changing to 50/50 may well end up being a disincentive for content creators. Why should someone who places a vote get half when it is the creator that has put the time and effort into it?
I really think the bigger part of the problem is that the Trending page leans more on the monetary value the voting has created than any other measure of quality.
Surely an algorithm could be devised that reduced the monetary influence and factored in number of views, votes and comments on a post. I know there are a lot of spam comments but with the complexity of algorithms that can be devised these days some method of weighting the comments to factor out some or most of the spam should be possible.
The end result would be the more engagement a post gets, the higher up the trending list it would get. No amount of self-voting or vote bots would artificially inflate the result. It would bring the trending page more into line with other social media sites.
Think of it as a partnership. Without votes by SP holders there is no reward for the author (and without SP holders collectively there are no rewards to give to any authors). Conversely, without content there is nothing for SP holders to vote for, and further no content or engagement to drive growth of the platform and STEEM/SP value. And, finally, without engaged voters investing time and effort into curation (the point of this post really), there is no way to determine which are the excellent posts that most deserve to be rewarded.
As @timcliff explained, curation rewards are split between all of the voters, but even in the extreme simple case of a single voter, it is still a partnership and both partners are critical to success. Recognizing the importance of both posters (and commenters) and voters with a more equitable split (and one which better compensates putting in actual effort to curation than the status quo) is good for everyone. I don't know whether 50/50 is exactly the right number but it is probably closer to the right number than the current 85/15.
80/20 or 75/25, even 70/30 may be okay but the 50/50 diminishes the value of the labour the content creator does.
If a content creator deems his/herself too good for that reward layout, someone else will happily step in. And, if that much higher curation payout makes owning SP sufficiently attractive (and it WILL make it more attractive to own SP), then those content creators that opt out will be very disappointed in their decision to do so.
I hear people talk all the time about "what if Steem reaches $10, $100, $1,000... what would these payouts look like then?", well, I don't see Steem reaching those types of prices with the current parameters, but making it far more attractive to own SP (buy and lock away Steem) is certainly a step in the right direction.
People aren't going to be complaining about "only making half of the rewards" as content creators if Steem does a 10X price move based on SP becoming a more valuable commodity.
If a content creator currently makes $100 at today's Steem price (call it $1.50) and today's payout parameters (85/15%), they will be making ( { [100 / 0.85] x 0.5 } x 10 ) $588.24 if Steem 10X in price (to around $15) and the parameters are changed to 50/50%, all else being equal.
you'd make a wonderful fiat publisher as they do their best to drive the proceeds to the writer lower and lower while their intake of proceeds goes higher on the backs of the creators.
What I say is true. If curators make roughly nothing, then how is Steemit any different than a site like YouTube (only content creators earn)? What's the point in holding SP?
If you want Steem to be an attractive investment, make this so called "Steem Power" actually powerful. Right now it's more like "Steem Weakling", if you ask me.
If, on the other hand, you're glad with a flash in the pan, short time window to cash out on your content before this all collapses in on itself, by all means keep curation as being paid in peanuts for holding a boat-load of SP.
You gotta realize that holding a high amount of SP is a fairly risky thing and it's those very people that have taken this huge risk who're making it possible for these content creators to be paid (in anything more than mere pesos) in the first place! Don't bite the hand that feeds you!
Should all these high SP holders get fed up enough and they all start to sell, guess what happens to the author payouts? Don't be too myopic in how you view this.
The curation rewards are not being given to one individual. They are split among the hundreds (or thousands) of users who upvote it.
The problem with the type of algorithm that you proposed (views, comments, etc) is that they can all be easily manipulated by bots.
Often enough, the curation rewards do all go to one individual, if it were a whale who voted first. Bringing the 30 minutes down to 5 might encourage whales to vote manually if they have a better chance of getting in before curation gets donated to the author. The 50/50 rewards however, will be a huge disincentive for good content creators. They would no longer have that 30 minute handicap, they would only have 5 minutes for minnows to get in and give the author some of the curation rewards which would mean we no longer have the underdog handicap where it's better to upvote an underdog (undiscovered but soon to be popular) than a "popular" (already recognised) author.
If you do change the ratio to 50/50, I would argue that the time for curation donation be INCREASED rather than decreased, to increase the incentive of finding hidden gems and DECREASE the incentive of voting the same posts all the time.
I agree that the 50/50 split would be a big hit to content creators. I would be OK with that if I thought it would mean that we were doing a better job aligning upvotes with quality content, but personally I am very skeptical/doubtful that this would happen as a result.
The 30 minuet limit primarily benefits established authors who already have a voting trail following them.
In this comment you say the 30 minute limit primarily benefits established authors. In the next comment you say a 5 minute window would encourage finding undiscovered quality content.
These comments seem to contradict one another.
Not really. One end favors established authors. The other favors undiscovered authors.
A longer "curation donation" window favours established authors who have inevitable support. This incentivises curators to seek undiscovered authors instead because the curation reward won't be donated.
A shorter "curation donation" window favours the curator who can vote on ANY post that was not recognised within the first 5 minutes that it would be a hit. This incentivises curators to vote for @sweetsssj, @timcliff, @blocktrades, @acidyo, and any other established author who is almost guarenteed to make it to the trending page.
That will inevitably make new authors see the game as rigged.
I see your point of view, but I think it oversimplifies things and also doesn’t account for irrational human behavior. The goal of increasing curation rewards (by changing the window from 30 to 5) is to try and incentivize more manual curation. Generally the established authors are the ones favored by bots, so the hope is that with more manual curators, the less established authors will get more attention from stakeholders. Whether that will actually happen or not remains to be seen.
But don't you think the 30 minute limit (or curation donation window as I call it) should benefit the established author? This actually discourages curators who seek curation rewards from voting for the same authors all the time, because once they become established the curation rewards are harder to catch.
Meaning it's more profitable for a curator to find hidden gems, which means new authors have a chance at growing.
Right now the incentives for curation are not very high. The 30 minuet window benefits the author at the expense of the curator. If we want to provide better incentives for curators to find and upvote undiscovered quality content, changing from 30 minuets to 5 will help with that.
I think it will increase incentive to vote for the same authors all the time.
Can you at least explain, where the incentive to find undiscovered quality content comes from?
You will earn higher curation rewards by voting on an undiscovered post than one that already has a high amount of rewards.
Again?
:) At first I was amazed, how many of bigger fishes were also doing that. Now I don't even comment any more. It would take too much time...
I purpose self upvoting on comments to be removed. Let the blockchain decide who's comments are more important.
Nearly every big account holder owns several accounts which can upvote each other ...
I described the concept of 'diminishing returns' which could discourage self-voting, multi account self-voting and circle voting here.
Now that would change the situation a big way. I think.
from your article: "How about if after each vote on a specific account (including ones own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before."
Great idea in diminishing the curation rewards as they continue to self upvote or circle jerk. I think this would be helpful to the platform indeed. What do we do about all this selling of votes and leasing of Steem power? This also is not good for anyone but whales either?
Perfect! Thank you for the link my friend. I will go read this now.
Apparently it's for visibility as I've been told. So if you have lots of money then your comment is more important. So you upvote it to the top of the list so everyone can see it. It doesn't even matter if the rest of the blockchain thinks it's a good comment it "Deserves" to be read.
That's what I've been told
"Just for visibility" is again, something that bigger self-voters mentioned now and than, why did they do that, and continued with the comment due to the article. What you have been told is pretty accurate :) And I 'd also upvote your comment but I delegated most of my SP, so my upvote is not worth even a cent
To prevent bots manipulating the view count is a simple matter, a 3-5 minute page timer, That is short enough time for picture people to get a real view and plenty of time for a medium length post to get a real view. And would cut down on the ability of the bot to jump from page to page. The views are mostly unique visits so a bot viewing the same page every 3-5 minutes would not effect the view count.
The votes are made at the blockchain level. There would be no way to implement a page timer that a bot could not get around by just posting their vote directly to the blockchain.
Took me a long time to read all the comments, I saw further down another reason this would not work, and that is because some places like Busy.org and utopian.io do not use the steemit views, and do not increase the view count on steemit.
Correct.
what more than putting the weight on the monetary rewards that the trending page now reflects being manipulated through circle jerking on the voting? At least their ability to manipulate becomes more diluted than the ease with which so many get on the trending page now for often rather questionable content.
I feel exactly the same way, especially when spending an hour+ or more on a post as I typically do.
In the end, it will encourage larger users to vote for more content and likely to smaller users. This would be a great thing. It will also encourage more people to vote in general. Is it perfect? No, I don't think we will ever see a perfect balance on a platform that provides financial rewards for creating content.
The goal is to encourage manual curation meaning good authors and content providers should be seeing higher rewards. If this happens, the value of Steem will rise via loop of attracting more great authors to the platform and viewers following them with a want to support their favorite authors. We all agree curation isn't working right now? It's not worth it for those with small SP and curiously same applies to whales also it seems.
We have to start asking what those who decide to not join Steemit think and how can we fix it? Main reason probably is that currently we are not rewarding the best content with highest rewards or even trying to find it.