Suggestion and discussion for changes to the comment system in 0.17 (AskSteemit: Where answers are rewarded)
@steemitblog posted this proposal for 0.17, I would like to make a couple of suggestions about the proposed changes to the comment reward system.
Need for change
First I'd like to say that I agree that there needs to be change, as pointed out in the proposal only 1% of the rewards go to comments, and in my opinion that is one of the reasons there is little to none secondary discussion on all but the very top posts.
Proposed change
Allocate 38% of the reward pool to comments.
Will this work? I think it has a very good chance of making a positive change
Can we do more
So this brings us to the idea in my title. An AskSteemit option, let me breakdown what I mean by that, and as the theme of 0.17 is KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) it hopefully only take one change to implement.
I would like to see an option for the maker of the post to transfer all of their rewards to the comments. This could be done at payout so there would be no need to change the voting system, a post would still show up as earning $x dollars and be ranked accordingly, curators cuts would be unaffected.
What's in it for the author in this case, well I have not proposed changing the system where the parent of a comment still gets 50% of the comments author's reward. So if a good enough discussion is fostered the original author will be rewarded.
What will this change allow? Two things I am envisioning being facilitated by this change
- AskSteemit/Askscience/Askhistorians topics, where the meat of the interesting content is in the comments, So for example I ask a question like this one on reddits r/askhistorians
While reddit relies on strict moderation on those subreddits I feel with upvotes and flags we can have a number of topics where we produce similar level of quality posts. And if there was a site where answering questions was rewarded, I know I'd like to hear about it. It could become a subpart of steemit, asksteemit.
- In the existing main topics you often see things like someone asking a question, for example if I ask a simple question I am unlikely to get a reply as there will be little to no reward for the answer and my post will have little visibility to begin with, whereas if a whale asks the same simple question they will get lots of answers in the hopes of getting an up vote from the whale and getting a small reward, all the while the post will skyrocket and the whale will receive the lion share of the rewards even though they were the one asking a question and looking for help. The current proposed change would help this a lot but with my added change the good answers would get even more.
Conclusion
Well that's it, one small change, allow author to give his rewards to commenters. But in general I am glad to see some changes coming to the comment section, much needed
Asking good questions should be rewarded as well.
As I said the commenters rewards would still be split 50% with parent as always, that's how it works right?
So if new payout ration ratio is 62:38 and author gets 50% of commenter's payout would work out as 81:19. Or with my suggestion 50:50. All of which are better than the current 99.5:0.5
You're forgetting a 'positive side effect': the motivation you get when someone comments on your post!