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RE: Thoughts about capping rewards in an incentivized way
An interesting idea, but I should point out two outside factors which make the whale-centric system worth abiding by:
- STEEM demand. Other than speculative demand, the only real demand for STEEM tokens right now is to buy influence on Steem. I could promote myself to dolphin by buying ~$1,000' worth of STEEM and powering up. In this way, the system being geared to whales gives an incentive to buy and hold STEEM. Right now, there's no other reason to buy-and-hold except speculating.
- Both Reddit and Twitter started off as minnow-friendly platforms - and both of them have had real difficulty monetizing. (Ellen Pao was fired from Reddit in part because she tried to implement more celebrity-friendly moderating, which caused a mods' revolt and a lot of bad publicity. Jack Dorsey's trying the same thing and facing the same difficulty: just look at all the anger when Twitter permanently banned Milo Yiannopoulos because one of the Ghostbuster-reboot stars complained about him.) I think @dantheman and the rest of the devs has learned from both companies' troubles and designed Steem to be whale- and celebrity-friendly from the get-go.
Although I'm stuck at minnow level, I think the system should be left as is. I know that you're proposing a voluntary option, but it's not likely that the whales will use it - and it's not likely that Dan & Co. will implement it. The current system directs minnows to churn out content, hoping for authors' rewards, and that's better for Steem imho.
what incentive do writers have to set their expected turnout accurately? Seems to me that under such a system, whales could state that they expect a low turnout when in reality they expect a high turnout.
To be clear, I 100% agree with your intention here, but I am exploring all options and modes of abuse that could take place in such a system, which I believe is the Steemit Way.
The incentive is a higher multiplier for their actual rewards. If they go lower with the cap (less greedy) they get more.
The whales are voters in the system, not authors, so the proposal only applies indirectly in terms of curation rewards for them.
But in case a big whale writes an article, they may choose to cap it intentionally to avoid extreme upvotes. Say if the Steemit creators want to make a post, they can put the limit to 500-1000 (enough to be "trending") but not more than that (so that rewards could go to smaller authors).
or create a separate place for steemy and whale posts, a separate column, next to trending. trending general and trending steemy...just a thought--great post
Sorry, I don't quite get what you're driving at. Would you mind explaining?
The purpose is not to upset the whale-centric system (it has serious benefits in terms of eliminating sybil votes), but more to increase retention at the lower levels.
Look at it this way: A post that doesn't get 13.000$ but gets only 10.000$, is 3000$ more for smaller posts. You can take that 3k and give 100 authors 30$ that will motivate them to keep going. If the casino effect (the roulette is at 1/37 odds) tends too much to lottery-odds (highly improbable to win, ever), then one might abandon it altogether.
But then you have to deal with how to cap rewards and get that 3k... so instead of doing it forcefully, you allow the user to set the cap and get rewarded for it with an increased multiplier (the lower he goes).
That's certainly a nice goal, but it it aims to retain the minnow who wants to click instead of write. I certainly understand: I tried to snap up some curation rewards when I started out here! But I also got the idea that I should be writing instead of just clicking away.
Are you trying to address a perceived unfairness induced by the impression (not "fact," impression) that the whales are making huge bank simply by clicking?
It's more like:
Okay, thanks for clarifying.