Two ideas that can make the Steem blockchain a better place
It's been a while since I've written anything on my opinions about the Steem blockchain and its current state. I have a few ideas that could make Steem, and to a lesser extent, Steemit, better. I'd love to hear people's thoughts:
1. Reputation Remodelling
Stock photograph from Pixabay, credit to "Beeki"
This idea was sparked by a comment I made on a post by @drakos. Instead of having your reputation modelled by having people with a larger rep than yours, and their upvotes that are hurled in your direction, I propose the following, with a few caveats:
Prerequisites
- 1 Acount = 1 vote
- Oracles (to determine the above)
- People to use the "mute" function.
Let's look at two examples. We have Sally and Bob. Bob makes a post every single day about something stupid, and people don't like Bob's opinions. Instead of flagging Bob's posts, Bob is muted by a large audience. As a result of him being muted by a large audience, his reputation drops.
This number of users whom mute Bob to ensure a reputation drop should be a sample of the active daily accounts, so that dormant accounts aren't used to mute users for transgressions past, and those who no longer contribute to the block chain.
Meanwhile, Sally has a lot of followers, and makes daily posts about really interesting things. She has a lot of followers who engage in the content, with meaningful comments, and there's a lot of activity around the account (votes received, votes given) AND Sally's altruism spreads wide (her votes go to a large sample of people).
Sally is given a high reputation based on the breadth of her distribution of stake.
2. Curation Services (as opposed to a bid bot)
Stock photograph from Pixabay, credit to "Anemone123"
This is something I am seriously considering doing, as an alternative to the traditional bid bot. Every x period of time, bids open. SBD or Steem is sent to the curation service, and then a team of humans review the content submitted. From all the submissions, the curation team pick the best posts, and these receive an upvote.
Those who didn't have their quality reach the mark do not have their SBD / Steem returned, instead it is used to power up the account. Curators can "front run" the selected post to gain increased curation rewards from the "curation service".
This would encourage users to submit only their best content, but such a "service" would need to have considerable voting stake in order to appear worth while.
This idea is actually something I'm seriously considering implementing. Who would like to curate for such a thing?
It would work as follows:
Carlos, Jane, Fred, Patricia and Tom all pay the curation service 1 SBD their posts are excellent, and selected for curation. There's another 15 users who submitted 1 SBD, making for a total pot of 20SBD.
The SBD is liquidated, powered up, and Carlos, Jane, Fred, Patricia and Tom all receive a 100% up-vote in turn, based on the curator's selections and votes. In the event of a tie, the person who submitted first receives the first vote.
Once the "curation service" is back to 100% voting power, or twenty submissions, or [24 hours] (or whatever period); the same is done, with another 5-10 posts selected for an up vote, with those unsuccessful submissions receiving a comment with feedback about their post from one of the curators.
This would encourage continuous improvement in regards to generated content; and help more broadly distribute rewards, in my opinion.
the muting part is supposed to already work negative on a persons reputation , if i remember correctly it was @timcliff that told me that some months ago when i made that same suggestion :)
TIL something new about the Steem blockchain, thank you! :)
Given that online communities migrate, and people become active / inactive, it would be really cool if it was based on that user's "activity" score, or influence.
Perhaps even going to the "value" of the bandwidth they consume on the chain. Maybe. :) Thanks for your comment!
I think the bot would be popular. I don't think it'd do much damage to the bidbots business model, since low quality posters aren't going to bother submitting to yours, knowing they'll just be wasting their cash.
It'd be a nice option for high quality noobs to get some exposure and feedback, though.
Like curie, but you've paid to be in a smaller pool of candidates.
I'm leaning more toward the @rewards-pool business model, but select the winners based on quality/originality, rather than luck.
What if candidates delegated 100SP each to the bot, then each day, the panel checked for any open posts, assessed them all for quality and 100% upvoted the best 10, with a maximum of one per contributor?
I like the delegation idea as a subscription - it gives a sense that people are contributing to the success of others and not just participating in hollow capitalism on chain. I like the Robin Hood idea of not upvoting people who submit subpar content, however, and "redistributing" their bids to the content that is of the superior quality.
They won't though. If they're posting crap, they know they're posting crap and they won't throw their money away.
If they're persistently delegating, they can use the service as an ongoing measure of what works/doesn't.
Whether upfront cash or delegation, though, you'll only get customers who believe they're posting good stuff.
Delegation scales really well too, I find.
Looking at some of the issues @silvergoldbotty and @ssg-community have had, with changing tiers etc; I think that informed @rewards-pool's thinking.
As the bot gets more delegations, the rewards for the top 10 get bigger, and the quality required to win climbs.
What'd be really cool, is if you could anonymise the posts.
It'd take all the accusations of under the table deals, and friends looking after friends, off the table.
Anonymity is interesting. You could have a public "private posting key" that the user submits the blog under. The rewards would be difficult to distribute, but it would make for an eccentric collection of posts. Gues curators would fix the problem of mates looking after mates, but the possibilities are endless.
Now you've got my gears turning.
All delegators get access to the private posting key of the shared account, to which they also delegate.
Each of them hash a four word excerpt from the post and post it as a comment, somewhere on chain under their own name, before posting their article to the shared account.
If/when it wins, the curator will reply to the post, calling it a winner.
The author replies with the four word excerpt and a link to the hash they posted before the article was posted and if nobody contests it for 24 hours, the 100% upvote will go on their comment.
They won't even need to share curation rewards, and it'll be incredibly rare that any curator will actually need to go and check the proof.
Thoughts? Too clunky?
I like it. I might just bring @holozaps out of retirement. We'd have to combat abuse of the private posting key by people using it to upvote their content immorally. That's the only catch I can think of, other than a batallion of flags from all the other delegates.
Yeah I may not have thought that all the way through. Perhaps an empty account, separate to the one they delegate to. Hmm. Even then, they could vandalise each other's work, and you wouldn't know who the culprit was. This might be sunk.
Edit: MY suggestion might be sunk; yours is still good :)
Also, if it's quality, you don't want them having to forego the benefits of posting it on their own page, to their own followers, in order to be eligible for the fat upvote.
Any anonymisation may need to happen between the admin and the curators.
Edit: Then of course, a curator could just google a paragraph from the post and ID the author, so still not ideal.
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Wow. I am realizing just how much of the guts of Steem there is to learn. I have been reading so much, but understanding remarkably little. :)
Comment left. Excellent idea on #2. That's the type of thinking we need more of. Most people are trying to squeeze as much money out of the same sponge without prioritizing how to keep it sustainable and growing.