The curation formula is currently broken in a number of ways, most notably, the fact that it encourages maximizing curation rewards by dog-piling authors who are already making the most rewards. I have posted on adjusting this formula a number of times, but coming to consensus about how to adjust the curation formula is contentious and will create relative winners and losers.
The current formula has achieved mostly the opposite of the intended goal. It makes it game-theoretically correct to routinely vote for the exact same authors who are already very popular and need no curation. Perhaps worse, it has created a situation wherein automating your vote is necessary to compete:
However, there is a stop-gap option that (I believe) is both easier to implement and few would have reason to object to.
Allowing the author a dropdown box, or slider, (much like the vote slider), to choose how much curation to split with readers, and potentially a checkbox (similar to "Upvote Post?") whether to engage the 30-minutes "curation timer", is an easy way to help with this problem. Authors who wish to share more of their rewards to encourage curators and followers would be better able to complete with the popular top authors routinely in trending by sharing more of their own rewards. Authors who choose not to adjust the setting will be unaffected.
I have mocked up an example interface for curation splits. I created pre-filled options, but I think a free-entry box (simply enter a percentage) would be preferable. Whether curation rewards should be technically able to be reduced below 25% is a separate matter requiring debate. I'm inclined to think this is a bad idea, so setting the option only to increase curation from 25% is likely to be far less contentious.
This would also go a long way in giving authors options for dealing with auto-voting readers and lack of engagement.
Credit to @Snowflake for discussion/genesis of this idea.
Open Source Contribution posted via Utopian.io
@lexiconical I completely agree and I posted a very similar comment in response to this amazing post on curation rewards by @miniature-tiger - An Illustrated Guide to Curation
I like your idea but I still think people will just pile on to the big authors anyway. All of this is really too complicated for most people I think and they just see big dollar amounts and know that they can get a portion of it.
I am including myself in this group since I also just thought that for max curation rewards i should vote on the most popular authors after 30 minutes.
Not sure most people, myself included, will be willing / able to do the math to figure out that their reward might be greater on a small post with 50% curation rewards as compared to a huge post with 25% - if that would even really be the case.
I agree though that the curation system as it exists today seems to have the exact opposite of the intended effect. I am very interested to see how things will work out after SMTs are released and running and different communities can change the curation settings.
"I like your idea but I still think people will just pile on to the big authors anyway. All of this is really too complicated for most people I think and they just see big dollar amounts and know that they can get a portion of it."
This is probably true for those who do not understand the system (ie probably have low stake.)
However, my hope is that some up-and-coming authors might be willing to attract more of an audience by increasing the curation split. This could even be made visible on the post or interface itself.
"Not sure most people, myself included, will be willing / able to do the math to figure out that their reward might be greater on a small post with 50% curation rewards as compared to a huge post with 25% - if that would even really be the case."
Agreed, I don't expect anyone to really do the math regularly. My hope is it just provides another reason on the stack when a user is teetering on the edge of "do I upvote this good, lower rewards post or save for curation".
At least this change would create the beginnings of a free-market response to the issue. Perhaps we'd learn that nobody wants to change the 25% split, and it would be moot, however this alone would be useful data for further changes.
I think what we are going to learn is that most authors are willing to give a bigger share of the rewards to curator which is a good thing because higher rewards for curators means more engagement and more demand for steem power.
It is essential that every users knows exactly how the curation reward system works, most users don't even know that the more SP they have the more curation rewards they get.
When users submit their vote they should be directed to a link explaining how the curation reward system works, educating users is key and I think that introducing curators/authors percentage will actually help in that regards.
I also think that authors should have the option to keep 100% of the rewards for themselves, the wider the spectrum the better. I agree entering a precise percentage is preferable because this will make every single post different and encourages curators to search for new content.
"When users submit their vote they should be directed to a link explaining how the curation reward system works, educating users is key and I think that introducing curators/authors percentage will actually help in that regards."
I am sure people will object that this will be "confusing" for some users.
Perhaps a tooltip that you get when hovering over the upvote button, that shows something like "Estimated .1 SP for curating this content", would convey that more smoothly. It could be wildly inaccurate (and say estimated on the tooltip), but simply making people aware of the concept while requiring nothing of them could be very beneficial.
"I also think that authors should have the option to keep 100% of the rewards for themselves, the wider the spectrum the better. I agree entering a precise percentage is preferable because this will make every single post different and encourages curators to search for new content."
I agree wholeheartedly. I merely didn't add those options on my image because I was fudging it in ms-paint and figured I got the idea across...
Really good point about the "free-market response". There's no better way to know how something will work out than to try it! That's also along the lines of what I was thinking about with SMTs. They will allow actually trying different curation strategies in live environments.
In the middle of writing this comment, I had a different, half-baked, idea of how to handle curation. Perhaps instead of paying out a % of the rewards from each post, there could be a separate reward fund specifically for curation. This way it would be possible, in theory, to get a larger curation reward for voting on a post than the author gets from the votes on that post.
The idea is to de-couple curation rewards and author rewards - i.e. not have them fighting for a share of the same pie.
As I said this is a half-baked idea - currently the "quality" of a post is determined by the value of the votes it gets, so this would require some other method of evaluating post quality, which may or may not be possible.
Anyway I think i'm rambling here - very glad that we're starting more discussion about this!
"As I said this is a half-baked idea - currently the "quality" of a post is determined by the value of the votes it gets, so this would require some other method of evaluating post quality, which may or may not be possible."
I love this idea, and I've considered proposing it. Of course, the key problem is subjectively assessing quality with an automated algorithm. I've posted about how to start attacking this problem so it could be possible to suggest this change, but I'm not sure exactly how to do it. Using reputation somehow is an option, and I've also suggested having a second reputation score for curation rep specifically. This might allow the decoupling (experienced curators can earn more via their higher curation rep) of which you speak.
I would like to work with a machine learning expert to train a model on the existing set of Steem posts and see how well it can "learn" to pick out high quality posts.
It would have to have no knowledge of the author of the post (so it doesn't learn just to pick popular authors) but just the content of the post and the final payout.
Then if that is used to evaluate new posts it would be interesting to see how different its evaluation of what the payout "should" be vs what it actually is. This would tell us to some degree how much who the author of a post is affects the payouts, and might allow us to find unknown authors that make high quality posts more easily.
I would bet that machine learning could do a lot with this topic.
An algorithm that actually works to make higher quality appear in trending would be great, but it's quite a task from where I'm sitting.
This is a great idea. I love the fact that people are thinking of the current system and what can be done to improve it. It is definitely flawed as is. If this was implemented it is something that would really make a difference I think
I would love to see the results of competition for offering higher curation rewards. Whatever happens, we'd learn a lot about the supply and demand equilibrium between content creators and content consumers who are currently using Steemit daily.
Thank you for stopping in to make a comment! Been following your blog for a long time ;)
It works be something to see! Here hoping it happens.
That's splendid to hear, I shall follow you right back and make sure I don't miss any good stuffs :0)
I’m all for suggestions on how to control the ‘auto-vote dump’ of those with the most SP.
It’s amazing how subtle acceptance of things can become. The recent, and ongoing glitches seem to have diminished things such as this, which would make the platform ‘better’.
Somewhere along the way I made a suggestion:
As an example: A is a huge fan of B. However, A doesn’t have time to read every post. This logo would, via automation, register the value preset by A.
Every time Steemian B creates a post, the auto-vote would kick in.
This would give the community an opportunity to see how many up-votes tallied automatically, in-comparison to the current, individual up-vote method.
Again, the longer I'm a member, and the more I understand the logistics of the auto-vote, it’s been 'easier' to put the discussion on the back-burner.
**Btw, speaking of payouts, it seems that the posting of author/curator rewards is on delay of a different kind. Several payouts showing up in SteemNow haven't registered in my Wallet. Hopefully, it’s a glitch which will be corrected soon. I created a simple post which I'm hoping will get this matter addressed soon.
Peace.
Great points you have there. An auto-vote, or "super follow", option in the native Steemit interface would be very welcome. Perhaps this could be added on git via an open-source contribution? I may look into this.
"Several payouts showing up in SteemNow haven't registered in my Wallet."
I haven't noticed this issue, but I am very poor about tracking payments and things of that nature. I just let the blockchain handle it and I "trust" it to happen. (I don't really balance my check-book, either).
Yes, I like this description. As well, I like that it would be open to all Steemians; and, fall along the same lines as the highly successful tipu app.
As an example, imagine a photographer who gets pennies for a post, receiving a 'guaranteed' preset payout of any amount every 7 days from a "subscriber" who set up the amount in advance.
I think this could be a viable incentive for attracting new Steemians.
Usually, I don’t keep tabs on the awards penny for penny; but, the values stood out in Steem Now as far beyond the average up-vote. For this reason, the non-tally in the Wallet was so obvious that I considered it worth mentioning. I didn’t perceive the authors/curators were being shorted; but more so, wanted to alert the developers of a potential glitch.
@lexiconical, blessed are you to not have to keep tabs on your bottom line.
I have to admit that part of my joy as a Steemian is watching my dimes and pennies turn into more and more SP/SD; with an ongoing reminder of gratitude for all the years spent posting for Z-E-R-O, nadie, nothing.
Best regards @lexiconical!
Peace.
The dog piling to me is a disappointing side effect of the current curation system... of course we all want to make some income here, but i would like to believe people want to actually listen to the songs I wanna share or the thoughts I have to express than just... lets click on this dude, this is the way i get some money...
Its like i would like both, but not in the order they are happening... I started to not upvote content unless I read and engage, because I'm like this person who I appreciate in one way or another put his work into this post. I owe him the respect to read him, its not about my curation money... if i get curation money cuz some whale comes in here for example and blesses Lexi with a super vote... Fantastic! thats great for Lexi, cuz his posts deserve to be succesful and great for me because I was "lucky" key operational word there to have found the post early.
I may be a little to idealistic and half way rambling here, but hey... its just my two .02 steems
I definitely agree with everything you've said here, philosophically.
However, this is ultimately an amoral blockchain protocol where code is law. Everything else is what we culturally add on top as the community. As long as that is true, a great many users, I daresay the majority, will be motivated by strict game theory and will post-hoc-rationalize what is needed to get as close to that as possible.
I see this change as a tool to help those who agree with you (us) philosophically have another option for competing for views/votes with the big guys, as they can choose to share more.
We might also need a 50/50-option.
The 100% option makes the bots frontrun everyone, I guess this isnt intended!?
I agree completely. I only didn't add one to my image because I figured I had gotten the point across, and I was using paint, so...
I think the curation reward should be visiable, so that people would know what they'll be getting if they'll vote on said post. This lack of transparency is really problematic for those who can't read code.
Also allowing the author to adjust the curation reward is a great idea, a lot of people vote in the beginning 30 minutes of my posts, thus giving me most their vote weight, I'd like to change that only the first 5 minutes actually contribute to my reward, and after that 25% goes to the curation reward reguraly.
I don't want people to be disincentivized from voting on my posts.
I agree. I've suggested a (very poorly) estimated curation reward tooltip be added on hover to the vote button. Haven't heard much support for the idea.
On Golos [ which is forked Steemit ] apart from "official" golos.io there's another client site goldvoice.club [Just like on Steemit there's busy.org ]
Goldvoice.club allows authors to pay "cashback" to curators, rShares received are calculated and author can decide which % of reward received going to be transferred back to curators proportional to rShares.
There's an initiative on Golos for authors sharing rewards with curators 50/50 instead of 75/25. They can use goldvoice to settle it or just use another "cashback bot" available.
All posts using 50/50 principle are reblogged by "50/50 community account" this giving more exposure.
Last week over 100 authors published posts using 50/50 principle and participants of this initiative now do distribute about 13% of total reward pool on Golos.
The moral is, there's no need to appeal to developers, all that could be realized by a group of interested users.
"Goldvoice.club allows authors to pay "cashback" to curators, rShares received are calculated and author can decide which % of reward received going to be transferred back to curators proportional to rShares."
That's very cool. I would certainly have made use of that option. It's nice to offer the extra promotion to those who participate.
"The moral is, there's no need to appeal to developers, all that could be realized by a group of interested users."
I don't see why both options can't be available. Your option, notably, requires trust if using bots rather than a decentralized blockchain, so appealing to developers is still worthwhile. Or, we can simply code the option ourselves and post it to Git.
I am not sure that this is the final answer - as you say, a stopgap - but I think it is definitely worth exploring.
People that may object - some big well established posters who rake in large author rewards with limited to no interaction beyond hitting the post button - these people might, perhaps rightly, argue that they have spent the time building up their following and they will be penalized by this, in terms of being made to look selfish for merely maintaining the status quo.
But for the long- term future of the site it, or something similar to it, would seem to make sense
Cheers
"these people might, perhaps rightly, argue that they have spent the time building up their following and they will be penalized by this"
Technically speaking, they won't be penalized, there will simply be more competition from some authors that hypothetically will be willing to share more than 25%. I realize the practical effect is they could make (probably slightly) less.
Thank you for the comment, I found you on SF!
Agreed - I think that the majority of autovoting would remain largely unchanged, but I would expect to see less flooding of newcomers to vote on the trending page if they realize they can get a larger absolute return from a bigger % of a smaller post.
It may be objected to in some quarters but I am all for market forces playing out...
Agreed, and removing that flood of sycophants and "nice post" commenters would really help clean-up the look of trending posts, without requiring flagging to hide those comments.
" Authors who wish to share more of their rewards to encourage curators and followers would be better able to complete with the popular top authors routinely in trending by sharing more of their own rewards."
I am not so sure about this. If top authors also have the option to give 100% curation rewards to curators, they will only gain more advantage. Even if those top authors are kind hearted and want to "give back to their followers", they will unknowingly gain more advantage over smaller authors. Unless after a certain amount of SP authors dont have to option to choose the curation/author rewards.
However as @fitzgibbon says, this adds more to the complexity.
"This would also go a long way in giving authors options for dealing with auto-voting readers and lack of engagement."
I don't see why the engagement would go up as curation rewards go up for auto voters, wouldn't it mean that they are gonna follow you more just to auto vote?
"I am not so sure about this. If top authors also have the option to give 100% curation rewards to curators, they will only gain more advantage."
If the top authors give up more of their rewards, it will mean they make less overall while other users are making more. If they want to turn their blogs into charity, I guess most people benefit from that. I'm not sure this is too likely, or will even be a problem.
"I don't see why the engagement would go up as curation rewards go up for auto voters, wouldn't it mean that they are gonna follow you more just to auto vote"
Well, you might have Jerry Banfield set on autovote because you know who he is. So you don't even need to read the post. However, you will have to search for smaller users with 50% or whatever curation split, if you want to try to get higher rewards.
For example, my posts would make you more curation then Jerry's if I set it to 50%. That would apply to a smaller author than I if they set theirs higher than 50%.
It gives a new vector to compete on, it doesn't guarantee an advantage for either side.
Thanks for checking in.
I see this could be a tool for smaller authors to attract more people, but it could also be a point of complain for minnows to whales, for setting their author curation too high.
For example, if people see a whale like Sweetsssj making hundres on a post, and they would see that she sets her author rewards to 75%, then people would complain about it. And to keep her rep up she would need to automatically lower her author rewards.
I think this effect would apply to most whales, which leads te beginning authors to have to set low author rewards. I beginning author already doesn't have much incentive to write, other than that he or she would receive considerable rewards for it. The starting author would need to sacrafice early rewards to gain more for later.
I think this takes the whole monetary incentive away for new users.
"I think this takes the whole monetary incentive away for new users."
Why? It's just competition. They can keep it at 75% and toil away for 50 cents a post, just like I did.
This is a very interesting train of thought! However, I would bring a different argument into this discussion: if we would want to keep Steemit accessible for new or noob users, things must be as simple as possible. Too many options might be confusing, certainly at the start.
However, unlocking these tools (as one unlocks the vote slider) would be awesome I think.
You are right, however I think the compexity can easily be solved by adding a notification or a symbol (one that is more visible than the 100%), whether people get 100% curation rewards or 25%.
But I am not sure about the effectiveness of this.
I think curation is THE leading factor when it comes to the succes of Steemit as a platform. What makes Steemit really different compared to other social media platforms is the reward and incentive structure.
Theoretically this could lead to attracting the best of the best in terms of content creators, but I think that would only start to happen when curation becomes more important than post rewards and the parameters for curation would incentivize quality content upvoting. I do consider control over curation parameters an incredibly effective tool for authors to incentivize engagement and curation.
That is my main standpoint. Curation is the backbone of steemit. The balance between rewards for curating and for authoring, may be a bit imbalanced now.
Indeed, especially taking into account this rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
Totally agree. This is why I keep posting on the curation topic!
Curie is an amazing microcosm of how effective curation can be.
Couldn't agree more with this.
You're right, the simpler the better. But no matter how complex it sounds now it can still be made simplified for anyone to understand.
Just like a computer, there are lots of complex programming in it, but simple to use.
"However, unlocking these tools (as one unlocks the vote slider) would be awesome I think."
Great addition. Alternatively, it could be hidden by default like NSFW posts, though I prefer your idea.
That is an elegant solution to this problem.
But, no matter what, curation is always going to be played using game theory. But I think that is a good thing. It gets many people engaged ... trying to "beat the system" which, at the same time, strengthens the system.
I agree. I see no problem with the application of game theory, but we want that to contribute to the platform's quality by aligning those incentives with those of quality content! Robotic auto-voting fails to achieve that end.
Hey @lexiconical I am @utopian-io. I have just super-voted you at 97% Power!
Suggestions https://utopian.io/rules
-Your contribution is less informative than others in this category.
-Utopian has detected 1 bot votes. I am the only bot you should love!!
Achievements
-Good amount of information. Thank you!
-Votes on this contribution are going well. Nice!
-You are having more votes than average for this category. Nice!
-You are generating more rewards than average for this category. Super!
-You have a good amount of votes on your contributions. Good job!
-In total you have more votes than average for this category. Bravo!
-You have just unlocked 6 achievements. Yeah!
Up-vote this comment to grow my power and help Open Source contributions like this one.
I just authored a post about this a few days earlier. My thoughts are similar in that the "Author" should be able to select the "algorithm" of their choosing. This prevents the proliferation of 'Auto-voting" and levels the field for a true consensus towards voting on "Good Content." Voting at post+1 minute or post+6 days should be equally favorable to the voter, with the goal of identifying quality versus money. A sort of a blind draw if you will.
I would definitely at least like to try these ideas. I think they will work better, but it really would be nice to give them a week's dry run.
I like it, but, man, would it create a shake-up in the Steem universe.
When competing content creators are handing out 75% of their rewards and putting out comparable quality to those top-earners, what do you think is going to happen? No matter how they choose to respond, the top-earners are very likely to take a pay cut.
"competing content creators are handing out 75% of their rewards and putting out comparable quality to those top-earners"
Would content creators be willing to provide that comparable quality on a daily basis for 75% less? That is the question.
The higher the quality of the content, the fewer people are capable of producing it. The number of people able to intelligently explain, discuss, and predict cryptocurrency developments, for example, are still restricted to a rather "elite" few.
Wow. Thanks for the insight! I'm relatively new here and still learning but thought I'd leave you a god ol' fashioned manual upvote and comment :) Thanks for the good read!
Thank you ! Welcome to the platform.
Thanks!
I like this idea... what would people think if we added 100% Author also LOL
I have a feeling they may not like it! However, I'm not one to judge on this point...
Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.
[utopian-moderator]
Thank you!
Curation strategy depends on the size of your account.
Jerry's findings suit his account, at 93,000 SP. This will not suit an account at 1-2000 SP. A smaller account will be swamped by larger votes and get little/0 % of the pie.
After Steemfest I will get stuck into proving this :)
I'm pretty sure you're off on this. The only difference from the amount of SP from the curator is the amount of rewards. 10x SP = 10x More Rewards.
Therefore, the exact same strategy is game-theoretically called for. This is axiomatic and inarguable, unless vote weight becomes logarithmic again.
Small curators get proportionately small rewards, and while they may not "be worth" working to get, the game theory is the same.
"After Steemfest I will get stuck into proving this :)"
If you disprove this, it will be quite the story. Make sure to let us know!
Good Post Thank You :)
These options are good but it would create complexity to the new users
There are numerous options to mitigate that. Have it earned like the vote slider, have it hidden like NSFW and toggled on in the settings, provide a tooltip explaining briefly, etc.
Amazing idea, I hope to see this positive evolution for the whole community
That would be great!
It will be a nice idea. Of course, always from outside there will always be good ideas all the time. It depends on how they will be seen by stuff.
I read @snowflake 's post too. Yes it could be a start for the smaller people to have more motivation.
However for me, if i see a post i will write on it anyway if i have something to say, even if is not that way. But, some balance is needed again. And for sure will be more steps do be done in the future too. That's how things works from the beginning. With great ideas comes also great service and content. Let's hope here will be the same.
For what you propose, it could also be a box to let the viewers know that thing. For the good minnows auth / curators will be also a good thing.
I tried to simulate here:
Also, it is a big problem with new good content that is not viewed. Eh, is another topic...
@originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @lexiconical to be original material and upvoted(2%) it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
Your Post is awesome, Thnx for sharing :)
I like your post
Cute Cat Cubs...
Vote Please....
https://steemit.com/cat/@akhterhossain/animals-photograph
This post has received a 9.85 % upvote from @buildawhale thanks to: @lexiconical. Send at least 1 SBD to @buildawhale with a post link in the memo field for a portion of the next vote.
To support our daily curation initiative, please vote on my owner, @themarkymark, as a Steem Witness
This wonderful post has received a bellyrub 15.37 % upvote from @bellyrub.
Great post..
"So much of it seems short sighted and self defeating."
Thus ever is the prisoner's dilemma that many of us live our lives in. The free market is our best solution so far, but it's never "really" free in practice.
This would take us one step closer, at least on Steemit, to that free market.
I mostly agree, although this part:
"Steemit is enough of a pyramid as is."
I don't think this is accurate. Steem payments are guaranteed by the protocol, it's only the free-market value of those rewards that can fluctuate. It's risky, but not a pyramid.