Photo by victoriawhite on flickr, labelled CC2.
I haven't done a discussion post in forever, so let's see how engaged I can get my followers. :)
I'm sure most of you have heard the old parable, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". If you didn't pay attention in high school biology, it's a cute little paradox -- if you did pay attention though, you're pretty aware that the thing that laid the chicken we know of today, was basically a less-evolved chicken. Another fun form of this parable-paradox would be "What happens when an immovable object encounters an unstoppable force?"
Our Steemit equivalent, I believe to be, is "Which came first, the engagement or the reward?" Ever seen a post on trending with few comments, and few views? Ever seen a buried treasure with tons of views and comments, but no reward? Over time, the first post will hopefully gather comments, and the second will hopefully gather reward... but which should come first?
I believe these two things are more intertwined than we initially come to believe. We all know the main reason why people are here on Steemit (HINT: It's not the UI), but which does, or should, come first: the reward that we are here for, or the engagement?
A little about me...
Steemit isn't fair. It's never been fair. Take me for an example; let's face it, my photography is terrible. I'm just some amateur that sometimes takes a half decent picture with a half decent camera, and happened to have visited a bunch of half-decent places. There are an uncountable number of photographers that are mind-bogglingly better than I am, and when they first come to Steemit, they're not likely to immediately match what I have previously been rewarded for my photos. So why is that?
Well, there's a few obvious reasons. The primary being my follower count. With over 1,800, I've amassed a significant chunk. You could argue that this is the main driver of success here: a huge audience. Or maybe you're a bit more clever, and understanding the steem distribution, realize it's not the number in the audience but rather the aggregate influence of the audience. A few important characters with extreme influence in your audience, makes a world of difference. Thus, the community (and engagement on your posts) matters quite a bit. But how does that high follower count come to be?
In my case, I built a following starting a year ago, right after Steemit launched. I wasn't anyone famous, and no one in the community knew me -- I wasn't a bitshares name like a lot of people were at the start, nor did I ever blog before. But I interacted with the (then small) community, made myself known, and became somewhat infamous for being 'the cheetah bot guy'. This launched me into a steem witness spot too, making me an ever more well-known figure in Steemit land. While starting early gave me an advantage, getting involved with the community was far more relevant and important to increasing my rewards.
I've made a fair chuck in rewards this past year, and I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to do so. With that said, I'd say I started with the engagement, and then got the reward. In a way, some people are voting for me as a person, rather than necessarily the exact content that I produce.
In general, you might be thinking by now "Of course that's how it works! You have to build a following." and you might be right. However, famous people come to Steemit and immediately make a huge reward, sometimes without even engaging. Perhaps the reward is expected, as their popularity and influence brings theoretical value to the platform when they join. So that begs the question...
Can Rewards come first?
Can the reward come before the engagement? In a way, this recent hardfork to linearize reward has attempted to flatten the distribution of reward, such that the highly popular have less reward, and the "middle class" of Steemit has the new opportunity to see a drastic improvement in their influence. Now, more than ever, we can put the reward before the engagement, as the ability to reward is less concentrated in the hands of the few. Of course, one still has to minimally engage in order to be qualified for a reward (need a post or comment to vote on), so the real question is the quality of the engagement relative to the reward. You can perhaps think of this situation as a post that is voted highly before it is even digested or otherwise engaged with.
There are a few arguments I can think of where putting the reward first is useful:
- Enticement.
- The enticement of reward draws people to contribute and engage further, and the desire to build a following.
- Positivity.
- A reward is positive feedback!
- Promotion.
- A high reward draws in new people to look at, and engage with, a post.
But I don't think this is reason enough. Here's some counter arguments on the situation, and reasons why I believe that the engagement should come before the reward.
- The tragedy of the commons.
- If everyone seeks to maximize their own reward, overall community support and involvement will dwindle, and resources will deplete.
- Plastic dolls.
- Some famous people cross-post content on Steemit, but do not engage with the community. They paint themselves as pretty and superficial plastic dolls, figurines with no internals. This even leads to incentivize identity theft, as scammers try to latch on to the fame of others to try and get a quick buck, knowing that famous people will be well rewarded.
- Laser focus on rewards.
- People who know they have a large following, or know every post they create will be well rewarded, will often take advantage of it by focusing on quantity instead of quality. Or people will spam comments like 'great post', in hopes to get an upvote. And at worst, people will abuse the platform with plagiarism to defraud voters.
- P.S. Abuse on steemit is at an all time high. Is that the canary in the coal mine, once again?
- 'Deserve' mentality.
- Some people begin to expect rewards, or expect voters to continue to vote for them.
What does it all mean?
So, what's all this discussion about? This wasn't just word vomit, I promise I do actually have a point. To generalize: perhaps we should be more careful with rewards. With a high price of steem, and newfound influence of the middle class, one could be quick to think that everything is fine and dandy. However, with the new ability to reward only our friends or ourselves with all our influence, we run a great risk; if people focus on the reward rather than the engagement and community building, we could quickly collapse into a self-serving, reward-leeching scenario.
As linear rewards also mean voting for oneself is easy and profitable: a true tragedy of the commons will occur if everyone only voted for themselves "because that's what everyone else is doing". Quality will degrade, and efforts will focus not on providing value, but rather on extracting reward. If this happens, we are likely to see another steem bear market, as a new fire cleans out those not soley here for reward, once again. To prevent that, I believe we now need altruism more than ever.
What are your thoughts on the engagement versus rewards paradox? Does the current linear situation have you thrilled, or concerned? Do you have more or less faith in humanity than I do? I'd like to hear your comments below!
And with that said, time to change gears for a bit and talk about my own voting.
The paradox of more voting power on curation.
There's another friendly Steemit paradox that I encountered: The ability to greatly reward a post, actually reduces your own potential curation reward as a percentage of your influence. A bit confusing, but let me explain.
A few months ago, I created a voting bot that strategically voted for posts to maximize curation reward. I found myself as a top curator, frequently catching posts before a larger curation trail voted for it. I then set myself up as an available curator on streemian to enable other Steemians to automatically follow my vote. Over time, many Steemians started following my votes (and a big thank you to them!), at which point in time I noticed that I was no longer catching posts before other larger curators... I WAS the large curator!
What I found happening is that I could reward a post well enough on my own, and in such, the other curator just picked a new post to reward. In a way, it became a sort of implicit sharing of curating; "you get this post, I'll get that post", rather than piling on to the same person as I did before.
With great power comes great responsibility.
When I found myself with new influence, my old strategy didn’t work as well. Come hardfork19, this difference was further magnified, and I'm now re-organizing my voting strategy. Moving forward with my own votes and the new linear reward, I'm going to completely scrap any focus on maximizing curation reward, and instead focus on rewarding under-valued, quality content, and spreading smaller rewards to more deserving users, since it is now feasible to do so! I am going to have most of my votes picked by manual curators, and follow their choices with a small power. If you feel like joining me in this curation endeavour, check out streemian.com where you can follow me as a curator!
Agree. Self voting is a great challenge brought to us by HF19. We can ask people to behave unselfish, but it will have a little effect, becouse system incentivize selfishness more. Rather we shoul get back to non-linear reward curve (but not quadratic one) for that we should get some kind of proposal and vote for wittnesses that agree with it. We have ability to change system from its core, why don't go that way?
You nailed the biggest risks.
There has to be an element that rewards altruism and also rewards getting other people to agree with you.
OMG! $99 for one vote
Usually more. I also bought 15k Steem this week.
Y'know, you're kinda adding to my concern by upvoting your own comment here to almost $100.
:/
I addressed this earlier today. It's a fair point. So are mine. It's a nuanced issue. I have also demonstrated in many ways that my time horizon for Steem is long term -- by earning a ton of steem writing, curating, commenting for over a year, by buying more Steem on a net basis than all but a handful of people, and by buying a chunk of Steem this week. But read on my full comments.
https://steemit.com/games/@lukestokes/table-top-game-reviews-mastermind#@eeks/re-lukestokes-re-eeks-re-lukestokes-table-top-game-reviews-mastermind-20170623t155051189z
Neither here nor there, I was an early supporter of Cheetah, and you've always been one of my favorite Steemians.
Thanks for the explanation link! Nuanced indeed, hence my post about it.
I think it's worth you making a post about your views. It is absolutely a valid point of view saying that it's within your right to do so. But I'd say @liberosist has a good response here worth reading. You and other large stakeholders might stand to achieve a higher return on investment long term, by spending the extra effort on voting on content that will make us go to the mainstream.
And secondly, thanks for the support -- it's greatly appreciated! :)
I regularly try and upvote content that is underseen but it's hard when most people just herd into crap like TDV and the same 10 people, half of whom are snakeoil salesmen. That's a harder problem to solve. I take the tact of trying to encourage and cultivate pretty random writers who add something. It's a mixed bag but we've also seen that sign-ups have been gated because of costs that may now be resolved so maybe we'll see more competition and real growth.
One thing I've noticed though is that in terms of time and rewards, previously curating was more valuable than upvoting my own content by a lot. Curating depending on being a thought leader and being rewarded for that -- it involved other people agreeing with you for good returns. This simplification alters that dynamic and removes the dependence of my rewards on other people for me as an orca.
It's early yet, anything that happens in the next months is transient, so more experimentation to be had.
People just earn almost a hundred dollars by upvoting their own content.
haha so powerful! nice photo .
want to share a window view from Uruguay, where I live.
hope you enjoy
At least now there is a middle class!!! 10 months ago it was only top and bottom class. Crypto geeks and pretty girls were receiving getting crazy rewards, And Blogs with meat and credibility were staying under radar.... There is a lot more good stuff around now than 6 month ago
Yep. This should spread things out more. I think HF19 is a good iteration but were have more ways to go to get to the right balance.
The rewards, of course :)
You're spot on - we need to curate responsibly, as a community. We should stop mindlessly voting on just our friends and ourselves, and on the trending posts. Besides, that's a sure fire way to kill off all your curation rewards.
The community must be educated to vote on great, undiscovered content and promote them. There's a significant incentive in the curation rewards system that favours voting on such content versus posts that are already trending.
Despite a largely positive HF19, I'm afraid after HF19 I see a lot of engaged curators with large SP holdings (or delegated) give out 10%-25% for others, while saving 100% for themselves and their friends/colluders. That's not the desired behaviour of the voting power rate change. This should be called out as questionable behaviour.
Everyone needs to read these comments from @liberosist!
Excellent post, I sadly missed reading it! Definitely agree with you. I do think it will take a large mindset overhaul, as the majority of the early adopters are all crypto nuts, and we love our crypto news... I'm guilty of following and voting for this stuff because it's presently valuable to me (e.g., I would have completely missed the byteballs airdrop if it wasn't for @kingscrown; he's always on the ball with crypto info.)
This is interesting, and I'm already guilty of saving 100% votes (e.g. for @steemcleaners logs). I have a strong feeling this will become the norm. It makes me curious; how much will people now consider a post to be "already too valuable" and not vote on it. In this case, not voting for oneself may end up with the same reward at the end of the day, as more people might be inclined to increase the reward, instead of the power user increasing it themselves.
We opened a whole can of worms with this hardfork, should be interesting to see it play out.
For the longest time, I was partial to the view that this is a free open market and everyone should do as they please. Of course, I still believe that, but I've come around to the notion that there should be accountability and the players should act in the best interests of the community rather than their own.
We have a real shot at making this place special, but I'm afraid we are curating sub-optimally right now. It is about time the top stakeholders of the platform took responsibility. Stop delegating SP to people you like, stop voting on your friends, start voting for authors that have a chance of attracting the mainstream. It's in the best interests of the community and the stakeholders themselves. I can promise you if the Trending page was replaced by engaging content the mainstream audience can enjoy, this network has a real chance at hitting dozens of millions of users in short order. Stakeholders stand to gain millions of dollars, if only they stop being myopic and look at the bigger picture.
I have limited reach, few would ever read my opinion. My hope is influencers like yourself can start a serious and involved discussion on the matter. I would greatly appreciate it.
There's the free market, and then there's cutting down fruit trees for firewood. If somebody with a $10,000 stake can upvote their own posts and comments to something like $700 a week, 7% per week!, there's no way that the current economy can be sustainable. Maybe a couple of months of that, and then we go back to $0.02, and the $10000 turns into $1000, against the trend of the whole crypto market, and everybody will cry foul.
This upvoting of one's own comments is not stimulating interaction, and it's in bad taste. It always was lame, now it's completely over the top.
Yeah, definitely see your point. Stakeholders being myopic is exactly the tragedy of the commons that I often talk about.
I have always wanted there to be a separate trending page on steemit: a front facing one with normal blogs, and a
circlejerkinternal trending page. My post here would fit in the latter. Perhaps communities, when they arrive, can help this this kind of separation.I think you have a bigger reach than you think. I personally regard your opinion extremely highly due to all the effort you have put in this platform, and I know I am not the only one. As for my influence, I still struggle to get people to pay attention to plagiarism. :p
If you have ideas to push this forward, you'll have my support for sure.
Precisely, communities should solve this issue, but it would also require the voters to act responsibly. There'll no longer be an excuse of "Oh, this is important, it must be trending!", but the voters still have to learn to vote on valuable posts that'll attract users to the network.
Top authors can also disable curation rewards on their posts to disincentivize vote piling. That seems like an altruistic act, but most top authors are holding Steem/Power that stands to gain value if they help reshape the Trending page.
I'm aware some people are listening to me, but at the end of the day I prefer working behind the scenes. I don't have any political skills and don't intend to learn. I don't really have any ideas on how to push this forward, but that's where I'm counting on influencers and witnesses. As the abit experiment proves, the community has the power to unite. If a couple of influential people got together and made a pact to not vote on circlejerk posts, pull back delegations to irresponsible curators, look to vote on new authors, I'm sure it'll happen. It's as simple as someone taking the initiative and making it happen.
That someone isn't going to be me :)
Hey liberosist, I'm curious if you know of anybody who'd be interested in leasing out their SP for a small fee. It would be for a voting application that I'm building which will target comments specifically, and I'd strongly commit to no self-voting or anything like that.
I'm guessing that everybody you know who has spare SP has already delegated it to @curie or some such, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Funny, I'm looking to lease out SP too. Your best bet would be @neoxian. Come find me on Steemit.chat (http for now, not s) or Discord liberosist#1871.
Many good points on this comment @liberosist. I've been observing this phenomenon that you point out from the first day. I've been here on steemit basically around the same time as you and @anyx (11 months ago) however, look the distinct results in the value of my account and wallet.
I am stuck with a Rep53.. well, since ever. And my SP does not even reach the 100 mark so far after 11 months of engagement. Consequently, I have not yet even been able to earn me the vote slider either. So go figure!!
I've already published a good lot of posts specifically addressed to this pernicious problem of blind upvoters & mindless bots. Just the same as with the curators who simply vote for their own interests and gains without first reading the content from top to bottom on the posts they are voting up.
I've been waiting patiently backstage for some logical and positive changes on this platform in order to improve and enhance true live engagement and solidarity between steemians. Where the sense of creating community, collaboration and healthy common growth be the first goal and slogan. But I think that there are still many others hard forks and changes ahead to reach that point. Unfortunately!!
Finally, and to make this comment short. I would like to shamelessly draw your attention towards an article that I would appreciate some support, diffusion and promotion by both of you. I think this is for a good cause that unfortunately gone undiscovered & unnoticed by the community and also highly underrated and under-valued.
I invite you to read the post and hopefully both of you feel gratified with the probable curation rewards from this post and also look gorgeous inside and out for the next steemit's photography.
Cheers! :)
You joined at the same time as us, sure, but it looks like you only started being active when the price and subsequently blogging difficulty went us. Many of us have stuck with Steem and believed in it through the hard times. When the price hit $0.10 virtually everyone left. There were only a few hundred of us who stuck around, and we gained large followers and were rewarded a significant portion of the reward pool. That went on for nearly 6 months before Steem started growing again. The reward pool is the same in terms of Steem Power rewarded, and it was really easy to get to the Trending page. Now the blogging difficulty and competition is way up, it's much harder to get the same kind of attention.
It's the same as mining difficulty, really. Those who were early to Bitcoin and Ethereum mining could make accumulate thousands of coins. At they time they were worthless, but if you were patient, you would be a millionaire now.
The lesson to learn is - Be patient, be persistent, be early. Keep engaging with the community, if your content is good you'll eventually get some attention. All the best!
its also about finding it early which can be done to luck and then taking action
hey @anyx!
I love how you're digging into the seams of our community here anyx. I see this dichotomy play out inside my own head every day on Steem. It happened when I opened your post...there was this little voice that went off in my head (also I am not familiar with your account) about a paragraph down that said
this is a good one! go vote on it before anyone else does
This time, I ignored it and kept reading, but that is ALWAYS THERE. Some days I'm feeling expansive, and I just want to support others that deserve it. Other days I'm feeling needy, and I (perhaps somewhat angrily) upvote shit just for the reward. It's odd...I've felt so many things come up since I joined a month ago. Sometimes I'm insanely excited, some days I feel kind of meh about the whole thing...other days I've met some royally cool people.
I didn't realize that you made Streemian. It's really useful =) I have been donating my vote to curie for a while.
There is this question looming over us all;
What will we become?
I'm hopeful that whatever it is, that many many new friendships will be born.
I like the critical eye on it all anyx, keep it coming
I know the exact dichotomy you're talking about -- I had that when I first started. After some time, and becoming witness, I've been focusing hard on finding ways to become more altruistic, and improve the community as much as I can. I've done this through making @cheetah, and bootstrapping @steemcleaners. I think (and hope) that as people stay here longer, they start thinking about longer term success as you have. :)
And oh, no, @xeroc made streemian! I meant to say that I just set myself up on streemian so I was an available curator. Curie is a fantastic choice to follow too!
I believe that content come before rewards. I have been commenting much, much, more than posting since I have been on Steemit. I still enjoy posting, I just enjoy soaking up all the great info and content that this platform has to offer at this point. I also end up upvoting the posts that I comment on and those whom I create diolauge with. I think that is much more important and fun than spending my time worrying about maximizing my curation rewards. I will however be putting more effort into my posts as I will start blogging soon. Great read, looking forward to more!
I'm so glad that more people are voting on comments nowadays! It's the best way to build a community here, and even a good way to get followers. Nice to see that you're less concerned about rewards and are just having fun! I hope that attitude spreads. :D
I agree, it's not really a reward without the content. Thidb is because you have to earn the reward.
@elderfinancial I like your approach. I find myself in it as well.
@elderfinancial - Great comment "content before rewards". I like the concept of commenting as much or even more than posting. It is this dialog that creates a voice in the community. This is the interaction. This is the connections where we learn and interact. Cheers my friend.
That was a lot of word. But it was good. I don't know. I don't know that the amount rewarded should exceed the work put in. But in special cases like you say, famous people come and since they will attract new users maybe they deserve the reward a little before too. And I do feel the middle class is still powerful. But the vote exchanging has been and will continue happening. Good thing, people like minnow support and whaleshares are helping out newer people! And I don't know, I have mixed feeling about the early reward thing and randowhale etc. I use him sometimes though. You have been here and out in the work. It's like I'm a journeyman apprentice steemian and you up at master or grandmaster. Gotta work your way up, get to know the right people, and offer something valuable. Like this food for thought. Sorry it's such a long response and I'm on esteem so I can't reread as I reply..
Thanks for the feedback! Definitely agree with a lot of what you're saying. The minnow support projects that are popping up will hopefully stick around, and help bring the new wave of minnows up to the middle class. :)
I bought my way in. The first part on accident. And then the second part when I realized how great steemit was. Now I have a little influence and it feels good. I'm trying to do good things too and help a few minnows out with my limited resources. I know you are too!
Hey your bot flagged me using my own tag and has messed with others
It's a long read, but i read it! It is good, with lots of good thinking. If you're talking purely contentwise, no steemit is not really that fair as there are a bunch of people who are actually not interested in reading and just want the rewards somehow. But in the meantime it is fair that the most time you invest in Steemit, the more handsome rewards you are going to get with less efforts, when you get more followers and a larger network. So it depends on whether you consider steemit to be an investment tool or really a place to do blogging and attract readers. I'm not saying both cannot coexist, but we cant deny there are people deeming it as the former only
Hey! I found the little tips on content production to he very useful. Would you say that having such a big audience has changed the way you interact with Steem? Do you feel constrained in any way by your audience?
Thanks for sharing and good luck going forward!
We are attracted to those that we find it satisfying and gratifying to be with. If a relationship gives us more reward and pleasure than cost and pain, we will like that relationship and wish it to continue. Thus, even after a relationship ends, we may find ourselves drawn to people that remind us of the former person.
This can help explain why no love can feel quite the same as that "first". These "firsts" can generate sensations so new and unfamiliar that the experience feels almost unreal. Besides emotional engagement, these experiences also have a heavy dose of novelty.
Mmmmm, don't even know where to start from. Firstly the picture or let me say architecture is perfect and concerning you having in your mind that you are an amateur in photography doesn't mean you couldn't take clearer and better pictures, all is good, I'd try an article on that. You are all good .
When you have traffic, you can sell anything. Without it? You may have the solution to world hunger in your hands, but no one will ever get to see it. Engagement and followers comes over rewards, as they shall arrive with the upvotes :) It's all a numbers game in the end. If you have a few thousand followers on here, it's safe to say you COULD be put in a position where if you're rent and such costs are low enough, you could make a full-time living doing Steemit.
cool post. I think the dynamics of a social site like this with tangible rewards will constantly be changing over time. When people figure out how to game the system, the system usually changes. What worked in the past wont always work in the future, however there will always be outliers/whales/celebrities, but it will be interesting to see where you or I is a year from now. You having already established a name and reputation whereas myself a fresh new born
Sir @anyx @cheetah I do apologize for the plagiarism on my page and I fully understand what plagiarism is now and I promise not to post anymore post that do not respect the guidelines. Can you please un blacklist me @cheetah @anyx @adm @blacklist-a
I wish I had engaged in Steem last year! But, alas, being a normal human who is afraid of the unknown/what I don't understand I did not, rather joined this year thinking first and foremost (believe it or not) it would be a therapeutic venture for myself. Years of time on the old book of faces yielded no real interaction that i considered more than superficial bull most of the time. I got those interactions and still do (but rarely) within closed or secret Facebook groups. Usually, posting about something on my main page resulted in seeming disinterest, some people thinking my interests were strange or "fringe", and some people being mad, or taking personally topics of interest (not in a good way). Facebook draws in a lot of drama, politics, and general bs. My social engagement there has/had long since been that of fulfillment. Here on steemit however, it is different. Even though I'm still a "newb" I had more fulfilling interactions on here than i ever did on facebook. Oh wait, and i can get paid too!?
So anyway, i think engagement comes first because it demonstrates interest and genuine personality.
There's another interesting dimension to the rewards system, for those of us 'playing by the rules' so to speak: everyone's careful about their reputation, as it is tied to their ability to receive a reward. So in a way, I think that helps with keeping the general BS around here at a lower level. :)
Makes sense. Those spamming, or" tabloid steeming", as I call it won't get anywhere with their behaviors
@chelsea88 - afraid of the unknown? Sounds like you've gotten over that silly fear. One of my favorite proverbs: "man who moves mountains starts by carrying small stones"
That's a good one. And true
I think this post is a perfect example of this paradox. I only clicked on your post because it was young and had a high price tag. But I knew that I had to read it to make a meaningful comment in the hopes of a random whale vote.
So while I was motivated by greed, I actually read the message that you presented.
That doesn't mean that I only look for posts that I can make money on. The more time I spend here, the less time I think about getting a quick buck. I become engaged in the topics and forget that I'm making money. I see how the "pros" format their posts, and research their posts. It makes me want to do the same.
The rewards present a tremendous opportunity. As someone new to blogging, I've never been more passionate about perusing my interest than now. Steemit is constantly forcing me to think about "What's something cool that only I can post?"
As someone who doesn't spend much time on social media, the rewards also encourage me to find interesting authors and engage with them.
This place is a strange experiment. The amount of positivity here is almost nauseating until you realize that most people are nauseatingly nice when their words can have a financial impact. Just like in real life.
I'm not too worried about the scammers and shitposters. Once people get a few months under their belt, I think the majority of people will settle down and realize that garbage won't cut it.
TLDR: I'm thrilled about the rewards. I think it's ok if people pursue them first. They are the perfect encouragement for any creative soul that didn't have the dedication to spend years building a social media presence. They can start out slow and earn money and encouragement and feedback along the way.
Then again, I'm just a newbie.
Fantastic arguments for the rewards-before-engagement point of view! You're also bang-on with the professionalism that people put out on the platform due to the incentive of reward.
Unfortunately, many people take it the other way and realize how easy it is to make a quick buck spamming nonsense. Check out the amount of daily plagiarism with @steemcleaners and @cheetah daily logs.
engagement before reward is what I opt for. I think that is the only way we can build a homogeneous community. I often wonder when I see a post having more number of upvotes than views. Then the question comes to mind: why upvote a post you haven't read?! One good thing steemit has done for me in the past 3weeks of my joining is LEARNING. I have learnt about beautiful places I never knew existed before. I have learnt about people and inventions. Learnt about stuff I never came across in other social media platforms. And I have been able to share as well. If we have a system that rewards before encouraging engagement, all it will produce in us would be selfishness. By then, we won't be concerned about building this amazing community, instead everyone will be building their own little empire. That should'nt happen. Let's share and connect, and consequently build a community that will inturn gratify us with rewards!
Totally agree!
That's an excellent way to think of the potential problem. Hopefully the community will recognize this.
I hope so too
@anyx, I am the newest newbie here and I quite liked your presenting the paradox so succinctly.
I am just a few days old here with 3 blogs to show, the introduction not counting as a blog of any thing more than just my intro.
Trying to relate my thoughts with your Engagement or rewards question, I am heavily inclined towards quality engagement over rewards.
The engagement vs reward works like a farmer vs hunter analogy. The farmer engages his farm, takes his time and over the period of time reaps the fruits of his labor. With hunter it is instant gratification. Hunt, kill, eat. After a day start over again. It's like I post a blog and I need my dollars yesterday. It does not matter what or how. I need my money. And I will do whatever it takes to get that asap.
When I said I am inclined towards engagement, this is what I am attempting here.
No requests to follow me in my blogs: There will never be any mention of that in my posts. I believe, steemians here know the meaning of followed / following very well. If I am able to engage them they will follow, else they will look else where. As of now I have 40 followers many of them being newbies like me. So my influence here is as good as nothing. But that's fine with me. I am in no hurry. Rome was not built in a day. I am a first time blogger. Never ever wrote any stuff earlier. So it is more difficult to engage my readers. I don't know the rules of the game. The rules of engagement. But that's fine. There is always a first time and a beginning. I can live with that.
What some might find annoying here is that I don't resteem the blog. I believe at this juncture with 40 followers and no influence my resteeming won't bring any traction to anyone, instead I run the risk of cluttering my page with resteems and I might lose visibility to my blogs and I am trying to hold it together and keep it tight to make my blogs visible to whoever chances to pass by. When my influence increases I shall consider resteeming other's blogs.
I am also very choosy in following. Only the guys who make an impact on me gets my following. I don't go by the big names and oldies here ( but a lot of them are too good anyway to ignore). So I am running a tight ship here. Now I put my head down and see if I can produce quality content and engage my readers. That's all I am doing here for sometime now. Only time will tell if my strategy stands vindicated or not. So for me engagement Trump's reward 😊 and I also comment a lot, from heart. And my comments are usually long. That's how it has been always. Thanks and feeling good already ☺️
i like rewards
Hmmm interesting! Let me give my take one at a time ;)
In the old times, nobody said that chicken eggs were created, it just said the place were bountiful in the garden. So am assuming, animals were just running around at their leisure. Even before the flood, pairs of animals were let in, most of all chickens for fried eggs in the morning on the boat.
As for the immobile and unstoppable, yeah it can happen. They have happened but not ended happily ever after. Programming can still make you decide in pursuing something or not. It's for everyone to choose where it may lead.
Now, with the engagement and reward. I have seen this pattern as well as vice versa, depending on what a member decides to do. People have done engaging to members with or without the reward, some with just having the rewards with no engagement.
Others are doing both..so it goes back to each members affiliation to the platform and on how they are to their followers and to other members.
Phew!!!!
Hi Anyx, i voted you as my witness, just wanted to let you know :)
In all honesty, I came to Steemit because of the rewards the system give. There are countless social networks out there, but Steemit rewards people for their content. That does not mean that I dont engage people here; been slowly knowing people and getting more involved with Steemit, and now I often engage on threads regardless of whether I get rewarded or not. But that is how it has turned to be now, but I initially came here lured by the prospect of earning Steem.
Unfortunately, I believe this is the scenario we have entered and I absolutely hate it. Furthermore, I am not sure how long it can last without drastic changes.
One of the foremost issues in my mind is the disproportionate amount of SP users are able to accumulate by frequently self-botting their own contributions, even mediocre ones, or engaging in constant circular voting with their friends.
It's disheartening for the users that really want to earn their rewards and strive for some degree of honesty in curation. I am inclined to think maybe this game just isn't for us.
Proof-of-brain is a wonderful idea in theory but seems to me that the ideal is unattainable when human greed enters the equation. I hope the issues can be solved somehow.
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Congratulations @anyx!
Your post was mentioned in my hit parade in the following category:
Ok, this is completely irrelevant, or maybe not since I am engaging, but one of the bots you have created in cahoots with several others have done something to my account. I am not very happy with it. Here is the post, hidden now due to low ratings because apparently, some bot thinks they can dictate what I put on my blog. After I commented my disapproval, all of the sudden, it says I have exceeded my bandwidth which is total horse crap. I never initiated any kind of power down, I have rewards waiting I can't collect and I'm really peeved. While writing this I am at 18% Steempower which is more than enough to things here. So, I ask that you do something about the nonsense please. https://steemit.com/cloudmining/@enginewitty/is-cloud-mining-profitable
I think whichever way you decide to look at it, engagement should come before reward and people shouldn't take advantage of the platform either , while there's need for sensitisation of users by more seasoned ones to the newbies to give them a pointer or two.
Over time these ineffiencies should balance out in equilibrium. But, in my option as a minnow I feel that great content with engagement can go unnoticed and unrewarded. While a big reward will without a doubt get noticed.
That doesn't mean that the attention garnered by the reward post will be more "valuable". But, more desperate people will chase the reward.
I hope we do see an equilibrium come, especially for the market, while the kinks get worked out. :) Seeing good content that slipped through the cracks is always saddening.
Lately I have gotten into commenting more and I'm having fun here on Steemit.
I think content come before rewards as well.
It wasn't the Chicken or the Egg that came first... It was the Rooster...
@pocketechange
People that put in the time and effort to engage long term, seem to make the most payouts ;)
Good stuff.
I am a beginner in Steem, but I realized that with a good strategy we can get great results. The article is excellent, and I hope to learn more from you. Thank you
Well, the people who made steemit had to engage first before they can give us any rewards. Then we got enticed because of the rewards so then we engaged.
in a round about way
Well done @anyx
Help me to have more subscriber, and stem power and a bit of money please, I need it to finance my studies @foodtrend
In everything that you doing, you need to engage. This is the charm of it. The reward will come last.
The engagement should come first instade of the reward. One should put effort in hard work first after which the reward can come. This is the best way the community will grow fast.it will make every members to feel at home knowing that there is equlle opportunity for all.Good job as usual upvoted
i'd say first was the dinousar that laid the chicken and then the chickens tried to put all their eggs in one basket lol aka we can't blame steemian dinosaurs for having most profit since they exist the longest, but one day meteorites will wipe them out and on that holy day all retarded chickens like myself will make their own trail in new steemian world and it all starts with steemians like you my friend ;)
I strongly believe and believe that someday, I will as you discussed here ,,@anyx
Great post check out mine if you can !:)
^ That's from my post. I'm guessing you didn't read it. ;)
Would you rather me go down voting everyone? I'm just interact with the Community .
I've seen the cheetah, didn't realise that was you!
I am a bit worried that some people may take advantage, set up many fake accounts with plagiarised content and vote for their own network. It's very difficult to prevent when monetary rewards are involved.
For me, I think that there is a lack of reward for long term content that continues to drive traffic. There's a few steemit posts I continually come back to and sadly some of those have next to no rewards.
1- Haha, it's in the FAQ. :)
2- The goal of @steemcleaners is to try and crack down on that behaviour. Unfortunately, it happens quite often (and is at an all time high).
3- Totally agree. Sadly, Steemit currently incentives short lived content and doesn't have any way to reward old stuff. I wish there was a way, but it's actually quite hard in the current setup to try and solve that problem...
2 months ago I had around 600 followers and very little rewards. I started engaging massively. I have 2100 followers now and my rewards have skyrocketed.
For me I am sure it was engagement. I would spend more time in the "new" page and everything else was unfolding rather smoothly. I knew nobody as well (was 'infamous' for picking up debates) but I guess now things have normalized.
A shining example of what new Steemians should aspire to! :)
well, if they are willing to spend 2 hours a day curating :)
I stopped reading any kind of other material and focused entirely on posts.
It matters a lot to new people who only get 3-4 likes and no comments.
I think it means the world to them so they can stick around.
True, the hard work paid off! And totally agree, all too often I see people get disheartened right away because they don't pick up any traction to begin with.
It's great to see people seeking out the newbies. If I didn't lead too many lives with work and school and crypto, I'd be helping too :)
Oh believe me, in order to do everything (posts, design projects, curation) I have to fork myself more times than Steemit itself
Neat story. Thanks for opening up.
How to initiate effective engagement to increase your contribution and hence increase your followers on steemit?
@anyx
I love this line
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This recent hardfork to linearize reward has attempted to flatten the distribution of reward, such that the highly popular have less reward, and the "middle class" of Steemit has the new opportunity to see a drastic improvement in their influence.
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The issue we new members are facing is worrysome...I do check blogs of some members with little followers and they have very nice posts....educative and wonderful stories to share...funny enough you see 0.02 or even less as reward...I become sad because such people may be discouraged to share good contents/engagements as no reward as all are here for both...content value and reward.
I also see many who just share a low quality video/image with no write up or very low quality contents and you see hundreds of dollars reward dropping. Some do not even post but their unintelligent comment gains rewards more than the content owners!
I also witness the big guys...they do not even post good contents but resteem only and you see them making money...contrary to my expectations, reward rules more than engagements and the big earners are not helping us show us the way to cherish contents...
I belief with you and others with like minds...this can be remedied...and I love your resolve as stated under....
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Moving forward with my own votes and the new linear reward, I'm going to completely scrap any focus on maximizing curation reward, and instead focus on rewarding under-valued, quality content, and spreading smaller rewards to more deserving users, since it is now feasible to do so! I am going to have most of my votes picked by manual curators, and follow their choices with a small power.
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I wish this your resolve will become the resolve of most other big guys...the big whales and dolphins....I wish people will value and reward contents/ engagements rather than reward self and friends....I wish new members will come and see rich contents rewarded rather than low quality contents rewarded or even comments gathering rewards more than contents owners! Like Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream that someday soon...the main slogan I see in stemians as All for one...One for all is put into practice rather than just slogans...
I can't stop loving you guys...keep up the good work...
Pls follow...check out my few posts as a new member and ensure engagements is encauraged than rewards...
reward came before engagement.
another newb here, from my POV engagement is the only thing I need to be concerned about.
Why?
Because I have more control over what I do (i.e. engagement)
than what others do (i.e. rewarding my engagement)
Read about @Suncontract and upvote it
https://steemit.com/suncontract/@sayyedraza/what-is-suncontract-project
As a general rule I value the engagement more than the reward. That said, I like money. I want to earn money for the work I put into my content and the engagement that brings value to someone else's content.
I couldn't care less if someone votes my input at $0.01 or $100. Sure I'll likely crap myself if anyone voted any of my content at $100, but that wouldn't change the fact that i will continue to post what I find interesting and engage with people who either share my views or give me an opportunity for undiscovered knowledge.
As for the algorithm, I feel that a post reaching "trending" or "HOT" should be measured against both criteria. If a post has especially high engagement compared to other posts it stands to reason that it is contributing more community value. If a post has a large number of upvotes, it may be due to highly valued content, popularity of the author, general greed, pay-for-vote mechanisms, or any number of other factors.
That's just my $0.02 (even though right now it's only worth $0.005)
Hey that definitely answers a few questions I had about why my posts weren't making that much money :/