There's An Experiment Running On Steemit Now: Whales Making Room For Dolphins And Minnows
It started approximately 12 hours ago, and was announced by @abit in this post.
Very short, this experiment aims at stopping whales voting for a while, leaving the reward pool at the discretion of dolphins and minnows. As you know, the power distribution in Steemit is heavily (im)balanced towards whales, who can move significant amounts of Steem from the rewards pool with just one vote. This experiments aims at understanding how the rewards will look like if there is a more balanced distribution of power amongst voters. So it's good.
Now, the communication could have been a lot better, especially the first post announcing this. It was just: "ok, we start this experiment". No word about how long it will take, how it will be measured, and so on.
I had my own interesting encounters with @abit and I agree his style is sometimes hard to understand, or even blunt. For instance, I made a proposal for a new voting mechanism a few days ago and, while he did provide feedback on it, he also suggested that I was sloppy and "I'm not really a developer". After this encounter I decided to stop making proposals for the improvement of the Steemit platform, feeling strongly that I kind of overdid it. I also strongly felt it's not really my job to do this. In the spirit of transparency I will also note that after a short exchange of comments @abit apologized for his comment.
As we can see, communication may not be the strongest skill of some of the people here. But that doesn't mean they are inherently ill intended. Or they don't know what they are doing. On the contrary. From what I saw on github during the last few months, @abit had a tremendous contribution to the security of the platform. Kudoz for that. Like, really. I feel good knowing that someone takes the fabric of the platform so seriously.
So, although this test was poorly communicated, I decided to fully support it, hence this announcement. I think it will help the community understand a lot more of its own dynamics.
Attention!
As part of this experiment, you may see downvotes on your posts, from some whales. This has nothing to do with your post, per se, but with other whales who are voting prior to that, mixing up the results of the test.
One of the whales participating in this, @smooth, had created an automated notice to go with these downvotes:
A downvote was applied to partially counter earlier whale voles as an experiment to reduce whale domination of voting influence. Not intended to express an opinion on the content nor result in a net reduction of rewards or reputation (automated notice)
Other members of the platform who wrote about this test:
- @timcliff The Whale Voting Experiment Explained (including downvotes from @abit)
- @neoxian The Experiment: communication required, this is a social platform
Really looking forward to the final results of this experiment.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
In my opinion, bad timing.
Let's see how it goes.
Its a terrible idea and poorly implemented.
I do not like to have a flag on my post even with a good intent. There should be a better way.
We can safely agree to disagree on this one. I think it's a good idea and it may produce interesting results.
Any results will be meaningless. Nobody knows who is involved, who isn't involved and how long the experiement will last. Steemit content creators will react by either posting less or posting lower quality until this daft idea has run its course. Finally, trying to coerce other whales to take part by flagging their posts smells almost like bullying/strong-arm tactics. Already it has created untold ill-will among steemit members who have been caught up in it. Very short-sighted and selfish and terribly executed.
What makes you say so?
Best I can tell, it is known that a certain group ("whales") are excluded whereas everyone else is included. As far as experiments go this one seems perfectly valid to me.
@ bigsambucca I agree: why not everyone does isi names of who was penalized, and you go to see the content .... One thing really stupid
Good info but bad timing for such experiment
Why?
It's implemented too aprupt without much explanation. I see the long term value of @abit's idea so I just sit back and see how it goes . I wonder if our reputation will be effected. Anyways, we are still in beta so let's be the guineapigs then for a while.
We are guinea pigs, we're just getting reminded from time to time :)
Haha yes indeed! 💅 I can take it ! 😉
I´m happy to see that a large group of our whales are able to align and to cooperate on such an experiment. I´m very interested to see how this will play out.
it seems nobody knows how many whales are involved. Sounds like a small clique rather than a majority.
Me too :)
Meeee too
@abit is highly skilled in not giving a fuck about what others think. :D
let's suppose we let people fill in the blank in the following sentence ...
I tend to think that many other whales may rank higher than abit ... lol
I truly believe that all people on Earth are ok. Their actions, sometimes, may be out of line. So, from this point of view, I'm not discussing @abit, but his actions, which are, sometimes, detrimental (even to himself). Once these actions are corrected, we may resume proper interaction. Meanwhile, he is ok. Like all of us.
Haha ! There is a good book out with that title
I agree with you. The Fraggles are not the best communicators in the room. Which is why I suppose the marketing of Steemit has been a bit shite. I respect your opinion on this. So lets hope,The Experiment has a happy ending;D)
Let's :)
You know, that is actually the first time I read about this. About 2 weeks too late.
Communications again.
Also @smooth message should include a link to the experiment it mentions. Communi....
Good suggestion with the link in the automated notice. @smooth?
Thank you very much for explaining. Much better than just putting out mememe - posts with crazy memes. :)
You're welcome.
My voting power has exploded! It could have been properly announced.
Glad to hear you're a whale now :)
Thanks for the update D! Nuthin wrong with mixin it up. We'll see what the effects will be.
Yeap, I'm curious too.
Well, I don't know if this is an effect of experiment, but the value of Steem in the last few hours is rising!
I saw that too.
It may because alts are getting more exposure after SEC denied the Bitcoin ETF for the Winklevoss brothers, it may be because of the imminent HF 17, it may be because the people who wanted to sell finished selling, it may because some people see the benefit of owning some Steem, it may be fore another million reasons. :)