There is still a problem with engagement on Steem, but I have a few ideas.
Curation Rewards
I think a major part of the problem comes from the way curation rewards work. The goal is to give you an incentive to upvote quality posts before others do. What really happens now is people upvote posts they think are going to be popular before others do, and that’s a big problem. If everybody is only upvoting posts they think others will like (or risk losing money), they will do that. The posts people seem to agree on first and foremost are ones about steemit, next comes those about cryptocurrencies, and after that comes travel.
The problem seems to be centered around the fact that there is no incentive to upvote quality posts that will not become popular. This may be because the author is new, or the topic is often ignored. Now people can easily use bots to upvote certain authors and get a guaranteed curation payout.
My Solution
Every person will naturally upvote a post they like when they see it. More often than not this post is of high quality. The problem is the incentive to upvote the pre-popular posts over posts you like personally is too high.
I have multiple proposed solutions that I think are at least worth thinking about.
Currently everybody gets 10 votes with curation rewards. What if we gave them 10 “curation points”. It could be a separate slider from your vote. You would be able to do a 1:1 ratio like now, a 2:1 ratio where you get double curation, or even 5:1 on a post that you really expect to become popular. Often a person would have some extra upvotes left-over without curation, that they can spend however they want.
Some will not bother with these leftover “free” votes, which is fine. That gives others more power over the rewards pool. This may not fully solve the problem, but it does add an extra degree of freedom.
Sometimes you just have to force it. People given curation-free votes may choose just not to use them. If we give people an equal amount of normal and curation-less votes, and force them to use a curation-less vote for every vote with curation, they will be forced to vote for posts they like/support for curation-less ones, or at least in theory. There are a few problems, like self-voting, but we already deal with that.
This has the bonus of giving “free” downvotes so that you don’t lose money on downvoting plagiarism or spam.
Another problem is that many popular authors get upvoted once they reach trending or hot. This can be helped by adding a “collective” of sorts. You could get a random assortment of posts from different chosen tags. This is something that could easily be gamified. For example given a set of 10 posts, can you find the one that will end up with the most payout? (Without, of course, knowing the author, current payout, number of upvotes, or even number of comments.) It doesn’t have to be completely random. The posts could be chosen by some algorithm based on tags and a view to upvote ratio, comments, and popularity.
This could easily provide a higher level of “fairness” for steem. Where the better writers, regardless of popularity, would be rewarded more.
These are just suggestions on how steemit could become better. A social media where very few people actually read posts won’t get very far.
You're spot-on about the problems. The solutions are harder to evaluate. Or to come by.
Trying to think about this just on the spot, and comparing it to the real world, I think one problem might be time. Think of it this way: the really genuinely good artists and authors and thinkers of this world, usually take years to rise to the top. It may even happen posthumously. Bad authors and artists, on the other hand, rise quickly and then fade away just as fast.
So. By supporting a system where every post is 'live' for only 7 days, you're in essence favoring the sprinters, rather than the long runners. So the people who invest, will invest short-sightedly. A good post, if allowed to stay 'in circulation', will inevitably be spotted, and will slowly, but surely, rise to the top. If a person who upvoted this post could earn money in the long term, then there's his motivation to vote for posts that have real value.
What tends to get appreciated in the short term, is the readily fathomable, the already-understood. More important, or valuable, posts will need more time to be absorbed, and fathomed, and appreciated.
But I say all that without knowing exactly what the ramifications would be for the system in general, money-wise, or what the reasons are for the 7-day window (it used to be less, no?), and other practicalities.
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i think u have right and upvoting a big fishes here is not solutions i see all the time upvoting just a well known people who made more 1k on the post and that is more wrong that helping a minows to grow ..
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This is a great strategy! And concrete suggestions that would be easy to implement.
I'm new to steemit and have very few followers. Am wondering how to get my content out to a broader, more engaging audience.
Here are some of my posts:
Latin America most happy - US ranks 38th
Ethereum's Ups and Downs
Did the FDA do something right? Proposal to reduce opiods with alternative pain therapy like acupuncture
Plastic Bag use Drpped 85%
Don't know how to cook with turmeric?
Fasting -- more time on Steemit
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I think actual engagement is actually disincentivised by the monetary element - at the end of the day it is so much simpler to vote on sure things, or just self vote, and collect your payout. Unfortunately, lack of engagement is being systematized in streemian, pay to profit services like randowhale, whaleshares, and minnowbooster, and the ability for large accounts to make substantial self voting money - the former two of which I use regularly and, without which, I would have probably left. Unfortunately, there are no other realistic tools to try and get through the minnow-dolphin transformation - not only because engagement in general is low, but because it still comes down to the SP quality of that engagement - and in that sense, whales remain centrally important.
All of which is to say, what a weird platform.
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I like the thought put into this and your right, by design it is an amazing system however it does have its flaws and now sadly people are tapping into them like crazy to get a few bucks. Keep the great suggestions like this flowing because the power of steem comes from us as a community.
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You are quite right. Thank you for all his valuable advice. I'll follow you because you're a very intelligent person. Good job.
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Agreed!
The solution part what explained is never finding anywhere! :)
Thanks for sharing this!
Keep posting!
God bless! :)
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Good suggestion. I will follow you
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This post received a 1.4% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @anarchyhasnogods! For more information, click here!
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Its a delicate balance between thinking about $$$ value and if you like the post enough to upvote it. The $$$ factor adds an extra level of thought when upvoting someone. Often people will tend to find groups of people with similar interests and upvote one another. If someone upvotes you often as a courtesy you upvote them back, unless they have no steem power and they post garbage. Very good post and it is an issue that should constantly be looked at.
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Great post i agree with you that's great solution.
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