My Two Cents

I’ve been on Steemit for the last few months. I’ve been onit pretty much 24/7. When I’m a wake I’m steeming. (I’m retired and trying to supplement a fixed income) During that time I’ve made some observations and come to a few tentative conclusions. I’d like to share some of them now.

The biggest problem that I’ve seen, the one that causes the most heartburn among all the minnows...is inequality. The whales have all the POW WAH!...and the winnows want some.

Understandable.

On the one hand...the Whales have “bought in” with a WHOLE LOT of money...now they want a return on their investment, the sooner the better.

Understandable too.

The way the system is presently set up the whales can buy POW WAH. They can lay down a big chunk of change and purchase SteemPower. The SteemPower adds PUNCH to their vote. The power of that PUNCH....the EFFECTIVENESS... of that vote is directly proportional to the SteemPower behind it.

On the other hand...the minnows want POW WAH too. They have two choices...either lay down some money (not likely, if they had any they’d have done so already and be whales too). or work for it. They can blog and blog and vote and vote and comment incessantly and eventually accumulate SteemPower, it takes months.

However...there is still the glaring disparity. A whale can vote for a piece of garbage and the writer of the garbage get’s LOT of money (compared to the vote of a minnow) and the Whale gets an instant return on his investment.

Paraphrasing here, since I’m too lazy to look it up, but Dan said once that when he votes for someone they get $200 and he gets $20, which is a POWERFUL inducement to vote on everything...quality or NOT!

A paranoid individual might think that Whales buy a lot of accounts then write crap from one account and vote on it from another HI POWERED account. I’m SHOCKED that anyone would think that. No one would do such a thing...would they? Such action would eventually drive off the other users. (cough...currently Steemit has over 108K accounts...about 30K are active...of which more than half are ‘bots...WAY more than half)

On the gripping hand without the minnows the platform is nothing. It won’t succeed with just whales voting for each other. The must be sheep to shear...er... I mean, for Steemit to succeed long term it needs a LOT of active accounts.

Once more I mention SteemPower. The concept is fundamentally sound. The vote SHOULD be weighted. one man, one vote is a flawed concept. The WAY the vote is weighted, however, in my NOT so humble opinion, is the problem. Right now Whales can ‘buy the vote’ while Minnows have to earn it.

I propose that the power of the vote be tied DIRECTLY to Reputation...NOT SteemPower. I suggest that SteemPower and Savings (which earns substantial interest) be merged, and that reputation become the new SteemPower.

That way...a noob... who just walked in the door, HAS a vote...but it’s not as powerful as someone who has posted hundreds of articles and thousands of comments and cast thousands of vote. (just like now) I propose that the NEW SteemPower can NOT be bought but that it MUST be earned, and that the newly created steem continue to be directly distributed by vote according to that SteemPower. (the same way it is done now).

Another thought, that’s related.

Currently the FULL POWER limit on Posts is for only 4 in 24 hours. After four the value of that post declines drastically. For example, the fifth post is only worth 3/4 of what the fourth one was, the sixth is worth 1/2, (this one for example, my sixth in 24hrs) the seven is worth 1/4, the eighth is worth 1/8.....see where I’m going with this? If a prolific person who wants to make a living posting, well he can’t. He’s THROTTLED...he can work as hard as he can..and get nothing...after the first half a dozen article...per day.

The reasoning I’m told behind this ‘feature’ is to prevent Spam. The idea is to prevent someone...oh...let’s say a Whale..from posting a ton of Crap with many low powered accounts and then voting on it with a hi-power account. I’m sure this never occurred to anyone, that would be unethical. We have ethical whales. .

How’s that working out for everyone, by the way?

Yeah...I thought so.

I suggest that If MY proposal to, change the way that vote power is allocated, is implemented then SPAM will just go away. If vote power is based on reputation, and the reputation must be EARNED rather than bought, then voting will be honest and who votes on spam?

I suspect that vote power based on reputation will have a number of other effects also and some will unexpected. There will be no reason to hate whales for one.

And finally...Long Tail

The payout system should be altered Right now it’s just BEGGING to be gamed. (and it is..bot swarms for example..and curation guilds) Right now there is decreasing incentive (from a curation standpoint) to vote for anything younger than 1/2 hour old, or older than a month. The curation reward system is complex. I’m not so sure I understand it, but it effectively makes any article that ‘goes out of print’ (the first 30 days)...worthless.

As it presently stands...if anyone sees an article...over a month old. They can vote, but it has no effect. They receive NO curation award, and the author receives nothing either.

That should be changed.

There should be an incentive for an author to write a LOT, of quality stuff (as determined by un-gamed NON strategic votes...if you like it...you vote on it...simple as that) and continue to receive compensation for doing so as long as it gets new votes.

Oh...one other thing.

I’ve noticed that my series. TEOTWAWKI...is doing well based on the number of votes. The other day I received more than 200 on one post...that’s a new high for me.

It received $1.52...

I surmise that they were all minnow votes. All the whales are busy at the steemfest(s).