@steem-ua Still Alive & Kicking

in #utopian-io5 years ago (edited)

@steem-ua Still Alive & Kicking

steem-ua.png

@steem-ua Still Alive & Kicking

Over the past 10 days there were quite some changes in UA ranks, which caused a lot of questions, and there were also a few posts (for example by @tarazkp and @soyrosa) openly questioning whether the @steem-ua project still needs, and deserves, delegation support. This post aims to answer these questions and concerns, so that hopefully all can conclude @steem-ua is still “Alive & Kicking” and simply fine as it is.

@utopian-io quitting their witness node and UA rank effects

As you might know, in short, the UA influence (or reputation) metric and ranks are heavily dependent on two core components, being:

-a- the Follower Matrix / Graph (who follows who), and
-b- the Witness rankings (and who those witnesses follow)

Computation of UA scores for all accounts on the Steem blockchain is a massively complex undertaking with lots of number crunching. Something to realise as well, is that with every witness (un)vote and every account (un)follow on the Steem chain all UA scores change. When “plankton X” decides to follow “plankton Y” or “whale Z”, still every UA score changes, albeit slightly — that won’t effect big changes. Yet when a massive account like @utopian-io, which is not only very influential on the Steem chain but was also a top-10 witness account, decides to quit their witness activities, then all UA scores & ranks change a lot indeed.

You may like those changes, or you don’t, but this change in UA scores has always been coded like this by design: the event in which @utopian-io quit their witness activities and UA adapting its scores accordingly, is in fact proof the UA system is objectively functioning exactly as intended!

These UA score & rank changes can indeed be intuitively justified as well: as @utopian-io first announced quitting its witness, has been calling for voting on other witnesses they think deserve your witness vote,
quit their witness node (server), and quickly dropped its witness rank, from a mathematical point of view @utopian-io itself became “less influential” on Steem (therewith not meaning to state that @utopian-io isn’t meaningful anymore: it still is!), ergo the UA algorithm now passes on less “trust” to the @utopian-io account itself (the UA algorithm detected a large drop in people voting for the @utopian-io witness, and the UA algorithm “assumes” that therefore less trust should be passed to @utopian-io), and as a direct effect the account @utopian-io passes on less trust to the accounts it (in)directly follows itself: hence, those accounts dropped in their UA scores and ranks.

And at the same time, due to @utopian-io quickly dropping in witness ranks, the other witnesses increased their witness ranks, some of which increased a lot, so more UA Trust is now being passed to those witnesses and as a direct effect also to the accounts those witnesses follow themselves.

Where some lose rank, others gain: the sum of all “absolute UA” still remains 1. This is nothing short but full proof that UA functions just fine as it is.

UA (the Influence Metric) vs. @steem-ua (the Algorithmic Curation Program)

As we’ve stated time and time again, @steem-ua - the Algorithmic Curation Program - is merely one possible application of UA, the Influence Metric. Almost 5 months ago, we’ve Open Sourced the UA code for anybody to download, install, verify, contribute to, and build their own dApps with. @steem-ua has always been and still is an ALGORITHMIC curation & up vote program based on UA scores: this is not per se better than full manual curation, yet it is different and a perfectly fine alternative to delegating to “bid bots” or “promotional services”.

@steem-ua is still being delegated to by almost 900 individual delegators: a few powerful supporters wholeheartedly delegating tens of thousands of SP to @steem-ua (e.g. @neoxian and @jaki01) enable hundreds of smaller delegators to get upvoted by @steem-ua with a higher value than they could receive if they would self-vote at 100%. In other words: @steem-ua helps to keep onboard these smaller accounts, to stay with Steem and grow their accounts.

If you’re a big Steem account and you’re primarily interested in getting rewarded a good ROI in terms of “accumulating even more Steem tokens by delegating”, then delegating to “bid bots” is your best choice.
However, if you’re, being a big Steem account, more interested in adding more value to Steem, to grow the Steem user base, to increase demand for Steem then @steem-ua can be your preferred project to delegate to. Your big delegation matters: it supports hundreds of small accounts getting better upvotes by @steem-ua, and that by itself increases your own Steem holdings.

Thank you for your time! Steem On!

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Hello, @steem-ua!

Thank you for your contribution to Utopian. The algorithmic curation program is a wonderful project, and I appreciate the fact that you took the time to create an informative blog post. The post is also well-written.

In terms of content, I like all the information provided. Even though the post lacks editorial content, it certainly contains all the necessary details. I have to admit that I wanted to read a bit more about your personal experience of working on this project, however I do realize that this wasn't the purpose of this particular blog post.

To summarize, this is a nice contribution from you. It is great to see that everything is running smoothly, and I think that you are doing a really good job. Keep it up.

Your contribution has been evaluated according to Utopian policies and guidelines, as well as a predefined set of questions pertaining to the category.

To view those questions and the relevant answers related to your post, click here.


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[utopian-moderator]

Thank you for your review, @lordneroo! Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why my UA rank had dropped so much.

Posted using Partiko iOS

Now you know! ;-)

Good to know. Hopefully there are some more posts coming as the last one before this was 5 months ago. A lot of people seem to use it as an indicator of their engagement so I think it is important for there to be updates along the way, even if it is just to show that there is still someone behind the wheel.

I agree that it's important to provide some "vocal loudness" every now and then. On the other hand, I'm not of the type to "just post, to post" and as @steem-ua has always been an Algorithmic Curation Program (which of course includes a lot of "manual curation" - yet in-directly! - all manual actions / transactions are the basis of all UA computations) not posting and just "letting the system run" does fit "the UA / Steem-ua Way".

@neoxian a few days ago DM'd me to notify me about your post, and by then I had already drafted parts of this post as an explanatory update discussing the effects of Utopian quitting its witness activities on the UA data. So both your post and the "Utopian explanatory update" were, in my mind, a good topic to post about!

Yep, it was a good thing. I am glad you posted it because as said, quite a few people use it as a metric of their engagement/growth etc, but don't understand how it works or what affects it. THanks.

Supporting small accounts is a greath thing and you have done great job at that. Congrats on that.
There may be some room for impovment in evaluating the quality of the posts :)

In essence the algorithm works just fine. If more people would be more "selective" about which witnesses they vote for and who they choose to follow, which posts they upvote and to which they comment, then the algorithm would function even better - just like it is coded right now.

Concerning the witnesses some very few very rich users have a huge influence on the ranks of the witnesses, and thus on everybody's ua-rating ...

In and by itself that observation is both correct and "just how things are" currently; it's a direct consequence of dPOS, which also has its advantages and disadvantages of course.

The "witness rank" component, via which an initializing "UA trust vector" is assigned to all Steem accounts, surely has its pitfalls -- I'm not denying that of course. On the one hand, I agree with you that indeed a few very large stakeholders (e.g. @freedom) have an immense influence on -a- the witness rankings and therewith also on -b- all UA scores. But on the other hand, the question begs: "is that therefore 'wrong', or a good indicator indeed?"

@freedom is massively "influential" on Steem, yet due to not openly blogging via the @freedom account (arguably one of the best example accounts on why UA functions better as an influence metric than "reputation"), it has no "votable objects" and conversely no "reputation earnings" either, but it does have a relatively high UA score (and rightfully so!). And therewith, I argue that it is justified that the witnesses @freedom / @pumpkin votes on should be "powered with" lots of "UA Trust".

So is the UA witness ranking component "perfect"? Nope. Is it "justified"? Yes, I think it is.

Right, it is indeed kind of an 'influence score' which need not to be bad. Nevertheless, people with much influence still can have a very bad reputation (think at Donald Trump for example ...). :-)

Steemit, Inc. changed the display of the people one is following. There is no alphabetical order any longer. I had started to go through the people I follow in an alphabetical order (I had reached 'j'). Now this is not possible anymore (ok, maybe other STEEM interfaces list the names still in an alphabetical order, I just didn't check it).

I'm not complaing about the UA score but the daily rankings of the posts.... I dont know how that works, but from what I have seen there is room for improvment

Posted using Partiko Android

There's always room for improvement! ;-)

This is a great project and something I feel everyone should participate in. I regret pulling my delegation but the moment I have SP to spare again I’ll definitely be saddling back up. Thanks @scipio! 😄

One can always re-begin delegating; that's the beauty of the delegation system

Mystery of my improvements explained! Thanks for the update! Eager to see more nee accounts join and monitor their progress as it has been useful for me to see how I am improving within the community. You should do a round of posts to welcome new users as more have joined (and left) the last couple of months!

Posted using Partiko iOS

True, partially, which is why this post was posted!
A lot has been explained in earlier posts, and maybe this one will stimulate to newcomers reading what we wrote before.

@steem-ua glad things are going well for you, one of my first delegations was to you and I enjoy seeing the metrics from the comments.

Posted using Partiko Android

We might improve those "smart comments" further somewhat...

thanks for writing this update as the post by @tarazkp had me wondering as well and checking up on what was going on. I still have my delegation running and plan on keeping it that way. Its not massive in the scheme of things but it does support the platform as such...

Every delegation helps, albeit that the project is heavily supported by those delegating more than 250 SP. The large delegations "carry" the smaller ones, pull them in so to say, and keep the project going.

Huge thanks for this to @neoxian and @jaki01. @steem-ua owes them lots of "thank you's"

A TLDR would have been great :P

Posted using Partiko Android

The TL;DR is in the title ;-) "Still alive and kicking" :P

Fair enough :D

Posted using Partiko Android

can someone just tell me in kid style what is steem-ua, I asked in discord too :(

UA (short for "User Authority") is an alternative "influence metric", like your "57" (right now) reputation score. Where this "reputation score" is computed simply by how much rewards you've acquired over time, UA doesn't look at your rewards / earnings per se, but at who is following who. A (very complex) computation system, lots of number crunching, was invented (by me), then coded (by @holger80 in direct and intensive cooperation with me), to compute (and frequently re-computed) every account's UA score and rank.

@steem-ua is one application that utilizes UA data: you can delegate to it, but unlike a "promo bid bot" it then doesn't upvote your posts by how much you've delegated to @steem-ua but by your UA scores compared to others. It uses 3 components: your own account's UA score, all UA scores from the accounts upvoting your posts, and the same for all accounts commenting on / engaging with, your posts.

Then this way, Using UA services will be beneficial only in cases, if a whale upvotes my post or comments on it since my UA score is obviously low and I would need some whale engagement to effectively get benefit from steem-ua services.

Is it so or should I give it a shot by delegating?

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