Thinking Out The Box: Curation Rewards
Lately, I have been reading a lot about curation rewards. There have been many fine technical solutions proposed. Changing the n something to a cube something and all sorts of tosh magnificent suggestions.
I do not wish to denigrate these fine ideas. After all, it is one of Steemits greatest successes that we can all get together and pitch in an idea if we have one.
Well I have one.
What?!?! That's right. Remove them. Get rid of them. Now, before you grab that fiery pitchfork and start preparing the pyre I will explain, so please read on. It won't take long. And also, at least at the end of it, you won't have made a baby. Which can be a shocking side effect of those words.
Firstly what is important is to assess the problem. What I have often read and tend to agree with is.
I get why we have them. It's a noble idea in fact. Incentivising people to search out and discover good content. Buy it just doesn't happen on a grand scale. One of the most common complaints we hear is that good content gets passed up.
I think it is true. There is little in the way of true manual curation. There are however some absolutely amazing initiatives set up to find and reward undervalued users.
These are magnificent. In an ideal world their posts would be found and voted on without their having to be groups set up to find them but sadly it isn't really happening.
So we get rid of curation rewards. These groups can still function. Just think, the deserving author also gets to keep all of their lovely rewards.... Hurrah!
Without Curation rewards would you get clusters of auto voters descending on the same posts? Well, you would still get that. It might not be so bad though because there are bots and people which vote for popular authors for the curation rewards and the curation rewards alone.
It's important to realise that Bots/People voting for the curation rewards aren't really voting for the author of a post at all. They are just chasing the money.
Another thing. I think it might be popular to get rid of them. When was the last time you heard a minnow bleat about curation rewards? Nah, doesn't happen. It wouldn't be missed by large swathes of the user base I am sure.
What about the incentive to look out for cool and funky new content?
Well, it happens on every other social network and people don't have to be paid for it. People/posts still get found and liked. It can be quite the organic thing.
Other people have suggested quite enthusiastically changing the reward structure from 75% authors 25% Curators to a 50/50 model. The way it was back in the day.
That won't work though. It will just make the problem worse.
So what is wrong with going the other way. 100% goes to the author for all their hard work!
I know, wild and crazy times. What am I on? Lack of sleep probably. But thats another tale.
The thing is, curation rewards are broken and I don't think that tinkering with what currently happens will work. We have to think outside the box.
So why not get rid of them? Might it stop the ganging up of auto voters in that first thirty minutes all seeking to get a big piece of the pie? It might, it might do lots of things.
We are in beta. Now is the time to try. To be bold.
Please note that this is not to be confused with the issues of auto voters or voting abuse.
This is simply a suggestion being thrown out into the wind for the ravening hordes to rend with their bared teeth.
Whatcha think? I am more than open to suggestions, being shot down in flames. Remember though, just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it can't. I will say it again. We are in beta. We should not be afraid to change things up.
Hey could you please tell me why this will make things worse?
In my opinion this 50/50 option will make abuse of the reward pool less likely be cause it gives people more reason to upvote others.
There is a problem right now with curation and votes being thrown at popular authors instead of new talent or lesser known people who have been here longer. The problem is essentially that curators look for the highest return possible. So they don't go looking for new authors in the main. They look at who is successful and pile on before our round the fifteen minute mark to get a share of the pie.
Why vote on someone who could potentially get a good reward when you can vote on someone who is guaranteed to romp in a hundred dollars a post kind of thing.
I used to be a huge fan of curation. I just don't think that currently it works and think that making it more profitable in its current form will only make it worse. But hey, that's just my opinion. I mean, I used to eat chillis for lolz :0D
I just still believe most people want to give as much as they want to take. To do this now means one has to selfvote about 5 times a day to achieve 50/50 split in rewards... holding
Steem has to have meaning, I mean why holding Steem if it gives us no reward?
Btw in 6 months it happend only once that my curation reward on a post was higher than 25% of my upvote. So I guess if 'they' just want the best return out there they don't vote for others at all...
For lolz, holy moly, I cant handle even 1 tiny bit, you're the man! ;-)
I think it would still have meaning as the amount of SP you hold directly affects how much you can reward others and of course how much your own self vote is worth. Your reward would be right there :0)
Either I am the man or just plain stupid lolz!
I actually think there should be some reward related to curation mate and I know there are a few great curators out there who take a lot of time to read and comment, some more so than those who post regularly and I think if the posting is being rewarded then so should the curation side of things, though I would much prefer to see manual curation rather than the plethera of voting bots and trails we have at the moment. You are far more experienced (auld yin) and have a better knowledge of the workings of the platform which I am happy to bow to and happy to try anything that could potentially fix the broken system (self governing no less) that we have now. :)
Auld yin ;0) up ye :0p
I think the idea behind being rewarded for curating is great. I remember when I joined thinking this is awesome, not only do I get paid (potentially) to post, I get paid to curate!
Some people really do curate well. They probably don't get rewarded enough for it. It was while I was thinking on it I just thought ah fuck it, if it is causing trouble just get rid of it.
Perhaps there could still be great manual curators attached to groups that paid them via post earnings or something? I just think it's got to change. But hey, I appreciate your input Mr T!!
Cheers mate and I appreciate your attempt to foster conversation and change because you're definitely right, something has to. I commented a little while ago that the users of steemit will by default, follow the actions of those that are seen to be in leadership positions (most of whom are seen as those who have the most SP) and so it is important for those in these positions to set a good example. Hopefully in this way things can change for the better. If we have the right leaders. :)
They do do that don't they. I have noticed the same thing. I think it is good to get chatting about stuff as well because if none does then come the next hard fork everyone will be like wtf, where did this come from!! Not my idea but something else if you get me!
I absolutely agree that 50/50 will not work. It will only make the commercial bots situation worse. They will operate at lower levels, but they will be even more present.
No matter what matrix is applied, there will always be a sweet spot and they will it. To penalize those who actually fill the pages, day after day, somehow doesn’t sit right.
I, actually, like the idea of doing away with them. Then again, I also like the 30 minutes and the reverse auction.
IMHO, I still think our solution is to evolve to a dual citizenship model. In which apps de facto get to benefit a lower maximum share than users. Because bot operators will always look for the weak spot. Just ask Google, who have invested hundreds of millions in curating. And still get gamed every day because SEO is still a viable business.
If you can come up with a good way to implement this I'd be interested to hear it. Here's the best I could come up with (from a previous post on the subject):
I'm not trying to strawman here but really these are the best I can come up with.
My biggest issue is not necessarily the how but what to do when an app doesn’t identify as such. For native advertising it isn’t that big a problem. Then again greed can incite all possible wrongs.
I think it wouldn’t be too big a problem to develop SteemConnect as the auth layer for the blockchain. This can be fully decentralised and apps can target their own nodes or just happen via a default auth.steem.io.
The question is what next. Once the instance is in place we could operate even without any API while still count access requests and determine based on daily usage.
But this being open source, who defines what is commercial and what is pro bono. And what ramification options are available when apps identify (maliciously) wrongly as pro bono app. Also who decides over the ramifications?
Blockchain explorer and all similar tools would be pro bono apps as such. Commercial upvote bots are easy to identify as well. But what with voting trails? How will we determine whether a user uses them for profit or just out of laziness? Cap the number of daily uses and charge the used app beyond that number for each user?
I predict revolutions and forks, by witnesses, long before any HF with such dual citizenship happens. I think Steem Inc may even be easiest party to get on board.
Yea maybe we have to create this ourselves. But the how is the first step. It's not worth considering unless there's a how. Figure the how out and the what will follow.
I used to love the reverse auction thing. If they could make it even more clever with just a few more enhancements to discourage blind pile on voting that would be excellent
What was the reverse auction thing?
Hey, @meesterboom,
It's good to see a radically new and different idea put forth... Kudos!
😄😇😄
Cheers mate! I saw lots of stuff talking about various thinks which just tinkered with what is there and thought. Why bother, throw them away!
Booooooooohhhh 👎👎👎👎👎 lolol i just got into curie, dammit. 😾
Oooos i meant to reply to the main post lolol
:0p
Hehe, there would still be a place for curie!! Someone would still have to find good posts!
Excepti dont get a cut and altho i love digging fir gold its hard work. Sometimes i find good writers and convince them to change a little n it has paid off a couple times
"Curation" is truly a promotion thing. Much better than playing bidbots , you find ppl that will appreciate your work. Its not easy to get curied. But the big payouts provide curators some small incentives to keep digging.
I think curation itself is awesome. I also think it would happen if there were no curation rewards too. :0)
Most of us don't get any appreciable curation rewards anyway, only the big wallets do. Yet we curate.
We do indeed and works no doubt carry on as normal
This. Curation is an integral part of the Internet and has always existed.
From Usenet servers where one could actually follow and find, via the directories, to nowadays Google and (ugh) Facebook.
That is not to forget the Kottkes, Waxys, Daring Fireballs, Drudge Reports, Bleacher Reports, Boing Boings of the Internet.
Bonus: good curators have always found audiences, followers and generally financially fared really well. Yes, often by means of advertising but those were the known and obvious models.
It's true, it is a vital part of every other major site and they often do do well.
well people would upvote things and authors would have to pimp their stuff harder--- the thing is that groups like curie work in part because there are curation rewards. there are many curators out there right now digging for stuff that curie group will agree to support. THe problem right now isnt curation rewards. Its just another talking point in service to the questions of quality and rewards. THESE PEOPLE that question curation rewards are people that have bid bots. As has been said. minnows upvote stuff even though it makes them nothing and doesnt make the author anything either. THE biggest problem is the gap between dolphins and whales IMO, I have yet to seen anyone with an economics degree AND also a vast understanding of PR .
we have all these specialists in their islands shouting. But the truth is that no one really knows what will make steemit go viral. I mean actually you should watch this https://steemit.com/steemit/@sirlunchthehost/the-crypto-struggle-showcast-presents-talking-with-techslut-we-discuss-flags-steemit-and-surviving-the-ecosystem-exclusive-video
I will have a look. The thing is though that this is not about making steemit go viral. It will or it won't. I have great hopes that it will take off and be successful even more so than it is just now.
I question curation rewards because I have seen quite a few posts about them recently. They have never been a consideration for me. I suspect that it is the case for a lot of other people too.
Groups like curie could still carry on, there are many ways for funding community initiatives. I don't have a problem with curators getting paid. Nor actually a huge problem with curation rewards.
But when there is a problem I like to offer a solution that others have not thought of. It's the magic of community :0)
However removing the curation rewards would do more bad than good things.
Not everyone have the talent/skills to write high quality blog post and the earnings of our posts are depending on the people, who upvote the posts.
And the amount of each upvote is able to give is depending on how much Steem Power the user have.
The curation rewards gives Steem Power to the accounts, who vote on posts/comments and the more Steem Power we have, the more we are able to give in a single upvote.
So the curation rewards are helping the whole community in the long run.
It would certainly keep things a lot simpler and easier to explain to people starting out on Steemit. Keeping 100% of your own rewards for your own hard work. There is definitely something in that.
I thought the same. Keeping it simple is never a bad thing. And some suggestions to give more to curation rewards just made me think how will that solve anything??
Pitching steemit will be way easier..but then we don't include curation nyways.
Yeah, I usually leave out the curation rewards when I talk about Steemit. Makes it even more complicated, next to explaining how not all votes are equal :-)
Nah..we don't go that far! Their interest usually stays where there are earnings if theyre quality posts..explaining how to make quality posts is much better😃
Very true!
Yep..stick to that unless it's a day talk lolsss
It would be one less thing to explain for sure. The times I have seen eyes glaze over when saying, well no, your rewards is actually 75% of what a post makes and half of that is in SBD and half in steem... Etc etc...
we don't even go that far ahead with Steemit Philippines. We just emphasized that there is a platform that pays for quality posts that get voted when liked, compared to other social medias.
Explaining SP is even harder..no one can't imagine having stocks when uploading selfies😅
Haha, I started keeping it to a minimum as well. It works best. Steem power is definitely a tricky one for newbs!!
My friends lost interest so i've learnt not to mention it. Haggis!!!!
Never mention the haggis. That way lies madness!
Even Mel Gibson liked it..and he got worst🤣
Not necessarily. Or to be more precise: Not at all. You can choose "Power Up 100%".
If you choose that, you obviously get all the rewards in Steem Power.
In the case of the Default setting (50% / 50%), you get half of the rewards in Steem Dollars (SBD) and Steem Power (SP). So you actually don't get Steem, but Steem Power.
Steem Power and Steem is two different things, yet still the same. I mean you can convert Steem Power to Steem in 1:1, but that's takes time. You can also convert Steem to Steem power in 1:1 ratio and that's instant.
If you like to convert Steem Power to Steem, you need to do a power down. A Power Down is currently takes 13 weeks. You choose how much Steem Power would you like to convert to Steem and according to the FAQ, you will receive equal distributions of the STEEM weekly, over a 13 week period.
So the things is currently even more complicated than your explanation.
Hehe, yes. That is correct and well done for explaining how it all works. Try explaining that to someone about to join.
The bit you quoted from was me imagining a conversation, not really starting exactly the way it worked :0)
I feel that is the complete opposite of a solution. Self voting is already the most profitable use of investment in the platform and that is what I feel is the core problem we are up against. I am of the mindset that we need to make curation the profitable reason to invest in the platform and there is no way to get rid of self voting. Make a second account and still vote for your own comments etc would be the response. We need business minded people making logical investment sense of why it pays to invest in and use the platform. New users are not really given incentive to care about long term growth in the platform right now because curating has been the backseat issue for over a year. Curation rewards are a joke. I regularly curate posts that get hit by Curie upvotes later and they may make .02-.04 SP. Think about that in a larger scale investment perspective. What is the point of having a million dollars invested in STEEM to give someone 75% of my stake reward and take 25% of it for myself. It's like saying not only do you have to invest in STEEM, but you have to give away most of your investment. The other solution is you can just vote for yourself and get 100% of the reward. I really think making curation profitable and competitive is the solution to getting both investment and actual active users on the platform.
I think you make good points but ultimately I disagree. Self voting is an issue which cannot be gotten around that is true. If you banned it people would find a way to vote for themselves probably by the sock puppet/alt account route as you say.
But i don't think we are going to see users flock to steemit because they can earn by curating. Originally when I joined it was 50/50 rewards which should have meant way more curation to individuals but it was virtually nothing. It was pushed quite hard at the time as this being a killer feature. But what became of it, nada.
Partly because what you say is true, curation rewards are crap. I just think sometimes you have to go full on mad turkey out of the box and if something is broken not just try and tweak what is there. Hence my, get it gone approach. :0)
I think we need to make it even more profitable for authors. That is my solution :0)
I'm all for active discussion and looking for new solutions. I often have a lot of those "just throw it the fuck out and try something different" ideas from time to time. I'm not opposed to what you suggest from an author standpoint, but I still feel like the issue is it offers no incentive for people to vote for each other. Say we reversed your idea and did zero reward to authors, would you still bother creating content, or would you just go around voting on others? I think balance is imperative, but asking either side to give seems to be a relentless bickering argument. I still think if we do simple math and consider that most of the content creators aren't the ones investing and holding 250,000-millions of STEEM, it's only logical that at least half of that vote payout should be going to the person taking the financial risk. I say this as both a content creator and a curator, I fully recognize that I don't hold all of that risk by having that much STEEM and feel it's fair to earn profit on an investment. On a personal level, I love the idea of a gift economy and charity, but expecting business people to shoot themselves in the foot to give other people money is illogical.
See, the whole, it offers no incentive for people to vote is the bit I mean particularly. There are loads of other social media or even just big sites in which people vote/like/comment/review all for the princely sum of nothing. Not a bean. They do it for nothing. I think that is what would happen here too.
The curation model doesn't work for that vast majority of the users of the platform.
Why should it be kept or levered even further in the direction of the big fish?
Often people will invest in crypto for the sake of the currency speculation itself. Heck some of them might be philanthropical about it and just love to vote up undiscovered content :0)
And as for posting if I didn't get paid for it. I probably would, I love writing. I stuck with it back in the days of hardfork 18 where most posts made single figure cents.
I don't know if we will see big investors come to steemit for the curation rewards. I don't even think that we need them. Eventually if successful they will come and invest because they have to. Or a horde of smaller investors who create content will invest. Ultimately there can be a demand for steem without giant investors coming in. I don't even think there are that many here just now. There are certainly people with huge amounts of so but a lot of the ones that bought it left when steem sunk to sub twenty cents.
I agree with most of this. I think it's just interesting seeing the issues that come from monetizing a social platform like this. It's like adding money into the mix adds different motives and objectives for many different people. I'm right there with you about writing through the very unprofitable times, hell I remember writing when STEEM was .09 cents and I'm sure you do too. I feel like either solution could work ultimately, but for this to be a cryptocurrency and not just another social media platform, we have to figure out the logistics of where the tokens come from and what the point is, because right now even if the platform succeeds, we have to fix the financial side of things too. I don't have all of the answers and I appreciate your perspective on this as well. Good food for thought.
I very much appreciate your perspective. I like to chew the fat over this shit as they say in Ireland.
It is a difficult issue. There is probably a solution there somewhere or at least something to try. Perhaps not even keep them or lose them but something else. I hope that they dont just tinker with what we have and do something else instead. Something left field even :O)
I agree the financial side of things needs to be fixed. What if the reward mechanism is abandoned completely; for voters and for posts? If this results in the end of blogging type of services, so what? Steem is a crypto currency and does not require a difficult reward allocation designed for Steemit and Busy like blogging anf UIs. Since we let everybody develop into the Steem blockchain and everybody can use the reward mechanism, the reward side of things is by default an issue. Zappl posts are regarded by some as always to be sh*t posts because het contains only a couple of words + optional image + optional URL. Others love them. I posted earlier about the fact Zappl should not been integrated with Steem blockchain in the way it did; ie sharing the reward mechanism with Steemit, and SteepShot. By nature these are total different services and should have had their own blockchain + reward mechanism.But that said, we will have to face so many issues due to the reward mechanism, my proposal is to discuss the fact to remove the reward mechanisms to authors and curators altogether.
And yeh, I started with Steemit when Steem was a few cents, and dropped to something like 5ct, I never stopped reading, posting; Curating. But so many others did, because the rewards were not good; And then they returned when Steem got back some of its initial value. Money s*ckers, including those who quit and came back with big wallets and lots of SP and lots of Reputation. We can do without them!
I'd upvote both of you even without any curation reward!!
Hehe, splendid!!
To be honest, self-voting is overblown an issue. It’s the easiest to get rid off.
Creating a second account isn’t that easy as it sounds like. The second account still needs SP. oh hey, I have an account I now use for curation, i.e. to write about great reads and all SP it makes I delegate to my main. So I can reward those I upvote better.
Outlaw self-voting (with code) and if people want to create and use alt accounts for it, it means more SP in circulation. Unless, of course, they will dilute themselves.
It is easy for those with masses of SP though. They just farm out a big portion of it. For them the issue is getting the votes back and if self voting were not allowed then they would probably farm their sp out somewhere else or even worse just start voting someone that wasnt them but actually was
Agreed with that. There’s some things we will never be able to fully eradicate (should we), even less so in a world of a blockchain since one can easily interact directly with the blockchain.
But if defined by Governance as not welcome, the whole ethics around it would change.
I admit I have not looked yet in to how often do (big) whales statistically write. I’m not convinced that an investor would come here and focus on curation to make their money back. That just seems like a waste of time, and an absolutely poor ROI, to me.
Delegation is most definitely a much sweeter business model. Spreading the wealth and delegating to new, positive projects on Steem even more so. Because, eventually, the depth of the Steem ecosystem will define whether Steem goes up or flatlines. Not just the blogging which is right now the most prevalent activity. I think that’s way too shortsighted a focus. Content isn’t worth THAT much.
Just ask Ev Williams (blogger/blogspot, twitter, and medium founder).
I completely agree. For an investor there are ways to maximise their return which do not involve interaction with steemit themselves. Steem is a currency. There can be other ways which should be looked at. There are a few curators out there who do incredibly well. But it is not the norm and involves a lot of work I think
Looking at a more traditional form of curation, a pre-likes/RTs/Digg/Reddit/Web2.0 form of curation, it is a full-time job.
Most high profile creators like Jason Kottke, John Gruber, the Boing Boing crew, Drudge Report started with curation on the side until popular.
Many of those still run multiple projects, or jobs as such, actually despite publicly known revenue for their sites being generally awesome.
Given that on Steem it is more difficult even, although more and more have their own submission process but that also comes with lots of noise, it surely is a lot of work.
I am a curator in that older spirit/sense btw. Apologies for the shameless plug.
I don't mind a shameless plug, it's obvious from reading your comments that you are not a link drop and away kind of person :0)
As long as a fair percentage of the big wallets want to optimise their curation rewards and tune their algorithms to that end, you can fiddle with the percentages until the cows come home and bend the reward curve into a bow tie, but nothing will change. They will just adjust their, um, doings accordingly and carry on.
It would be interesting to see how the reward pool gets distributed by those who curate without looking at curation rewards. Maybe we can finally develop a "middle class" instead of increasingly concentrating Steemses at the top.
A side effect could be that those who vote for profit only will no longer see a reason to keep large amounts of Steem and will sell, pushing Steem price down. That could well be temporary as Steemit becomes a much nicer place to be. Those staying in will maybe pursue their perceived entitlement of ROI by voting within their Mutual Masturbation Societies, but they already do, and that is more easily detected than all the scheming in the background that is going on now.
Let's try it.
Hear hear! I think it would be fascinating to try something and not get in a lather about what the big whales think of it all!
One of the problems being that witness voting is also stake-based and having no curation rewards would upset quite a few , um, business models favoured by some witnesses and big walleted people.
Not that I wouldn't greatly enjoy seeing that play out, of course.
2 posts in a day, that is unheard of ! :P
Well while you have a valid suggestion, I still think from my perspective being promised a share of the pie, no matter how small that is, would better incentivize people to vote on posts.
The big whales reap rewards from their upvotes, hopefully for great quality post curation, that is a good incentive. Doing good and getting rewarded for it.
Even more importantly, I've seen a lot of curation teams rely on curation rewards to sustain themselves, so it would be denying those people the outcome they get from such curation effort.
Just my two cents :)
I love two cents!
Yeah, two posts in a day, I am on maximum overdrive ;0)
There is definitely something to be said for it existing. But in its current form I don't know. Could defo do with some shaking up. There are always alternate streams of income that could be sourced for curation teams. I am not above the idea that a portion of rewards should be set aside for curation. But not in the hotchpotch way that they are now :0D maybe the solution is to better think how can they be apportioned?
Yea i hear you, Steemit definitely could benefit from fresh ideas and improvements here and there !
Adjusting proportions could be a valid idea too. Maybe a 10% share would be better aligned instead of 25%, or some similar thoughts along the line...
I agree. I think they should get rid of curation rewards. It would be good to see how it truly affects us in a live environment. Give them time to review and see how the community reacts. And if everyone hates it, then work on fixing the n into a cube during a future fork.
Those are exactly my thoughts. It could be a disaster but it could be something amazing. Something that forces a behaviour change and is it is a disaster, will, fork it out toot sweet!
Then go all n into cube :0D
I think I'm going to have to resteem this one! I love the idea. I know it won't solve all of the automatic voting, but it would solve it just a bit. It's like you say, plenty of people/bots just follow the curation rewards.
I also agree that it might be a popular solution. Most people indeed wouldn't care much, because they don't earn a lot of curation rewards anyway.
Whatever happens, we definitely don't need higher curation rewards and lower post rewards. Oh my gosh, what kind of lazy, greedy bastard would suggest that idea?
Haha, glad you picked up on that. I completely agree that the solution is most definitely not to increase curation rewards. Add it stands now it is not curation but instead is a race to vote!