Would Greater Comment Voting Help The Community?
Introduction
I have been noticing how certain users like @abit have been concentrating on rewarding comments.
In the short time I have noticed it, it does seem to be having a positive effect in the comment threads.
I remember back in the early days of Steemit how comments frequently made rewards that were comparable to full posts.
It did seem that there was a lot more engagement and enthusiasm for commentary at the time.
Further since it is not really possible to make a good comment without reading a post I think we had much more people actually reading posts.
Since then, as the price of Steem has fallen, many of us have started rewarding comments at a lower rate than posts.
I for example do it at 1% most of the time because my assumption is that people prefer to be rewarded in their posts.
Recently I have tried to up-vote at least a few comments every day at 100% but the vast majority of my voting power still goes to posts.
Am I and others who do this making a mistake?
In my opinion posters and readers are equally important. It doesn't matter how good or bad the material you are posting is, if nobody reads it what is the point.
Concentrating On Posts - A Sub-Optimal Strategy?
It is possible that this a less than optimal strategy for a number of reasons:
Not everyone is a writer or wants to write posts, this removes a potential avenue for them to make money.
Engagement from my (albeit limited understanding) is a key component of social media success.
There is less connection between posters and readers which results in poorer social cohesion.
Remember That Comments Reward Parent Posts
There may be a more optimal way of doing things that benefits the whole community.
I realise the white-paper is out of date, but I believe the following (from pg 21) still applies when it comes to comments:
"Good discussion requires back and forth posting. When you reply to someone else, they get 50% of any payout you receive in that thread. This rule applies up to 6 levels deep. Starting a big discussion greatly rewards the parent poster."
"This incentive structure motivates people to contribute in a way that motivates others to get involved. It encourages people to ask good questions so that others can provide valuable answers."
From my understanding that means that the original poster and commenter split the rewards.
To put it another way, up-voting the best comments on a post rewards both the poster and the commenters.
This would not solve all the problems we currently have in the community but it might help:
Currently Perceived Problems
If we consider some of the current problems that people are talking about:
- Lack of Engagement and Reading of Posts.
- Potential "bandwagon" effect with whale voting.
- Bad feeling when people get down-voted/flagged for readjustment of rewards.
- General lack of communication between people.
- Low Steem price.
I am wondering if these things could be potentially improved by all of us voting more on comments?
The original post will still get some of the rewards but there would be a greater distribution than simply up-voting the post itself.
Perhaps one method of doing this might be to up-vote the post by 50% and then up-vote the best comment by 50% .
Also would it be better if whales ONLY voted on comments?
I don't know - those who are more mathematically minded than me can probably suggest or model the most optimal strategy.
Conclusion
Anyway this is merely an attempt to start the discussion on this topic.
It is entirely possible I am missing some key point or issue that might make this problematic.
I will apologise in advance for that!
As always I welcome the rest of you to correct this and/or add your own perspectives.
I understand it will not solve our problems but it might at least be of some help (assuming I have this right).
We are all stronger as a community and part of that is having a good dialogue:)
Thank you for reading
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I don't see a reason to treat "posts" and "comments" differently from one another. They should be equal, and use the same reward pool.
They are both "posts".
Both blogs and comments can entertain, or not entertain, other users the same way; both are collections of words strung together to create sentences that other people may or may not find useful, valuable, or entertaining.
I'm not a fan of the proposed reward pool exclusively for comments, but think they should just be equal with the actual blog posts.
Agreed - I remember early on some of my comments took as much as an hour to put together sometimes more.
It will be interesting to see if it does work as intended.
I think some commission flowing upward is okay (probably 50% was too high for multiple reasons). Any reply is always some evidence that the parent was something even worth replying to at all (there are exceptions such as replies calling out abuse). Posts and even comments that spark a lot of active discussion in response are even more valuable than their own content might suggest.
In the original system it was supposed that some of these effective "conversation starter" posts or comments might be extremely highly rewarded due to getting a share of many, many, child comments. It would have been interesting to see how that played out at scale.
I can imagine in a small community in building phase, not all topics can evenly be addressed, since not enough people with interest and knowledge of any topic you can think of, are member of the community. Therefor topics that have most shared interest in the community will take the most money home. Also, the number of whales who are voting for the comments, maybe biased to some subset of topics as well due to the low number of whales we have here on Steemit.
Indeed, it would have been very interesting to see how the comment rewards where distributed when having a large community and large whale population with a very brought topic interest. Maybe something for later to test when this community becomes more mature?
A very good point and something which I think people tend to forget.
Indeed and let's hope we get to be big enough to test it out.
Lets work on becoming a community big enough to be super relevant :)
If Steem would be more like Reddit, that setup would work better. Sharing an interesting link would worth a lot because of the deep conversation. That's the only value that a link can bring, so it have to be rewarded. However, in the fear of plagiarism Steem has become more like Medium, tl;dr is rewarded more.
A comment that would want to compete with posts for the same reward pool should be insanely long.
Acts speak louder than words, many users apply minimum voting weight for comment, or not voting them at all. They show that those are worth less for them, even when they speak about the opposite.
Yes and I think that may have worked out in time. We will likely never know now.
Rewarding comments equally to posts is a path to centralisation, in my view. Here is why. Let's say I write a post which sparks a really good conversation. There could be 50 comments on there - ok, they are good but my post becomes one of fifty-one and ... knowing that my average per post is about $2 because of my ability to analyse things, the comments could get multiples more.
I see you got over $7 for 4 votes for a comment - voted for by whales who want to see this happen ... cannot be right.
If comment voting becomes the game then the intra-voting practices of whales will, in effect, go unseen. Their 'trending' posts will disappear as they will not vote for posts but only for comments - to encourage an unseen abuse of the power structure is a step in the wrong direction.
Sure there will need more UI for comments.
I doubt people will vote ONLY for comments though.
If you send the intra-voting "underground", there will be every incentive for whales to only vote for comments. Let's be very clear, they have displayed every possible intent of ensuring non-decentralisation.
They already ensure that through the cynical voting practices used to date. Not only do they do it but they actually admit to doing it.
Do you really believe any vote outside the top 300 steemians matters? It does not. Otherwise there would not be a situation whereby only 1% of all the worth ever distributed in the 10 months since steemit started is held outside this group.
Please explain how and why you believe that this trend will change. It will not. We all know why but some of us are prepared to really look into the practices and see the illegitimacy of it all.
Within the top 25 accounts of steemit, two actually put any actual money into the system. Two!
Yet they claim the right to be able to usurp it and make an enormous amount of profit in terms of SP by usurping the offerings of the 1%.
This will get worse with a voting structure for comments such as you propose.
I mean If you put your time on right things your time will worth more. It applies to all of us.
And if you put your time into doing things badly ... there is no wriggling worth the time here. I am trying to be positive and I get met with passive aggressive nonsense the whole time and I get maltreated by the whole bunch of whales for exposing their behaviour.
I have got a lot more dirt to dish out if you want me to -- a LOT!
So, shall we focus upon the solutions?
I have them, and have said so many times before.
Do people want to listen or enjoy a right royal sinking of the good ship steemit?
I understand your frustrations but I don't really have any solution as of yet.
I do ... and it would be a revelation for them to be heard! I am not alone in having solutions and you are not alone at bemoaning moaners! :)
Direct quote from Dan Larimer: "It is so sad seeing people fight over nothing. The whales who vote and consume rewards from the reward pool only take out of one pocket and put it in another."
Me to you: "You are therefore arguing, quite rightly in my view, for a fewer number of votes per person.
Personally I would like to see anyone with a nominal vote value under $0.05 have a double vote too. So, one could have, say, 20 votes (2.5 times current value) or 10 votes and 5 double votes. That is a better path to engagement.
Of course you cannot read everything - read what you want and vote accordingly upon the posts and at, say, 25% power for a comment vote with 50% of that vote going to the author of the post.
Is that not sensible - this is, after all, supposed to be trying to be social media!!"
One other thought ... which might make it work ... is it possible to make a vote impossible for a bot ... then actual engagement would be necessary ... or maybe make it only possible to vote via your own comment ... then making the rewarding of posts a non-option would make the whole concept of social media appealing!
I don't think that is possible.
Then the system needs an overhaul .. but I think that anyone who has an inkling of understanding already knows that!
Time is money, my friend.
Whaaaaat ... so yours is worth something and mine is not? This comment is not befitting you my friend!
@thecryptofiend I like the idea of voting comments cause there really are comments that stir participation and give birth to more comments not only sensible ones there are funny ones that could make you go lolling.
In fact it's a good idea IMHO cause anyway its also counted as a post isn't it? I for one love it when my post floods with comments. I work hard for each post I make from photos to facts attached to it but if it only gets 3 comments I feel like sobbing but I'm no fan of drama so I go around commenting as well to get noticed and actually I made so many friends here this way. It also makes any author feel better to see their post are really being read. It's frustrating when nobody reads your post at least if there's a comment then it shows someone did read it and even if the comment seem hostile one should be thankful for whoever wrote it and just handle it maturely it won't have to turn into a heated exchange of writing would it cause at least that person spare his time going through your post.
So many sudden changes these days .. I am a bit lost in this transition but it's almost Steemit's birthday so perhaps new changes will be born and maybe this experiment shall prosper ... hopefully .. otherwise we're all just going through a roller coaster of changes that if one group dislikes it automatically gets terminated again - I hope the platform somehow keep still for a year - trying a few rewarding system and if it doesn't work I wish they'd ask the community as well before they even terminate it.
I think everyone does.
I think a lot of people feel the same way. People have so little time these days and I think that is part of the problem. Any way we can incentivise them to comment more is better I think.
Hopefully HF17 will help with this.
As a general rule, if people take the time to comment on my posts I always upvote their comments at 100% voting power to show my appreciation. As for comments on other people's posts, I follow a somewhat organic approach and will upvote if it's something that really resonates with me or if I want to make an extra effort to help that person out.
I am in favor of having a separate reward pool for comments. Their nature is different from full posts. On average, comments take only a few minutes to write and are not carefully planned out like posts. They are more freely flowing in nature and are the primary method by which many people engage on the platform. They need to compete for rewards against each other rather than against full posts which receive the lion's share of the payouts.
Not sure if this is such a good idea. The power of whales is so unbalanced, if comments started resulting in much higher payouts, on average, than most regular posts, people would be even more disincentivized against making long, well thought out, well written posts than they are right now.
As long as it works as intended I am fine with it too.
Good point my only worry is that very few people actually read those long posts!
Thanks for your input:)
Ah, now this could be the topic of a whole blog post in and of itself. Personally, I like reading meaty articles I can really sink my teeth into. But I recognize that many social media users have short attention spans. Which is a good argument for introducing post types to Steemit: article, short post, video, link, etc. That way everyone can focus on what they like instead of having to wade through all the flotsam in the stream, looking for the good tidbits like now.
You should do it and please send me the link if you do:)
Very good point. It might also help to differentiate apps. For example the Steepshot guys (an Instagram type app) will be doing something like this to filter posts not taken with their app.
For me, the key here is engagement.
I understand I'm in a very small minority in this.
The money generated from posts or comments is so tiny that it is not part of my strategy.
I think i we all focused a bit less on trying to grasp our little coins and focused more on having fun and building relationships with good content and have interactions that spark discussion and collaboration etc, then Steemit will actually grow to be the powerhouse we all want it to be.
But all this grasping at pennies is a pointless waste of time.
So what if someone earns $5 more than me. My dad has recently come on and he is earning way more than I am telling tall tales of his childhood.
I spend a bunch of time editing his work and helping him get it online.
Do I complain that he is seeing success where I am not?
Of course I do!!
The old bugger is reaping the benefits of my hard work!!!
I'm just waiting for him to earn enough so I can charge for my services :-)
(for those unaccustomed to sarcasm, the paragraphs above are meant as a joke. )
So come on Steemians - the platform is about Esteem! Do stuff that builds up your esteem within the community, and stop worrying about the money.
It will come in its own good time.
Perfectly formulated!
Sarcasm: When your old man dies (hope that does not happen in reality for a long time to come) you get his money anyway.
hopefully when the old man dies there won't be a single cent left - he will have spent them all enjoying life :-)
Good point! Success with making your father rich! :)
Absolutely. Also there is no point in having lots of those coins if they are worth zero.
Great discussion. I think that upvoting comments more would be a significant improvement to the community. @abit has been doing a beyond amazing job on this!
One thing though - they technically removed this logic in an earlier hardfork. Comments no longer distribute any of the rewards back to parent comments or the parent post.
OK thanks that was what I was wondering:)
What do think about the 50:50 idea (or 75:25) - give 50% of your vote to the post and 50% to the best comment(s)?
That may still be an improvement on the current situation.
When I like a comment but not the post, why should I be forced to give some % to the post? If it's designed that way, I'd rather not upvote that comment directly, but ask the author of the comment to copy that comment to one of her own post, then I'll upvote the new one without hesitation.
The original thinking was that since it was the post that spurred the conversation then it was in part responsible and hence should be rewarded.
According to @timcliff it doesn't work that way any more. It goes entirely to the commenters now so you don't have to worry about it.
I was worried because I thought you were proposing to enable it again. :)
For example, when @cheetah left a reply on a plagiarized post, I may want to reward @cheetah by upvoting the reply but won't want to reward the post.
What about posts that are in essence not good at all, but still take the opportunity to respond with good comments; Maybe to help the writer of the post to become better; Maybe to help the writer to see things with more open minded view? I would comment on posts where for instance the writer has a BIG tunnel view, or did not think of the topic he/she is addressing at all, I may take the opportunity to try and help such person to think about that topic from different angles, to open the mind of that person more. Kind of being a teacher trying to make the world a little bit better. In such situation I may want to upvote the post to support, but someone else may like my comments, my effort to try to 'better' the world a little bit, but does not like the original post at all. In my short time here on Steemit, I actually did upvote comments to posts already since I liked the comment, for which I did not wanted to reward the original post.
Yes abuse would be an exception to the premise of the original system (about the only one I can think of though). Perhaps there would be some other way to address the exception without throwing away the whole rule though.
No I was just wondering if it still worked. Right - I hadn't thought of those issues.
It's a cool idea. I think anything that gets people voting on comments more is a good thing.
My vote doesn't count for a whole lot, but I still upvote quite a few comments (and posts) at 100% voting weight.
Yes same here my vote is normally only one cent because I vote a lot. I think it will still help though because it might encourage others to do the same and so the cumulative effect will be greater.
Also after HF 17 with the separate comment reward pool those votes may be worth significantly more.
Although my vote doesn't count for a lot, actually almost nothing since I'm new to the platform and have very low SP, I do upvote posts AND comments with 100%. Comments I upvote to show appreciation and also to encourage others to vote for the comments as well. I do everything manually, no bot has my voting power. I also vote for posts that may be in the system for a minute.
In generally, I vote for things I read only, and that I liked and/or want to support for various reasons.
Lol you are not the only one. I don't really pay attention to the timing unless I am using a bot. For my manual voting I just vote whenever I see a post.
Yeah in the 'early days' with the few people that were here, there still was more engagement because people actually read through posts at a better rate than now (I think) — I'm guilty of not always reading all the day, plus there's the curation trails etc.
That said, I have always made a point to upvote comments that I particularly like, maybe not always at 100% but something.
Knowing that the incentives are to interact more, I'll make more of an effort to not only upvote but comment and reply.
Yes I think it helps us all in creating more engagement. Thanks for taking the time to comment:)
Since about 95% of my "posts" are as comments, I certainly wouldn't mind having another reward pool specifically for them.
How does this work for voting power? I'm picturing it as if we'll have two separate voting powers: one for voting on blog posts and the other for comments (this seems to follow from having two separate reward pools). Is this correct?
I don't think they will be separate. Only the reward pools will be separated.
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
NP :)
I miss the times when a great comment, at the right time (like before any other commented the post) was worth some SBDs.
I think, without any doubt, that comments should have a better reward: it's quite useful for the authors to receive feedback and not only upvotes!
I currently upvote 50% every comment I get to my posts, maybe I should upvote at 100?
Me too.
You could try it.
Does upvoting a comment help an article move up the feed? Because if it doesn't, comment interaction is simply not incentivized. If I like an article, I would rather have my upvote count towards the actual article than weaken my voting power by upvoting a comment.
Yes.
Oh okay. And I assume posting a comment also helps an article move up the feed because it counts as "interaction".
I think it helps in the activity feed rather than trending.