Steem Guild Will Transition to Community Building
Hardfork 17 will be a very exciting improvement for Steem. Among the expected changes will be a flatter rewards curve and a greater share of rewards going to comments. With the comment rewards and the removal of nesting limits on comment trees, it makes sense to focus now on building communities for Steemit. Even before additional community features arrive on the site (later this year), we must focus on supporting engaging posts and comment discussions.
I’d like to thank @ned for establishing Steem Guild by sharing his voting power to support a broad array of diverse content on the site these last few months. And thanks to other accountholders who have shared their voting power as well. Thanks so much to the authors we have helped support and to the staff members for their tireless work.
In anticipation of the coming hardfork, Steem Guild will be decentralizing its model and moving away from the fixed list of authors that it has supported. You will notice some changes in voting soon. This project has been a bridge to the future and that future is arriving in these coming weeks.
Steem Guild’s future involves building communities and helping to add a massive number of new users to Steemit in 2017.
Authors: If you are producing engaging content on the site and stimulating robust discussion with your posts, we will do our best to find you and to help recognize your posts and comments. We won’t be covering all of your posts anymore, but there are other great curators on Steemit now also. This community is ready to find and reward the best content.
For all accountholders who are ready to launch Steemit to a whole new level, let’s work together to make this site a million times bigger. Steem Guild will be a much leaner and more decentralized curation project going forward, operated by experienced curators who will each vote separate accounts. We will continue voting any current accounts who wish to continue putting your voting power to the best use. And we will welcome new accountholders who wish to delegate voting power with Hardfork 17.
Yo. Thanks for trying to do things well. We all make mistakes, but Steemit is a place where mistakes are vigorously misinterpreted as premeditated malice. I appreciate that you guys keep doing your work despite the never-ending stream of vitriol coming at you.
Thanks, for seeing the wood from the trees.
It is a "mistake" to lie to the community about how you are funding an initiative? It is a mistake to continue to do that after the community asks you to stop? When the asking didn't work, next came the flagging, which also didn't work. Now they vote on old posts to ensure the money goes where a select few want it to go?
Everyone knows this is happening. The same accounts just don't have the power or voice to anything about it. They fear back-lash which makes sense, because it is threatened a lot.
It is just a mistake to call the community entittled and whiners when they see bad behavior going on. It is just a mistake to tell them to write better articles if they want votes. (eh, no.. they won't get the votes, because the votes have already be allocated to whatever the whales have decided to fund)
Where I come from those are not mistakes they are blatant lies, fraud, and embezzlement from current investors. Setting up the end-users to be disappointed and based on the price it is a failing business model.
@biophil, yes, you support anyone you like. I do not support ANY activities by this group. I feel disappointed by those of you who are supporting it, and those of you who are turning a blind eye.
@whatsup @sigmajin @beanz @noganoo etc... I think some things need to be cleared up here. Keep in mind that none of this is directed at any one of you specifically but more at the general group. I just want to clear some things up. This comment is not intended to instigate anything, so please don't read it as such.
First of all, when SG was formed the whale backers of SG said they would prefer to compensate the staffers in upvotes on their own personal work to compensate them for their time. We asked them for other means of compensation via curation rewards or outright steem payments. We also suggested doing a model similar to Curie where we put out a single daily post which gets upvoted heavily and we use that post to help compensate the staff. All of those methods were forgone by our whale backers in favor of using upvotes to compensate the staff for their time.
Secondly, the staffer's posts were upvoted strictly in accordance with the amount of time they contributed to the project, the more hours they put in the higher percentage vote they received.
Thirdly, no one was ever voting their own posts, there were no "self-votes". Every post that was voted was agreed upon by another member of the group and voted in accordance with how much time and work he had spent on the project.
I guess some of you don't feel people should be compensated for their time but much of the rest of the world does. We are not talking small amounts of time here by the way. A couple of the staff routinely puts in 8-12 hours per day curating and then voting 400 plus authors every single day. That is a lot of work... The take away here is that no one has ever been upvoted above the amount of time and work they have put in, and again this is all the preference and in agreement with our whale backers.
Now, when the community started to show some backlash, we got together and went to our whale backers asking them if we could do some combination of steem payments or something like that as the community seemed to not be thrilled with their chosen method of compensation. The backers said that the only method they were comfortable with at this time was continuing to use votes for compensation.
SG as a group decided we would reduce the frequency and the percentage used on our post's to help satisfy some of these complaints. Again, this was not something our backers told us to do, it was something we decided on our own, and in reality didn't have to do.
When that still wasn't good enough for some of you, a couple of our staffers tried another alternative, voting on older posts to compensate for their time. They did this because one of the chief complaints being thrown around was that SG posts were dominating the trending page and that is not fair for others... OK, so a few SG members tried to appease that concern by going about alternative means of being compensated for their time while not dominating the trending page.
So, now staffers have both cut back on the number of posts and they have cut back on the percentage used, and some of them have removed themselves from the trending page completely. Yet that still doesn't seem good enough. Nothing was done in secret or hidden, in reality it was done to appease some of you guys in hopes that we could all work together for the good of the platform.
Another thing to keep in mind, look at the accounts of SG members, none of them are powering down. In fact all of them are powering up. This is a group that is committed to growing the platform not one after a cash grab. These are the facts. Run with them how you choose.
I'd also like to add that you may agree or disagree whether SG was actually needed, but I can tell you a large chunk of people have told me they would have left had they not started getting rewards via Curie and SG. So, we might be exactly where we are today in terms of price had SG never existed, but we would be here with significantly less of a community.
Again, this response was not meant to instigate anything. So, please don't see it as such. It was merely meant to lay out some facts regarding some misrepresentations that have been going around. Thanks for reading.
I see it as a reasonable response and attempt to explain your perspective. I truly appreciate an intelligent and thought out response. Thank you.
My perspective is different. Many people spend time curating and don't draw a wage. That is what the curation rewards were intended for. Not a fixed system where it is pre-determined who will vote for whom.
Although you have received the feedback that your efforts have paid off, and I have seen it myself. the retention and price say it might not be as effective as you think. However, I REALLY appreciate the thought out response.
Fyi. We are not a group. I don't speak to any of the other mentioned people on a regular basis.
Thank you for your response. I still totally disagree with what was done and how it was done. However, it doesn't seem quite as sinister when you just straight up explain it. Thank you, @jrcornel.
edited: There are/were unintended consequences to the lack of transparency in how the rewards were distributed and @gavvet claimed he was voting on old posts to "catch a troll". Due to how you were paid, and how this was kept silent. It hurt the creditability of the platform which for me is way more important than the reward pool or the trending page.
Although, in my opinion, both of those areas were hurt as well.
Anyway, my goal here was never to be a blogger, so my interest in the whole affair was the credibility of SteemIt and SteemIt, Inc. And how it looks to potential investors.
I see. And yes that is understandable. Just keep in mind that any and all curation rewards were going back to the whales. Not SG staff. So, we did need some form of compensation for our time... Things are set to change drastically with HF17 for steemit and for SG. Hopefully for the better of all of us. Thank you for the diplomatic and kind words by the way, it was refreshing to read :)
So was your response and I appreciate the change of tone. Cheers. I wish you the best of success.
Thank you for a respectful response. I can see that the guild is made up of a mixture of people. Some receive criticism well, others don't. Those that don't are not very good representatives for a Community Building Guild. I understand you probably feel attacked and worn out from defending yourselves or having to deflect because of not being able to speak on behalf of these "whale backers" who chose this revenue model.
I've always been against the use of the upvote as an exchange because I believe it undermines STEEM as a currency - which should be the medium of exchange, and it depreciates the reward pool for the rest of the community which I believe was your purpose was to build. When a business hires people to work for them, they pay them out of the profits their employees bring them. So nobody is against the staff members being reimbursed for their work. It is just that the money is not coming from those who benefit from the service, it is coming from the reward pool, which means that the funds can be downvoted by anybody and everybody who does not benefit from the service, which makes it an unsustainable model - unless you can successfully interrogate people from downvoting the content - which is definitely not good.
But I understand that's not up to you how you get paid. I voiced my concern before about being on the list of supported authors for this very reason. And I know others stepped out of the guild because they saw the flaw. I hope the revenue model for this new initiative will be different.
That is understandable and we agreed as well, but we weren't left with many other options. We would have loved to receive some form of steem payment for the work being done. That is what we kept pushing for actually.
For those wanting the "market" to decide votes... I am not sure if you remember but before Curie or SG, the "market" was deciding that there were a handful of authors making thousands and everyone else was making under $1... now, and yes SG authors were often near the top of the trending page, but there was a much fatter tail of rewards behind them. There were tons of posts in the $10-$40 range that were never there before and that is factoring in the much lower price of steem, those same authors would have been in the $100-$400 range when the price was higher. If Curie and SG never existed, that fatter tail likely never happens.
So, yes while the compensation model wasn't ideal (we even agreed but weren't left many other options), we also agreed that SG was absolutely essential in keeping as many people as we possibly could on the platform. We weren't growing it, but we were keeping as many as we could.
And yes you are right about some of the members reacting differently and handling the stress we experienced differently. I am sure many people have said things they wish they could have been more professional about but sometimes emotions get the best of all of us, ya know :)
Thanks for always being diplomatic and professional about this. I have tried to be as well. We are all after the same goal of a thriving steemit.com and a much higher price of steem. Hopefully this next HF is a step in that direction!
If everything was transparent from the start, I could easily say that SG did far more good than bad. But you have to agree this conflict in the community is not good (calling them trolls doesn't remove them as an important part of the community - being the ones who voice their concerns rather than just leave) and could have been avoided if the whole thing began with more transparency and people reacted better to being questioned. Deflecting questions with accusations of bitterness or jealousy etc, just made people more suspiscious...
Exactly. This is what I want everyone to realise. I may not like the way things have gone, but I don't think malice was intended at all... Some mistakes and understandable ones when being transparant also means facing criticism from the start.
If anybody from steem guild would like to do an interview with @votu we would be really glad to have you. This Saturday we are doing an episode on witnesses and the role of witnesses as part of the community so it should be relevant to this community building intiative of yours (and ours).
A noisy group of self-interested, powering down and dumping, vest-less, trolls with and exit strategy does not constitute "the community"...
Time will tell.
Now on that we can agree...
Well said.
More of the same. The moment they are exposed for their misuse of the reward pool they adopt a new incarnation and continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the community at large.
One of the people running this new project came onto chat last night threatening to sue anyone critical of it.
Is this really what people want for steemit?
No Sir, It is not what I want at all.
I would have loved to have seen the "law suit" threat. Not surprised.
The SG group does not have my support or my trust based not only on the way they voted, but the way they continued to vote, the way they went silent on @gavvet's "troll work". etc.
:) Thank you for sharing. Many people don't want to talk about this because it ties in and hurts the creditability of the HQ group. I for one, have noticed everything they have done, continued to do, etc.
It was my theory this was why @smooth was flagging. I don't know, if it were, I wish he would have said it loud and proud.
Anyway, thank you for sharing. I appreciate the things you guys have said and challenged on this.
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman."
Justice Louis D. Brandeis
EDIT to add -- the quote is from a book called "other peoples money, and how bankers use it". Its over a century old, but still excellent and something a lot of people on steemit would probably get a kick out of.
https://steemit.com/rewards/@krnel/payouts-over-usd50-vs-flags-applied-feb-18-24#@krnel/re-clayop-re-krnel-payouts-over-usd50-vs-flags-applied-feb-18-24-20170301t025711151z
drama coin awarded. Also, a high five!
I respect you @sigmajin but you don't come off as the good guy in this picture....
not really sure why you think that is. The picture i see is a bunch of profiteers looking to make money at the expense of the community and threatening to sue or 'blacklist' anyone who objects to it. ANd no, this isn't actions in the past im talking about. this is things that have happened this week.
It doesn't make sense to me to discourage people to change for the better. Whatever happens, these people within the guild are here to stay and they may or may not prove to repeat past actions. You seem to want to shoot before they get the chance to slip up but that just means a lot of negative energy following them until they do. And the whole community has to suffer from that. Maybe we should instead give this new initiative a chance? I don't know it all but I see that a lot has been said that warrents hard feelings, I just don't think holding a grudge is going to be healthy for steem. Personally I believe when somebody says they are going to try well that should be encouraged, even if you think they will fail.
I mean what else can you hope for? To kick them off steemit?
Beanz on many topic we agree, in this case when people are trying to change for the better, there are some steps involved. Owning vs. justifying is a huge one for me.
When someone does something unethical (even if legal) I don't put them in charge of the next big project. We don't have to execute them, but we also don't have to treat them like leaders in the community. If they wish to win their reputation back, they will have to earn it. At this point they have zero reputation points with me.
I can't disagree with that. I just know I don't get to decide. I won't be treating them like "leaders" either.
You mean the new initiative thats been around for months, and secretly funded out of the reward pool?
Yes, because i threatened to sue them. And I called them assassins. Im the one with the negative energy.
The fact is @donkeypong was talking this feel-good lets all work together horseshit on #price last week, before he got behind a bunch of posts calling most of the people who he was working with shit. Hes two-faced. Plain and simple. And If i see that and you don't its because im smarter than you, not because i'm more negative.
Before you say "that happened in the past" , you should keep in mind that it h appened 48 hours ago. Im pretty sure the lawsuit thing happened after this post.
I don't think its possible to kick someone off steemit, but i do think its possible to recognize a harmful, dishonest scheme for what it is and respond appropriately to it.
I didn't know it was a secret. How did I know about it then? I just thought it was another bad revenue model, one we've seen here many times before.
The lawsuit thing seems like a petty thing to get worked up about... When one person says "scam" somebody usually follows that up with "slander" or "lawyer" in the heat of the moment. I agree that you have a right to be angry for recent events, I just don't know what you think you're going to achieve here...
Who said i was worked up? I pointed out that coming on to chat and trying to intimidate people is a method used by this guild. One thats been used since the same people were a a part of curie.
As long as the community allows them to behave like scum bags, they will behave like scumbags.
That screen shot (perhaps when taken out of context) makes you look like the intimidator...
Hey... they say it right there:
Nepotism
just as a side note, i have to say that I find it deeply deeply suspicious that there are a bunch of posts supported by @donkeypong trashing a channel on chat (for being critical of SG), then chat disappears, then this announcement is made (within an hour or two).
EDIT -- chat back up. but i still wouldn't put it past this institution to use their in with steemit inc to try to remove it/ theyve already threatened lawsuits and made multiple posts complaining about people being critical of them. Trying to get it taken down entirely would be par for the course.
Haha. Blame me for an Internet outage. It was me who hacked Amazon's AWS yesterday, too! :)
I could just call you an assasin. You know, the same thing I was called recently in posts you supported for being critical of SG. Or threaten to sue you. There is certainly better evidence that SG or what ever youre calling yourselves is behind the sudden disappearance of chat than there is that I killed anyone. (well, anyone relevant to steemit anyway)
As long as youre (you curie, SG, outreach, or whatever youre calling yourselves this week) sending people around threatening lawsuits against anyone critical of you and calling people assasins and trolls i think its perfectly reasonsbale to assume your organization is trying to supress the very same speech they have a record of, well, trying to supress.
I knew it!
😂😂😂
m8 really every time I try to use the internet
the chat downtime was due to an unexpected glitch with a software upgrade
@smooth so that explains the gateway 502 notice that time ..
thought my comp was just acting up
or cause of the heavy rain the connection was f...ed up
anyway, you haven't notice my messages in the chat
so I hope you don't mind if I remind you here that we're running 3 weeks late man .. please check your chat I know you're busy but this one depends on you to get published too
thanks a lot!
I believe in this platform, and am grateful to everyone I've met during my time here, it's an amazing place and I don't think the moon is too high a goal! Thank you for everything you've done and continue to do.
Is there anything you would suggest we can do to help get the word on steemit? I'm happy to contribute in any way.
Edit. I love that there will be a greater focus on rewards for comments, it's an excellent way to promote engagement.
I am really excited to see what happens when engagement is rewarded too. Who knows how it will work, but it should be a ton of fun!
Absolutely! Many of your posts have the kind of humor that begs for entertaining interaction :)
Thank you for your nice comment and support! Steemit is great for people like you who breath an air of positivity.
Positivity is truly key, isn't it? To take an opportunity given to you and do everything you can to make the most of it, and be grateful :)
You have been a great addition to this community!
@dreemit was the first person who encouraged me when I joined Steemit. She gave me the boost I needed just when I needed it.
First impressions become solid in our memory. A bad first impression will be remembered like a stone and feel like a heavy burden. A great first impression will also carry weight but the weight of gold.
In this way I understand the importance of how community interaction is vital on the Steemit platform.
Thank you for saying that! I feel the same way about you :) Interaction is absolutely vital.
Thank you :) I hope this means you'll finally have the time to relax and write more as I know was your desire, I enjoy your articles very much!
I don't think you get the gig - have a look at this post - no pay out right? Wrong - check the comments - the problem for the whales is that they cannot continue their retention of steem through their intra-voting anymore as the thing gets more and more exposed. So, rather than having their posts exposed as being over-valued, it becomes the comments that get over-valued - but the comments do not get listed anywhere so it is 'hidden'. Do you remember that @ats-david post the other day? +/- $120 in comments - is that what you want? Engagement for whales to hide their retention of SP? They already get way more than anyone really thinks - look at it!!
I suspect whjat you have seen is mostly coming from @abit. Full disclosure, i have had many comments upvoted this way recently by @abit. This was not solicited (though it is much appriciated). SO you should take anything i say in defense of this with a grain of salt, as I am defending something which i have been a primary beneficiary of.
I don't think having $120 in upvoted comments in a post is necessarily a bad or undesirable thing, provided the comments are high quality, or indicate a significant level of engagement. If you look at my personal comment history, I tend to comment at length. I have written comments before that were many times longer than the original post. At the end of the day, its discussion like this, rather than a bunch of people throwing off blog posts, that make steemit social media.
I do agree with you that vigilance is required to make sure we're not paying out a significant amount of the reward pool for "nice post, bruh" type comments (which is suspect is what the people behind SG/outreach/insert new scheme here have in mind). But i personally think that right now, @abit is doing a not-bad job of selecting good comments (and based on his engagement on chat and the posts h e upvotes, i suspect this is happening manually). That is to say, what youre seeing with comments is ultimately a good thing.
Case in point on my recent post, the ended with $4.39 payout ($3.71 of that to me) but comment rewards for me totalled $11.94 ($8.95 to me). That's approaching 3x for comments than the article.
Which I think is great. I get it that it was kind part of an experiment of @abit, but in general promoting discussion on topics might be of higher value than rewarding the original poster. It certainly was the result here.
I think that you could be right. By virtue of the system, you cannot be wrong.
There is this elephant in the room, though. Does it strike you as fair that a comment, albeit written in a positive and knowledgeable way, can gain $7, whereas a post which took several hours of preparation and provides substantial benefit to the community gains 150 votes and $0.34?
You see, Social Media does not see that as 'social'. It regards that as anti-social, especially as that $7 came from 1 vote.
I can see the game going on here and everyone else should too.
I am busy generating positive engagement for the whole steemit community. In the meantime, the whales are intra-voting crap posts and comments whilst they ignore the platform builders. Now, do you think that there may be something wrong?
Any person with a sane and adult head upon their shoulders would see the problem, as they would sense a sore thumb!
No disrespect to you personally but the power sharing issue shows that 98% of all the rewards ever are held by less than 5% of the steemit community - now you know the next string to their bow - hiding intra-voting in the comments section.
I wasn't aware of the @ats-david post actually. I'm here for two things, to get my words out in the world in the form of stories, novels, etc. and to meet and develop friendships and bonds with people from all over the globe. I'm accomplishing what I'm here for. I thank @donkeypong because he's helped me personally with those goals, the same way I thank many others in here.
I'm sorry that you're upset, truly. As far as what you're speaking of, @beanz appears to be willing to give the benefit of the doubt, I think it would be nice if others with the same goals chose the same outlook.
I really do appreciate very much what you are saying - some of us can tolerate certain things and some of us simply find certain things unacceptable - we are all, thank goodness, different.
I read yesterday that there has been something mad like $3million of investor money lost through the whales' activity. This is not ok with me, sorry!
They do not deserve their position in light of what they have done. This attempt to make comments have the same value as posts is an attempt to hide the continuation of this - if there is a fair rewards pool, how come the whales and dolphins have 99% of it all and yet they are less than 5% of the whole steemit population?
There is a very large amount of malpractice going on and I am afraid to say that donkeypong is bang in the middle of it!
It was dodgy. Yes. I would have preferred to see repercussions made by those in charge. Instead, we may just have to see if they redeem themselves. We don't really have a choice since the whole system is about to change anyway.
It won't be forgotten. But right now rebuilding this community is the priority and I'm glad to see that that's recognised. It doesn't look good to have the thread full of rejection... But I understand that efforts have to be made by both sides, first to realise your/their own negative influence (on the situation/the community), then to express remorse so that we can all have a little faith in what we are trying to build here.
so charlie brown, I got a question for you. How many times does lucy pull the football away before you realize that she's going to do it every time?
Curie? SG? Outreach? thats three. ANd yes, three, because this outreach program was already being funded out of the reward pool, on the downlow. So when they get caught again and the same people move onto the next scheme, are you going to be singing us the same song?
And im not really looking for a lot of saccharine, warm fuzzy rhetoric here. Just a number. Is it 4? 7? 12? I want to know when I can come back and say to you "we gave them XXX chances, and they scammed us every single time"
Charlie Brown? Really?
See this is where I see why you haven't achieved anything. Such an approach can only be met with rejection.
I commented my disapproval of their revenue model when they posted about it. I had already known about but waited to give them a chance to disclose publicly and they did.
At this point, after your several replies 2 of which I found disrespectful I'm going to step back out to reflect. It's not what I expected from you.
SO don't you see a pattern here? Like really?
They started with this 'bad revenue model' on curie. Then they got called out on it and people started downvoting the curie payout posts.
Then the exact same people started SG, and adopted the exact same bad revenue model. Whale voting "pretext posts" but this time they disguised those posts and tried their level best to keep it a secret.
Then SG got called out on it, and again the exact same people adopted the same revenue model with outreach.
I mean seriously. If youre really being fooled here, how many times is a simple name change going to be sufficient to pull the wool over your eyes? Not to mention the fact that this "bad revenue model" seems to be still going on.
@beanz, there is nothing I want more than what you seek - the problem is that, at every turn we see more and more of the same - intra-voting and feathering of the nest in ways that are just unconscionable conduct. 99% of all the rewards EVER distributed are in the hands of 5% or less - that just has a whiff about it!! HF17 - not a fat chance in hell that there will be a redressing of the balance.
What negativity have I brought? That I do find hard to swallow ... I am endlessly inventing new ways to create engagement and I get not one jot of support ... and I now know where the problem really lies ... and that is really not good.
What do you suggest as a resolution/solution?
Firstly, there needs to be an acknowledgement by the whales that their behaviour has been destructive and has burned the investment of every investor - several million dollars I saw the other day - the miners are the destroyers - they got in for nothing and they should have a downside built into their ownership based upon performance.
There should be a minimum factor of decentralisation built into the system which, if not met, penalises the top 10% of Est Value holders (prorata) and the value is distributed inverse prorata to the rest. Individual targets should be set as well. This should remain in place until there are 500,000 active accounts all of which are owned by different people.
Every week, the whole rewards pool distribution should be published, including the part which nobody pays attention to (not my idea -I saw it the other day)
Witnesses should be banned from being steemit account holders - this should be outsourced to a company with no vested interest - it is not like it is a difficult job and it would actually save the platform money and increase integrity.
The system of rewards distribution is quite clearly unworkable. Everyone now seems to be acknowledging this ... at last ... 98% between less than 5% is not distribution. The geeks have had their turn - they go back to their terminals for some quark spotting.
Meanwhile, it has to be recognised that building a rep and SP base has rewards. It should be possible to start in steemit today and get to the top, purely through activity. There do not seem to be many people thinking long-term. What happens when a whale dies (sorry, just realistic) and leaves 30 million SP in his will - are we going to se a Trust Account scenario? How will the 'nominee accounts' operate? Will niche ever arise on steemit as it so needs to? Does there need to be some management ... ever ... look forward to 15 million subscribers and the reward pool - if we do not address these things now, failing to plan = ... you know the drum.
When you start something like this, reverse-engineering is always an important way of looking at it. So, start with 1 billion users and work back to today, as you would want it to be - then you have a chance of getting the rewards pool right AND being able to explain it to all the miserable gits like me who just see GREED!
High valued comments seems to me to be a good think as it rewards discussion.
However I agree that it would be good to have a comments reward summary somewhere on the page. If you feel strongly about it then write a post and tag @ sneak (won't tag him here because I'm always tagging him for stuff like this). But you'll have my vote if you do!
I think you should see this for what it really is ... an attempt by the whales to hide their intra-voting. I comment all the time because this is social media - the more we understand what social media is and what Game Theory is, we will be the wiser for it!
Comments are valuable but $120 worth in one post? It takes me about 65 posts at my rate to get to $120 because the whales know that I know what they are up to and ostracise me as a result, though I put steemit on page 1 of google searches (news - twice) ... the guilds all ostracise me because they are run by whales ... you should these things.
Meanwhile I am running a Facebook group and starting engagement initiatives to generate stuff for other people - I get ignored and there you go ...
You should know these things - I do because I am prepared to find out for myself rather than believe an equation longer than any blockchain key!
@sneak seems like a good guy who works directly for the founders. He does what he is told to do.
Heya @donkeypong and steemit experts - thanks for the heads-up! Some points from me. I think the move towards community building is in general a good one! The question is what are the plans there exactly?
The guilds were excellent for users without a lot following that just started or gained a bit traction – so they sure will be missed by some steemians. I have been member of a social platform that also paid their users for orginal content (based on ad revs).
It was a real positive community (in the beginning) and many from start requested groups to better organize and to engage in dedicate topics / communities of interest. The plan was indeed to strengthen community and increase revenue to nominated charities (was a great point there – paying forward) BUT when the communities started only a selected group of people where allowed to own groups. I was lucky enough at the end to have some groups – I had 25k followers in the community and one of my groups was Global Soccer Fans where we had over 10,000 members. The group owner received a certain percentage for revenues / rewards made in the group, certain moderator the group owner could select got another daily rewards from the group reward pool. The users got only reward from their posts.
That all sounds good but was a starting point for complains that certains users are more equal than others. It was in my point of view the start of the end of the platform. Therefore I am asking how the community idea will be executed? Will there be Owners per community - how is the look & feel for communities etc?
''And let's take Steemit to the moon and beyond in 2017!'' or take it in the 7 new planets nasa discovered?
There were certainly lots of posts about those planets! :D
So excited! I can't wait to see how big it gets.
I really think this flatter reward curve plus the work being done by the outreach program is going to be huge for steemit!
That's an even better idea. I should have you write my posts. :)
Sounds great. I'll miss the SG, as it still seems needed, IMO. But this is a good move too, and nicely anticipates the growth of Steem. Keep up the great work.
I always looked at SG as being a temporary way to level the playing field while the experiment played out. I think the flatter reward curves are going to mean great things for the site, community members and content creators. You have done some pretty amazing things to help the platform.
It's time to look ahead. Thanks for all your hard work on Steemit also.
@anotherjoe I miss them already :)
@donkeypong am reading late again and am sorry
I just want to say THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
I was one on that fixed list and so thank you @ned for casting you votes on many of my posts!
I'm forever grateful ..what's the plan now?
I join these words. @donkeypong thank you very much indeed and I will miss you. It was great support. Now I feel myself orphaned ....
@aksinya, funny, that's how I've been feeling the past days, too - orphaned indeed but I guess we had been blessed enough so forward child :)
and some of them are still supporting us, we're going to be okay!
Steem on!
Thank you for the support))) It means much to me! We will be ok.))) And I wish you all the best here!!! Yes, we were blessed and I hope we will be)))
@aksinya likewise!
we are!
we were on that list aren't we?
it doesn't change anything!
Keep the faith!
Let me know if I can help to build a community for geek posts or writing. I'm a published author and well a geek, so I can bring expertise to both. And if I may ask, can you and all other the separate accounts please keep me in mind as you move to your more leaner format, I plan to continue to bring original fiction to this site and would appreciate the support.
I am clearly not as dedicated geek as you are. I only put it as the first word of my description. But you sir.... hats off to you! You went full geek! We need as much geeky stuff as possible on here.
Your name is @hanshotfirst, you sir are as a dedicated geek as I. Agreed, maybe we can work together to bring the geekiness to steemit when the communities are being built.
I am really curious about HF17, and way more excited by the community building features that will appear this year. in the meantime, I can only thank SG for the accomplished work. And for the continuous support.
How will you build a community? Will you promote topics instead of authors ? I always thought that when everyone started voting for authors is when the community died down.
The new rewards and comment pool should help a lot but What will the guild do exactly?
Good questions. We need to see how the hardfork changes are implemented and what that means for everyone. Personally, I think everyone should vote for content that they like and want to see more of, but I'm also going to be looking at what makes Steemit better. That's my own view, and I understand there's some subjectivity with which others may disagree, but to me what makes Steemit better is content that engages users and/or brings us more users. We know what some of those popular areas are that have a ton of users on other sites, so it's not that difficult to predict what areas we can develop better, though of course Steemit also may evolve in different directions and develop its own culture as well, which is wonderful.
Engagement will be easier to measure now because we'll have the comments that finally are getting the rewards they deserve and the nesting limit will be removed, so hopefully we can have some great discussions about hot issues, news, funny pictures that people post, sports, movies, jokes, gaming, and a lot of other topics that just have not caught on yet on Steemit. As long as rewards exist, then to some extent, I think that content which creates a lot of user activity (or brings in new users) should be rewarded more highly than some obscure poem (as good as it may be) that has very few views or comments. That's not to say that diversity of content is not important, because it is also, but engagement needs to be a priority until we can get more users onto Steemit (and after that, I think the content can grow more organically in various directions).
To make a long story short, we'll be discussing all of this and watching how things develop, trying to tread lightly as we learn how best to help communities grow and add more users to Steemit. To some extent, Steem Guild has experience with this because several of the communities we have supported have grown in very healthy ways already, including science, photo, Spanish, German, and other languages, but the comment rewards and other changes certainly will make for a new dynamic.
And I'd really welcome your feedback and love to chat with you if you have good ideas also.
@donkeypong To get a social network going, interaction is the key element. Great to read, you and SG will shift focus to interaction. Hopefully this will get some of our large pool of inactive users, active.
In addition SG, Steemit Inc, and others can think of starting interactions. Today many of the posts are voted for by bots, and hardly opened and read by humans. These posts will be lost very quickly. Especially since post older than a day are more or less lost for almost the entire community. Why not form teams who start interactions with more than just "great post" "thank you for sharing" and more kind-of-meaningless comments. These teams can also link older posts into their comments/responses to activate the history of posts a bit more. Next to curation teams, we will have interaction enablers teams, so to speak.
Great answer! I think focusing on activity will pay great rewards. Glad to hear you are thinking through these issues. I too am curious about how the hardfork will change the feel of the platform. When will it happen?
Looks to be scheduled for π day!
And accurate to the first 5 digits no less. ;)
2017/03/14 15:00:00 UTC
https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases
March 14 is the current date, I think.
This is really hard to understand. It's okay though, I am glad to be here. I am betting pretty big on this. I'm all in. I'm afraid of the unknown but joyful I can see a lantern in the storm. We are making a difference!
@donkeypong I am glad someone is listening. Thank you