Possible solution to content flooding the blockchain with junk. "The 24 hour new article probationary period"
A NEW idea to slow down and limit the content churners who flood the chain with junk. Your comments are needed.
In my last post I explained how poorer countries often will create "cheap" or "plagiarist posts" in order to even just make $5/week by churning them out non-stop.
It is most evident at around 4am in the morning while North America is asleep.
In a recent announcement on @steemitblog the explained that a new backend service named "jussi" was created which sits between the website and the blockchain and allows some caching to occur.
Jussi got me thinking....
If the first 24 hours is when most junk posts get sent, and many of them never earn more than 0.10 cents or get more than 10 or 15 votes, why are we filling the blockchain with these junk posts to last an eternity?
Here's some changes that I think hold some merit.
...
(1) All new posts are held in a preliminary queue for 24 hours. They can be seen, read, and voted on, but they do not earn any monetary rewards until these conditions are met:
- a) 24 hours has passed
- b) They receive a minimum of 10 upvotes that require a minimum collective SP or vests of a certain amount.
(This is to prevent low reputation and low SP bots from autovoting things) - c) A minimum of 3 comments is received on the post in that 24 hour period
- d) The author account must have a minimum reputation of 25 or higher
- e) The author name is withheld when shown on the "created" or "new" feed for 24 hours
(2) All votes received in the initial 24 hours "if the post meets those conditions" are then applied to that post since it becomes an "approved post" by the community and then it gets written to the steem blockchain
What would this 24 hour new article probationary period solve?
If am a spammer, and I write 25 copy/paste news articles, and none of them meet those conditions, none of those will get written to the blockchain in 24 hours, and I would have earned nothing.
If I am a blogger with lots of followers, and a huge reputation value, if I write something, it is the article itself that gets attention (and not the author). This means that whale-like authors are less likely to always profit, if their articles have to get approved past the 24 hour article probationary period just like every other article out there. (This would bring more fairness to the system for new authors, and experienced authors competing on a per-article basis)
This "24 hour article probationary period" would no longer incentivize content blasting / content churning at the steem blockchain hoping that just 1 out of 10 articles makes even a few cents.
This would lower the resource required for steemit, busy.org, etc. It would make it easier for curators to judge good quality written articles and spend less time scrolling past hundreds of garbage posts just to find a good one.
I introduce to you... the 24 hour new article probationary period.
Lets lighten the chain, lighten the load for all curators, and lighten the chance a spammer or plagiarist will get paid.
Do you get the idea, but have a BETTER idea?
Share it below. Let's hear what you have to say.
You have a good point right here! What makes me afraid of this approach is that barely nobody who is new here will not ve able to gain any reputation in maybe weeks or months of work, and this will only increase the gap between minnows and the well known whales which are able to post a photo and one or two rows of content and still be able to make 20+ votes in the first 10 minutes after the post got submited. I guess that your proposal is good, bju the limits for an article to be keeped need to be a little bit lowered. I found sometimes in the situation on writing posts at which I worked hard, but posts which do not meet the criterion of minimum 12 votes or 3 comments received, and I guess this is based on the fact that I don't have a lot of followers and not because the quality of my contents is low (which sometimes may be, but not always :). And since I don't have a great exposure, I will be never able to receive any rewards in this system, if we discart the low ones. What do you think?
Agreed... I was thinking of that the same problem. If the article was posted anonymously for 24 hours.. and people did whatever they could to splatter their name all over it, that would be unfair.
But imagine for a moment that no one did do that.. wouldn't it be so much easier and nicer to evaluate postings without knowing who wrote it. That would be so nice if we could do that..
I'm focusing on the "new" feed the most. Up at the top, where it says trending, new, hot, promoted.
The new feed doesn't matter if you have 1 follower or 2,000 during the probationary period, because all posts go there, and everyone can see them.
See.. these things were not anticipated on day one of this system. But the problem is very apparent now.
Knowing what we know now in this social media experiment, I bet day one of the blockchain some added safety nets could have been implemented to prevent some of these problems.
Human greed was underestimated I think.
Oh, so are you saying that their post should be removed only from new section and kept on their profile and in the news feed of their followers?
After the 24 hour window, yes, it could stay on their profile, and their followers could see it, and voting would happen normally.
As it stands now. 100% of articles are approved. 100% of articles get written to the blockchain, and 100% of articles can earn a few cents no matter what.
My method, about 30% of articles would ever get approved. 30% of articles would get written to the blockchain, and 30% of articles would earn a few cents to several hundred dollars.
The spammers and plagiarists would end up being starved out and they'd soon realize it wasn't worth it anymore to pound the system as heavy as they do.
Okay, this sounds good, and I guess it will work pretty well against the spam bots too. Maybe it's worth giving it a try!
I don't get it. I would still see a flood of posts, and spammers may want to post even more in order to hit the jackpot with one of them.
But more importantly, most of my own posts (and those of other great new members I know) would not meet the criteria, despite the fact that I try to create original quality posts. If a measure like you propose was to be put in place, I would quickly leave.
70% of the spam and junk posts (and copy/pasted news articles now) would never make the 24 hour probationary window and would never make it to the steem blockchain.
All of those self-upvoted 0.01 cents wouldn't be awarded either.
That means our chain would shrink 70%, making it easier for the witnesses.
You're missing the point. The reason why your posts (and those of other great new members you know) do not meet the criteria is because they are hidden among the constant sprawl of junk posts that are hitting the system non-stop.
Look at one of the comments someone wrote on my last post about this problem:
Do you see how your post (and those of other great members you know) are losing possible curation because of this problem? THAT'S WHY the system I proposed (or a change) needs to be implemented. It's to help people exactly like yourself...
I probably don't understand your proposal well enough. In those first 24 hours how would posts like mine stand out above the spam posts? They would still be buried, right?
I don't have data about the spam behavior, but would a limit to the amount of posts in a 24 hour window help? For instance max 12 original posts and max 36 comments in a 24 hour window. Those seem reasonable numbers to me that shouldn't affect regular posters.
On day one, if this was released tomorrow, yes, your post would still be buried in spam posts, because most people wouldn't realize the new system payouts and chances at first.
However, after a few weeks of this you could imagine that you could be sitting in an internet cafe somewhere and 3 spammers are sitting there talking....
"Hey, I'm copy/pasting this news article into steemit" one guy might say
"Forget it. The last 20 articles I did that for, never got past the 24 hour probationary period. It's a waste of time. " the other guy answers
"Really? Who cares. Just upvote yourself in the 24 hour period then"
"You don't understand, even if you upvote yourself, you still don't get paid, if the post doesn't get approved to get written into the next blockchain block.
"oh"
"So what should we do?"
"I'm actually just writing a proper blog article. It takes longer,but I get paid better. Plus, new languages are accepted on steem now. Spamming just isn't worth it"
Three spammers sit in a cafe talking...
"hey did you know that they implemented some new rules? Let's join together and upvote and comment on each other's posts, we just need to find a few more buddies to group together. We can start a chat channel. Or maybe we can create a few more accounts just to vote and comment on our main channels. That'll make it easy for us to rise above those suckers who try to do everything ethically and organically. They'll never make it so there's more steem for us to share. So let's post and comment more!"
And in addition to the "I followed you, please follow me" comments you'll now get, "I voted for you, please vote and comment for me" comments.
The people who are doing this stuff that you/we don't like will game your rules. And genuine authors will leave the platform be cause they don't meet these rules for months if ever...
The rules could be tweaked. The idea and concept gets us thinking in a new direction.
Do you have any better ideas? As time goes on, we're on a slippery slope here. Getting discussions going is important.
I knew my ideas would get shot down pretty quick. But at least we have people thinking about it and talking about the problem.
I didn't necessarily meant your rules but just any rules. People with bad intentions will always try to game the/a system...
I have to give it to you, I don't know any solution the the situation we're in right now.
I thought about this a little longer; why not just pay a curationreward to downvoters?
Lets say 25% (or whatever %) of the downvote's worth, but maximum the posts worth!
If the post is worth 1.00 and my upvote is worth 5.00 then a max downvote of -5.00 wil lower the post reward to -4.00. My curation wil be 5.00 * 25% = 1.25, but the post was just worth 1.00 so curation is maxed at 1.00!
This idea should still be tweaked to perfection, but lines out te basics!
What about the regular guy that signs up, writes good original content, but because he isn't 'known' he doaesn't get the 10 votes, or the 3 comments on his frst few articals....he will leave and we may miss out on the next @papa-pepper.
If papa-pepper's articles don't show they were written from papa-pepper in the first 24 hours, just the article title competes with other article titles... Then everyone gets a fair chance if they are not known.
That was the whole point of why I said this:
I already thought of your concern.
I don't think it's fair that if @pappa-pepper or even I, myself, write something, we get more attention just because we're known, and not because of the article content itself. That's not fair to new writers.
I see your point and I agree in principle but for me, knowing the author helps me decide on what to read. For example, when I saw this post I almost scrolled past it but then I saw that you wrote it and I like the way you approach things, I read it and was not disappointed.
But like I said, I think you're on the right track...
Maybe new posters could have a grace period where they get several posts that are exempt from the rules. That way they get a chance to build their momentum...
Overall a great idea though!
It is a difficult situation. The idea of why I wrote this was to get people discussing the issue and seeing how hard it is to come up with a solution.
I can smell the answer is near. I just can't see it either. :)
we'll think of something! I feel like you're an intelligent guy for some reason...
Do you get the idea,
Nope
.
but have a BETTER idea?
Yup
Share it below. Let's hear what you have to say.
OKay
attract
like
attracts
eliminating one
decreases the other.
yup! I wouldn't mind if all those voting bots were gone. Since I joined a few weeks ago, it seemed to me that those bots were counter-productive to stimulate quality content.
I agree - time to get rid of all bots, and a lot of this spam would drastically reduce.
Does anyone look at the new feed anyway? - WHY?
They have devoted people who have access to a computer and the internet who sit there for hours on end doing things like "solving captcha" or "getting dust from altcoin faucets" or "clicking adsense banners"
In poor countries they could make $2 USD for spending 4 hours on the computer doing these things, and they do. These are not bots. They are just hungry people that know how to click, copy, paste.
Even if you did get rid of bots, you couldn't get rid of those people. Looking at the feed, yes, some of them are indeed bots, but many aren't.
Hello @intelliguy
I read your previous article on content flooding and now your possible solutions. It's actually great, I like the idea of it. Only quality stands at the end but here are some few things I think will not make it effective.
Many people use bots to upvote themselves. With steemvoter allowing you put authors in autoupvotes, 10 upvotes will be very easy to get. In addition, a trail too can make one get more than 10 upvotes.
Engagement is encouraged on steemit a lot but still many don't like to make comments. I've seen posts having $13+ upvotes with no comment. Making comments sometimes can be tasking and tiring too. And one wouldn't want to make spammy comments.
My favorite part of your conditions is this:
Implementing this will go a long way to stop the "mutual masturbation" that exists here.
@learnandteach01
As you can see, and agree, the technicalities are wrong. The concept is right. That is all I was trying to convey. Something "like this" could work, if we could iron it out the right way.
Granted, it doesn't matter what you do, someone will find a way to game the system. What we need to do is make it harder to game the system easily.
This will merely create an additional layer of work for them. Queue automated comment bots. No sophisticated review AI quality required like the neural network AI bots which (my soon) operate on Yelp and Amazon.
Three comments is also very steep an entry bareer for new Steemians.
I think we need a higher level of sophistication than the probationary period.
Instead I suggest that a karma alike system, or some algo like Digg at some point applied gradually making it more difficult to earn the same. That also based on how often one posts in each period.
In other words, as you churn out content, hopefully quality content, you will always need more votes to earn the same. Which shouldn't be too big an issue for those who generate high quality content since with each new article they will gain new followers.
Not wanting to dismiss the issue, it does happen and that not solely by sploggers from not First World btw. I've seen quite some First Worlders making $3-6/post, crap post after crap post, heck... I have even seen it from a witness.
Well it depends on what the article is about.
I think people are more apt to leave comments if they really don't know who wrote the article and want to comment on the article itself
Agreed. The issue is alive and needs to be addressed. We can pretend it can just continue. But if we times the current traffic here by 1000x the same problem will be 1000x worse as we grow.
Interesting, I don't know much about Digg or a "karma alike" system. Sounds appealing.
Digg was pretty much a discovery platform, like Reddit at heart. Users submitted links, followers upvoted. The more upvotes you got, the more chance you had to land on the frontpage and thus crash a server in those days.
The Internet being a platform made for, and by, humans, of course, financial opportunities were quickly spotted and the top submitters were often approached with financial incentives. As the issue became more known, and widespread, the requirement to rank became always more complex. Pretty much like Google algo updates.
Often, Digg did annoy its top users because platform updates were created to level the playing field and diminish the weight the top submitters carried with them.
Now I'm pretty sure that a more sophisticated automated, neural even, approach can solve issues like this much better than additional layers of requirements which only make the entry level steeper and can become counter-productive.
Concrete example: I'm rep 54, very often do dedicate lots of time creating decent content, or at least what I think counts as decent quality. But I suck at self-promo. Would this or this have made it through the 24hrs of approval gate, passed Heimdal?
Nope.
I'm not saying those aticles are your cup of tea or that they are good. But who's to judge?
Why wouldn't I then go and publish elsewhere? Yet, while I see potential and love the Steem blockchain, I am working on two projects, one for Steemians and another one to promote all awesome (tech) happening on the Steem blockchain.
Don't make the bareer to entry too high. Many people like spam. TV channels and tabloid rags are the perfect example of this. IMHO an algo that grows the difficulty to earn, as we send more 0s and 1s to the blockchain, is a smarter approach.
Unless elitist is what we want to be, of course.
The curators. That's how this system was designed.
Well we could always preserve the non-winners, simply don't pay them, and allow them to be posted on spam websites for those failed starts. We could call it steemit-rejects.com
Of course not. We just need to find a healthy point. I don't think we're there yet.
Right now the healthy part is being hidden by the constant spam. We need a tweak.
Hmm, I'd like to know from you if my posts are such junk to be given a treatment you propose?