn and wrong-headed ideology.
Take care