Extensive stats comparison pre-HF19 and post-HF19
Let's see what the impact of HF19 was. Let's compare statistics between approximately 1 month of data before HF19 and approximately 1 month since HF19. The "PRE-HF19" data is from between May 23rd and June 20th. The "POST-HF19" data is from between June 20th and July 18th.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this article shouldn't be perceived as 100% accurate. When you spot significant errors, please leave a comment.
HF19 impact:
| Statistic | PRE-HF19 | POST-HF19 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total SBD rewarded | $2,885,263.624 | $2,068,277.043 | -28.32% |
| Number of votes | 6,444,823 | 6,520,238 | +1.17% |
| Active accounts | 45,498 | 63,947 | +40.55% |
| Number of authors | 22,025 | 39,547 | +79.56% |
| Average author income per month | $119.96 | $45.54 | -62.04% |
| Number of curators | 45,100 | 63,082 | +39.87 |
| % of reward pool to posts | ~91.58% | ~88.84% | -2.99% |
| % of reward pool to comments | ~8.42% | ~11.16% | +32.54% |
| Number of votes per account | ~141.65 | ~101.96 | -28.02% |
| Number of posts voted on | 220,451 | 376,883 | +70.96% |
| Average post reward when > $0 | $11.99 | $4.87 | -59.38% |
| Number of posts per author | ~10.01 | ~9.35 | -7.43% |
| Number of comments voted on | 564.429 | 723,368 | +28.16% |
| Average comment reward when > $0 | $0.43 | $0.32 | -25.58% |
| Number of votes per voted comment | ~1.92 | ~2.56 | +33.38% |
| Self-voting % of total reward pool | ~3.68% | ~8.47% | +130.16% |
| Self-voting % of comment rewards | ~24.22% | ~34.04% | +40.52% |
Account growth
We've seen the amount of accounts increase by 40.55%, this is likely mostly unrelated to HF19. It's impossible to know how much user growth that is, because users can have multiple accounts.
Reward pool
The rewards have dropped 28.32%. This is mostly because of the drop of the STEEM price. But what's much more significant is that self-voting has increased by 130.16% after HF19! This is something to be concerned about in my opinion as more and more people become aware that you can make more money by voting on your own low value comments than voting on top quality content.
Posts
No significant changes.
Comments
Comment rewards relative to the total reward pool have increased by 32.54%. The amount of the comment rewards that were assigned by self-votes has increased by 40.52%. It's obvious that since HF19 there is a rather significant rise in the amount of rewards people put on comments!
Impact of max voting weight increase (from 0.5% to 2%)
The number of votes per account has dropped only 28.02% of the maximum potential of 300%. This means that many curators have used the slider to decrease voting weight below 100%. This also means that posts are curated by less people. It's highly preferred to let users curate as much content as possible, so this is a negative result.
Author income
The average monthly author income has decreased by 62.04% (average post reward by 59.38%). This is because of the drop in STEEM price and the increase in authors. There were 79.56% more authors active this month which made almost exactly the same amount of posts per author as the month before. Assuming an identical amount of posts per author, to increase the income of the average author, the STEEM price had to rise by more than 79.56%.
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I think all the "self voting lists" and the entire issues is completely over-shadowing all kinds of other work we should be doing on the Steemit platform.
To quote @smooth:
"Someone who buys SP and then selfvotes is not 'draining' anything and at best can get back a portion of what was put in. It causes no harm at all."
Investors are the ones who underwrite all of the rewards on this platform. If you are not an investor, or are only a smaller investor, you need to focus your efforts on creating inspiring content that makes investors want to give their money to you. Whatever else they do or don't do with their money (including self-voting) is not your concern and does not harm you in any way. Nevertheless, you do have a downvote that you can use to disagree with what you think are underserved rewards. I suggest using it."
"The idea of creating 'lists of shame' and demonizing people is divisive, creates a hostile and toxic environment attractive to no one, and serves no useful purpose. There is no way to tell from these lists whether the content is deserving of the rewards or not. The only way to tell is by actually looking at the content, and if you think it is undeserving, downvote it."
"Your own statistics show that self-voting is awarding about 8.5% of the reward pool. I don't find that suggestive of any problem whatsoever. It is probably a very reasonable number given that the current parameters give people 10 full power votes to make per day. Thus one is being applied to the voters' own content and nine to others' (on average, of course). Seems fine."
In addition to average monthly income, I would like to see the median montly income of authors. The change could very well be in the opposite direction.
Herein lies the big problem: different people have different tastes. I might like to come online and see people making funny text-messages back-and-forth, with emojis & quick, one-liner responses. Another person might be blind, so cares nothing about graphics & layout; they want to read a long, thoughtful article. Another person likes to watch music videos, and other people like news & politics.
WHAT YOU, OR ANYONE ELSE CONSIDERS TO BE "VALUABLE" OR "GOOD CONTENT" IS YOUR OWN OPINION. DO WE ALL NEED YOUR APPROVAL NOW, BEFORE MAKING A POST OR A COMMENT? WHO'S APPROVAL DO WE NEED TO GET? WHO MAKES THE RULES OR LAYS DOWN THE GUIDELINES?
SteemIt is much like a Direct Democracy. In fact, it is an extremely rare form of government that few people actually feel comfortable living within - because they are used to having people like you tell them what they should think is valuable or what has no value.
(I'm playing "devils' advocate here, so don't take any of this personally.) Your assertion that short comments and self upvoting are to be considered as "low value" is your own opinion - and I think that, in certain cases, a short answer could be the perfect answer.
In other words, I could have not written any of the above content and just said,
"Nice opinion. Please don't tell me that I should conform my system of values to your own set of values."
Are you a financial advisor? Are you telling me how I should be distributing my money & giving it away to other people? Is there something wrong with me saving up my own money to provide for my family? Is self-interest "bad?" Is it immoral for people to look after taking care of their own needs, first?
Better question: What gives you the right to tell other people how they should be using their money?
Would it be best for me to give away everything to the "poor" on SteemIt? Then, what if I were unable to take care of myself - because I gave everything away, and didn't save any money for myself? Is that good?
You might want SteemIt to be a place for rewarding top-quality content creators. I might want SteemIt to be a place where I can grow my own savings account. SteemIt is actually a big enough place for the both of us, and then some.
Good post. Upvoted & Resteemed.
You make some interesting points @bi5sh0p.
Indeed, we all have our own opinions about that.
Outside that question-- at least for me-- comes the greater "story arc," namely how do my actions now contribute to (or not) the building and survival of the community, in the long run. I'm less concerned about having an objective standard for "quality content" than being able to answer the question "what type of content is most likely to help ensure there is still a solid Steemit community for ALL of us, 5 years, 10 years from now?"
Now, I suppose if that's my primary objective... my next question to you would be "Do YOU care whether there is still a Steemit, 6 months, 2 years, or 10 years from now?" if your answer is "no," perhaps our objectives are too different to work towards a consensus... if your answer is "yes," my follow-up question would be "would you change your approach to content to whatever serves the survival of the community, rather than purely what puts money in your pocket next week?"
The reason I phrase it like that is because it seems to me a lot of the disagreements about "content" and "value" on Steemit are really about time horizons; immediate vs. long term.
Using SteemIt as a savings account would mean I would take a longer term view of wanting to know how to best preserve the platform. I frequently cite the phrase, "The turtle wins the race," when posting comments on people's money posts, or where they are asking questions.
The things about cryptos is that they attract short-term speculators like flies to $#!t. Really, I think that it is "much ado, about nothing" - because whether you take short term profits or hang onto your tokens for the long-term - both sets of people are going to lose and make money, based upon sound investing strategies. Namely, when to take profits - and when not to. When to buy more of something, and when not to. Overall, cryptos are going to be booming this next decade - IMHO. Blockchain is a complete game-changer for worldwide currency & transactions. It's here to stay. Short-term speculators and long-term holders are also here to stay. One group should recognize the existence of the other type of crypto-buyer, and learn how best to deal with them - because it takes all types to make the world go around.
Every big social media platform is forced to deal with the phenomenon of internet trolls. They come with the territory. Blockchains like SteemIt have whales and voters to determine our future course. It would seem that any Hard Forks could be problematic - in that they sometimes seem to produce unintended consequences. This is a question and problem for mature code-writers to deal with, ultimately. The community can talk all day about what they think they would like in a hard fork - but actually programming it & achieving the intended results... well, that's a bit more problematic - I would think.
I don't disagree with what you're describing at all. But some of the truly abusive self voting occurring involves a user making a post that simply says "test," followed by 100 comments with no more content than the numbers 1-100. Then they just go through and upvote everything as a means of "mining" Steem. I don't think there can be any label for this other than low value content, and I'm in favor of flagging it as it's against the spirit, intent, and long term health of the platform. This is very different from short replies, memes and emojis which I believe will be much more rewarded as short form versions of Steemit, such as Steepshot and Zapple fully launch.
On your second point that people are free to use their stake as they see fit, I also agree completely. But I extend that unconditionally to the act of flagging as well. If mining via self voting is valid, flagging those posts is equally permissible.
Good point about flagging. That's exactly why SteemIt is so awesome - we can all participate in shaping the community in ways we like, or don't like. For example, I flaggged some post that was promoting Islam the other day - because I think it is a bad idea and promotes things which are detrimental to individual freedoms. However, some rich Saudi prince could come by and "punish" me for having done that. I could cry foul all day long - but I would have brought it on myself.
Wow as you say the number ONE point to be made here is the HUGE increase in SELF voting.
I also agree that it MUST be addressed as its a HUGE drain on the reward pool without ANY real contribution.
Thanks for another informative post.
Actually, it's NOT a "huge drain" on the rewards pool. Think about it - the top 2% of whales are the ones who dole out the whaleshares of the daily rewards pool. All the minnows on SteemIt can't hardly begin to touch the voting power of the top 2%. All said, minnows account for less than 5% of total daily rewards - which is about... $4,000 total, per day. Out of the $80K which is given out daily - who really gives a crap if minnows stroke themselves to death??? What difference does it make?
There are thousands of minnows on here who would almost KILL FOR $1 A DAY in payouts....There are thousands on here who are living on a $1 a day and one extra $1 a day would change their entire lives. It would be nice to profoundly change 4,000 peoples lives than have gamed theft.
Anybody who would commit violence for $1 is not only an idiot, but probably doesn't really fit into the overall context which SteemIt is meant to promote - do they? Nevermind the other $76K in the rewards pool? It seems their efforts would be better spent following whales and commenting on their posts, as it's actually pretty easy to get a several-dollar upvote at least once a week, just by doing that.
The simple fact of the matter is, most scammers are, "So Dumb, They Can't Even Do Wrong, Right." I mean, have you opened up your spam folder in your email lately?
They can't even spell, write, or speak without making a fool out of themselves:
Simply focusing their efforts in a productive direction would net them much bigger rewards than their best attempts at trying to scam somebody.
Appreciate you taking the time to put all this together @calamus056. I always prefer to back up my "gut hunches" with actual information...
As a matter of mathematical correctness, you might want to re-do your negative percentages... you can't have more than -100% because that takes you to a negative number.
For example if something went from $100 to $40, it declined by 60% (40/100, then subtract the result from 1 and multiple by 100 to get a percentage), not by 150%.
Ah thanks, i'll fix the negative numbers. I knew the formula obviously, i just haven't slept much and was working on it for too long so then your brain stops working hehe.
No worries... I'm sure this is a LOT of work to compile!
I don't see these as particularly bad numbers. The total number of votes went down, that is logical as each vote is worth more. People are being more selective on what to upvote. That makes for better curation.
The number of Authors increased by 80% That is awesome! The heart of every social media platform is the diversity and amount of content. This is huge! A big win.
And as intended, the number of votes per account had decreased by 32%! Perfect, as whales were over-voting while everyday users were under-voting. So it is likely those whales reduced their number of votes while regular users remained the same. (my assumption there)
Thanks for the time and effort to put this all together @calamus056. As a post HF19 signup, I'm kinda oblivious to any changes it may have made, subjectively that is, but it's interesting to see how things, in general, have changed.
Just a question about active accounts being at 63,947 - What constitutes an inactive account? Or, how long would an account have to be stagnant to be considered inactive? Is there a consensus on this? Just wondering what sort of numbers I should quote when telling my friends about steemit.
Active means at least 1 post or at least 1 vote during that month. So "active" might not be the best description :)
Gotcha ;) cheers
Nice objective stats here, upvoted.
Well, they're always a little subjective as well ;)
Thanks for not muting me and never coming back like others usually do when there's one tiny something they don't like. You're a good example of how to discuss openly and not take everything too personally.
Np...thanks for having the conversation with me. I know I come off a little abrasive sometimes.
Interesting point
Thanks for sharing! A link to your post was included in the Steem.center wiki about Hard Fork. Thanks and good luck again!
this is great info. Thanks for putting it together. I was curious about the post HF 19 stats. Self-voting does appear to be a big problem, and could become a cancerous issue, if it grows...
Well, it did grow significantly the month after HF19. We'll have to wait another 3 weeks to see how the next month went.
As stated in this article, it's concerning that you can make more money by voting on your own spam comments compared to voting on high quality content.
yes, that is definitely a negative. We need the rewards to be given based on value to others...this will be necessary to think how to achieve that.
I'm currently doing research on curation rewards and already also made a different curation algorithm that could solve some of the problems. I'll probably publish an article about it soon (within a week probably).