The Second Payout: Christmas in July or Second Chance Door Prize?

in steemit •  8 years ago 

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I was thinking today about the second author reward window, currently set for 30 days after the initial ~24 hour author reward window. I'm proud of my last post describing how we often react to disagreement (Are You Ignorant, Immoral, or Stupid?) and was surprised to see the post value jump from $24.29 to $44.69 after the initial payout. Turns out I got a vote from @dantheman!

This isn't the first time I've had this pleasant surprise. A couple months ago I told my miner story about melting 100 bitcoin which had an initial payout of 25.593 SBD. Eventually the total payout became 155.798 SBD thanks to a vote from @smooth and @smooth.witness. This is really a neat feeling, but it's also a rare one.

How many whales (or any of us, for that matter) vote up "old" content beyond the first payout window? Should it happen more often or is it a waste of value which should be used on fresh, new content?

I try to treat every reward like a gift (hurray Christmas in July!), but this last time I caught myself thinking something slightly different. I felt something close to vindication. "Oh, cool! Someone recognized the true value of this post!"

I fell for the trap.

Value is subjective and very often great content gets missed while other content thought of as "great" really isn't based on the subjective opinions of the whales voting at the time.

I'm happy with my post because I think it can be really valuable to our community. I had hoped it might trend to get more reads, but I didn't go so far as to promote it. I was happy with the initial rewards (or any rewards, for that matter), but the second pending reward it has now kind of reminded me, "Yeah, this really was a valuable post." It made me wonder, did I just get a second chance door prize because I missed out on the initial real deal for one reason or another?

It also made me wonder, should I be voting on more "second chance" content after the initial payout? Could that be even more encouraging for authors to know, "Yes, this post was so good someone used their voting power to communicate that to you, with no thought about curation rewards for themselves." I do know when I hid the $$$ on Steemit.com for 24 hours, I voted for all kinds of content, regardless of the payout dates. I also may have "wasted" my voting power in terms of not having much voting power left to reward new authors.

It's interesting to me how much I think about this stuff, given my vote is only now worth a few pennies. Do the whales think about this stuff even more?

What do you think about the second chance payout? Do you often vote on content after the first payout window? Are you often rewarded by the second payout window?

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I vote on stuff for the second payout. I usually leave a note because 30 days is pretty long time and if the author isn't very active they might not be aware of rewards coming into their account weeks later.

Oh, that's a great idea to leave a note. I remember after your vote on my mining post, even though I expected the reward to come in later, when it did it surprised/confused me for a moment before I remembered what it was.

Thanks for setting such a good example for what a whale should be.

I just vote on what I feel is good content for ME. My subjective value posts...irrespective of how long the blog or post has been there. I too old and tired to work out all the nitty gritty around optimizing votes etc.

So basically, "Get off my lawn, kids! I'll vote for what I want!"

I love it. :)

I do vote on older content. And like yourself I up-vote all kinds of things, I am still very much enjoying the variety of content on Steemit...

I find myself reading and enjoying things I would not have been searching for in general, but because it's here I see it and read it lol..

BTW, have you noticed any recent issues with Streemian ? Seems my followers aren't following for the last few hours....

I also love finding and reading great content here I wouldn't see otherwise. :)

I seem to go back and forth between "make every vote count!" and just doing whatever I feel like at the time.

As for Streemian, I don't have it running right now, I'm not sure. I don't see anything negative on the curation trail status: https://streemian.com/status

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Yeah, I suppose once your up-vote is worth more you kinda start feeling a lil more responsible lol... I don't know if there is a right way but I just vote for what I enjoy reading, and I also support those who support me....

I do feel guilty sometimes for not paying enough attention to the #introducemyself tag, but I try :)

I have had a couple decent sized payouts that came after the initial payout, and be much larger than the first. On each occasion it was a nice gift from a whale. It's always a delightful surprise when this happens after I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that a post didn't get as much attention as I would have liked.

I find there's so much new stuff to always read in my feed, and way more of it than I have time to look at, that I just don't get to older posts as much. It's not a conscious decision on my part to optimize curation, it's just that I look at and vote for whatever interesting content I happen to see first, and that ends up being the newer posts. Occasionally I do find and vote on something past the initial payout period, usually as a result of clicking on a linked article embedded in a comment or something. Having a "related posts" or "people who read this also read these other posts" at the bottom would go a long way toward raising the visibility of older posts.

I find the upvoting payout crazy. Recently had 50 up votes and earned nothing. Had one post with way less and made 48 stem dollars. How does that make any sense?

Read the white paper and it makes perfect sense. :) Sybil attacks are bad.

I remember one of @kennyskitchen's articles not doing well on the first window, only to jump over $300 a couple weeks later.
IMO, as the platform matures and different ways to highlight and find good content emerge, especially based on specific themes, late payouts will become more common. At least I hope so.

I like that perspective. I hope so too.

I think it's hard because everyone has limited time and there is so much new content. I think it will be more relevant once we get a better search system and we have more Google ranking visibility. At that point the 30 day payout limit will also likely become more of an issue.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of the google ranking impacting the longtail value of content, but that makes a lot of sense to me.

If I find content I like or is helpful I usually upvote it

I think that's a great strategy, as long as we can find the new useful content easily.

Out of curiosity, I reposted an older post of mine that didn't get much attention. I originally posted the piece when I first began contributing to Steemit. My post didn't raise any red flags, and it received seventy more viewers than it did the first time I posted it. It should also be subject to another 30 day payout period. This is by no means a solution to the various problems that Steemit has with long-term curation and lasting content, but it is possibly an option that people can use when they feel like they have quality content that was missed.

I'll vote on any good posts if I can. I've had a second payout on at least one post. Some will not get appreciated in the first 24 hours. They may only get discovered by some people much later and not everyone is on here all day, every day. Personally I think posts should accept votes indefinitely as they may still be useful months later. When the next million people join up over the next year or so I'd like my old posts to be able to benefit from them. As it stands you might have to re-post items to get the full benefit.

I've got once a 10$ tip on day 30, and yes, it was encouraging )
Previously it used to be "payout time" section here and I also used it sometimes to upvote overseen posts to encourage author a bit.

There should be a related post feature like most blogs have. Every article could have older posts about similar topics at the end. Steemit is currently focussed on the newest content, but it wouldn't be difficult to feature stuff beyond the 24 hr or 30 day point.

Yeah, there used to be a recommended feature of stuff you might also like (before the follower feed), but it wasn't around long. I'm confident things around here will continue to improve.

I rarely up vote older material perhaps I should

It's an interesting thing to think about. Votes for older material don't give curation rewards. That vote could also go towards great new content with no rewards... but I guess in the latter case, either I saw that post and voted for it or not. I've never not voted for something because I felt my voting percentage was too low or something like that.

I vote on posts regardless of the payout time. I pay no attention to that at all and just vote on posts I like unless they are older than a month, in which case I'll comment on it if it's appropriate.