Steemit Will Never Go 'Big' in It's Current Broken Form
Broken how? Communities and societies all operate according to established rules (right or wrong). There are various measures to deal with violations of those rules. Some measures are more severe than others as punishments, which vary within a society/community and between various societies/communities.
Can this be done in Steemit? Not right now. No rules or standards established. No measures to address wrongs from those who have the power in a flawed design and abuse it to engage in vendettas.
Do you think Facebook succeeds because there are no rules? No, there are rules, and that's why issues and problems can be dealt with to a certain extent. They adapt and change to correct errors in how things operate, to a certain extent, such as abuses, harassment, copyright, etc. There is a method to apply a right to redress a wrong in some capacity. You can report. You can contact staff on issues. Sure they can censor, ignore, and do nothing, but at least there is a real avenue to deal with issues on the platform.
What about on Steemit? Nothing, other than the "great" flagging tool... yes, the flag solves all problems LMAO!
When power abusing authorities in a flawed system can punish authors by removing rewards others allocate, authors who put out 1 post in a week (tested and flagged), or one post in a day (tested and flagged), even when it's original work without coming from external sources... yes... that's a rational and successful model for greater adoption by the masses... LMAO. Don't you love it when wrong-doings go on unchecked without any consequences? I sure do. Sign me up!
Go ahead and bring in tons of people like in July 2016 through advertising and marketing while this system is still broken like it is with an experiment pretending to be a "real solution". And when people speak truth to power abuse, they can see how great and wonderful Steemit is as they get flagged by power players abusing their authority. I guess that's what it will take for the so-called "community" to wake up to the issue. I guess it just needs to happen to more than one or two people ...
The concentration of power is the problem. It was in July, and people noticed, and they left. Yet it was never addressed, just ignored by the power players and Steemit Inc. Things just kept going as they were. July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March. It took 8 months for the so-called "management" by power playing SP authorities to decide to try an "experiment" to show the problem is with a concentration of power. Will it take another 8 months to deal with the flagging issue? LOL!
I understand your frustration (I was called a "pretentious douchebag troll" yesterday by the same whale you're frustrated with). I too have been flagged by them for (what seems to me) arbitrary and inconsistent reasons ("You shouldn't have three posts on the trending page at the same time" or "I didn't think it was that valuable or the rewards should be that high for a new user"). The last one bummed me out a little because all the liquid rewards were going to a new user, and I was just using my follower count to promote their great content. Watching the potential payout for this new user go from $149 to $49 with one Steemit user's click is certainly discouraging...
...from a certain perspective.
I have argued that Steemit is a lottery. If we think about it in terms of deserved rewards or some rational pay for value system, we will always be discouraged. And yes, that does mean people who have those expectations will get very frustrated here (in its current form) and leave. Some are okay with that because they don't share that same perspective on what "should" happen here.
Again, I'm not discounting your frustration or what it feels like when you get flagged and see potential rewards disappear. It can feel vindictive or a personal attack (and, in some cases, it clearly is). What I am saying is this is a different animal than any other social media platform. The rules you speak of may be comforting for the masses, but there's a growing number of people who reject them outright. They don't want central powers controlling their content and selling it for their own profit. Steemit has a centralization of power as it relates to financial reward distribution, but it's also an open system anyone can participate it. Yes, some early miners have a huge amount of Steem Power. Unlike the social media systems you mentioned earlier, there's an opportunity for anyone with enough money to power up and have that same level of influence to offset the votes of other whales.
In summary, this is chaos. Many are very, very uncomfortable with chaos. Others are starting to realize how order can come from chaos and how resilient and anti-fragile that result can be. It will not happen quickly. Some will leave because their expectations are not being met. Others will work to influence the community decisions and software rules to change the platform to better meet their expectations. Still others will change their expectations and post here for fun, with the financial rewards as an extra bonus.
I value your content. I hope you reject the first group and choose to stick around as a combination of the second and third group I described.
Very well put, and much more than I can be personally bothered with, considering @krnel 's continued ranting on the subject and lack of contribution to a solution, instead stoking the flames of discontent. This is along the lines of what I would want to say 😊
It is actually a lottery, since there's no non-subjective way to evalute a post - except the number of upvotes. Have to take it for what it is
As I mentioned in my post, it's directly described that way in the white paper. When we have expectations outside of the document which defines the system, we're bound to have frustration.
of course. but complaining is a way to put pressure. many people complaining in a very small community can change something - not necessarily for the best
Complaining is a very poor way to do it, but has some value.
Criticising is better because it essentially is a complaint but goes further to try to make sense of the problem instead of just reacting against it.
Proposing a solution is probably the best, as it includes the first two, but goes even further because even if you're wrong about it or way off, a solution can provide impersonal debate and arguments something that may stand on its own or inspire someone else. This is something the first two do not do well.
of course you are right. even if I was thinking more about social dynamics and their effects on the growing/not-growing of a community, than about actual problems and their solution. I think it is an aspect not to undervaluate
Indeed. I prefer constructive debate over complaining though. Most of us take things personally or resort to name calling instead of constructive debate. Very few have the mathematical game theory experience, financial motivational psychology understanding, or programming skills to push things forward. I think it'll take time. There is certainly room for "Hey, this is kinda messed up, people. What can we do to fix it?"
It is, but it's only a metaphor (actually a simile) of how it works. It's not quite a lottery because we all decide how payout happens, instead of by some random process. Perhaps a large enough group of people voting can be considered random (I'd have to see this proven to believe it) but it appears to me that people do seem to vote for what they like or feel is "deserving", however variously and individually that is defined. And that is enough to skew things, amongst the other complex factors, like the price of Steem.
But this
is important to note.
Can we do better though? I know that's what krnel is and probably will be calling for. Do you think this aspect is fundamental, i.e. will not be likely to change in an update / HF? I think the best we can do without throwing out the system's premisses entirely is reducing the power disparity, which I think is probably the real root cause of the issues that get brought up.
Yes, there's been a lot of talk about changing the reward distribution curve or hiding potential payouts until all the votes have been settled by the community, etc. Those, I feel, are very constructive conversations.
I love Steemit and hope to be a whale myself some day. If the incentives for becoming a whale decrease too much, that may delay (indefinitely?) me getting to that position. That said, maybe the value of Steem itself would be enough to encourage whales to power up even if their direct influence over the platform goes down. There's also been talk of an investor class among other discussions. Many things are being discussed.
I presume you are saying you would not support reducing whale power relative to minnow or dolphin power.
If so, I hope you are convinced some day that a large "middle class" of medium power users is important, also for the accountability concerns krnel raises, but for fairness in general.
No, I do think adjustments in the reward curve should be made. The experiment so many people are upset about showed, IMO, this would be a more active platform if everyone's votes mattered more.
That said, I don't think the incentive to be a whale should decrease to such a degree that no serious investors want to invest in STEEM (and thus, this platform which is funded by their investment). Steemit, Inc will not continue to exist without those investors. Some may think that's a good thing (and maybe it is?), but I do think their focused, full-time attention to the platform is really important in these early days.
Agreed. A balance must be struck. Thanks for your replies. 🙂
I think the concentration of power is definitely an issue and they're looking to redress this by altering the rewards curve with respect to the voters stake so that larger stakeholders have reduced voting power in the future
I think flagging as a way of removing rewards is not a bad idea, in a decentralized community no one has the authority to censor or remove your posts, so removing monetary rewards is the only viable approach. Does that mean this system will be free of abuse? Of course not, but I trust that in the long term this will balance out for the better
Yeah, at least if everyone has more or less a relative equal amount of power to flag, then a flag from an asshole with lots of SP won't have as much of an impact. That is better indeed.
I agree, they will likely get rid of the exponential voting power that's proportional to your holdings^2
They're retain some degree of positive relationship between holdings vs voting power or steem power will have absolutely no utility value and this would destroy the economy (or at least require a completely new economic model)
After the changes, I'd expect whale flaggings to hurt less or cost more for them etc.
I like how you think, I also agree with what is stated here, just now I made a comment, on the "NEW" Hardfork 18 :( and how there will be no consensus unless there is communication, which we aren't doing properly and no amount of chat can do that, either there is a separate post on all the topics so we can reach one clear outcome or we are going to never agree because half of the changes are flawed to most people, so good luck getting 10k people to agree on a given topic even if it's just 10 changes and some are old news so to speak :)
Original COmment: here
Seems like there will be changes to the "Upvote Lockout" from 1 minute to 12 hours, seems like a dull move, even if there are here, they might roll it back in hard fork 20+ since people would want to vote five thousand times by then :| instagram and all :)
Source post: @ervin-lemark on the hardforks 17/18
Anyways, Welcome!!! I saw your post but didn't read it was too far into the sleepy phase :)
Nice to see you getting on the major issues here :) we had a blast from a starting "steemian" before a few months, @fidelity is his handle :)
Other than that cheers, :D there is a new samurai jack already at episode 3 and StarCraft has been remastared:D
Good luck I hope to hear more from you :)
They can have it.
Where you at? email me at: [email protected]
thanks ;)
:D post on flagging gets flagged for 123 views and 28 comments , by @engagement :) welcome to the you are ruining our good image chain :) be quiet :D whale at work :D
The best thing will be competition from similar platform models. I see some social network block chain type setups in the mix.
Bullshit. There are tons of rules. Explicit, implicit, whatever you want.
The money-for-vote rule is one of strongest there is on the internet for example, because money is power.
You can make a living for people just by adhering to the vote rule, and you say there are no rules here? That rule of power is even stronger then that of employer-employee.
You cannot chat here, and you say there is no no-chat rule on steemit?
Architecture is rules. Just look at the anti-sleeping-homeless banks with their round "armrests" or the space between seats made so that you cannot lie on them. THAT is rule by architecture in perfection.
Same goes for every feature that is included or not included here.
If you cannot see that, you need to open your eyes. And then again.
Nice nit-picking straw-man. Rules of accountability for wrong-doings by "authorities". Sorry, I didn't explicitly state it in such a an obvious way. If you read the post, you will understand that's what I'm talking about. When authority is not accountable for their actions, it doesn't make for a successful model of operation. Go look into why there is police accountability, or political accountability for actions those authorities do.
Edit: I can see other issues that you brought up by assuming things, like centralization of Fccebook, but hat was just an example of how they have measures in place to deal with issues, while Steemit doesn't. I don't advocate for the centralized accountability too much, but a community driven method. I focus on community empowerment of all individuals here. If the power equals out to active community members, then there is no more concentration of power issue and abuses won't be coming from power playing "authorities".
So you want OTHER rules as are in place now. Fine. But don't say there are none.
He's far too "conscious" to talk to people like you. He doesn't understand because he's a pretentious douche who TRULY believes he's always right.
Well said. You've capture many of the concerns I have voiced since July, mainly the lake of community standards and the broken and overreaching flagging mechanism. In a previous comment I suggested that flagging weight should be a factor of reputation and not steempower. Additionally there should be limits to flagging with any flagging abuse putting the person flagging at risk of a drop in reputation. I think that lack of these structures along with the lack of standardized reward limits are the main causes of the poor performance for the past 6 months....(also steemit needs to find a way to monetize all the attention on the site).
Upvoted. Resteemed.
Hey Captain of steemit. You hit the fucking iceberg!
I had a problem with randomness from day 1 here. Somehow you just learn to go with the flow and keep your fingers crossed. At least that is what us minnows can do :/
What if it was designed that way on purpose?
That would be a rule. Didn't you read his post? There are no rules!!!11!! ;)