I think you're wrong, and I can speak from experience as a content producer who's been here for over two years.
Providing curators with a larger cut will encourage more to actually curate(vote). That's exactly what actual content producers have been desperate for on this platform for a very long time. With more people willing to vote, content producers could potentially see an increase in overall rewards per post (more votes, more rewards). With more curation rewards being offered to consumers, all the content producer has to do to make up for some of the losses is powerup some of their earnings and curate others.
Even under this model, in recent weeks, I've produced content, provided curators with 'x' amount of SP, and made at or around the same amount of SP in curation rewards. In other words, I'm receiving the full value of my posts simply because I choose to vote and support others.
50/50 will also encourage more to play the role of content consumer. As a content producer, I feel this model of producing something, allowing my fanbase to enjoy it for free, and having them leave with more money in their pocket than they had when they arrive, all while I too can get paid; that's genius.
How often do you see a busker in the subway putting money in the hats of passersby? How often do you open a new book, get to page 50, and see money taped to the page with a 'thank you' note?
You call yourself a 'promoter' here because you sell votes. Have you seen the crap you and a few others sell votes to? Of course not. You get paid to look away; and that's the exact opposite of what true content producers need in order to succeed. When the actual content from actual content producers gets buried under those monkey posts you like so much, we end up losing money; that model is forcing many of us to leave because by the looks of it, the things some of you guys "promote" makes you all look like you've been drinking the moonshine. If I can't even compete with that monkey post, there's no reason to stick around.
Those changes won't hurt content producers. The model you're defending hurts content producers, and the proof is all around us.
Have a good day, @fyrstikken.
I also have been creating content and curating here for over two years and when I first read @kevinwong's article mentioned at the beginning of this post I thought that if suddenly authors rewards were reduced to 50% it would tank their moral. But if you curate as well I think you're correct and it would compensate for the reduction in rewards from posting.
It's a known fact and something that's been on my mind from my first day on this platform that the majority of people online are consumers of content, not creators.
Of course, striking a balance between rewarding authors and curators who connect with others by commenting and curating and whether changing the rewards to 50%-50% would actually change enough users behavior is a whole other matter.
I see it creating a positive feedback loop in the feeds as well as within posts.
These days I see many publish a post, then leave. Snoop around the wallet region; their SP is delegated away. So they want free votes placed on their posts, then expect others to pay for their votes. Those paid votes then contribute to subpar quality content pushing the content creator/voteseller's work down and out of sight. As they get paid to look away, they're contributing to a negative feedback loop where they earn money to sabotage their own business.
Even if the content producer didn't want to go around curating posts all day, they could reserve SP to curate and respond to comments. The votes they place on curators comments would be worth more to the content producer. Commentators and curators might think they'll be earning less, but once more content creators catch on to the fact they can now earn while responding, more would do it, leading to more comments, and more people getting paid to comment. That scenario could potentially bring back some of the missing social elements. A lot of people publish posts and nobody leaves a comment these days.
As a content creator here, some days I'll spend hours under my posts, responding to and upvoting comments. I don't get paid much for that. Under this 50/50 plan, I would, and so would everyone else.
More people earning attracts more people who want to earn. Some are trying too hard to fit in and produce content so they can make money, they're not good at it (no offense to anyone here, you've all seen those crappy posts) they're wasting time, they make better curators, and should be rewarded for their efforts as well as be offered and incentive to hold and actually use their own SP.
As a content creator, I want satisfied customers. If that means I must earn a smaller percentage per unit with the hopes of earning more in bulk (more incoming votes), so be it. That's actually quite common in business. Nothing unusual about it.
What many don't realize is if this place scaled up to millions of people, a content producer would be able to maintain a blog/vlog and secure profits even at a 10% cut, provided the value of the token was high. 10% today wouldn't work, but it easily could many years down the road.
This all sounds good in theory but would it actually play out that way or will those inclined to game the system find other ways to game it? I can see the potential for bots spamming comments even more than they do now and vote selling wouldn't be discouraged just by changing the reward percentages..
How would that be worth more to the content producer as opposed to the one leaving the vote?
To me personally, a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of difference as I both post and comment equally. My focus is on building and engaging an online community, but I'm not so sure it would change anything as far as paid votes for sub-par posts. There are those here now who only look for ways to make money with the least amount of effort and they're not going to stop just because of a reward percentage change.
For honest actors who really are engaging with others on the platform, it would be a boost and probably create more engagement, but as far as bringing quality content to the attention of the community I don't see how the change would make any difference at all. Quality and highly engaging posts would still be competing with posts that bought votes and clog the trending pages.
Of course those attempting to game the system will attempt to screw things up. That's just what they do.
Vote selling may continue but who will buy? Spend 20, have 22 placed beside the post. They'd need to earn 9 in organic votes just to break even. Sounds kind of silly to me, but I'm sure a few noobs will fall for it, then feel ripped off, blame the platform, leave, like they do now.
If I leave a vote worth 10 cents on a comment, I'd now get 5 cents. $1.00, I'd get $0.50. It adds up.
I'm not sure how much profit there would be in selling votes. Spend $100, receive $115, lose half = $57.5. A poor quality boosted post would have to earn $42.5 in organic votes just to break even. If the SP is already locked away ready to be sold, who's going to be able to put $42.5 on a shit post organically? Minnows?
The higher they go, the worse it gets. Those votes would have to be sold for less if someone just wanted to buy votes hoping to squeak tiny profits out of low effort work like they do now. Spend $5, have $10 placed beside the post, lose $5. Break even. Is $10 worth of reward worth $5? I can't see them making much money selling votes that way. Those members with their own SP to use could easily just vote for quality work in a timely manner and earn more per vote because the odds are more votes will trickle in after theirs if the post has potential. To me, it sounds like curation would compete with vote selling, and curation rather than selling would come out with more potential profits.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense to me now. I'm all for it because I curate and post equally already so in theory my earning would be about the same. I think so anyway.
I was very interested in your view on this... Because you are a "Content Creator" who wants engagement.
I produce art and creative writing; art needs eyes. I can't get laughs if they don't read. Why would I write humor if I didn't want to hear laughs? I'd never pay someone to look away, because that hurts my business. I want people to look, I hope they stay after the show to talk to me, I hope they support my efforts, and they all get a small token of my appreciation in the form of curation rewards and comment upvotes. That's like offering a free coffee at the art gallery or free beer at the comedy club. Provide incentives, more people show up. Back in the day, you could buy a movie because you want to see it, open it up, and there's a free poster inside. That's how this business works. Without engagement, there's nothing here for me. Sure, I could farm rewards, but just because I grew up on a farm, that doesn't make me a farmer; and there's no point in planting a crop if nobody is going to eat it.
I wanted to answer a few things, but I don't really know you. Nevertheless I would like that if it is possible you answer me only one question: When was the last time that you read an article of someone with reputation of 25 and 15SP and you gave him a good vote because you thought it was good content? Those who have large amounts of SP will benefit in any way because what seems to attract people here according to my experience is the SP not the content or its quality (exceptions are accounting with one hand). I don't have two years on the platform like you but I've spent almost a year and to get to the little I've achieved has cost me sweat. Now imagine a new user with exceptional content that nobody looks at because he doesn't have SP and how little he can do should lose his 50%. I am against monkeys like flames having great rewards but we are not going to detonate the atomic bomb on the city full of civilians just because KingKong is in the city. I think there may be other ways and I will look for them to give my opinion on all this controversy that threatens the stability of the system for new users. It's just my humble opinion and I don't know if I'm the only one here who thinks about newcomers.
There are 2 of us, jj.
I keep telling them they are literally taking food out of people's mouths just to buy themselves a trophy.
One day folks will care.
He votes for people with low SP. I received his a couple of times - back in the day when my SP was still low - and have seen others receive it too.
It is not that I am in oblivion because I also receive some important votes but this is not about me or the other subject but about a whole community, when I issue an opinion I do not think about myself but about those who have it more difficult, in the platform in general.How good it is that you receive his vote, maybe the man is one of the few who act well on the platform, I have not reviewed his profile to give an opinion, however I think based on the thousands I have seen doing what I say and it is not a question of judging if he acts well or badly but of evaluating if applying a 50% healing reward would really affect the behavior of users or simply continue doing what they always do with the difference that new users will receive 33.33% less than what they currently receive being more difficult for them to upload. Thank you for participating in the conversation.
The part I keep seeing here is everyone's forgetting, is that apps take a cut of the profits. Which means you will be getting in less then you think you will be getting. The Apps will not cut out their fee's it's not going to happen. As more specialized apps start and host images or videos. These costs aren't cheap don't expect apps to cut fee's very much other you can kiss image or video hosting goodbye.
Also, what's stopping anyone from just automating curation as they did before and like they do now. Also, people seem to think this 50%/50% will trip up the bots. The model is likely to switch over to @smartmarket style.
Or they are likely to start self-voting them self with big votes as some do now. Content curator plus biggest vote on your post means more for you. This update has a bigger positive for circle jerks and automation creation services. And the spread will be just as bad as it is now.
The apps with delegation wouldn't have to take a cut, because when they vote for content on their app, they'd receive a higher curation reward. Now factor in popularity. If more members were available to curate, instead of being paid to look away, a really good photo or popular video of the day would generate even more revenue for the app in the form of curation rewards once the other votes start rolling in.
Automated curation isn't terrible. If I earned someone's vote, and they want to support my work even when they're sleeping, then come later to view, which is typically the case for me, I don't have an issue with that.
Would you purchase votes if you knew you'd be losing 50%? Spend twenty, get $22 placed beside your post, no views, lose half to curators who were paid to look away. Does that still sound like a 'smart' market?
Did you just self vote yourself three times for no gain, no reason? Just wondering.
You raise some good points @thedegensloth. I agree with @nonameslefttouse regarding the Apps. It is quite possible people will move to the @smartmarket style of vote selling. I consider this less problematic as at least people keep their Steem Power rather delegate it away, therefore they can still curate whenever they want with ease.
Higher curation rewards combined with more downvoting, adds risk to selling votes to lower quality content. I think it is possible that good curation may actually be as profitable as selling votes. The same can be said about self-voting low quality content.
I think the proposed changes are worth a shot. I find it hard to imagine that we will end up with less manual curation than we have now.
Thank you @nonameslefttouse, I have been reading what you have said, including the dialogue with the others and I will think about it. I still think the OP looked like it was made in a hurry and brought more questions than answers. But if you and the majority of CONTENT CREATORS really want to earn less per post, I am not going to stand in your way if you all truly believe this will benefit you all short and long term.
It wasn't made up in a hurry by any means. Maybe the chart itself didn't take that long but these discussions have been going on for literally years (for example I'm quite certain there was a well-followed post in 2016 which discussed putting curation rewards back to the original 50/50 design, but I don't remember the original author and not going to go searching for it).
It's probably this one
https://steemit.com/steemit/@calaber24p/revamping-curation-is-the-way-to-increase-steem-power-demand
Good find!
Well, the last edits has made the OP better.
The stakeholder map has changed since 2016, so I suggest we start again, please.
50/50 is a big disappointment to the majority bloggers, so imagine how loud SteemSpeak.com is in some parts right now.
Another thing we should think about is competitors. If we create a balance that feels unfair to content creators, and someone else opens up shop that could be a disaster for us in the short and long run.
Have all these pros/cons been really hashed out, or is everyone just being yes-men in order to not stick their heads out and ask for a ten minute break to catch up? ;)
Many pros and cons have been hashed out. Hundreds if not 1000+ comments on the various posts mentioned here, countless side conversations, etc.
ANY idea that has been around since 2016 on steem has certainly been discussed. A lot. Worry yourself not about that.
I am not worried. Just gathering opinions, @smooth. I run http://steemspeak.com discord 17 hours a day, been doing that for 2,5 years with an active user base of between 5000-6000 people (active last 7 days, I prune it often to only keep it with active and not dead users) so naturally I have a lot of people who wonder about things.
I hope to see you over there some day, spend some time, get to know each other better.
We are almost in 2019 now.
Someone visited my blog yesterday. They liked my post. This was said:
Too many people are paid to look away.
Content creators are earning less now because much of the SP is delegated away and centralized into the hands of a few. Under this current model, I was not able to earn the 2 cents I could have received had they not had a reason to delegate away their SP. This is a widespread issue for content creators. I've seen many slowly lose support over the past while due to the fact so much SP in the form of votes with value behind them is unavailable and can't be used to support content creators.
If there was more of an incentive for members to curate, they would not delegate their SP away. I'd be earning more if that curator was earning more curation reward. Even if I only received half of that 2 cent vote, after everything is said and done, I'm still earning more. That penny is more than the current model that gave me zilch.
There are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of valuable votes that can't be used,daily. That gets unlocked the moment curators have more of a reason to curate. Content creators gain access to those hundreds of thousands of dollars, therefore, they can potentially earn more, even though their posts are worth half. I have my doubts seeing a steady stream of votes with value behind them pouring in will somehow lead to content creators earning less.
Since we all get about 10 full power votes to use on any given day, when one member is paid to look away, that's converted into at least 10 less potential page views. Keep in mind, many vote at lower percentages, so one member being paid to look away can easily be converted into 30-40 less potential page views. When 1000 members are paid to look away, that translates into a loss of 10000-40000+ potential page views. That's in one day. There are over 1 million accounts here.
I have trouble believing content creators would earn less having access to that many more potential views.
On the surface, it's easy to look at a number, only see 50%, and convert that into a loss because it's less than the 75% cut content creators take home now. There's more to it than that though.
I could keep going but I'll leave it there.
P.S. I see you edited your comment and removed the 'moonshine' bit. No offense to anyone here, but I thought that line was funny.