Another day and more ongoing discussions regarding the curation rewards.
We all want Steem to succeed and that means recognizing everyone's contributions and rewarding the behaviors that maximize the value of the platform. These are the behaviors that we want to reward:
- Showing up every day
- Identifying quality content first
- Quality Discussions on high payout posts
- Building Reputation on a Single Account
In addition to rewarding these behaviors we want the interaction with Steem to be fun.
Status Quo
Recent graphs of the current reward calculation system show that @ned is getting twice the rewards for curation as the highest earning authors. A total of 15 accounts are getting 99% of the curation rewards. This is not what we intended and therefore must change.
The top curve shows the concentration of curation rewards. The bottom curve shows a comparison to content rewards.
Smoothing the Curation Reward Curve
Thanks to feedback from many intelligent people we are going to smooth the curve for curation rewards to make sure that far more people get a meaningful payout. We have fixed the math such that the following statements should be true with respect to curation rewards on everything prior to July 4th.
- those who vote early make the most when others follow them.
- there is a small bias toward concentrating funds in a single account (n*log(n))
- the more steam power you use, the bigger your rewards
- 50% of the rewards on a post are distributed to curators.
The new curve weights curation rewards according to the following equation:
W(R) = (R) / (R+S)
S is a constant chosen to produce a reasonable distribution. More details on this equation and the values we pick for S will come in a future post.
Future Allocation of Rewards
Going into the future we would like to see greater engagement in the discussions. People should be rewarded for sharing and adding value to existing content. It is the comments that are most accessible to the most people and which are equal opportunity. Any new user can add an incredibly valuable bit of information to a comment.
Making meaningful money from curation depends upon having a larger balance than new users get. It doesn't matter the interest rate, the amount you earn on $3.00 will still be small in absolute terms. This means that existing curation rewards are a game for people with much larger balances who seek to maximize a return on their balance.
Discussion Rewards
25% of a post's payout will be distributed to the discussion on that post using an algorithm similar to how Steem allocates rewards among all top level posts. This means each popular post creates its own discussion bounty.
Curation Rewards
25% of a posts payout will be distributed to the curation rewards using the curve defined above.
Activity Rewards
In an earlier post we suggested rewarding activity as a means of balancing out our heavily biased n3 curve. Now that we have a curve that we believe is more fair. activity rewards should no longer be necessary. If you are actively curating then you should get an income from curation rewards similar to (or better than) what you would get from the original activity rewards.
Justification for Slight Bias in Curation Rewards
As a platform we want to encourage people to build a reputation under a single account. This will minimize sock puppets and maximize efficiency. This means we want there to be a greater incentive to combine the balances of two small accounts into one larger account. The bias in the old curation reward algorithm was way out of proportion, but the new bias of n log(n) is much softer than the old bias of n^3. This means account holders benefit the most by increasing their stake, but the benefit from increasing your stake decreases as your stake gets larger. In other words, increasing your account balance from $5 to $100 will have much more impact than going from $50,000 to $100,000.
Conclusion
We are actively trying to listen to all sides and make sure that we get the right mix of incentives to make Steem a rewarding place for everyone. We will have actual numbers to show you Monday.
Not bad! I'm glad to see you dumped the "activity" rewards, i've always thought those were useless and encouraged poor/artificial behavior. The other valuable tasks are what brings me back, activity is a given. Though I'd like to see a bigger payout on curation 25% is still very reasonable.
I'd like to see the comment payout tweaked a bit. A flat 25% of the post reward could be way too much for many posts. Some posts are extremely valuable and do not require or warrant any discussion. And having it there just pushes for useless artificial chatter. I can't say I've come up with any solution for that though. perhaps upto 25% based on total rShares for all comments. You could make this curve fairly sharp, where if no one votes on any comments little if anything is paid but when even one small whale votes a comment or 2 the full 25% is paid out, or something like that. The problem there is what to do with the remainder. If you give it to the author, the author is incentivized not to encourage and participate in discussion. If you give it to the curator, the curator is incentivised not to vote on comments. hmm maybe the odd case where comments are not useful is not worth the trouble. Or the author just saves an important bit to add to his own post as a comment to capitalize on the extra rewards.
So ...
Is that how we play?
Is there a comment curation reward? What is the incentive to upvote comments? If there is a comment curation reward, then the bots will be fighting us to upvote comments first as well I guess.
I'm not saying that I'm trying to figure out how to game the system, I'm trying to figure out how others are going to game the system. I'm fairly certain that this accounts history shows that we just post and upvote what we like. :)
Aha! I have your secret now Tuck, you have a spouse that you take shifts with, so that you can be on here 24/7 and hoover up all the curation rewards don't cha?
Haha; well two can play at that game :-)
"Honey, come here a minute, I just need to show you something!"
You are close but we are 4 strong. ;-)
Got your kids on it as well? That's child labour!
Next you'll be telling me you're training your dog on how to use Steemit :-)
Good question. My understanding is that voters don't get any rewards on comments so there wouldn't be a contest to vote first, but I'm not clear on that. In contrast, the OP seems to suggest it's the same or similar rules as top level posts which would imply commenter gets 50%, voters on comments would get 25%, and sub comment authors the other 25%. etc. down the line. ???
If voters don't get rewards on comments and 100% goes to the commenter, I don't see any reason to vote for anyone but yourself... not sure how that's going to work out.
Definitely needs clarification.
I think you should not focus solely on money. People will upvote great content no matter.
I think what it does, is you're not thinking about voting as a reward, but as a way of showing appreciation, I've been on here for a little over 4 weeks now.
At first, I treated the vote button in the same way I treat the Facebook, like button. Then slowly over time, as I started to realise the power of voting and how to get the maximum out of it; I started to try and think more tactfully.
I don't think I'm unique in this, I think a lot of people when they first discover Steemit, will treat the vote button in this way, simply because it seems they are the same, so it's no cognitive leap to come on here and just start voting for articles and comments you like. If someone says something that makes you, laugh or think differently in an intelligent way, you vote up.
In the future, nobody but the original Steemites will even be aware that there used to be rewards for voting, so it will matter even less, people will vote on what they like, whether it's a comment or post.
And that's a good thing :-)
CG
I don't think that would work under this system, because unless other people up-vote your comment, it will be pointless. Plus if people are fully aware of how the comment rewards work, which eventually we all will be. Then it will be obvious to everyone what the poster is doing and that will turn a lot of people off voting for either their article or their post.
This is a very exciting platform and this post just gave me the most confidence possible. You guys could very well take over social if you play your cards right. Great concept! Great ideas. Im happy to be here.
I think the constant tweaking is a beneficial thing. Continual improvements and iterations make a robust system. If there was a way to measure individual emotional response values then your algorithm would be like magic and rewards would flow in good direction. Hmmm, how could this be implemented?
If that is the case, then the comments won't get up voted, take this post for instance, this post is extremely valuable, yet there are valid comments which have made me think and react, so I up-voted them. I think it can work well like this.
CG
This is fair. I like it. Good compromise. I think this maintains the core value for SP, encourages activity and discussion, and should make all the varied self interests happy and coming back for more. Well done.
With more time and data we can always adjust where necessary but this is a solid breakdown IMO.
Never speak of those silly activity rewards again please. : )
Will those changes be retroactive?
So what does the author of a post get? Or is this a mistake above or am I misunderstanding what a curator is? Has it been redefined? I'm lost. I see no payout going the author.
Is it 50% to the author and it's simply not stated? And the other 50% is split 25% to curators and 25% to discussion?
Good catch. No doubt they meant 50% to the author or just failed to mention the remaining 50% implying that it went to the post creator. The "curators" here likely refer to both the voters and commenters[edit: im wrong, he's referring to pre july4th curation/voting], where later detailed at 25% each. (Dan mentioned this line of thinking today in mumble -- commenters being curators. )
Previously they suggested 70% to authors so I don't think they intended to remove it entirely. : )
Thanks for this. What I love most is the desire to continue tweaking rules until we arrive at an optimal solution for everyone. This will go a long way in creating the community we all desire.
I think this is the most important change. I'm really happy with the new changes. It makes me go from doubtful to enthused once again!
This is awesome! Thanks again to you and the team for these changes, I love this debate; this is exactly the sort of intelligent debate we need. Getting results from debate is energizing, even if the results don't completely fit with what you want, it encourages you that the process works.
15% of the accounts having 99% of the rewards is an amazing statistic and one that should change; and unless I am in that top percentile, then keep it. Joke! :-)
Calling something a beta version means you tweak things, using feedback from your users and you've done that; I have contributed to the discourse and have read almost every article about curation rewards. And I feel you've melded a lot of the best suggestions together.
The only thing I would add, is that the algorithm should reward comments that get a lot of votes and replies, because that is usually a good indication of a good comment. Also the more you vote on other people's comment, the higher your earning power and weight should be.
I think if you reply to posts and reply to comments on that post, and then vote on those replies, this proves that you are a human being, who is genuinely engaging and adding value to future readers.
I'm assuming in the statement above, that the algorithm could catch all the spam voters and 2 word spam comments and treat them accordingly?
As we need to stop the "nice post" comments getting the lionshare of a curation reward, as that will just encourage the production of bots like Wang; who by the way, I have anthropomorphized into a lovely character who I like :-)
Thanks again
CG
Hey Dan, I am glad to see that you guys are working towards making curation rewards more equitative.
Did you guys calculated how the new payouts would look under the new scheme and if so would you mind sharing it with us?
If you want the community (humans) to create and vote on quality content. Having bots in this game is already going against your #1 goal. Imho, bots cannot be allowed because the content is redundant and as someone that builds databases for a living, redundancy pisses me off. 8)
Anyway, Go Steemit! Awesome work so far!
This sounds like a reasonable middle ground. I hope it pleases everyone!
This seems good!
I am glad to see this post, because I was just going to comment on how I feel the current curation system rewards speed skimming and upvoting. The current structure doesn't feel like it rewards spending time dissecting each post before upvoting. Would the new curation reward system address this dynamic?
The system encourages people to start an intelligent discussion, related to the post, as early as possible. The only way you can do that, is to read and be interested enough in the post, to comment.
Sure if you're an expert speed-reader, you'll have an advantage, but you can never average real life out to zero, some people will always have an advantage. My blogging experience gives me an advantage over posters without experience. Someone with more time on their hands and no children, has an advantage over me, that's just life.
The best we can do is build a system, that gives everyone as fair a crack at the whip as possible, I think this new system does that and I'm hoping against hope, that they get implemented.
15, accounts, holding 99% of the curation awards, is not giving everyone a fair crack of the whip as that's probably a ratio of around, 0.1:1 and that's not good.
CG
There is a small error in this post. The correct equation is
I'll talk more about this when I continue my series of blog posts.
thankyou for this explanation
We call see the "beta" tag in the upper left corner, so we should expect changes. I'm just happy that the changes are transparently presented to all of us here! Thanks! :)
So this will all be decided by Monday and the changes will be retroactive? When will the changes be implemented?
Give this fact no motivation to game(?) the system by creating multiple $100 accounts?
No because the way the algorithm is set, means that 1000, $100 accounts, won't be as powerful as 1, $100,000 dollar account, so you are still incentivised to have just one account.
Minor correction:
Should be
Steem Powersound its fair
I'm just delighted to see things are being refined to make Steemit more fair and enjoyable for everyone. - and harder to game! You guys are basically doing in a few months what took Google years to do with SEO
Bookmark: changes to curation reward allocation
I just started 5 days ago, and I'm really exited about the prospects of Steemit. I don't totally understand all aspects of the system yet, but I'm not sure why I have zero curation and post rewards. I haven't put any of my own money into Steemit, so I have very little Steem. I'm showing 55 posts, so is my situation normal? I'm not greedy, and don't expect to be making much money, at least not right away, but I was mainly wanting to know what to expect, and was wanting to know if I'm doing something wrong. Thanks.