When You're Dead, You Don't Know That You're Dead
Sorry, guys, but I couldn't resist :)
Here are the facts: this morning I read an article on @timcliff feed about a test going on Steemit, a test in which whales will not vote anymore, leaving the reward pool at "the mercy" of dolphins and minnows. Brilliant idea, I thought. It will help a lot with identifying behaviors, with extracting intelligence and planning for a better Steemit. So I even wrote my own post, supporting this and letting know other fellow Steemians that something interesting and useful is going on.
Alas, what a waste of time :)
When I looked at the post announcing the test, I simply couldn't believe my eyes. It was just 2 lines: "Going on. Let's see how the dolphins and minnows will play." Here's a screenshot of it:
Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously?
The guy who told me less than a week ago that I'm not a developer because I dared to make a proposal about a new voting system, is now starting a test over an entire community of more than 10,000 active members with just 2 lines of text? Is this for real? Am I on candid camera or something?
Come on, guys, no announcements at all? No metrics? No goals, no methodology? Just flagging the shit out of anyting because, well, we can? How the test will be run? When does it starts and when does it ends? What are we measuring? How are we measuring it? Is this unit testing? Is this functional testing? Is this behavioral testing?
Ups, I asked too many questions at once. Let's wait a bit until the circuits cool down. Pun intended.
Just count to five. Ok. Thanks. Let's continue this.
So not only I supported this, but I even answered to all the comments on that post, trying to give as much information as I could. In vain. Nobody seems to really know what's happening. Other whales didn't know about it and they wanted to continue voting, just to support other authors.
Just look at all the edits on @abit's post. Seems like he discovered, hour by hour, that there are some curation trails on Steemit. Wow! There's also hot water, man. And sliced bread. Great inventions, by the way. I can't imagine he didn't plan for this in advance and everything was just an impulse.
The so called "test" soon spiraled into a game of flagging between a core formed by @abit, @smooth and @nextgencrypto, and the rest of the platform.
And now we're going back, to the featured image of this post. Guys, I know you're ok and you're feeling good about yourself, but, err, you know... How should I put this? This move was kinda stupid? Are you getting this? Please don't take it personally (I know you will, but I'm asking it anyway) but this one was really not well thought.
If you ever want to do this again, count me in, as always, but only after I see a clear methodology, a set of goals and metrics and a definite time window.
Otherwise, you're just a bunch of kids breaking things without even understanding what they're doing.
Later edit: I start to believe that you're not a bunch of kids breaking things randomly and you know very well what you're doing. And I don't like at all what I'm seeing. Under the pretext of an "experiment" you just took over the entire reward pool and you do whatever you want with it. Counteracting even @dantheman's votes says a lot about what you're up to.
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
Dare I suggest that you have to open and read a post BEFORE you vote, that way you know what you are voting for. This would remove the bots as I believe they can't read. Also if you voted numbers rather than money and divided the daily pot by those numbers it would benefit the better authors.
Agreed - Terrible implementation and communication. Plus its a real kick in the balls to get flagged when you try hard to produce quality content and have only a handful of people stopping by who are not bots. At least Curation Guilds actually read and think about what they vote on. Stripping their votes away seems very stupid, and I dont think i'll be posting until this stops...
This whole thing backfired so badly, unfortunately. Instead of incentivizing people to post more, this stupid implementation will drive authors away.
berniesanders finally came to his senses and quit the "experiment".
I'm all for experimentation too but this was done badly. I've been spending the bulk of the day trying to do damage control and keeping GOOD contributors here. This too shall pass, I keep telling myself. I wonder how many more times before I stop believe it?
I tried to spread good cheer yesterday but failed miserably, I came off sounding arrogant or like a Pollyanna. My apologies to everyone for labeling you chickens squawking cause your feeding routine was changed. But that's what I feel like, but the feeling was subliminal. We act like farm animals used to a certain routine and when that's changed we squawk and don't know what to do. Wild animals would migrate to a new feeding ground. I saw a meme yesterday depicting cows being milked .... that's when I realized I was acting out unconsciously...
Thanks for your concerns. I like to think I didn't react unconsciously. I even supported the experiment in the beginning, until I was able to identify some patterns. Then I realized it was all a giant blunder.
Me too.
Too little, too late.
A downvote was applied to partially counter earlier whale votes 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)
:))) I love this. I'm having the best time in months. Keep those anti-whales-bots bots coming, @smooth.
power in the wrong hands... hmm sounds like government