It's courageous to take the stance of addressing the taboo around downvoting. Indeed downvoting should be used as liberally as upvoting: as a mean to steer the plateform in the right direction.
Another thing that would be even more effective would be to soften the payout algorithm to use a function that grows less fast. Currently, payout growth is quadratic. This is the reason why there is no middle ground between a good payout and a ridiculously excessive payout.
Interesting. Perhaps you or @rok-sivante could add to the comments in my "Minnow's Code of Conduct" post from this morning. I suggested that we (minnows) not use it as an 'I disagree' button but called out my lack of knowledge on the user base's overall consensus.
It being a flag (as opposed to a thumbs down) made me view it as something to be used cautiously.
It's true that the flag is setting some particular context that becomes difficult to ignore afterwards. The choice of using a flag was meant to discourage the type of vote brigading that we find on Reddit. The Bitcoin blocksize debate with wars between /r/btc and /r/bitcoin where opposing views were systematically downvoted into oblivion participated to the creation of echo chambers. We want to avoid this kind of thing happening here, but we may not have to do anything to prevent it because of the economic incentive stake holders have to ensure that the platform remains an enjoyable and user friendly space, which implies that downvoting should be done wisely.
I never used Reddit and wasn't privy to the Bitcoin block size debate, yet I follow. I appreciate the explanation. Down voting has a cost.
However some users will not be motivated by pure economics.
However some users will not be motivated by pure economics
This is true. The assumption is that a user who holds a lot of stake is likely to have either invested (which normally implies some level of understanding of long term economic incentives) or received the stake as a reward for posting good content or curating (which implies that the user is relatively constructive, intelligent, sociable and not a complete troll). Although this isn't exact science and there will certainly be many stakeholders who will use downvoting unwisely in spite of the fact it reflects negatively on their investment. But it is expected (hoped?) that such stakeholders will not be collectively holding a large amount of stake.
"Currently, payout growth is quadratic. This is the reason why there is no middle ground between a good payout and a ridiculously excessive payout."
This is because the only votes that matter are whale votes currently. It's not the algorithm, it's the distribution of SP that's the issue. Obv there could be ways to curb this, but that's not seemingly being addressed. That's the real issue.
Granted, I may be biased, and may not see the bigger picture of how these seemingly "unfair" reward distributions may in some way generate an attraction that could advance Steemit's long-term position.
That is my hope, but I have similar concerns with you!
Wonderful post! Sorry to hear you were locked out of your account during the hack.
" am I the only one who had higher hopes for this platform to become something game-changing and revolutionary - a socio-economic catalyst transforming the nature of social media"
This. 100 times this. I have been everywhere from beginning of reddit, 9gag, funnyjunk, voat, etc and this is the first time I am so excited about a new one popping up and showing more promise than anything ever has before. Not that I had invested in any of the previous ones, and I doubt most people even had the possibility too. Steemit makes everything possible, and I am 100% that no matter how long it will take for mass adoption, with bigger userbase and more balanced voter-value in time it will all become golden.
Not to mention Steem can do so much more than just being a social platform, it can do what augur (crowdvoting) and any marketplaces and many other apps that are being developed by the Ethereum team.
Usually I liked to compare eth and btc to Apple and Microsoft, now its more like btc being Internet Explorer, eth being firefox and Steem being the beta version of google chrome.
I have been into altcoins for some time, and have been promoting Steemit on my instagram: www.instagram.com/crypt0trader and the userbase is growing there every day too! Would love it if you could take a look at my post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@getssidetracked/the-steemit-community-on-instagram-is-growing
where I warn people about suspicious activity from user: steemit on Instagram, and to make sure not more users get their accounts hacked/phished
Thanks for this blogpost! I also want to take the time to mention not to forget the comment sections of posts! If there is anything I've learned on reddit its that the comments can be a place of originality and most unique stuff you could read, most times leading to them being of more quality than the uploaded content, and that's the real beauty of quality reading!
I'll be looking forward to reading more of your input later, especially on the comparisons between Steem & ETH blockchains - a topic I've been curious about. sounds like you may have some interesting insight on this...
Im not sure but I think the drop to 26k was due to the 75% posting rewards payout... or maybe something to do with the price fluctuating.
I agree with you to a certain extent but I think these kinds of posts serve as potential advertisement for mass adoption. I recently convinced a friend of mine to join the platform (once sign ups are open) she's been hustling trying to create a cooking show on Youtube and then leverage that to start a catering business.
Even though she has 45k subscribers she gets paid peanuts. I tried to convince her with my geeky articles, but she only really showed interest when she saw the makeup video and then the cake baking video. She saw where she could offer value.
It's about getting people like her involved that will push the user adoption rate up explosively. I think the whales know this, which is why we're seeing article or videos that can 'advertise' mass adoption so heavily upvoted.
Exactly! People want to see that people like themselves are getting big payouts on Steemit. It's not going to be attractive if people only see nerds shuffling money and paying each other but when they see it's a person like them getting the big payout? That will change everything for crypto.
The problem with crypto has been that only geeks could get Bitcoins. You had to either know how to mine, or know how to write C++, or be a hardcore anarchist or libertarian. In reality most people aren't like that and for every person like us there are probably a hundred or a thousand people who don't have those interests.
When Steemit is successful the most popular posts probably will be posts about stuff ordinary people are interested in. It probably wont be tech related but that doesn't mean it's not making people happy or providing value to people.
yes. different forms of value. alot of users might not personally be into certain content themselves, but highly rewarding certain niche stuff could potentially prove very valuable to different aspects of Steemit's growth...
I think the biggest missing link that many people are not seeing is the 'social value' and the capital of having friends and connections on this platform. Quality comments go equally far as quality posts in connecting with others, which is the REAL value of this network
Let me know what you think of it, I've seen the discussion pop up in MANY threads and posts over the past days and I think it's a very adequate topic to discuss deeply.
The issue here is that tag-spamming problem - people upvote this in masses and then all top 20 topics are dominated by the same posts. So you need a whole armada to downvote a more or less spammed post and even then the whales have to join. The problem now is that all whales upvote spammed posts - so in general they risk their whole investment as nobody is interested to search for relevant content between some other stuff. It can not be that the same 6 articles what are even top earners are in 18 of top20 topics.... then whole steemit is failed. I even wrote a post that editorial work must be done by whales to protect their investment:
Should I continue to downvote spam comments? The comment ratio on Steemit is very low and when there are comments, it's the same people spamming gifs for pennies.
I agree with you and follow that policy. I don't downvote to take money away from people. I upvote to give money to people. I don't like the strategies which are based around punishing people for success. I would say reward a competitor if there is one.
If you don't like the makeup tutorial then vote for another new person doing something similar so the rewards are spread out. The point is people have to get big rewards and the days when an ordinary person gets a $100,000 reward for a post then this is the best kind of marketing for Steemit possible.
People all over the Internet will see that this happened and rush to join Steemit.
Says the person with a $10k reward on the front page right now. j/k of all the postings I've seen in the last few days yours is one of only a handful I feel genuinely earned it.
Karma works that way I guess.
Perhaps you spoke too soon. Whatever my posts end up getting rewarded my opinion on this is firm and hasn't changed. The subjective theory of value applies to Subjective Proof of Work in my opinion. Valuing content is like trying to put a value on art and I do not think you can have equality of rewards without discouraging talented people.
If this were music for example and we see that certain albums are at the top of the charts even though some other artists put in much more effort, practiced a lot more, and are under appreciated, the only reason we have it where all artists aren't starving is because some have some chance to make it big whether it's fate, luck, the swarm effect, or whatever it is.
What I understand is that on Steemit you only get two payouts ever. The 24 hr payout and the 30 day payout are the only rewards a person can get. While on Youtube or other areas there is a residual income where people produce a piece of content once and can be paid for many years from views. Typically in the content space the popularity translates into the rewards not "quality" which is extremely hard to measure and as quality reaches a certain point then maybe you have all of the trending content being of quality so how do you determine an excessive reward?
$10k for a post is nothing compared to what we can expect to see in the future. I expect we will see $100,000 posts and I'll be very happy for the winner who posted it and for Steemit for making it possible. It might not be considered what most people expect coming from the traditional economy but Steemit is about the Steem Power not the Steem Dollar rewards. As the price of Steem goes up then the only way to get Steem Power for most people will be to earn it and in the process of earning it they could earn a lot of Steem Dollars as a side effect but this will only make Steemit go viral when people see what their posts are really worth.
I actually agree with this use-case of downvoting. It's another way for high-value SP members to exercise their ability to curate and influence the site's content.
Since the whales have the most to lose if the quality on Steemit degrades to the point where people start losing interest and leaving, I think it's fair and that they have the right to make these kind of downvotes.
I've definitely seen a fair number of posts earning ridiculous amounts of rewards for the type of content they've added, but overall I think the quality of the trending page's posts has been getting better and that makes me optimistic that the Steemit is improving and on the right track.
i think it's also an honorable approach to take that if you DO downvote/flag anything, to include a comment as to WHY the choice was made - so as to provide feedback for the offending user. that may be a valuable gift that they straighten them self out with in the future.
Who are any of us to say what is fair or unfair? And if you knock some make-up tutorial down a peg, does that really benefit you? You feel that your content and other content is more valuable, and I certainly agree that you add valuable content. But when people, many people, vote for something, they do so because they find it valuable. And what is wrong with that?
Having said that, I upvoted this post because it's definitely a conversation that needs to be had.
It's courageous to take the stance of addressing the taboo around downvoting. Indeed downvoting should be used as liberally as upvoting: as a mean to steer the plateform in the right direction.
Another thing that would be even more effective would be to soften the payout algorithm to use a function that grows less fast. Currently, payout growth is quadratic. This is the reason why there is no middle ground between a good payout and a ridiculously excessive payout.
Interesting. Perhaps you or @rok-sivante could add to the comments in my "Minnow's Code of Conduct" post from this morning. I suggested that we (minnows) not use it as an 'I disagree' button but called out my lack of knowledge on the user base's overall consensus.
It being a flag (as opposed to a thumbs down) made me view it as something to be used cautiously.
It's true that the flag is setting some particular context that becomes difficult to ignore afterwards. The choice of using a flag was meant to discourage the type of vote brigading that we find on Reddit. The Bitcoin blocksize debate with wars between /r/btc and /r/bitcoin where opposing views were systematically downvoted into oblivion participated to the creation of echo chambers. We want to avoid this kind of thing happening here, but we may not have to do anything to prevent it because of the economic incentive stake holders have to ensure that the platform remains an enjoyable and user friendly space, which implies that downvoting should be done wisely.
I never used Reddit and wasn't privy to the Bitcoin block size debate, yet I follow. I appreciate the explanation. Down voting has a cost.
However some users will not be motivated by pure economics.
This is true. The assumption is that a user who holds a lot of stake is likely to have either invested (which normally implies some level of understanding of long term economic incentives) or received the stake as a reward for posting good content or curating (which implies that the user is relatively constructive, intelligent, sociable and not a complete troll). Although this isn't exact science and there will certainly be many stakeholders who will use downvoting unwisely in spite of the fact it reflects negatively on their investment. But it is expected (hoped?) that such stakeholders will not be collectively holding a large amount of stake.
"Currently, payout growth is quadratic. This is the reason why there is no middle ground between a good payout and a ridiculously excessive payout."
This is because the only votes that matter are whale votes currently. It's not the algorithm, it's the distribution of SP that's the issue. Obv there could be ways to curb this, but that's not seemingly being addressed. That's the real issue.
That is my hope, but I have similar concerns with you!
Wonderful post! Sorry to hear you were locked out of your account during the hack.
" am I the only one who had higher hopes for this platform to become something game-changing and revolutionary - a socio-economic catalyst transforming the nature of social media"
This. 100 times this. I have been everywhere from beginning of reddit, 9gag, funnyjunk, voat, etc and this is the first time I am so excited about a new one popping up and showing more promise than anything ever has before. Not that I had invested in any of the previous ones, and I doubt most people even had the possibility too. Steemit makes everything possible, and I am 100% that no matter how long it will take for mass adoption, with bigger userbase and more balanced voter-value in time it will all become golden.
Not to mention Steem can do so much more than just being a social platform, it can do what augur (crowdvoting) and any marketplaces and many other apps that are being developed by the Ethereum team.
Usually I liked to compare eth and btc to Apple and Microsoft, now its more like btc being Internet Explorer, eth being firefox and Steem being the beta version of google chrome.
I have been into altcoins for some time, and have been promoting Steemit on my instagram: www.instagram.com/crypt0trader and the userbase is growing there every day too! Would love it if you could take a look at my post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@getssidetracked/the-steemit-community-on-instagram-is-growing
where I warn people about suspicious activity from user: steemit on Instagram, and to make sure not more users get their accounts hacked/phished
Thanks for this blogpost! I also want to take the time to mention not to forget the comment sections of posts! If there is anything I've learned on reddit its that the comments can be a place of originality and most unique stuff you could read, most times leading to them being of more quality than the uploaded content, and that's the real beauty of quality reading!
thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I'll be looking forward to reading more of your input later, especially on the comparisons between Steem & ETH blockchains - a topic I've been curious about. sounds like you may have some interesting insight on this...
Im not sure but I think the drop to 26k was due to the 75% posting rewards payout... or maybe something to do with the price fluctuating.
I agree with you to a certain extent but I think these kinds of posts serve as potential advertisement for mass adoption. I recently convinced a friend of mine to join the platform (once sign ups are open) she's been hustling trying to create a cooking show on Youtube and then leverage that to start a catering business.
Even though she has 45k subscribers she gets paid peanuts. I tried to convince her with my geeky articles, but she only really showed interest when she saw the makeup video and then the cake baking video. She saw where she could offer value.
It's about getting people like her involved that will push the user adoption rate up explosively. I think the whales know this, which is why we're seeing article or videos that can 'advertise' mass adoption so heavily upvoted.
Exactly! People want to see that people like themselves are getting big payouts on Steemit. It's not going to be attractive if people only see nerds shuffling money and paying each other but when they see it's a person like them getting the big payout? That will change everything for crypto.
The problem with crypto has been that only geeks could get Bitcoins. You had to either know how to mine, or know how to write C++, or be a hardcore anarchist or libertarian. In reality most people aren't like that and for every person like us there are probably a hundred or a thousand people who don't have those interests.
When Steemit is successful the most popular posts probably will be posts about stuff ordinary people are interested in. It probably wont be tech related but that doesn't mean it's not making people happy or providing value to people.
yes. different forms of value. alot of users might not personally be into certain content themselves, but highly rewarding certain niche stuff could potentially prove very valuable to different aspects of Steemit's growth...
I think the biggest missing link that many people are not seeing is the 'social value' and the capital of having friends and connections on this platform. Quality comments go equally far as quality posts in connecting with others, which is the REAL value of this network
I've elaborated on my views toward Steem marketing and social capital here: https://steemit.com/value/@spookypooky/posts-on-steemit-aren-t-valuable
Let me know what you think of it, I've seen the discussion pop up in MANY threads and posts over the past days and I think it's a very adequate topic to discuss deeply.
Social capital is exactly what I meant.
I saw Alla post just a bit ago. Good job bringing her on board and I hope she finds success beyond her other ventures here!
We have a clear UX flaw: the same tool is being used for two very different goals:
As a result we have two problems:
This needs to be fixed!
People can vote up or down whatever they wish. They own the Steem Power hence the right to decide where funds should be allocated.
This post inspired me to write on this exact topic. Thanks rok-sivante.
https://steemit.com/steem/@cob/should-one-downvote-flag-the-simplest-guidelines-you-can-imagine
I only downvote something that I think is either plagiarism or a compromised account.
The issue here is that tag-spamming problem - people upvote this in masses and then all top 20 topics are dominated by the same posts. So you need a whole armada to downvote a more or less spammed post and even then the whales have to join. The problem now is that all whales upvote spammed posts - so in general they risk their whole investment as nobody is interested to search for relevant content between some other stuff. It can not be that the same 6 articles what are even top earners are in 18 of top20 topics.... then whole steemit is failed. I even wrote a post that editorial work must be done by whales to protect their investment:
https://steemit.com/money/@hastla/why-whales-and-dolphins-have-to-start-work-for-steemit-or-lose-their-whole-investment
Should I continue to downvote spam comments? The comment ratio on Steemit is very low and when there are comments, it's the same people spamming gifs for pennies.
I think instead of downvoting useless comments, we should UPVOTE good comments. In this way we will get the same result and we wont censor comments.
I agree with you and follow that policy. I don't downvote to take money away from people. I upvote to give money to people. I don't like the strategies which are based around punishing people for success. I would say reward a competitor if there is one.
If you don't like the makeup tutorial then vote for another new person doing something similar so the rewards are spread out. The point is people have to get big rewards and the days when an ordinary person gets a $100,000 reward for a post then this is the best kind of marketing for Steemit possible.
People all over the Internet will see that this happened and rush to join Steemit.
Says the person with a $10k reward on the front page right now. j/k of all the postings I've seen in the last few days yours is one of only a handful I feel genuinely earned it.
Karma works that way I guess.
Perhaps you spoke too soon. Whatever my posts end up getting rewarded my opinion on this is firm and hasn't changed. The subjective theory of value applies to Subjective Proof of Work in my opinion. Valuing content is like trying to put a value on art and I do not think you can have equality of rewards without discouraging talented people.
If this were music for example and we see that certain albums are at the top of the charts even though some other artists put in much more effort, practiced a lot more, and are under appreciated, the only reason we have it where all artists aren't starving is because some have some chance to make it big whether it's fate, luck, the swarm effect, or whatever it is.
What I understand is that on Steemit you only get two payouts ever. The 24 hr payout and the 30 day payout are the only rewards a person can get. While on Youtube or other areas there is a residual income where people produce a piece of content once and can be paid for many years from views. Typically in the content space the popularity translates into the rewards not "quality" which is extremely hard to measure and as quality reaches a certain point then maybe you have all of the trending content being of quality so how do you determine an excessive reward?
$10k for a post is nothing compared to what we can expect to see in the future. I expect we will see $100,000 posts and I'll be very happy for the winner who posted it and for Steemit for making it possible. It might not be considered what most people expect coming from the traditional economy but Steemit is about the Steem Power not the Steem Dollar rewards. As the price of Steem goes up then the only way to get Steem Power for most people will be to earn it and in the process of earning it they could earn a lot of Steem Dollars as a side effect but this will only make Steemit go viral when people see what their posts are really worth.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value
I actually agree with this use-case of downvoting. It's another way for high-value SP members to exercise their ability to curate and influence the site's content.
Since the whales have the most to lose if the quality on Steemit degrades to the point where people start losing interest and leaving, I think it's fair and that they have the right to make these kind of downvotes.
I've definitely seen a fair number of posts earning ridiculous amounts of rewards for the type of content they've added, but overall I think the quality of the trending page's posts has been getting better and that makes me optimistic that the Steemit is improving and on the right track.
i think it's also an honorable approach to take that if you DO downvote/flag anything, to include a comment as to WHY the choice was made - so as to provide feedback for the offending user. that may be a valuable gift that they straighten them self out with in the future.
That's a good point and not one I had considered. I'll definitely be doing this more, explaining why I downvote.
Who are any of us to say what is fair or unfair? And if you knock some make-up tutorial down a peg, does that really benefit you? You feel that your content and other content is more valuable, and I certainly agree that you add valuable content. But when people, many people, vote for something, they do so because they find it valuable. And what is wrong with that?
Having said that, I upvoted this post because it's definitely a conversation that needs to be had.
Have a good day!
We are part of a community which is built upon us having ideas and opinions. That's who we are to say fair or unfair.