The Comment Reward-Pool thing, and some DATA.... oh - and FORK 17.1

in witness-category •  8 years ago 

While we have been unsuccessful at reaching a consensus in HF17, I have looked at some data I want to share with you and propose that we remove the comment reward-pool idea and continue to live in the same ocean as @pfunk pointed out earlier.

There are more comments than posts per day, but there are less comment-authors. The amount of accounts that comments may shock you, so let me just deliver it to you raw:

Today: 
203 new accounts (2 mined)
6410 active accounts; 
2056 posts (1068 authors); 
7300 comments (426 authors); 
234833 votes (5173 voters)

Yesterday: 
263 new accounts (16 mined); 
6613 active accounts; 
2299 posts (1168 authors); 
8157 comments (399 authors); 
338873 votes (5342 voters)

So what I see here is that a very large number of comments are made by an incredible small amount of authors (about 20 comments per author) compared to the amount of posts created by a recognisable amount of authors (about 2 posts per author).

Questions to consider:

  • Can you make a bot that can comment random compliments?
  • Is it hard to make a bot that comment random compliments?
  • Do you think someone right now have a random comment-bot?
  • Did you know that upvote-bots for posts and comments are open source and very available to all steemians?
  • Should we be willing to risk 38% of the daily blog-rewards on these numbers?

My personal opinion is that a few people make a lot of comments and a lot of people make a few posts. My witness is currently running Fork 17 with Fork 16 consensus. I will upgrade to Fork 17.1 when consensus is reached and we can move forward.

Steem On!
@fyrstikken



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Would you believe I'm not a bot if I give you a compliment for this text? ;)

BTW, feed doesn't work since this morning. Do you by any chance know is it a “game of forks” consequence?

This is the Scoreboard at the moment:

| Version | Witnesses |    MVESTS |
|---------|-----------|-----------|
|  0.16.0 |        50 | 2,242,647 |
|  0.17.0 |        19 |   648,947 |
|   0.0.0 |        15 |    56,438 |
|  0.14.0 |         6 |    49,102 |
|  0.13.0 |         3 |    38,695 |
|  0.15.0 |         5 |    35,673 |
|  0.12.0 |         1 |     6,073 |
|  0.11.0 |         1 |       196 |

I want there to be a separate comment reward pool because hardfork 17 will linger for many weeks until consensus to include it is reached

I think they are hoping that the separate reward pool will get MORE people to comment and engage. I am not in favor of a separate reward pool but I believe that is the reason they are pushing for one...

Perhaps all that is needed is patience, and that small community of 400 will grow. I think it was a short story by Alasdair Grey, and he had a character who would do anything to get rich, except the one thing that was guaranteed to be successful, to work at the same thing for 20 years. And I'm sure it wouldn't take that, just a couple of years of slow and steady continuity.

Good point. I think if they flatten the voting curve and make a few UI updates the site would function pretty well...

You got a point there, @fyrstikken.
Either there are bots commenting already or some people write
"nice post" or similar things several times a day so that they can upvote their own comment.
Many users were complaining about the low quality of the posts lately.
A reward pool for comments seems a nice idea to boost discussion and interaction. People really dedicated would get rewards by their valuable comments and insights, while bad posts would be more and more ignored. But what I see is the same who posted garbage so that their followers' bots upvoted them, are now flooding everybody's comments with similar strategies.
I can understand why there are differents opinions on this subject.

The platform will be as good as the people using it. Every minute the developers dedicate to tackle people's weaknesses is a minute less they spend doing important work to improve Steemit.

Now that this 'whale-fasting-experiment' is going on, I don't think we need a seperate reward pool anymore. Earnings on comments are much higher since the whales stopped draining the reward pool.

Besides, Hardfork 17 brings a lot of changes, all at once. Some changes, like changing the reward pool, are really big. I think it would be better to make one change at a time. It would make it easier to reach consensus on a hardfork.

Yes, HF17 brings a lot of good changes, but it is bundled with the rewardpool-change that we must agree that only a very few people want. Thank you for a great comment.

Delegated comment-bot for give auto comment. IMO do not like bot to do that. For upvote is okay. Personally I prefer give comment with manual mode, because that a sign for me show to the author that I have read their posting. Different with upvote bot, for me this bot merely have purpose to give support for author randomly mode, to give courage and moral support because it is imposibble to give upvote wih manual for large number authors in steemit, I do not have much time to do that. Nice !

I'm not sure if there are comment bots, but some people sure do look like one. When you check out their comments list, they've posted the same two or three comments on all posts they could find. Maybe it's a bot, maybe it's a person doing it. I'm not sure those kind of comments will get any considerable amount of reward either way.

If upvote bots get used by these people though, it might be different. It could already be put to use today, though. Not sure if a seperate reward pool would matter in that regard.

I'm not pro seperate blog reward pool, btw.

I'm gonna go on a limb and ask: Do you think people are using comments for conversations and would this conversation element account for the numbers. Likewise there are some posts that will list a variety of comments to vote for. For example, there's some bitshares post that asks people to vote for their favorite UIA. Then they list about a dozen UIA's for people to vote on. I think the biggest factor is the Conversation Element. Even this post for and example. Posts in Steemit perhaps are becoming like Facebook posts where someone says, "I need a good book to read. Go!" Then 120 comments follow with book suggestions, bits, and so on.

So is there a way of measuring posts that carry such engagement via comments.

Of course, people communicate in the comment section, it is not the users I am afraid of but sharks gaming the system. I think we can move forward without separating the rewardpool and bring the subject back at a later time.

More, customisable, feeds would help. Users could get alerts of interesting conversations by following a selection of active comment writers. Comment bots could then just be a nuisance to be ignored.

Very interesting post!!
I am not a bot :)

so you're saying comments and conversation have no point here? only the posted content matters?

Let me give you an upvote @solarguy in the current system to answer your question. As you can clearly see, your comment is worth something to me. But I don´t need a separate account for giving you an upvote on your comment. Do you?

no i suppose. but based on my experience here comments go a long way.
thanks for checking em. ^^ haha

yeah you don't get rewarded shit, abit votes on you and then goes experimenting :| truly not worth squat, people make 60$ a post I make 60 posts worth 0 right :) vote comments and support people, send steem once in a while :) some ideas that have helped me not care anyways :D I do that and I don't care, why would I get rewards and go shove money up my ass :| worth squat, commenting is fun :D I learn :D :)

I do around 100-150 comments a day at least!
P.S. Mentioned you here in my in-car Steeming video!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mindhunter/mindhunter-follows-craig-grant-s-in-car-style-of-blogging-and-chats-about-steemit-whilst-off-food-shopping

Cool stats. I had already came back on my decision about the comment reward pool. I also stand for not splitting the reward pool.

Cheers I'm one of those commenters I have 20 posts and 2200 other posts so you do the math :)

IMHO, where I truly feel a comment bot is completely worthless is for a category like photogaphy. The state-of-the-art deep-learning software may be able to discern that a particular image has three skiers in the foreground and moutains in the background but, wrt making accurate subjective comparisons between really good and really bad photography, fagget about it!!!

I don't really like the idea of comment bots (aside from things like cheetah and the twitterbot and such), because I don't see how that really relates to creating community. Can it be done? Of course! But will those bots be "intelligent" enough to tell the difference between a heartfelt experience and a picture of a dog? Probably not... so the bot-comment ends up having no more meaning than someone going around Steemit and writing "nice post" on everything.

I think what your statistics suggest is that there are "voters," many of which we know to be bots. There are a smaller group of active content creators (about 1200, it seems), and an even smaller group (400-500) who actively engage with the site, by commenting. I know (for example) that I "hand curate" and post about 20-50 comments a day... but I only make 1-2 of original posts.

All that considered I'm OK with keeping things as-is, and removing the comment reward-pool.

I'm the best AI there is :D I agree with you, I don't think giving incentives to bots will be good we have enough bot voting bot posting(sorry guys :D if you do it like a job sorry :| ) so yeah 80% is mechanical it seems :) steemit is a machine :D Steemit is THE machine :)