Perceived Inequity, Churn and a Proposed Solution
After writing my piece titled, An Open Letter to the Steemit Powers that Be (https://steemit.com/steemit/@lpfaust/an-open-letter-to-the-steemit-powers-that-be), I found myself engaging in one of the longest comment threads in my blog so far. The overall sense I got form the conversations I engaged in on both my own blog, and on other threads which were not on my blog, was writers as a whole are concerned the system is not designed in a way to give non-celebrities and minnows a fair shot at being viewed, upvoted and rewarded.
The interesting thing was universally (in my conversations), there was no expectation of guaranteed rewards for writing content. Rather the universal feeling was the way the current system functions favors, and is heavily weighted towards, the established and the celebrity to the exclusion of the newbie.
In the previous blog, I discussed how the 24 hour voting period is creating this problem. In this blog, I will touch upon how the Trending page revealing payouts is amplifying this universal feeling of process inequity and why payout totals should be eliminated.
Inequity and Moral Behavior in Animals (TEDx Talk)
Perceived inequity can manifest some very explosive and reactionary behavior, particularly if it continues without remedy. There was an awesome TEDx Talk by Frans de Wall titled, The Moral Behavior in Animals where part of the exploration revolves around the concept of pay equity.
At the 12:32 mark, Frans de Wall discusses pay inequity and shows an example of two monkeys being rewarded for passing a rock. The gist of the conversation is that one is rewarded with cucumber and another is rewarded with grapes for the same task and within full view of the other monkey.
https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en#
It does not even take one round of reward inequity before the monkey receiving the cucumber throws the cucumber at the research assistant out of frustration and rage over the inequity. The takeaway is that perceived inequality can lead to some very explosive and reactionary behaviors in a very compressed timeframe.
How the Trending Page is Adding to the Minnow Flight
In the previous blog, An Open Letter to the Steemit Powers that Be, I discussed how the voting period and payout period is reducing engagement and encouraging a Ron Popeil economy with bots (set it and forget it). Reduced engagement causes increased churn. The solution offered to resolve this engagement deficit was to reduce the voting and payout period due to the inverse correlation between the two (the shorter the voting period the higher the user engagement, and consequently high user retention).
As we saw in the pay inequity example with the two monkeys, perceived inequity can lead to explosive and reactionary behaviors in a very short order. Two of the most visible reinforcements of the perception of inequality in the mind of the minnow are: (i) the trending board listing the votes and payout totals of the top authors, and (ii) the daily top earners post which, conveniently, is regularly upvoted to the trending list.
I would suggest to the Powers That Be, in light of the fact that a search on Steemit using the term “Payout”, yields 163,000 results (many of which are negative), we are seeing the Moral Behavior of Animals experiment playing out on the platform and the blockchain. I would further suggest in addition to reducing the voting period, at the same time, the payout totals need to be removed from the trending page which greets every user at login and the Daily Payout Leaderboards post be killed. All this is doing is reinforcing the sense of inequity, embittering minnows who feel disenfranchised and speeding up the churn. It’s a self-inflicted wound. The trending page should be about votes, not earnings.
It may even change the dynamic of how whales and dolphins vote simply because they will have only vote totals to base voting on rather than calculating highest possible payout.
Moving Forward
The passion expressed by minnows who are feeling disenfranchised is amazing. Based upon my limited conversations, they truly see and feel how this could be a great platform if it is fixed, but the longer this festers, the faster the churn will grow. More than new features and more celebrities, the minnow churn needs to be addressed immediately.
nice 的
A few random thoughts on some possible changes:
Just some thoughts on how to give more attention to less discovered quality content.
Steem on,
Mike
@etcmike I love these features. The problem I have is even if they are implemented, it does not change how voting periods and reward period are affected. It also would not increase engagement, which is the root of the problem.
I would also add, allow the transferring of STEEM Power from one user to another.
I agree on this point as well, so long as proper controls were in place to prevent sock-puppet accounts for the purpose of abusing this feature. In many ways I think this could level the playing field quickly, allowing rewards from authors to curators and vice versa to create much more diversity in what's trending.
Good post, upvoted, but its not really "morality" in the inequity of the monkeys, it's self interest of valuation on a cucumber vs. a grape.
Morality is more properly about harm done to another. These monkeys are already being treated as slaves in a cage, the one's being immoral are the human master enslavers, who choose to give rewards that are more favorable to the self-interest of the monkeys and create this social conflict between the two slaves.
Remind you of anything in our lives? How we are kept enslaved, and we fight each other, i.e. politics, etc., and the masters keep being masters? LMAO!
Thanks. Peace.
@krnel I agree on the morality vs self interest argument. The "morality" aspect only comes from the title Frans de Wall used for this presentation, which covered a large array of topics, from empathy to equality.
I agree that the dollar amounts and seeing the same names on the trending page day after day is off-putting. There's a ton of great stuff being overlooked, anything more than a day old tends to get little-to-no attention, and this platform's growth will likely take a serious hit if these things remain unchanged. But the vote tally seems like the best approximation of a post's appeal we are likely to get, and I find the daily Payouts Leaderboard Post incredibly useful.