The Experiment: communication required, this is a social platform
Hello Steemit,
It seems like a group of whales have gathered together and decided to perform an experiment on Steemit.
The experiment is basically this: What would happen if whales stopped voting?
I will say that this is a fascinating experiment. So far I've seen that my vote has gone from 2 cents to 5 cents, and that's kind of cool. It might even go up more if the experiment continues to run for a day or so. I could have...dare I say..10 cents vote?
I'm certainly a fan of experiments, but I have a problem with this one:
Lack of communication
Why oh why couldn't these mighty whales have gotten together and written a post explaining the experiment? Why it's being done, how long it's going to last, etc. Another big problem, that since not all the whales have stopped upvoting, some of the remaining whales must down vote those posts to help make the experiment work. More communication might have mitigated this.
And of course, since now many good posts are being downvoted for apparently no good reason (because again, the reason wasn't communicated) this is going to cause much confusion and strife from many users who won't understand what's going on.
I think a problem is that most of the whales and witness are really awesome at software and math and generally being brainy, but not as good at the touchy-feelings, soft squishy side of things
We have a lot of this:
(pic from www.bestcollegesonline.com)
Need more of this:
(pic from Popular Mechanics)
I'm with you. This would have been an excellent experiment if conducted correctly and with people being notified.
This is going horribly wrong though. They are downvoting posts way more than the upvotes they have received, corrupting the results... And the timing is just fucked. Tomorrow payouts switch to 7 day cycles, so why would they do something like this without telling anyone on the last day that people have an opportunity to earn a little liquidity.
My post was trending, and probably would have been top two or three if I hadn't received four downvotes as part of this experiment. I see the cryptofiend lost $50 dollars on their post, that was published nearly a day before the experiment apparently began. I'm wondering how many others had their successful posts murdered because they were good enough to receive a whale vote that had to be counteracted by far more whale downvotes..
There's no point doing such an experiment if everyone is not on board, and clearly, there was not enough effort taken to get everyone on board or we would have known about it in advance. So this experiment is both useless and inconsiderate. I'm rather disappointed because it is being done by a couple of the whales who I was under the impression actually gave a shit about this platform.
Wow. you understand omg it makes me so happy you understand basic science unlike the people running this experiment!
They didn't even conduct it correctly! This was throwing spaghetti on the wall.
Exactly. And it's a shame, because had the experiment been conducted under the correct conditions, with more than 11 seconds of planning, we may have learned some very important information.
With this approach, the only reliable information I can draw from this experiment is that whale influence has grown to an arrogant level of feeling entitled enough to run experiments on a whim that affect the entire community, without the community's consent or even their knowledge.
Let them downvote my full whale power. You deserve this for having a brain. How many more of us exist here? Are we alone or is their a small army of people who actually understand this concept?
Sorry for the uncharacteristic frustration. Hubris bothers me but unchecked hubris wity no justification lights me on fire. sigh
My God. This is an excellent idea. We have seen somewhat of a boost in the value of STEEM over the last few hours, but, we cannot be sure if that is in any way related to this experiment at this point.
If it is, however, then allocating a weekend-without-whales every month could be a great idea that encourages people to invest in a little STEEM ahead of the "holiday."
Regardless of this specific idea, I think it's an excellent one itself to have some sort of monthly event that Steemians can look forward to. I think that would do wonders for morale, which has taken a heavy blow over the past month or so.
If people only paid attention to those who have more than a little insight into this. Tell u what. if you join me in beyonditcoins mumble ill tell u some of my other plans :)
This is an amazing idea! I love weekends-without-whales.
I already wrote a post about my distaste for this unscientific experiment last night, though it was somewhat of a spontaneous thing and I omitted a fair amount of my problems with it. But, nonetheless I do not want to do another one. I have made my objections known and continuing to moan about it will just be pointless, and pathetic by my own standards as well. Thanks a lot for the offer though..
Yeh im growing a bit tired of spouting myself. But i AM thinking it might be worth it to fix some things.
I didn't even know you were a whale, but it restores my faith somewhat to know that you're not all absent minded.
I ask that even though you know this is bullshit, still just avoid upvoting, because I have seen what happens when one whale upvote is countered by 4 whale downvotes, which doesn't even make sense.
But, it buried my trending post and cost me some reputation, so if you do it others, you might inadvertently be setting them up for a loss.
And no need to apologise. I am disappointed in myself for how much I have allowed this to bother me. Inconsideration is something I don't care too much for, and clearly, no thought at all has gone into the efficacy-- or lack thereof--of the data that could be yielded from such a poorly planned experiment, nor the potential ramifications for others, and for Steemit, that could result from executing such an action without prior notice.
Jesus...the most valuable thing that came from this "shit show"(aka experiment) is in meeting you.
Man ...u know we could plan and do this experiment correctly. Give everyone time to prepare. Do a Steem CENSUS, decide what the hell we plan to measure, do background research, establish a baseline for the variables we will assess and how we will control for outside bias...omg we could...do the real, non ridiculous version of this experiment. Something tells me Im not invited to this one since noone even told me.
Please write your next post about this. I have an account with 10% of my whale accounts steempower (cause i gave like 90% of earnings away to build solutions to help steem and bitshares together) to upvote u.
It is my new "whale" account now (now that whales are no longer voting?)...ug...confusing..
I can vote u up with it now. It is the "new whale"
You mean.. real science? What would be the point in that when we can just play the role of lobotomized deities. That's much more fun. Lol.
The fact that no one even contacted you about it just proves there was no planning involved. I had hoped that maybe they at least tried to get the other whales on board, and when they declined, decided to do it anyway.
This tells another story. One of a few whales assuming the authority to conduct an experiment without minnow, dolphin or even fellow-whale approval.
I understand the need to want to help, but if you don't know how to help, better not try or you will do more damage than good..
Okay, I'm starting to feel like a bitch. I have whined about this shit enough. Time to accept it and post some sub-par content until it's over. Sounds like a perfect excuse to enter this weeks memechallenge..
You know whats funny? Im one of the people larimer thanked and gave credit to for his contributions to what later turned into steemit. Ive been here as a cofounder of bitshares and was literally here for the birth of baby steem. Im one of the people who should have at least been informed (of course I would have said this experiment design was ridiculous but thats another matter) if for no other reason than im a whale (who worked alot to become one)...
We could have ...like you said, done ALOT of GOOD with this if done right. We could have even set it up as a cool and hip "holiday" we do every month at the same time (or randomly) to assess longterm datasets while promoting steem in the process...
Omg i dont want to spend all my time doing this research unpaid but its worth it to do this right...
Jesus ill stop.
I'm not very tech savvy, so if the ideas are at the coding level, I probably won't be able to make sense of them. But, if they are just promotional sort of things, then I'd feel a lot more comfortable in my ability to expand upon those ideas with you.
Id love to bring more thinkers in man. I dont know everything so its IMPERATIVE to surround ourselves with people who are smarter than us in various places
That's definitely a philosophy I can get behind.
Are they trying to kill steem for good?
Cool experiment! I see my vote went up a bit already. How did you hear that this was going on?
There are some other posts on the subject and through steemit chat. There has been no "official" post as far as I know.
Thank you, I found a few other posts after I saw yours. And my up vote of your comment just yielded a penny for you! :-)
Hi @kenny-crane - I saw a post by @abit and then I started to notice a lot of low percentage flags for a lot of posts. Check out @timcliff's feed. He's got more information as well. The comments are interesting reading too.
Thanks so much; I will do that! :-)
Hi kenny-crane.I found you in a roundabout way to thank you for your generosity again in transferring value to my account.Your thoughtfulness,encouraging comment much appreciated. @ijavee
Well said! I agree.
I have been begging for this experiment since last summer. Great to see it done. I never considered it could work with only some whales involved.
Maybe first stab
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dennygalindo/a-day-of-fasting-on-votes-for-the-whales-9-9-16
An interesting experiment, but as you say your, requires better communication to users.
I'm all for experimentation too...and this is a good thing for us under-whale-ings but communication is severely lacking and that is not going to be a good thing for our peeps. I appreciate your post and will probably do my own to spread the word.
Now -- if I only knew HOW LONG this experiment would last now that we know it's in process. hmmm...
Props to the whales for doing this. Hopefully it last a couple days so we can see the real effects.
My guess is that guilds/curation will have to adapt, people will have more power and the rewards will be spread out a lot more which is a very good thing and there will possibly be less bots too.
I'm not sure the price will increase however as this is a temporary thing and people know it won't last
I agree that it is not the best way to do it, but there will always be other greedy whales who don't agree, so it's this or nothing.
Yup, that about sums it up.
exactly.
but you are missing one vital thing: experiments are meant to measure something. This goes FAR deeper than a lack of communication and shakes the foundations of what makes an experiment an experiment.
What is the hypothesis? to my knowledge this is more Throwing Spaghetti on the wall. Yes the lack of communication was a failure. But then again there was much more bad to this experiment than good.