A plea for old-school guilds on Steemit
This post is in reaction to this one by @personz, which was (not my words) inspired by a post of mine. I suggest you read @personz post first.
I'm thinking about something like real guilds in the old sense of the word, say, as an example, a photography guild (how did I come up with that one?).
Like-minded photographers who appreciate each others work could make an invitation-only community, and invite new members (and kick out members) by unanimous vote. Infighting stays within the guild and doesn't disturb everyone. Membership would be voluntary, of course, and more than one guild covering the same subjects or interests could exist.
Members can make each other's rewards more smooth and predictable by sharing all rewards they get for their individual posts, without having to give up posting as an individual. This also helps oddball photographers who don't regularly get whale love, but are appreciated for their work by the community. The total income of such a guild would still depend on the quality of the individual postings as determined by the whole of Steemit voting.
Good photographers who are new on Steemit could be actively searched for and invited (real, old-school guilds would have called them apprentices 8-), taken under the wings of the guild, and they will start getting some rewards immediately because of the reward sharing, making it more likely they will stay on Steemit, and also making the current type of guilds less necessary.
A spokesperson for the guild could be chosen to communicate with the (financial, engineering, etc.) powers that be on Steemit and the rest of the outside world.
The guild as a whole could start selling their best photos (preferably for Steem) for use on websites in the real world, adding to the guild's income and possibly hike up the price of Steem.
This is not a functional spec yet, but it's a start. I would like to see the Steemit interface's enabling such cooperative groups (beyond mere communities) to get an alternative to the current underlying economic model without having to change the underlying economic model. It would give people the opportunity to cooperate rather than compete, or even build small companies, and have more fun.
Thanks for reading. Comments very welcome.
I'm not in the habit of naming names for the sake of getting someone's attention, but I would greatly appreciate @stellabelle's view on this.
I think this is going to happen naturally. Youtube has teams of vloggers, karaoke web sites have teams of vocalists. I expect the same sort of self-organization to emerge naturally here, when we have enough active users. Revenue sharing agreements will have to be part of that emergence.
I like your idea of selling photographs for steem. I wonder if we have any resident lawyers who could start crafting a license (or set of licenses) that all photographers and musicians could apply to their work which would permit use with a fee - in steem - to the creator or sponsoring guild/team...
Probably, but it would greatly help if the Steemit interface supported such cooperative groups in their daily functioning. It would take a lot of doing as things stand now to get a cooperation going within Steemit without external tools.
I'm not sure what's possible with smart contracts or side chains, but yeah managing the accounting manually would be a chore. Especially factoring in the 13 week power down.
There are two ways it could go: (i) some enterprising person or group writes the necessary smart contracts and offers it as a product, which enables the widespread launch of the guild model; or (ii) guilds start launching with manual tools and they gradually get better and better at automation and commission/develop the tools as they discover the needs.
I've been expecting the second path, but maybe discussions like this one will spur progress along the first path.
That would be me 😜 If there's support for it, I'll write it
This sounds a lot like what communities might bring combined with some form of delegated voting and reward sharing.
It could also be accomplished by creating a trail on a site like Streamian which a group of photographers simply follow.
I think this is a both a good idea and currently an unrealistic one. If you look into the business of selling photography it is incredibly competitive and cut-throat.
Some of the best photographers in the world have given up stock photography because they can't make money out of it.
There are just too many people willing to sell their efforts at rock bottom prices.
Further trying to use a cryptocurrency right now might add a further hurdle to any kind of mainstream usage which might make such an endeavour work.
I do wish I was wrong about this aspect as you know how much I believe in cryptocurrencies but I feel the time for selling stock photos in this way is not yet here.
An alternative I think might be to make it so that the guild creates a pool of stock photography that everyone who uses the Steemit site can freely use - a bit like my Steemit4free initiative.
Given a sufficiently large library of images this could be a massive advantage for Steemit to have over other blogging and writing platforms.
I have noticed that one of the problems that new users have on coming to the site is finding good images that they can use in their posts.
Although the photographers would be giving away their images for free - it could end up indirectly making everyone more money by raising the value of Steem and hence the value of everyone's investment.
That, unfortunately, is a very good point. I sell signed prints and occasionally to postcard companies, I have given up on the other options. It only pays for 5% of my income, but that's OK for an amateur 8-).
I was thinking more along the lines of no or very small payments for Steemians, a moderate fee for non-exclusive use on other websites and a larger fee for exclusive use or prints or t-shirts or mugs, and some revenue from the Steemit Publishing Guild that sells books illustrated with the photos (yes, daydreaming here).
If, and that, admittedly, is a huge "if", we can find some business model surrounding photographs that generates a even little stream of income, we could even attract photographers to Steemit.
Hopes not high, worth a try. I'll think some more, wish I had some of that great coffee from the Aceh Coffee Growers and Exporters Guild.
I think you are doing pretty well if you are getting 5% of your income.
Agreed :) Maybe an app more suited to photography on the Steem blockchain would help.
You should try out @steemtrail on discord. I consider it a much better guild system where votes are manual and voluntary. @instructor2121 do you have a link?
This is actually more to do with reward share than coordinating votes. It's outlined in my post 😊
Most social media sites have some type of group or club you can create or join. Some groups/clubs are moderated and the admin(admins) decides who joins. I think its just a natural way that people interact and will eventually be part of steemit. The reward part of it needs to be thought about with the developers and community involved.
That does seem like a natural progression that will evolve here, when there's a way to split the rewards instantly. I can see that some guilds would turn into a pit of vipers, while others will get along great. I would be interested in being part of some guilds like that -- the great ones, not the pit of vipers, please. : )
If I get to take photos, I have nothing against pits of vipers 8-).
I think the goings-on in these guilds would be similar to Guilds in, say, World of Warcraft. Some work swimmingly, others self-destruct in weeks.
haha -- I like snakes, but not that pit of vipers! It will be interesting to see how Steemit evolves. That's one of the neat things about being here -- just watching how it adapts.
Thanks for this idea, I like it a lot 😁 It's one kind of group that I think the app could support.
Trying to get an opinion on this from a few people: Do you think that contribution to the group (i.e. the amount one has earned and distributed to the group) should affect how much you then receive from others?
I don't know yet. You could have "share equally", "share based on contribution" (but then the devil would still shit on the largest heap, as we say in The Netherlands), or "share equally the part of the individual reward that's liquid", so Steem and SBD, but not Steem Power. I wouldn't mind the latter, but maybe there should be options there. Still out on this one.
Yea it's a tough one.
I love this expression! 🤣 It makes it clear in a way though (graphically I might add). It might be a factor that would overly complexify the situation. Perhaps if someone is taking advantage of the group they should just be ejected.
An alternative would be to display stats of user contributions in the app and let group members interpret that however they want. For example, if they see someone hasn't contributed in a while they could reach out. Maybe they were sick for a few weeks, etc. It might allow for a more "human" system.