What NEEDS to change NOW in order for Steemit to Survive. (Partial Payout Declined Self-Voting)
Good Morning Steemians & Fellow Witnesses,
Over the past couple of months Steemit has gone through a lot, to say the least. From HardFork's to price fluctuations and user growth, Steemit has been experiencing some growing pains. I believe that there are things that need to change in order for this community to grow into the mainstream and become something great... and its more then just adding profile cover images.
Let's start with a hot topic that has been going in and out of the minds of many Steemians recently and this is...
Self-Voting
To get straight to the point, Self-Voting has become an issue. There have been arguments both Pro and Con to the issue but at this point I think its all bad. When talking with most people, even those in favor of completely eliminating the Self-Vote, they argue that without that initial self-vote their posts would never gain any traction. They look to the many many great articles by new or low valued accounts that go to the way-side due to no initial visibility. It's true, when users see a post has Value they tend more often to automatically up vote this content. Not to say I don't up vote my own content on initial posting would be a lie, I do it as well, but there must be another way... I'll get back to this.
Another major way Self-Voting is an issue is Reward Pool Draining by High Value Accounts Self-Voting and this is always a very hot topic. It usually ends in hatred towards other users , down voting or flagging, and just negative behavior in general with comments, revenge posts etc and this is all bad for a social platform, it will drive people away. There is only so many rewards in a given timeframe to be distributed amongst the entire platform and with large accounts reaping, large amounts from the reward pool, it takes away from the small guy. Although a higher percentage of the reward pool is still proven to be in the favor of the smaller accounts , shouldn't good content be rewarded over account value?
SPAM, now that is a major issue and to make it all the worse tie in Self-Voting and you have a serious problem. Recently, as we have all seen, there have been some grave attempts to reap the reward pool by extreme self voting and bot voting (which isn't really Self-Voting but then again the bots are all voting for each other, owned by a single person). Not only does this take from the reward pool but it also creates a massive amount of spam on the blockchain , unneeded garbage with a potential negative impact on the blockchain...
Some have brought up that the positive side to Self-Voting is to retain the larger investors who need a solid ROI ignorer to stay invested and without self-voting this isn't possible. This just isn't true, we have curation, and it can be quite lucrative. Yes I understand that Self-Voting is the ultimate in ROI, after my 100% UpVote Everyone experiment I released I could make roughly $600 every 5 Days with pure self-voting. In the experiment I didn't just up vote myself but I did see how much I could give and if turned inwards that is some serious ROI. Curation if done right and done alongside everyone else could be yield a very good return. If self-voting didn't exist curation would be the go to and this would push the rewards for all, over that of a few.
This would still leave open the Whale Circle Jerking as some put it. Whales without a easy revenue stream of self-voting would turn to other whales for vote for vote strategies, causing essentially the same thing, therefor maybe implying there is nothing we could do would stop the self satisfying nature of some. But this shouldn't stop us from trying to move in the right direction... I have an idea.
Partial Payout Declined Self-Voting
What do I mean? The idea is simple and would to have each post/comment have three types of post rewards, over the two it has now (not including out right payout declined posts) Example:
Total Post Payout $230
Author 75%: $172.50 - Auto Declined $45 (Self-Vote)
Author Actually Receives: $127.50
Curators 25%: $46.125 instead of $57.50
Reward Pool Reduction: $173.62 instead of $230
One of the main reasons for people to Self-Vote besides gaining revenue is post visibility and in this case you Self-Vote does exactly what is does now visibility wise. On top of that it shows that you decided your content is good enough for you to use your valuable Voting Power without any reward to yourself. Like fully declining payout on your post it drastically reduces the amount of rewards being pulled from the reward pool and will distribute the rewards more evenly (Even back to yourself!)
I also think showing this breakdown via the dropdown instead of the current simplified "Potential Payout" would be very beneficial as well showing what each author has chosen to do, self-vote or not. The more transparent we are the better this is a community built on openness, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and a decentralized community.
I know most, if not all of us, love the fact that you can actually earn money from what we do here. I understand that making money from your time and investment is important, very important to most, but don't let greed destroy it. If greed continues to rain over us on this platform , there will be no platform and the price of STEEM will fall to nothing. Invest in your future by not investing in the now, vote for good content, others content, share and interact and the money will come.
I'm going to push for this change, this idea, I do not know how difficult it is to implement and I don't pretend to know, but I know something along these lines would really push the platform in the right direction.
I know Cover Images are cool, visually pleasing and make us more like most other social networks but remember we are not like them in so many ways, and we have the chance to prove something groundbreaking.
What say you?
I'm going to consider this witness-update so I'll add some additional witness information...
I am now ranked Witness #51
I know so damn close to the top 50!! Which every witness strives to break into from the very beginning. It opens the door to getting votes much more easily as your name is visible on the witness voting page here on Steemit.
I have been lucky to have climbed the ranks very quickly thanks to some great support from a lot of great users, so thank you all! I don't take your votes lightly from the smallest to the largest I am here to prove my worthiness to all whom vote for me. I am here for the long haul and will not give up, I want to see a bright future that Steemit is apart of. I will strive to see whats best of the community implemented and brainstorm with other Witnesses and users on what best for it.
If you have every tried to communicate with me in any form you will know I try to respond to everyone, so if you have a question just hesitate to reach out. I will continue to have my mention bot running and I try to respond to every mention but please don't be discouraged if I don't respond right away. Also for those of you who take advantage of that don't expect a response, don't just mention my name just to get my bot to respond.
I hope this opens up to some great conversation, look forward to all of your thoughts!
Vote for @blueorgy as Witness
- Go to the witness voting page on SteemIt.com
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the vote box
- Input my name (blueorgy) and hit vote.
- Rejoice in self achievement!
Interesting ideas, but I'm not really a fan.
The real thing that will take Steemit to the moon is for the price of STEEM to skyrocket. For that to happen, people need to be motivated to buy STEEM. The suggestion here seems to be removing one aspect of that motivation. Yes curation brings rewards, but so does some self voting. If this was implemented, I'd imagine many would just create multiple accounts and auto vote them up.
Thank you very much for you comments Luke!
That's is a very good point. That you could just find away around self vote removal by creating one account to upvote the other.
About "Being a good community member is to give more then you take".
It seems that proportion of givers seem to deacrease according to the rise of their SP.
It seems that minnows are more likely to be generous than dolphins and whales, despite that they can offer so little with their miniscule voting power.
It seems that the more Steem Power some user acquires, the more greedy he/she becomes (with some few exceptions), and less likely to share with minnows but more likely to upvote sockpuppets or circle jerk.
How about if all voting bots not allowed, then self-voting award limited to some degree. The biggest problem is "Account1 voting Account2 Same Owner" scenario, this may be solved by checking the source IP address, same IPs can not vote each other.
Haha I am no whale here, but may this idea solve the issue a bit. Regards all.
And VPN servers not allowed, if this can be done. I am just throwing ideas so that others might improve.
Yeah VPNS are the problem. I don't think there is a way to block it :-)
Hey man, just a dummy question as I am new to this platform: If I reply to you, is this automatically seen by the people above you in this chain? Or do I have to Reply at the topmost to be seen? Thanks.
Yes I think so. They probably won't see if you reply to the topmost comment.
I'm acting as admin temporarily for our band site @primatives-usa - this would mean I would get flagged for upvoting something on my personal page and vice-versa, even though the other band members are in full support of specific upvotes- same for when Jesse and Lila-suka return. I'm willing, for the greater good, to NOT do this, but I'm sure other people are in the same situation.
How about if all voting bots not allowed, then self-voting award limited to some degree. The biggest problem is "Account1 voting Account2 Same Owner" scenario, this may be solved by checking the source IP address, same IPs can not vote each other.
Haha I am no whale here, but may this idea solve the issue a bit. Regards all.
IP Addresses are not involved 🙃
Luke have you looked at other people putting self voting in perspective? link
Personz comented in the first link, 'self voting is a rampant and a huge problem', although he said I said rampant amounts to argument of the beard, I'm leaning to agreement, self voting needs to be shunned and flagged, we have the tools already, lets put them to use to trim this beard down, I think it has become a beard.
It's simply about perception, when people see others GAME THE SYSTEM, it devalues the overall experience,but I disagree with @blueorgy where he said that flagging will drive user away, I think flagging is a tool that would keep users more than drive them away, especially if people downvote bullshit self voters, personz quote the prisoners dilemma, which is exactly where we are headed if we encourage this behavior.
Thoughtful comments. Polite way to tell blueorgy much of his post was ill considered
I think all the "self voting lists" and the entire issues is completely over-shadowing all kinds of other work we should be doing on the Steemit platform.
To quote @smooth:
"Someone who buys SP and then selfvotes is not 'draining' anything and at best can get back a portion of what was put in. It causes no harm at all."
Investors are the ones who underwrite all of the rewards on this platform. If you are not an investor, or are only a smaller investor, you need to focus your efforts on creating inspiring content that makes investors want to give their money to you. Whatever else they do or don't do with their money (including self-voting) is not your concern and does not harm you in any way. Nevertheless, you do have a downvote that you can use to disagree with what you think are underserved rewards. I suggest using it."
"The idea of creating 'lists of shame' and demonizing people is divisive, creates a hostile and toxic environment attractive to no one, and serves no useful purpose. There is no way to tell from these lists whether the content is deserving of the rewards or not. The only way to tell is by actually looking at the content, and if you think it is undeserving, downvote it."
"Your own statistics show that self-voting is awarding about 8.5% of the reward pool. I don't find that suggestive of any problem whatsoever. It is probably a very reasonable number given that the current parameters give people 10 full power votes to make per day. Thus one is being applied to the voters' own content and nine to others' (on average, of course). Seems fine."
I think self-voting should stay: how do you prevent people from voting from another account or tacitly trading votes with another user or pool of users?
My solution is to go the complete opposite direction. Let people drain 100% of their voting power with a single vote. So instead of a 2% max vote you can do a 100% max vote.
What I think happens: people who just want their vests for themselves will actually try to write a good article every week rather than a bunch of spam comments and articles. A lot will think: why not try to get other peoples upvotes by writing engaging content?
Any scheme to limit voting, can ultimately be gamed, so why not make the voting as simple as possible?
I will add: the knee-jerk reaction to this is everyone will self-upvote with 100% of their SP, However:
If you are able to commit a significant amount in curation, you basically get 25% of the follow on rewards. So you can easily do better by curating good content.
Being selfish may not be the best strategy, building a social network by up-voting your peers might be far more profitable than 100% up-voting.
What will happen with a 100% vote is everyone would vote once for them selves every 6 days and the platform would be completely dead.
I disagree because curation rewards can be worth several times what a self-upvote is worth.
Why not let people who want to patronize others do that, let people who want to self-promote do that (but with a lot less spam), and let investors who do not want to participate in the social media aspect do that without suffering inflation penalties?
I detail more of my thought in this post.
https://steemit.com/steem-ideas/@donaldtrumpfan/allow-a-100-sp-vote-the-best-voting-problem-solution
Also, look at the current content. It is already 90% self-promoted trash. For the rare contribution that is worth up-voting, I would rather give much more than 2%.
Good post.
And I agree you can self-vote yourself in order for others to know you love your work and that want to share it , helping with visibility and hopefully others will up vote you. I don't want to take away the self-vote but more modify it.
It's one thing to upvote you own content manually but to set bots to upvote your own content, that is greedy and taking an unfair share of the total rewards pool.
To buy your upvotes for your own content, I'm not sure about, but it's your money you are risking....some even don't get a good return...but the businesses runnning the buy your upvote services do I'm sure.
It is mostly whales running those services to 'help' the minnows. Remember they are a business, and the aim of businesses is to profit.
Right on point. That's why you created your content in the first place, because you love the idea & has the desire to make that post. Self-voting basically means you are happy & satisfied on what you have done. :)
Thats all fine and good, you write some good content in your eyes you self vote, most of the time this is without issue , and at 7% not taking much from the overall reward pool. My self up vote isn't even worth that much at $3 or so as well. Im not disagreeing with all of these statements, I was more talking about gaming the system, a potential fully self centered community, very large accounts trending content at will with massive self votes, spam and other negative aspects. I just think a community where people would rather use their VP to reward others for content which would intern reward you.
That's the reason why i don't take a peek at the trending posts nowadays. It's same old, same old. High reputation & buffed up accounts not only self-voting, but voting each other, like a ping-pong game, with us minnows spectating. ;)
Oh thank you for mentioning that. Even though one of my posts made it to trending, I think its a feature steemit could live withot... actually, I think its another thing that encourages behavior not so good for the community.
I disagree, overall hot, trending, promoted do their intended functions quite well and hardly need addressing.
If that's what you "see", good for you.
You seem to have a problem with "high reputation and buffed up accounts", or more clearly the people behind those high reputation, buffed up account, and their "self voting" and "voting each other". First it's self voting and there is abusive self voting, like the "I believe my content is my own (do you believe, or do you know?) so I upvote because if I don't it means others won't like it".
I doubt many would agree with self voting and abusive self voting are the same thing. I doubt that the trending page has people self voting abusively, I doubt it's abusive first and foremost because it's brought forth with the "circle jerk voting", and I still haven't seen abusive self voting AND circle jerk voting AND high reputation accounts. So the problem with you have isn't with trending but with WHO is in trending.
I don't think I addressed that, I simply said I disagree, and you told me good for me, as if I referred to you or your comment/gripes with the community. Good for you, that you don't go into trending.
... I guess you don't need to worry about that problem since you don't seek out to see"is this a problem".
It seems that the 'trending' posts tag category is so full of whale upvoted posts mostly actually trash now, that I don't bother checking that tag anymore. If more of us just checked our feed and 'new' or 'created' we could find more worthy content to upvote and/or resteem.
Yeah, great delusional voturbatory argument, you deserve to voturbate.
Exactly, you invest in your own work!
If you don't believe in the content you are posting, why post it at all? Can someone belief in the quality of their work be defined by the amount they reward themselves, I don't think so.
Tell that to the countless people who post shit content. If they had the Steem Power they would reward themselves all the same haha
actually on that second part what exactly do you mean? prob just reading too many comments today but I can read this two ways.
Didn't @ned delegate 500,000 steem to you? And now you're saying you're using that to upvote your own content to give yourself massive rewards?
That's just wrong, man.
Well @gtg has currently (-77,397.267 STEEM) delegated away from his account not 500,000 towards it....
My reply was to tumutanzi. I remembered him posting about it the other day so I looked through his post but couldn't find it. So I googled, "tumutanzi @ned 500,000 steem" and it turns out the reason I couldn't find the post is because he's replace all the the English with Chinese.
Here's the post in question though:
https://steemit.com/cn/@tumutanzi/why-does-ned-delegate-so-much-steem-power-to-tumutanzi-and-thanks-steemit-ned-tumutanzi-400-steem-power
Here's googles cached version:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RiNuZdKan_cJ:https://steemit.com/cn/%40tumutanzi/why-does-ned-delegate-so-much-steem-power-to-tumutanzi-and-thanks-steemit-ned-tumutanzi-400-steem-power+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b
I don't know if that's the case, but voturbation is abhorrent, there's freaking curation rewards, if you have a large account you make decent returns simply from curating, everyone self votes but it seems this douche is a delegated 500k self voter, the worst kind.
It's definitely the case, he posted about it the other day:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RiNuZdKan_cJ:https://steemit.com/cn/%40tumutanzi/why-does-ned-delegate-so-much-steem-power-to-tumutanzi-and-thanks-steemit-ned-tumutanzi-400-steem-power+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b
So you are saying that you cannot expect others to like them because you believe they are your works and you must voturbate because others won't like them because voturbate becuase believe. Yeah makes sense to me too, now if only everyone was as selfish as you and valued themselves first and foremost on a platofrm designed to reward curation, it would be bye bye curation.
I like what your on to here @blueorgy, and it's strong to raise the topic about it.
I think there is one easy solution we could do, instead of complicating the rewards system, as @lukestokes point out. We could add an icon at the end of the header when someone doesn't vote on their own post, much like how we do when someone does a Power Up post.
This way we can signal early on that the post isn't a Self-Vote and should be encouraged to be voted on.
Of course, this mainly applies to the articles, not comments that are also a way to self vote. This is of course not a full solution to the problem, but one stop towards finding ways.
Interesting idea thats for sure, would hate to clutter the interface too much but hey maybe that little icon would attract people.
we already analyzed the self-voting statstics and if I remember it correctly self-voting only takes out less than 7% of the reward pool.
so that self-voting propanganda is total nonsense
I guess most of my thoughts and responses have been less about the "self-voting propanganda" where there is no reward pool left due to self votes, which isn't really what I wanted to force as the subject. It's true that roughly 7% of the reward pool is going to self votes as some have analyzed. Some of that 7% may be in the form of substantial sized up vote from very large accounts (which is also a thought) which is really what most are upset about. Posts that seem to have little substantial value or be considered quality content, self-voted to $400, and instantly trending and therefor promoting the other recent compliant: others just voting for curation reasons...
I like your idea more and more of really have a partial payout decline self-vote, My overall goal isn't really to take money away from users and stop people from gaining profits but more trying to get people be apart of the community and give back. As some have pointed out there is a lot of account not utilizing their Voting Power for others at all and just voting for their own content, I have fallen into this personally with my votes being all manual right now (one positive part of voting bots) arguments can always be made both directions it seems.
Ok before I go writing an entire post here within a comment what I'm saying is that part of the 7% which is probably a pretty big number still (have to go searching for this value) unless you know it? that some of this given back to the reward pool or directed elsewhere towards other good content wouldn't DOOM the platform and I feel could create a better economic environment.
Thank you for posting @blueorgy.
Since we did not have these issue before the hard fork....HF19......
Could we consider some of the measures Steemit had before HF19.....
such as the limit of 4 posts in a 24hr period......and the previous payout for comments....
It seems this would address these issues to some degree.....would it not?
On a side note..... @remlaps wrote an article regarding self-voting....it presents a different perspective and a valid point.
After reading roughly 75% of the comments and digesting the suggestions, it seems we are looking at a larger-scale issue than just upvotes, @blueorgy.
First, I agree with your insightful suggestion of declined self-voting... for those with a large enough SP to do so.
Second, I also agree with this:
Which @captainobviou3 also hinted at in the comments I believe when he said :
@lukestokes also inspired a volley of comments, with solid points.
I venture to say that we are bringing our current societal way of thinking into a forward thinking platform. We are used to WIIFM (What's in it For Me), instant gratification and the pursuit of 'get rich quick.' So without a paradigm shift in thinking we have to rely on the design of the reward system. Or...
Proper education for new users. It is available, mostly by chance, but there.
Yes, higher steem price would help. Yes, UI changes (covers) and ease-of-use help. Utility helps (plenty here with bots, tools, APIs).
Bottom line: People need to make a choice. Active users. Informed users.
Do we game the system for greed?
Or do we realize the potential, invest... and still earn! <- I hope this one.
Sorry for the long reply.
No need to apologize for a long reply when it's a good one! You're right on most parts here and have cleared thought about this community. There will always be someone trying to game the system, it's just life, but with the right tools in place this will be at a minimum. As others have stated community action is nessesory for this all to work and we are building that now. Optional declined payout on self votes I think could really be useful and give an option to be less greedy but not give up all of your rewards. I would personally do this every time because I do want the visibility created by my self upvote, although not very big compared to some of these whales, still impactful.
Secure a promising future for steemit , acquire more cumminity investment, reap the rewards of a high STEEM price!
To this point: I believe this will be the first platform that allows us an insight into the effects of gaming long-term for studies. Kind of a learn and earn experience.
Yesterday I seen a post from neoxian delegating most of his SP. Another creative way we can invest in the system without changing the rules. It's encouraging to see those with the most vested doing their part.
Hi @blueorgy, thanks for keeping this issue alive. I have not rewritten by original article Proposal for New Rules Regarding Self-Votes and Voting-Rings as I can't think what else to add. Perhaps I should just rehash it.
The change in rules I propose are simple, easy to code and fast to process. The one rule covers both self-voting and vote-spamming. Once the value of vote-spamming, whether for self or your sock-puppet drops to the point where the rewards diminish quickly, then it will both slow down in number but, more importantly slow down the reward-drain.
Yes, of course, this will lead to more sophisticated programs but those then become easier to catch with other methods. The drain will continue.
I welcome discussion on this topic as it is something that has been burning on my mind. I am not sure I fully agree with your proposed solution but it is refreshing to have a discussion on this. I have read through many of the comments on this post, and I get the feeling that before tackling the problem we need to first identify what the problem we are trying to solve is.
Is the issue related to payouts, or content promotion?
The guts of your post talks mainly about visibility, but I hear from comments people referring to ROI and the like. Why are these two dynamics entangled in the discussion in the first place and is this the issue. Is the problem we are trying to solve how do we making new good content more visible?
Upvoting your own post
For most people I have no problem with them upvoting their own post but at the same time is it really necessary, does it really add any value to the platform. They wrote it so surely they would vote for it anyways!
For whales, I cant believe they upvote their own posts. It makes little financial sense. Short term they get a boost, but longer term the platform suffers and their investment falls in value, at a significantly leveraged rate.
At the moment upvoting your own post is a way to promote your own content. This will never work unless there is a cost to you for promoting it. If you couldn't upvote your own post then you would have to spend SBD to promote your content in that way on the promoted tab, or via alternative means. The vote is a means of the community steering the daily steem to your account, of rewarding you for your contribution. If you can reward yourself it reduces the monetary value of Steem. The reason Steem has any monetary value is because of the network and community created and the fact that they are willing to use it to pay for goods and services.
Sock Puppets
Sure people can set up other account to vote for themselves, but maybe we should be tackling that problem too rather than dragging it into the discussion on payouts and visibility.
For example you could possibly introduce a penalty into the algorithm for repeated voting to the same accounts, or group of accounts. If this is not possible there could be dedicated accounts that downvote excessive repeat voting circles. (Not proposed solutions just the first thing that came into my head)
Level of Payouts
I would also like to throw this into the discussion. Many people feel this is a topic there should be no cap on payouts, let the market decide.
That argument makes sense when we have an efficient market. What about introducing a cap until Steemit achieves a sufficient scale so that good content is rewarded by the crowd? Or payout target such suggested by several people in the past?