As part of the recently announced changes, today we are delivering a lot of enhancements to Utopian.io; even more than we promised.
A New Reputation System
While we were trying to fix how scoring and voting contributions works in Utopian.io, we realised that the default Steem reputation system does not work well for our purpose. That's why we decided to create a custom Utopian.io reputation system.
Made with Utopian in mind
The new reputation system in Utopian.io takes into account a user's number of rejected and accepted contributions, in which categories the user has contributed, in addition to the score each contribution has received. This is the perfect fit for Utopian.io because it allows us to measure how well a user is contributing to the Open Source ecosystem, and then translate that into a simple reputation badge.
Reputation is dynamic
All reputation values are calculated against the user who has the topmost total score, overall on the platform. As the top score changes, the reputation values also change. Such an approach makes the reputation implicitly dynamic, meaning that: to keep your reputation badge at the same level, you must keep contributing valuably.
Reputation badges
- Newbie
- Beginner
- Advanced
- Expert
- Pro
- Ninja
- Guru
- Hero
- Legend
- Elite
Reputation and influence
Each reputation badge comes with a level of influence. The only reputation badge which does not have any influence is Newbie (to prevent new users with the wrong intentions from gaming the system).
The influence affects how a user scores a contribution. The bigger the influence, the more weight and validity the user's scores have when determining the final score of contributions.
Reputation badges assigned by default
- Moderators start with the Reputation Badge Guru. This is to ensure that they have enough influence when scoring contributions.
- Community Managers get the Reputation Badge Elite by default. This is to ensure that their influence can help maintain the quality of contributions overall on the platform.
- Specific members who are highly trusted in Utopian.io can get an Honorary Reputation. @scipio @jedigeiss @littleboy and @transisto all received the Elite reputation badge.
Power to Project Owners
When a project owner scores a contribution received for his own project, independently from the current reputation badge he has, the system will always calculate the influence as a minimum starting from the Guru reputation badge. This is to ensure project owners have enough influence when scoring contributions for their own projects, as much as moderators.
Delegate for more influence
In order to find new ways other than liquid rewards to incentivise delegation, we now allow users to earn a higher reputation by delegating to Utopian, which gives them more influence and ultimately gives them power to decide on the distribution of rewards.
- Beginner: delegate at least 100 SP
- Advanced: delegate at least 1000 SP
- Expert: delegate at least 5000 SP
- Pro: delegate at least 10000 SP
- Ninja: delegate at least 15000 SP
- Guru: delegate at least 20000 SP
- Hero: delegate at least 25000 SP
- Legend: delegate at least 50000 SP
- Elite: delegate at least 100000 SP
Decentralised Scoring System
As recently announced, we strived hard to find a solution to decentralise the scoring of contributions and give the community the power to decide what's good or bad, and how the Utopian.io voting power should be used.
While we wanted to give only Moderators and Project Owners the responsibility of scoring a contribution, we have realised our new reputation system can allow us to go way further than that.
That's the reason why every user can now score a contribution (which was not submitted by himself).
Each user can now answer the questions from the Quality Questionnaire, which before was only possible for Moderators.
Influence calculation
Since every user has a reputation badge and every badge comes with an influence, that influence is used to define which answers from the Quality Questionnaire received the best ratings.
Each answer gives the contribution a certain score, which is then finally used by the Utopian Bot to decide the voting weight.
New Utopian bot
Soon, the Utopian Bot will take into consideration the following criteria, to decide the voting weight:
- Score: the score assigned by the most rated answers from the Quality Questionnaire.
- Total influence: the summation of the influence held by all users who have scored the contribution.
The Utopian Bot will vote starting with contributions that have the largest total influence, the best score and which were marked as reviewed by a Moderator (or which scored higher than 80).
Since the Utopian Bot can only use a maximum of 20% voting power daily, not every contribution may get a vote, making the Utopian Bot vote never guaranteed and only an incentive for top quality contributions.
The new Utopian Bot should be released as soon as next week.
Projects Whitelist
Soon, Utopian.io may only list projects that have opted-in to our ecosystem.
In order to get your project in Utopian.io and to have our full support, project owners now have a dedicated landing page.
Dedicated Page for Investors
As we want to onboard more project owners on Utopian.io, we also aim to bring more investors into the Steem ecosystem.
That's why there is now a dedicated landing page where investors can get in touch with us to get more information!
Beneficiaries From 25% to 15%
As promised, the amount set aside for beneficiaries from contributions made on Utopian.io has been decreased from 25% to only 15% cross-platform.
Changes to moderation teams
In the last few days, a new moderation setup was implemented and Community Managers have begun working. They took up the responsibilities of Supervisors along with other duties, and were tasked with picking a maximum of 3 moderators each for their respective categories.
During this transition, some moderators were not assigned to any category and have been disabled from moderation as a result. We would like to thank them for their hard work and support, and apologize for any inconveniences caused. We would like to assure them that we will consider re-enabling their roles in the future, as the need arises.
We hope to see all of them discussing and enjoying the community on Discord.
Moderation Functionalities
As part of our effort to improve moderation processes, we have added some enhanced functionalities.
Better moderation controls
Moderation controls look nicer and easier to access, while providing more functionality than ever before.
Reserve a contribution
To avoid instances of moderators working on the same contribution at the same time, moderators can now reserve a contribution for one hour while working on it. No other moderators will be able to reserve the contribution during this time.
Staff picks
Staff Picks are contributions which our Community Managers believe are of outstanding quality. Staff Picks will get higher exposure and higher rewards on Utopian.io.
API Usage Limit
Our servers are currently overloaded by what we identified as bots. These bots have full access to our API without any kind of limitation.
We have just impemented an API proxy which controls the limits of requests.
In order to get an API key for your platform or bot, please send us a ticket.
What's Next
- New Utopian Bot
- Switching From Rules to Guidelines
- Enhancements to the Projects and Feeds Interfaces
Stay tuned!
Top Sponsors
 @freedom - Vote Witness |  @misterdelegation |
 @ned |  @wackou - Vote Witness |
 @xeldal - Vote Witness |  @fenghuang |
Top Moderators
 @tykee |  @jmromero |
 @syedumair |  @zoneboy |
 @samhamou |  @codingdefined |
Hello everyone! I'm one of the Community Managers closely working with our team on these updates. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them under this comment. You can also ask them on our Discord channel or via a ticket at support.utopian.io!
Upvoted for visibility.
Does the new reputation system take into account past contributions to the platform? For example if someone has made a bunch of contributions in the past, will they start as a higher reputation level or will everyone start at newbie?
And second is there a way to see how far away you are from hitting the next rank up?
The reputation system does take into account older contributions. If you visit a page of a previously active user, you should see their reputation is much higher than that of an user just starting on Utopian.
There's currently no way of tracking your progress towards the next rank, but once we are absolutely sure the ranks work as intended we will consider adding that so users are incentivized to level up.
On the project owners landing page it reads:
How does this work? Project owners get more power, more responsibilities and more work. Why would they follow up on Utopianen contributions if they get them without following up. What is the incentive for project owners to actually use utopian themselves?
I believe the STEEM revenue idea is still being developed to be launched relatively soon.
Some of the categories, like Translations, Suggestions, Visibility etc. require the project owner to create a task request in order to receive contributions to their project. This was a necessary change due to spam complaints that we've been receiving in the past. If they don't come to us and use Utopian, they will not receive contributions to their project. This is the main reason why they are incentivized to come to us and use the task request functionality.
Hi @jestemkioskiem.
Will the contributions be made visible on the utopian.io platform feeds (All / Suggestions / Development / Analysis etc) prior to a moderator scoring them? Currently, I can see and score any contribution (even prior to any moderator) if I visit someone's profile directly but in order to do this I must know that they have made a contribution. Is this planned to change?
Hello!
This is definitely planned to happen very soon. Our plan is to allow users to easily browse Utopian and curate the best content.
So glad I am a HERO LOL
I am a Legend!
Do you have data per each user additional to what STEEM holds?
Does it not require either a different blockchain, or a centralized database?
This comment has received a 30.21 % upvote from @steemdiffuser thanks to: @stimialiti.
Remember, above average bids may get additional upvotes from our trail members.
You got upvoted from @adriatik bot! Thank you to you for using our service. We really hope this will hope to promote your quality content!
it was a great experience being part of a great team like you @utopian-team. and it was kind of magic watching a dream become true in a blink of an eye , so congratulations @Utopian for all of your achievements so far and for the hard work of the team behind you, and always remember "i am a human being, not a human doing". ♥@thegoldenphoenix♥@utopian-io♥
it was great having you ! :)
thank you @mcfarhat
just delegated to this project. Glad to join in thanks to @steevc for his post promoting this
Thanks for such a good updates, you are the best. I am a Advanced now :D
It is a good idea that the bot of utopia vote for quality content, since there has always been a debate about low-quality publications favored by bidbots.
the bot of utopia.io will work differently ..
Looks like I'm not a mod anymore. Well, more time to write tutorials then. Question: I have 12 approved tutorials (0 rejected) and my rank is beginner. Is it really that steep? Do I really need thousands of contributions to reach guru? How can I estimate it?
Thanks for updates.
The math behind the contributions is top secret right now. I have seen accounts with Expert already though, so you might be just about to get to the next rank!
Well, it's not that big of a secret since I did some digging and can see it plainly in the source code ;) I didn't found an easy way to access user database, however, so I can't see top user's score (or mine for that matter). Anyway, let's see how it works out for Utopian.
Well, I suppose this has changed since I last checked with people responsible for developing it! I've talked to the team about tracking progress on the front end, so this might just become a reality once our team comes back from the conference in the UK.
great initiative. you make us always the correct way . thanks for sharing
I like a dynamic approach of defining reputation, but don't you feel "Decentralised Scoring System" form is too complex?
Great work btw!
We're still trying to figure out a way to do it correctly. The biggest decision makers are still the Utopian team, but the goal is to give Utopian users a voice that can actually impact the system. Unlike steem, we have a team to fight abuse of the system, so if anything goes wrong - this is all a subject to change.
For posterity.
This is seriously awesome work, so many thanks to the Utopian team for the countless hours you continue contributing.
We are all in love with Utopian and what it stands for so even though most of us put most of our free time into this, we all know this is time well spent!
And I would be lying if I said we don't get anything back. Just for clarity I want to state that the team memebers are weekly rewarded with an upvote proportional to the amount of work they've put in. We are actively trying to root out people that are in here for the (admittedly, quite a small amount for the work they put in) money, though! This is all but necessary to get a team that is very active and committed to the project.
And just to go back to my statement - steem is decentralized, so I'm not really criticizing the system for lack of supervision. It is just an issue that we, luckily, won't have to deal with even though steem does.
Wow, you guys really working hard to update the platform, neat. tipuvote! 1
Thanks @cardboard.
So good, thank you and long live Utopian!
Oh this is an awesome improvement to Utopian community, this is really decentralized, thanks.
We're glad you like the updates. :)
@imwatsi
Community Manager - Copywriting
Yes, i hope we find it favourable as well
We the contributors
This is a good update folks.
Its nice to see the utopian project getting better over time.
Congratulations.
These changes are just beyond awesome...I really don't even know what to say besides that.
I'm super excited to log in and check out the new changes but getting an error after authenticating with steemconnect:
{ "error": "Failed to create session" }Just an FYI - really excited about all of these great changes. You guys are doing unbelievable work and are the best example of how to create a site on top of the steem blockchain in my opinion!
Thank you for your kind feedback! We hope you enjoy the new features and get in touch with us whenever you have ideas or questions.
As for the error you're seeing, try to refresh the page several times as it might be an error related to SteemConnect and/or Steem itself. If you still have trouble logging in, please open a support ticket with the Utopian team at https://support.utopian.io/ and we will look into it.
@imwatsi
Community Manager - Copywriting
Found that issue as well @yabapmatt. Probably cache. Can u clear and retry? Let me know
Seems like it’s working now, didn’t have to clear cache even. Thanks, and again really really excited about all this new stuff!
Thanks for the update. Do these changes affect the current rewards calculation in Steemit? If yes, would appreciate if you could elaborate.
With beneficiaries changing from 25% to 15% it will affect your payout positively, which means you'll get more SBD/SP than you were getting before.
Thanks for being such a useful witness, I've included you in this post and I hope that you will do much more for steemit. ☺
huge information in this article
thanks @utopian for this amazing post
Love the concepts you're exploring and the work you're doing here.
I wonder about reputation longevity. It would make sense for reputation contributions to have a decay, so that a single contribution loses about 0.03 of it's value monthly (rough approximation of the golden ratio). Maybe with a floor of 0.2 or something.
This keeps competition alive and encourages new contributors even as utopian becomes more mature.
helpfull article. thanks utopian
AMAZING :D , Happy to see the great updates
The change has arrived. Big and Better Utopian.
congrats. it's a huge update. It is not the perfect solution for judging the value of contributions but I believe that utopian.io can make an improvement for the open source community.
This is good for steemian thanks.
Question: since reputation is effectively based on agreement, what measures are in place or planned to allow for the fact that “consensus” is not a basis of conclusive evidence or validation/proof of anything?
In other words: if 99.9% agree with me, this has precisely no more bearing on whether I’m right, than 99.9% of people disagreeing has any bearing on whether I’m wrong.
The reputation is distributed based on the acceptance rate & scores of your contributions, which initially is going to be nearly 100% related to what the moderators decide on. As such, you can only get a high reputation once you prove you know what you're doing to our team.
Now, take into consideration that a single person with a top rated reputation will be able to outvote even a 100 people (depending on how we tweak the numbers after the initial weeks), and the fact that our moderation team will constantly keep overlooking these contributions to make sure there's no abuse and that great contributions are not misjudged.
It really isn't based on what the majority agrees on, but what the experts agree on. We believe our teams are full of experts for each assigned category and the contributors that get to such high reputations will be close to that as well.
As a final note - if we find people abusing high reputation to hide precious contributions and support their friends/their multiaccounts etc. - we will take action and reduce their reputation and/or suspend their account.
I love it, keep it up brother
Pleasant content, congratulations for such a good contribution brother
I loved your contribution brother, greetings and follow the success
thanks for such a good contribution, we need to see more of this here hermno ... keep going
Hello everyone. I am the Community Manager for the Video Tutorials category. If you have any questions feel free to connect with me on our Discord channel or via a ticket at support.utopian.io
Cheers
really i am a hero lol.thanks for @utopian-io
thank you always give us a good imformation
Congratulations @utopian-io!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following category:
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hope this picture will look good. If you like it, please vote. Opinion vote is valuable for me.thanks bro......
I'm glad this platform is making such updates! How did the kickstarter go btw?
I like it 😂 @utopian-io
I like it 😂 @utopian-io
I like it 😂 @utopian-io
I like it 😂 @utopian-io
I like it 😂 @utopian-io
Hope this helps the community! I've just found out about it and have delegated my 100 SP :-) Just now waiting for the postfix to be 'fixed' so that I can get my crafted article from last night in the system! :)
It will be like playing Dota 2 or League of legends.
Always love to see upgrade/improvements, exciting to read. Thanks for posting!
Hi @utopian-io! You have received 1.0 SBD @tipU upvote
from @cardboard !
@tipU! upvotes with 200% profit and pays 100% profit + 50% curation rewards to investors :)