Curator's Slider - Steemit development
A long time ago I was thinking about this but it seems that it is becoming increasingly relevant. As a content provider at Steemit, getting upvoted with some significant payout is necessary to be able to continually provide decent quality articles well into the future. As much as I enjoy the writing, it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to continually create and put it together whist still maintaining all other aspects of life to survive.
However, this is only half of the story as without curation, there is no payout which means I personally am unable to continue as a provider. The curators are vital here and I see them as my customers and patrons and I do my best to provide both valuable content for them and content that adds value to the platform itself.
Before my time at Steemit, the curation/content split was 50/50 and as someone that really does put a lot of effort in and wasn't here at this time, this seems unfair. But, that is not necessarily the case at all. The reason is that many of those with high SP have earned it through various ways and should be entitled to benefit from it. Their inability to do so adequately from their perspective has spawned a whole range of behaviour that I think is harmful for the community in the long-term.
The largest of which concerning curation in my opinion, is vote selling. This happens because a curator can make much more selling their vote than spending their time curating content. This can be as much as three times, the value of manual curation without having to do anything.
This in turn spawns another anti-Steemit behaviour which is indiscriminate upvoting of content as it is the purchaser who buys, not the curator, who chooses where the vote goes. This means a great deal of the content that is upvoted is on poor quality that no one with any investment here would naturally vote upon. This takes from the pool which means that the content that is deserving, has less value added plus, many of the larger accounts that may vote upon it, don't as they are selling their vote instead.
Delegation of SP is also very popular now and this has a similar problem as to get the delegation cost back, a buyer will either need to be a very good curator or, self-vote content and comments. Most are not good enough curators to do so and those willing to self-vote comments for no reason likely do not have very high content production standards.
What I would like to try is if we can change the behaviour of users (providers and curators) to both improve the quality of content getting voted upon and provide returns significant enough that a curator feels they need not sell their vote or the gains from it are much less significant.
So, here is my idea: A curation value slider.
There is already the VP slider which allows for weighting of value but a curation percentage slider could allow curators to choose how much curation value they will take with the old 50% being the maximum.
For example, a curator with a $10 upvote could take 50 percent curation meaning they will get the same payout as the author, 5/5.
But that same curator might also really like the content and choose instead to give the author the majority of the curation award too. Let's say the curator chooses 10% curation return which means the direct split is 1/9 in favour of the author.
What I wonder is if this will disrupt the current system of vote selling as it now means that a curator can compromise a little bit of profit but can get significantly more return than currently while actually helping the real providers and therefore, the platform grow and Steem price rise. Win/Win/Win.
This also may mean that a well-invested and intentioned curator could spread a little wider as they are taking increased rewards through curation. They would be able to give added support to their favourite authors and still be able to provide some support for others.
With the reduction in value available for low-quality and the increase in value for high quality, there would likely be a shift of some percentage of users to work a little harder and create a better level of service for their customer, the curator.
For the curation guilds, this also allows them more options to increase their SP and therefore their ability to reach a wider group of service providers. I know for some currently, they are struggling to get support even though they are doing all they can to drive higher quality content upwards.
On top of this, would this mean that those people buying delegation would also change their behaviour to include more healthy curation rather than just self-voting? I don't know about this but it would at least add more incentive to do so and if some of these choose to grow the platform rather than rape the pool only, it is better.
Now, when it comes to getting the slider itself, I think that it would be a similar process to that of getting the power slider except one would have to earn a certain amount of SP through curation to qualify. This will at the very least slow down the legions of tiny curation botnets from taking even more and, it would ensure that by the time the slider arrives, the curator has a good understanding of the system.
The average curation rewards currently is around 29 SP but with the massive amount of tiny bots, I would suggest one would have to earn something like 40 SP (this is an arbitrary figure at the moment). This means that if one is predominantly posting, it would take quite some time to get the slider but, for a significant investor, they could get it within a week of starting to vote.
If implemented, the benefit of this type of slider is that it puts control of quality back into the hands of curators rather than tying them to vote selling for profits. This should also be significantly better for real authors too as the reward pool is larger as less crap is upvoted AND curators have returned to the system to vote once again.
The added benefit is that this slider is variable and changeable. If at some point 50/50 is not working, the numbers can be nudged either way to better suit the environment.
It almost pains me to say that curators deserve more of a reward on the content that they did not produce but, it also doesn't benefit me at all if they are not voting, as either they are selling their vote or selling all to delegation.
This platform is still in its infancy and has a lot of potential within but that is increasingly being lost as the system becomes a pay to play environment rather than the platform it was designed to be, which was one where all have a chance if they put their investment in.
As a content provider such as myself, my investment is a lot of blood, sweat and tears, as curators, their investment is their willingness to use their SP to support content if they think it has value. If content provider and curator work together, it creates an ecology that supports a continual spiralling of value for those looking to grow while suffocating those looking to do harm.
I am in no position to comment on all aspects of this or how best to implement it but, perhaps with adequate thought and development, it is worth running as an experiment to see if and how it changes user behaviour. At least, we could learn something new.
Yes/no/maybe/GTFO
I rarely ask, but if you do think this is a possibility in some way, it would be great to be able to get it to the dev team's eyes to see if there is something workable within. Thank you.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
An interesting idea. Selling votes is a secondary market that developed naturally based on the incentive of "easy money." There is nothing we can do to stop it - even though we don't like how it's being done.
Though it can't be prevented, we can try to find ways to remove the incentive to sell votes. Your proposal might be one good way to do that, but I really need to give it some more thought.
Just so I understand you, the idea is that I set the slider when I vote and I decide how much the reward is split. Are we talking about using this to replace the current time-based split or would this be in addition to that system where I am spliting my portion of the split?
actually replacing the whole voting system with a simple quality oriented system would fix many thing, when somebody reads a post, neither the time nor amount of the votes it already has should effect the amount he/she wants to reward the author.
with the current rules, we are missing lots of votes because our posts lose their appeal after each vote they receive.
Agreed
This is something I am unsure of at the moment and why I didn't mention the time split. Perhaps the voting time could be reduced to maybe 5 minutes so it will stop the spammers but won't make the bigger voters wait. I am not much of a curator myself though I am trying to learn to be better at it slowly.
I am unsure how the technical application of the early voter gets integrated yet but I am quite sure there is a way to maintain the incentive to be able to find decent content early.
Hello there @tarazkp . I believe you are not the only one who is trying to come up with a way to make this work for us, and that is good news. I couple of days ago I even wrote this long piece on the ethics of using bots, even thought my subject was focused on a different element, we are kind of talking about the same problem. Or least identifying it.
My take is that the big accounts on Steemit, the whales who are currently participating on the upvote sells, should have even more interest in changing the way content is being curated and upvoted on the platform.
The logic is not that complicated, if we were to slowly drift towards lesser quality content creation with a casino upvote betting approach without a doubt after a while the price of Steem would drop as its users decide to leave the platform tired of not being compensated for their work.
Granted this problem has multiple dimensions and any kind of implementation of a possible solution should be debated with the goal of fine tuning any change if would be required, via fork or otherwise.
I'm not necessarily ready to throw in the towel, for what its worth I've been sharing original music for over a decade and I've never gotten paid like I have on Steemit, but we can't assume that everyone's experience is the same as yours or mine.
There is a post somewhere on this blockchain that I've been told about, the user posted some lyrics of a Jay-Z song or something of the sort and by buying upvotes got it to trend past a $100 payout. If that doesn't speak volumes, then I don't know what does.
In any case, I think your idea is pretty good, it might be the best compromise I've seen so far, since I keep on hearing from other people that we are not going back to the none-linear voting days.
cheers
@meno
Yes, I read your article and it was good, I have a couple similar going back a month or two. I am not sure of all of the technical requirements but, I think that to change behaviour takes more than just technical minds working on it. Perhaps as an invested content provider, I (and we) can help with the behaviour adjustment aspects while the technical work out the best ways to implement them.
In my opinion, curation should take a more active roll in the development of the platform even though I am not much of a curator myself. This allows it to still be a linear system with options.
I wonder how hard it would be to get Ned's attention, or at least hear his opinion on the subject. I think (of course I'm biased) that you are making a lot of sense. Your concerns and proposed solution may have an impact in your wallet, but in the big picture it would have a giant impact on user retention, he has to be interested in the subject at least. Even if he disagrees with us and thinks we need to go back to high school.
Did you go to steemfest by any chance?
you need to get the attention of the #steemdev, #steemitdev and your withnesses. they are the ones whom come up with the changes to the code and decide to add them or not
No, unfortunately I didn't get to SF as I have a little daughter to take care of.
Getting @ned's attention? Maybe he will chance upon one of his one million daily mentions :) Or, perhaps someone like @stellabelle may be interested in pushing it forward.
lets cross our fingers! ;)
This seems to be an interesting idea. Maybe my mind is tired but I cannot fully visualize how it'll work. Perhaps you could include a short example of how this might work? :c)
Other than this, I quite know the pain that you speak of. Its quite annoying not having a vote slider native to Steemit Inc. before 500SP. Its also really sad that content is no longer rewarded following 7 days (it works for the top 1% - but for the rest of us... not so much.
Looking forward to a further exposition on the matter. And thank you for thinking about the issue @tarazkp :c)
I will give it some time to get some feedback but I see it as a second slider, power and share.
Let's see how much people hate or like it ;)
I wholeheartedly agree. I curate A LOT. Even with power delegated to me (by a wonderful supporter of the platform), I rarely rise over 30% voting power. Why do I do this? Because I care more about the community than I do about the money.
Another important thing about vote selling and buying - I am working with the amazing guys over at minnowbooster to create a whitelist to give more exposure to high quality authors. In addition, there is an anti-abuse policy in place, to try and prevent usage of the MB service to generate profits and game the system. Another thing to do - steemcleaners. I report A LOT of those users trying to game the system with upvote farms with 100s of users. They need to be purged. ASAP.
So while I am not sure a curation reward slider is the right solution, I think @ned and friends need to give thought to the right processes and rewards to ensure people curate more and benefit from it without gaming the system.
I don't know much about MB but am not a fan of the pay for vote at all, even if it goes to decent content as in the end, it will slowly push all value to a very sharp point much like the real world that isn't doing so well currently.
I send theodd case over to steemcleaners too but it is a losing battle as they are like hydra. I am hoping there is a way to starve them completely.
Me too. And I truly wish there was SOME way I could help. And self-voting bots are here to stay. They are the only way minnows can get any attention in trending or hot.
You're saying that the only way for minnow accounts to get there is to buy votes? Really?
The way things are right now? I am afraid so. I wish it wasn't the case, but look around. The system is flawed in many ways - from encouraging spam to allowing for scammers to game the system. Unfortunately, vote buying and the likes are a natural byproduct of the situation as it is, where too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people.
Personally? If I was dan or ned, I'd ban bots from the platform altogether. But without an alternative for minnows to use for self promotion - it'll just hurt the community even more.
So I am afraid that since I can't fight them, I join them. If I can't fix the issues, I can at least invest time in helping services like minnowbooster maintain a high level of correlation between quality and payout.
I am not quite a minnow yet, still in redfish stage, and will be there for awhile I am sure. But as for getting ahead on steemit, and getting noticed, there are legitimate ways to do it. And this is the number one way to do it, commenting on post that catch your eye. Commenting on post that you enjoy. I do that a lot.
What slows me down on commenting is that I want to upvote every post that I comment on, but I can not do that. What would help me most would be a pre-full fledged vote slider bar. My vote is only worth a penny, but with a pre-full fledged vote slider, one that only gives you a 50% split of your vote, would be a lot of help. I could then vote twice as often, yes it would be a smaller vote, 0.005, but it used to be only 0.001, the majority of my rewards for curation are only 0.001. Do I feel cheated by that, absolutely not.
It is leaving comments, meaningful ones, that bring a person recognition. That is the easiest way for a person to self promote.
Word!
Comments are life. I actually wrote a post about it last week. I comment waaaay more than I post.
What you can do is lease some power from MB (or users through it - I am still not absolutely sure how that works) to give your vote some more influence and earn more curation rewards, at least at first.
I'm afraid that as long as there is a substantial group of big wallets who are interested in short-term rewards only, and who set up their voting accordingly without considering the long-term prospects of Steemit and Steem, no amount of tweaking the percentages will make them vote for content "because they like it". They will just game the system in a different way.
So, I don't think setting the percentages back to 50/50 or making them variable will make much difference in the voting behaviour of said part of the "rich" group.
That said: this is just the scenario I see before me, a hypothesis of what would happen. The only way to find out is to do the experiment.
Below is a comment I wrote elsewhere on going back to 50/50. I would be interested in your opinion.
Given the current goings-on on Steemit, I think the most likely scenario will be that:
I don't think increasing the curator's cut will increase proper curating, it will just increase the rewards for those who vote for rewards only rather than for rewarding content they like.
I suspect all it would do is make the in-crowds and short-term ROI-seekers work slightly differently, while at the same time increasing the income of those who vote for profit and decreasing the rewards for content creators.
The long-term/short-term outlook of those with the big wallets is key here, not the percentages.
There's only one way to find out what would happen, so we could just try it, as long as it can be reversed when it doesn't work as intended. Nothing wrong with experimenting as long as you say beforehand what you will do with the outcome of the experiment.
This is key but the current system is pushing them increasingly to short-term views and we expect them to take a long position out of the goodness of their hearts. Yes, it may be in their best interest long-term but unless the majority agree, few will risk it. This is why trying to convince the majority of bigger accounts to risk a long view should be a concern.
And trialing to see how things work is not the end of the world if it fails.
I don't think it is the system that pushes them towards short-term thinking; short-term profit could well be what they came for, and the system allows it. They will find a way at any percentage setting, except perhaps 100/0.
I don't expect them to take a broader and long-term view out of the "goodness of their hearts" but for the benefit of Steem price and the popularity of the platform. I think eventually they will lose more from falling Steem prices than they will gain from gaming the system and partly cause those falling prices.
I'm not sure this is a problem that can be solved within the same economic belief system that was used to set up Steemit.
Wow wow, this issue of vote selling has really got me thinking. Fact is, this would really discourage many original writers because it becomes clearer that your content isn't useful to the full house .
If a whale decides to sell off his votes, he or she should be aware that his name can be seen on posts which on a normal day, he wouldn't go near. Not that they care, as long as hey get their money's worth.
I still believe that we have some different thinking 🐋 's .... @stellabelle
Long story cut short, the slider is a fantastic idea, but who is to say that it wouldn't be exploited too.
People come to steemit to find solace in being themselves and benefiting from it.
So my point? Let's preach STEEMIT as we all found it, and as it all found us . That way, we all will enjoy all that this blessed community has to offer.
@klynic
#concernedsteemian
Yes, it can be discouraging for real writes, providers, artists and that is why it needs to change. Hoping people will not scam is not going to cut it.
Everything is exploitable and this is why it must be reconfigured so the exploit i to reward better quality content and the curators who find it.
Exactly. It's about creating the right incentives.
I joined Steemit more than a year ago but then was away for 14 months so I'm just recently diving in to learn how this works.
I read on one post something like "the best strategy is to find a post that is 30 minutes old and doesn't have any votes." The author admits that it is hard/impossible to find those, but suppose one could find them - simply voting for those posts is not curating good content. One could make the argument that it is exactly the opposite (except, of course, if we account for the fact that some curators found the post early, thought it was good content and decided to wait on the vote for maximum payout).
It just strikes me that some are just hunting for lucky votes instead of trying to find good content.
Of course, I don't really understand how the rewards work for early votes, etc? Do you know how the curation reward is divided exactly? What is the reward for finding a post first, even if you vote within the first couple minutes?
From my understanding, if you vote in the first few minutes you are penalised heavily for voting early. After 15 minutes it is 50% penalty, after 30, 0% penalty. those that vote after you have an effect that increase the curation reward. If there are a lot after you, you can get several times more value for your vote than the initial vote was worth.
There must be a better explanation though out there.
In my understanding, it's not really a penalty. It's a split with the author. There is some reward I will, potentially, get for my vote. If I vote after fifteen minutes, I am "giving" half of that reward to the author. If I wait until thirty minutes, I get it all.
But from everything I've read, it's clear that the potential reward is greater when it's early. I wondered if maybe you knew by how much - either you have learned from experiments or have read something written recently about it. Some of what I've read about it is outdated.
Yes @whs. That strikes me too. ¡Big Time!
Oh boy! and on this second quote, you've just hit the nail on the head with a big/fat demolition ball. Your understanding of this is way too accurate. Actually, I think it is exactly what @tarazkp is describing in his curation slider proposal as the goals. Only, that this one that you understand so well is the invisible one from the sight, brains and everyone's rationality. :)
On other hand, I also wonder IF... SP delegation purchases are: To ¿Support one another? ¿Extract value from the authors? or Add value to the authors?
Cheers!!
Interesting idea Taraz. I have been thinking about similar issues for awhile. There is also the fact that a lot of people upvote what they know will be worth a bunch to try to get the maximum curation, without actually reading the content.
This could cause something to start trendig that is completely false just because someone usually gets a huge payout. This seems like a huge issue to me.
There are many issues here Bias, but perhaps instead of just talking about them, we can get some movement on dealing with some. I would rather see curation on mediocre than paid vote on shit.
Very interesting indeed!
First off, this sounds like a headache for the developers - I would not fancy this task, but everything is possible with code.
I suppose curators could ignore quality, and still drive for profit?
Have you seen this recent post:
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/enter-a-whale-s-mind
And my response:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@abh12345/steemit-abit-v-s-snowflake-180k-steem-power-battle
I think your idea worth a more detailed look for sure - lets see if any devs or super brains have more to contribute.
Cheers
Asher
A headache perhaps but I don't think much more so than they are used to dealing with already :)
Yes, curators could but, if the gap is significantly smaller, the incentive comes down and Stem price goes up a lot to make up for the shortfall.
I will have a read :)
As you will read, people are not happy with the current rewards for curators, and some are doing pretty well with it.
I have a feeling it will stay as is - you can curate for profit and reward good content at the same time IMO.
I'd still like to see some models for this though - maybe @miniature-tiger can help with this (I hope he see's the re-steem and drops in)
This will definitely nudge the curators towards reading the content.
The reason I don't spend a chunk of my time on curating is: reading takes time and time is money, it's logical to lean toward the task that yields more reward at the end.
I would prefer a vote that takes the majority of the reward if I know the user did actually read my post.
I think the 50/50 should be the maximum otherwise there is too little value perhaps for some users to 'bother' creating content. This way it recognises the symbiotic relationship inherent in the system.
50/50 always sounds fair, however when a user invested a lot in form of SP, we shouldn't mind if they want the bigger piece of the pie than the new user, I'm sure anybody would agree that 10% of a $100 vote is still an awesome vote.
This really depends on the content being voted upon. and they need not give a 100 dollar vote, they may give 10x$10 votes, so 10% of $10 becomes much less attractive.
even 10x $1 sounds better than no vote, we have to accept that the more profit there is for the curators, the more chance a good article would get upvoted, maybe basing the reputation on the quality of the post a person upvotes and have that reputation effect the amount of reward they can get out of their upvotes can motivate them to find good posts instead of selling the upvote
Interesting concept. I'd say a Maybe.
Whenever I link a post for free curation (like with ocd-resteem) or whether I bid, I try to do it with posts that will bring the most value. I know that my gaming stuff is more niche, so I'll promote something that is outside of that, because it could help more people.
I think the idea needs ripening, but definitely worth bringing to the attention of devs.
Much ripening but heading into the technical elements is outside of my scope. I am a concept dabbler.
When it comes to content to promote, that is a better way to go as it will likely attract more viewers and votes on top of the promotion. I don't promote my own content through vote buying, boosters etc but, I have benefited from the manual @ocd curation and I think that they do a good job overall.
Well the concept is a good one ;)
Yes, I tend to go with the manual ones mostly too. I've been experimenting with the buying ones, but all I can afford is ! SBD, so it hasn't been as profitable as the free ones, funny to day.