The @abit experiment
Today, like so many of you, I got hit with an @abit flag which drastically reduced the payout of one of my comics.
I'm not mad. After all he invested and should be able to use his stake as he sees fit. Right?
Unfortunate for me though, I depend on my whale trail and if I do not receive their votes then posting on Steemit just doesn't make much sense given the amount of time it takes to create a comic on average. Thus this seems like a very good point in time to take a well-deserved break.
I'll be gone for a week or two, after which I'll check in to see how the experiment is going and I will reassess.
Have fun Steemit!
I honestly don't see the point of this "experiment." We already know how non-whale voting is affected when whales don't vote. We know in theory and in actuality.
The only purpose that this "experiment" could serve is where the non-whale votes are going. However, given the amount of automation - largely due to past rewards history of users and the build-up of their followings - we have a very good approximation of where the bulk of the votes will go. And unless the "experiment" is run on a test platform that excludes/mitigates such voting, there's no way to accurately gauge active user interests.
There are several other issues with this "experiment" that will skew any results, including the fact that the "counter" voting is completely arbitrary - regarding both the weight of the votes and the accounts being voted on.
So, what we're left with is: GIGO.
The only thing we'll know for sure about this "experiment" is that many users will be upset about the arbitrary flagging. But we already knew about this as well.
There are many people in the community that feel strongly that the current distribution of stake is preventing the platform from scaling to billions of users. There is pretty much no incentive for a 'regular user' to buy SP, because even a relatively large investment of a few thousand dollars does not provide practically any influence. Figuring out a way to make the platform more appealing to 'regular users' to invest is really a key issue that needs to be solved if we all want our stake to grow in value.
The million dollar question is how do you achieve this in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders, and does not open the doors to abuse. Here is a post with some thoughts on the subject:
https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/whales-can-the-community-buy-out-a-portion-of-your-influence
The initiative that @abit is doing is an agreement with many of the whales to not vote for a period, as an experiment to see what happens when the dolphins+minnows get more influence. It is an experiment. It is not the solution to the problem.
If the experiment helps the community to reach a consensus on what that solution is though, then it will be doing everyone a great service. We need to figure this out / get this right in order for the platform to scale.
This is a poor rationalization for a bad "experiment." See my comment on this post for a more complete rebuttal to this "experiment."
I hate when I agree with you and @timcliff at the same time. seems logically impossible... gosh, it is me that need to see a doctor...
"Sir, you are diagnosed to have the Steemit syndrome. We are really sorry, but you need to get out of the beta phase fast or your account is in danger"
But if whales agreed to not vote why is @abit downvoting? And if only a part of the whales agreed, then the experiment has no practical value because the conclussions would not be valid.
apparently we need more information to come to a more sensible conclusion.
Absolutely Agree.
And Again, absolutely agree. Since I cannot refer to a previous comment I made to another post, I copy my comment here as well since I think it is relevant (original post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@ebryans/steemit-suggestions-and-rationale-i-hope-that-this-will-make-people-think-their-own-thoughts#@edje/re-ebryans-steemit-suggestions-and-rationale-i-hope-that-this-will-make-people-think-their-own-thoughts-20170319t170648880z):
Copied Comment
I bookmarked this one as per your suggestion @ebryans, and today found time to actually read.
I agree with many of the basics, you articulated in your post, of what Steemit shall be about. If it is a money thing, than it will fail. The funds made available each day will not pay for the hours spend on creating appealing content, for sure not when we will have 100s of thousands to millions of active bloggers.
Steemit shall be something else indeed!
Regarding your suggestions what and how to change things, I have not an opinion since I cannot foresee the consequences of it. On top of your ideas, I can throw many other ideas how to actually generate more funds, wether that be through Steem value increase against FIAT currencies, or the ability to generate more Steem every day, or a combination of both.
I actually think that we (while we are still in beta) will have to test quite a few different models. Those models that we can test by procedure, lets agree and execute those ASAP. Those that require code changes, lets list them and priorities for development.
We need a better way of bringing the various ideas of our community members together. We need a better way to inform the community on what is technical possible, and what is not (today) and what the consequences are when changing the models and code.
For instance: to allow only 1 individual to have 1 account, somehow the real identity of the individual is required to be mapped to the Steemit virtual identity. Although @timcliff and @abit generally state this is not possible (they are right in the sense that how Steemit/Steem is developed today it cannot be done), I think it is possible, whether that be something build internal into Steemit/Steem, or use some external 3rd party company/service for the identity establishment and verifications. The consequence is that we cannot be 100% anonymous anymore, or at least not in the chain, meaning we can still be anonymous here on Steemit, but somewhere there is a mapping between virtual identities and real identities. Knowing that, we first need to agree as a community if we find such consequence acceptable and secondly if we find such consequence more or less important to an one account per one individual requirement. Maybe we don't need this to make Steemit a success, may we do need it to not allow Steemit to die; Who knows at this stage? Fact for me is: We need structured idea exchange; We need solid discussions on how to progress Steemit; We need to find models and solutions to test; We need to agree on what we test; We need to agree on what to implement etc. Hence we need a less chaotic way of communication through numerous posts and comments here on Steemit now (some posts and comments are read, some others are not because thse users are not visible); We need a more structured approach supported by tools here on Steemit (or outside Steemit, but I prefer within Steemit) which requires (some) UI (and maybe some backend) development. Unfortunately I'm not technical enough to really understand the work and time required, but I'm technical enough to understand when some engineer explains me.
I'll be more than happy to contribute to such more structured way of evolving Steemit.
Pretty much agree with everything you say.
Regarding the 'single account' proposal - it is possible to do it on a site like Steemit.com or Busy.org, but not at the blockchain level. The blockchain is where the rewards are determined, so it would not really solve the problem.
Regarding the communication - the consensus is that the best place for these conversations to happen is on the platform itself. It gives everyone the ability to weigh in, and there is a record of it. There are also a lot of conversations 'behind the scenes' between members of the dev team, witnesses, and other members once things bubble up to having consensus across the community. A good example of how this has played out is if you look at the discussion to change the n^2 rewards curve. This started out with a few people throwing the idea out there in chat and posts. Eventually more people got behind it, and now it is being considered as an actual change.
There are obviously improvements that can be made to streamline things and make it less confusing. Hopefully as we continue to head out of beta and closer and closer to a non-beta platform, things like this will get ironed out.
Communication: I agree we shall have it here. However, I do propose to create a 'special corner' in Steemit, a place maybe a crossing between a forum, noticeboard and wiki. This place will provide a more structured way of communication and discussions. Things doesn't need to be explained many times, as it is done now. We shall also be able to refer to earlier comments. I basically propose to 1) better structured approach in discussion and finding solutions 2) voting mechanism to vote for solutions to go for 3) information board (eg to announce the whale experiment; now we've seen many many posts with lots of confused members, and we spend so much time creating those posts, while if we had a good noticeboard, a lot of the build up frustrations and time spend could have prevented) 3) technology to support the before (guess this is more or less UI design).
Anonymity: Is there really not solution that can be thought of? Even on blockchain level, or around it that will solve the one account per individual? I always think to believe every problem has it solution. In my life I questioned many times people when making statement "this cannot be done" and most of the time we could find solutions. Having a history of product management of complex IT/Telecom solutions, I brainstormed a lot with software architects and engineers with the goal to find solution to 'unsolvable' problems; With success :)
But doable? When so, that is all what we need to know at this point in time. Shelf the idea to actually create it, but include this idea in our discussions. We shall not make statements that it is not possible, but it has implications and requires a big engineering project. Otherwise roadblocks are put up for now reason, especially for those people who are non-technical at all. Maybe we really really need it, maybe we do not need it at all. First we need to test more models; Well first we need to see the effect of HF17, then we can test more models by procedure (as much as possible). In the mean time create the tools for more structural discussions (and that requires some development time for sure) and through those discussions, define the models we want/need to test.
Theoretically possible and practically solvable are two different things. I am not an expert in this area, so I could be wrong - but I don't believe it has been solved by anybody yet.
Put it this way.. I'm pretty sure that if you were to form a team of people that could actually do this, and build a crypto-currency around it, you would probably make several million (if not even billion) dollars. Again, I am not an expert on this - so I am not 100% sure, but that is my understanding.
hahahaha, ok lets find the engineers who know al the ins and outs.
I am neutral on the experiment, but in the absence of supporting data, this is absurd.
My son and I have recruited 10 or 12 people to the platform. None (so far) have sustained activity, and none care about the rewards distribution. The concerns expressed have been about usability and intimidation (i.e not knowing what to write about).
That is good news! I am happy to hear that new users are joining aren't finding major issues with the platform. That's a big change from where we were 6-9 months ago.
Getting users to actually invest SP though is still a very big hurdle. Would any of them consider actually putting money into the platform? If the answer is 'no', I'd be curious to know why.
I have no idea. It's not something that I ask people. I guess probably not, since they haven't even become active users (yet?). The whole point of linking social media with the block chain is so that people can buy into steem with their time instead of money, so I don't expect most new steemit users to buy SP any more than I expect most new Facebook users to buy advertising or shares in Facebook.
Sure, understood. I was merely asking the question because the stake problem that the experiment is aimed at is targeted at the problem of bringing in new investment. There are very few people who want to buy stake in the platform right now, because "what's the point". More investment is needed in order to pay for the rewards that drive the platform.
If nothing else, I think the experiment will be interesting. Not sure how useful though, without seeing the design. I am a little concerned that it has an ad-hoc feel to it.
As to, "what's the point," to a large extent, I think investment will follow eyeballs and eyeballs will follow usability. Also, more users would reduce liquidity, which would also drive up prices. IMHO, If investors don't see a point, it's probably because the UI isn't drawing in eyeballs.
Anyway, I am curious to watch the experiment play out.
taking out 25 SBD from post for which "evil whale" gave 5-10 that abit counters doesnt seem right to me. the whale i dont like gave you 10 SBD so i will take you out 50 for this.
Nobody is using the term evil whale. The goal is for all the whales to stop voting, so that the experiment can 'play out'.
i used it in quote. just keep eye on part me saying - whale B gives 5 SBD, whale abit takes out 20 SBD. -15 SBD on this "counter"
OMG are you still pushing that.
ANyway, i think this is a good idea generally, but the experiment is pretty pointless. As atsd pointed out, we pretty much know whats going to happen.
As I understood it, @abit's experiment was to see how payouts would work if whales couldn't upvote... sorry you got hit with it (I've been hit with "odd" downvotes, too), because that can suck... on the other hand, without running functional experiments, it's hard to tell whether a new algorithm is workable.
In any case, look forward to the return of your comics!
i hate to see when a flag discourages someone and makes them want to leave or take a break from steemit :( sorry it happened to you!
et tu brian? Seriously dude, you have way more sense than this. Especially after you got a significant payout for a no-effort picture of fake latte art (though it was hilarious).
NTM that even after the flag, given the current steem price, you got a payout in line with your typical post... the only reason it wsa inflated to begin with was the whale vote embargo gave tombstones vote extra weight that it normally would not have had.
What you don't seem to get is that if you don't get whale votes and also no one else gets them then the votes you do get will be worth more.
Food for thought imo
If no whales vote, this could be a great thing, but as long as whales continue upvoting causing other whales to downvote without a strict measurement of balance, it's not going to work. i.e. yesterday was the worst a post of mine has done in ages. And the past couple of weeks I've been almost solely relying on the full votes I get from donkeypong and a couple of others at his level, who are actually reading and enjoying my stuff. Now that he's not allowed to vote at more than a fraction, and the others are continuing to upvote causing retaliation, it's only hurting me. So far. I'm giving it one more day to see how it goes, to see if my other readers votes do in fact increase, if not I'll be holding my chapters back until they sort this out. I'll figure out something to post, it just won't be what I put a lot of time and energy into. Or more precisely, what I put a lot of heart and passion into.
I was kidding about the flagging. Sorry. Some of my comments got flagged. What the bleep
I agree that this totally sucks and I am sorry that you got caught in the experiment but going away for a couple of weeks isn't going to help you develop your community. I am hoping that the experiment doesn't last very long and I hate that they didn't ask for volunteers or warn our content creators (that I'm aware of). All I can say is: a hiatus is always a good thing if you need the break. Don't do it because of an experiment done badly. You'll be missed -- but I'm hoping you reconsider. I CARE
Noooooooo! Not you, too!
asshole is back and seraph is fighting :) we have to save the world, .. of Steemcraft
Asshole can kiss my asshole, he doesn't bother me. Lol
You are still lucky because you have the whales vote. Me, after the steem guild stop voting, my post could not reach a dollar. Well, I guess that's life. :)
I am sorry you got caught up in that. See you in a couple of weeks.