I think the very calculation of reward payouts for curation (not just on how it is distributed to curators, but the amount of the curation payout itself), needs to be adjusted by which account is the author of the post in question, and how consistently their posts have been upvoted in the recent past. I think the system should give boosts to curation payouts (not content payouts) for underdog winners relative to consistent winners, since it is much more difficult for curators to consistently predict the underdog winners.
Like you said, if we all know that @dan and @ned's posts will get highly upvoted (based on historical data from the recent past) what value are curators (those collectively voting for that post) adding by confirming that? Certainly not as much as that added by the curators accurately predicting the success of an underdog post. And yet, because a post's curation rewards is equal to its content rewards (in the current system and seemingly in this proposal as well) the former set of curators would earn a much larger payout than the latter set.
I think this is a huge insight. Something that could easily be implemented. A simple rule could be that curation rewards are only paid if a post's author receives a final reward greater than their average reward. In this way half of the time curators get nothing for upvoting consistent winners. This would also mean that authors make more from their lessor posts when they maintain a high average. Authors would have no incentive to spam low value posts because it would lower their average reward and in turn cause them to lose more to curators when they create something great.
I think it can be a little less discontinuous than that and I don't like the perverse incentive for an author to resist commenting and discussion for fear of hurting their financial rewards, but I think there is something there in that idea.
So there is a certain amount of payout allocated for a target post based on the net_rshares (same as current system), but the distribution to curators wouldn't simply be 50% always.
Each author would have a weighted average (net_rshares)^2 (denoted
R) for their posts (evaluated at time of payout) over some moving time window (4 weeks maybe?) where the weight factor is the (net_rshares)^2 of the post divided by the currentRof the author. A weight factor much larger than 1 of a newly paid out post's (net_rshares)^2 drivesRtowards that (net_rshares)^2 easily. If the weight factor was exactly 1, it would be a like a normal average. A weight factor of 0 is as if that data point didn't even exist. So the author's posts/comments that get no upvotes (particularly true of comments) do not dilute their weighted average.If the (net_rshares)^2 at time of payout for the author's post is
r, then the fractionfof the payout allocated for that target post that goes to curators could, for example, be:f = min(0.5, max(0, (x + c - 1)/(4*c)))where
x = r/Randcis some constant less than 1 such as 0.2. Forc = 0.2, I have plottedfforr/Rranging from 0 to 2.No matter whether the post is a top-level post or comment, it would always receive exactly 50% of the payout allocated for that target post. This means top-level posts would get the same payout as in current system, and comment's would get the same payout as they would if they were top-level posts (instead of only getting half as much as they do in the current system). Then, the remainder (
0.5-ffraction) would either: be sent back to the reward fund if the target post was a top-level post; or, be distributed to the post's parents as is done in the current system (or better yet with a faster decay factor than 0.5) if the target post was a comment. We have seen that most comments hardly get enough upvotes to make a big difference, so I don't think reducing the reward contribution propagating from children is going to have that big of an impact. If the decay factor was changed, whatever amounts are allocated for parents could mostly be distributed to the immediate parent, which I think is the most relevant contextual post to reward anyway.They don't get enough upvotes because nobody wants to waste his voting power on comments but prefer posts! (and we can not blame them, I lost for example all my voting power just for upvoting responses on a single post today!That sucks!) In reality most would love to curate responses as well but they don't have the economic motivation with the current system!
The responses curation will be a problematic in future also if you not implement something like "seperate voting power" for posts/responses like suggested here... https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@liondani/separate-voting-power-for-post-and-responses
I feel like I'll have to reread this post many many times before understanding it.
I like the idea a lot, but comments would have to be excluded as it's very unprobable for those to get over the average.
When they're excluded it'd encourage voting for them though, because you can be sure to get a reward. That's two big problems solved with a simple change!
Seems to be on the right way!
The average should be calculated separately for posts and for comments, otherwise posts would always be above average and comments below average.
Won't this tend to destroy the rewards received by consistently good authors? With no incentive to upvote, these authors will get fewer upvotes and and less rewards). Yes, they will still get some from the joy of rewarding but in a competitive system you will get what you pay for which is a lot less participation in voting for these authors.
So can you and Dan work together on an algorithm and then come up with a way so users can opt-in to test it? I think curation is important as it is. Maybe it's not earning a whole lot of money for the average person right now but it's the feeling of playing a game which really matters here and these small wins each day keeps a person playing.
If certain players are consistently big winners for long periods of time but you want to figure out how to encourage underdogs then figure out some bonuses for underdogs? Prediction markets are a bit complicated I think and even less players can play that game.