A nice example of one of Steemit's problems (edited)
This post, containing the wise words "fwe fe", has already made more than many a good post with real content in it. (Edit: some rewards have been flagged away now.)
It's not about being annoyed because somebody makes more than you, it's about how ridiculous it makes people feel when noise makes more than content, even when that content gets over 100 votes.
Bots gone wild? Following votes? Sock puppet? Who knows.
(Edit, thanks @nikolai:) The problem goes deeper than votes-for-noise; posts with 200+ votes making under $1,- are hard to explain to new users when they see noise or even equally good posts make a lot more, with under 20 votes. The gap is too wide and doesn't seem to be closing at all.
Would it be possible to change the reward formula into something that also includes both the number of upvotes and the reputation of the upvoters? Or would that just invite even more botvoting?
I was thinking about rewarding, for each vote, (voter reputation / a) + (current formula reward / b), with a and b calibrated to give a more even result without upsetting the total reward pool too much. Or something along those lines 8-).
Consider this problem as noise to be ignored. Although it IS frustrating, the way for Steemit to succeed is to keep generating GOOD content...and hope a wave of robots upvotes you until the real curators show up
You're probably right, and I don't really mind much for myself, I'm fine here, but I'm worried about what this does to new user retention.
I agree that it probably does drive away some new users, but those people would also likely leave when that dont get paid big bucks on their first post.
the whale/robot folks can be on Steemit for the short/medium term. creators have to look at this in long term mode
In the long term, we'll all be dead 8-). But I get your point and I hope for the best. I don't see things shifting the right way yet, though, however slowly.
Wow, why would anyone upvote a post with only that as its content? I am betting that it is voting bots.
Unless we see the frequency of posts like this growing I'd assume it's bots misbehaving and not an exploit of the rewards mechanism. In that case I would actually be happy about it because it's just normal market feedback to cut back on inefficient bots and reward bots that add value, even if someone accidentally made some money.
You may be right. The problem goes deeper than just empty posts like this, though; it's also about the distribution. Posts with 200+ votes making under $1,- are hard to explain to new users when they see noise or even equally good posts make a lot more, with under 20 votes. The gap is too wide and doesn't seem to be closing at all.
Do you know of any numbers to support this? Paper napkin theory math says whales need to gather upvotes worth 10% of their SP to maintain their voting power, which seems like it would be a force that dissipates voting rewards
I have compared the tables at http://steemwhales.com/ over time for a while to get an idea of the development of voting power as distributed in the population, and concluded that you still need at least one whale vote to equal about 150 to 200 average votes (excl. whales). The numbers are off the top of my head, as I buggered up the spreadsheet a week ago and couldn't be bothered to repeat the exercise.
I'm not concerned about current distribution, only about centralization vs diffusion effects that the voting system has. Has the power of the top 10 or 100 voters been trending down or up? How about average value at 20,000th voter?
Resteem this...