Dedicated Curation Program
Steve Palmer made an astute observation in my last thread about the 50/50 proposal. He noted that there is a group of people interested in investing in Steem and curating but who do not want to write root posts.
Changing the author curation ratio from 75/25 to 50/50 would benefit this crowd.
Personally, I think a better solution would be to create a program specifically for dedicated curators.
Such a program could be made with a SteemConnect App and busy.org clone.
Authors who want dedicated curators to read their posts could delegate STEEM POWER to the program (Notice how this encourages authors to hold STEEM POWER). People would sign up as curators. The curation program would give the curator a matching curation (Notice how this encourages curators to hold STEEM POWER).
The matching doesn't have to be perfect. Lets say the curators had 10,000 SP and the authors delegated only 8,000 SP. The curators would get 0.8 SP for each SP they held. If it was a 10,000 to 12,000; the dedicated curators would get 1.2 delegation for each SP they held. The matching doesn't have to be perfect. It is best done as a ratio.
The busy.org clone would keep detailed stats on readership. That way we could measure the number of reads that we get through the dedicated curation program. The clone could use a captcha and generated stats as the curators read. This would weed out the bots and give some valuable data about how people engage with the media.
The curation program should let the curators drop replies. Writing replies is part of curation.
One can expand the dedicated curation with other options. For example, who are promoting a keyword could give dedicated curation to dedicated curators who visit the keyword.
The program would be using a two part curation scheme. Lets say the program had the account @example. I would delegate to @example. @example would then delegate to the dedicated curators. @example would adjust the curations periodically in the same way that SteemIt adjusts the 15SP delegated to new accounts.
Creating a program that directly addresses the needs of people who want to curate without writing root posts enhances SteemIt without the negative consequences that would result by dropping the author/rurator rewards to 50/50.
In summary: A dedicated curation program funded by delegation would directly benefit curators and the authors who delegate SP. It would also encourage both authors and curators to hold STEEM POWER without upsetting author/curator balance.
Dropping the ratio to 50/50 would create a system with more bots and fewer authors.
The image is the iStockPhoto.com photo of the week.
I would consider delegating to such a system. A philanthropic dapp would be a worthwhile endeavour.
A dapp based on matching curation would provide a clear and direct incentive for both authors and curators to hold STEEM.
I suspect that such a dapp would encourage some of the whales to move their delegations from bots to actual people.
Thanks for the mention!
This is a great idea that I'd love to see someone try, but I'd argue that it doesn't eliminate the need for a change to the reward split. Curation is fundamental to Steem's "Proof of brain" mechanism, so I think that getting the incentives right should be done on the blockchain itself, not through reliance on a 3rd party. Somewhere around half of the world is made up of introverts, and "lurking" is a very common Internet behavior, so (IMO) the blockchain incentives need to be designed in a way that is more attractive to that underrepresented investment class.
As I said in the other thread, I think that because they would lead to an increase in audience size for authors and favorable changes to supply and demand for STEEM, these sorts of efforts would be beneficial for nearly all stakeholders: authors, voters, and investors of all sizes. I think that the only classes who may not benefit would be spammers and plagiarizers, who would find more eyes on their posts, too.
Fortunately, the two things aren't mutually exclusive, so someone could certainly go forward with a system like this, no matter what happens with the reward split.
Thank you for upvoting my post.
SteemIt gives me the account name of everyone who votes for me. I love everyone who upvotes me.
True lurkers prefer to stay anonymous. One could design a SteemConnect app that would drop upvotes with an anonymous name. The app would have a hundred lurker accounts allowing the curators to upvote and downvote posts anonymously.
@ats-david's argument for 50/50 states that SteemIt.com was never intended to be a single web site, but that the currency was designed to create a foundation for multiple sites.
As it would not be difficult to make a busy.org clone that used delegation to double the rewards for curation. The the original design of STEEM has a ready made mechanism for testing concepts like the statement that increased curation would improve the content.