Update on Simplicity: Cutting Complexity with Steem 0.17.0

in #simplicity7 years ago (edited)

Update on Steem 0.17.0, a.k.a. Simplicity

Great news everyone,

We are getting close to the release of Simplicity and this post clarifies some of the updates to the proposed changes originally released back in January (which can be found here). Here’s some of the killer updates we’re bringing to the next upgrade proposal:

  • Permanent editing of posts
  • Standardized payouts on a 7 day timer
  • Removing the comment nesting limits
  • Removing the payout penalty for posting ‘too much’ per day

Steem is about making amazing content how you want and getting rewarded for it. So we’re removing things that get in the way of that. That’s what this update is about.

These updates are critical to the next phase of Steem’s evolution, which you’ll be hearing more about soon.

Yo Dawg, We Heard You Like Changes

Changes to Reward Curves: Not Yet

We considered proposing a move from the n^2 curve (to either modified superlinear n or a linear n), which would mean more influence on rewards for smaller holders of Steem Power than is the case today. A modification could be good, but there are game theoretic challenges that haven’t been fully modeled. Because of this, we’re postponing these changes.

Rest assured, we’ve completed the implementation. We just need to see how it functions. If it performs better than the current model, we may include it in the 0.18.0 release.

These changes are about rewarding the best content, so we’re handling any voting curve changes with care.

Comment Curation Rewards To Remain

Earlier we proposed cutting curation rewards for comment votes. This was to encourage altruistic voting on comments and reduce the incentive to pile votes on an existing popular comment for personal gain (in the form of curation rewards). It would also incentivize curation bots to vote on posts, instead of comments.

But in the spirit of simplicity, we want rules to be consistent across both reward funds. Minor theoretical issues don’t warrant more complexity and inconsistency. That’s why comment voting rewards (for both authorship and curation) will function the same as posts.

(This also means that when the reward curves are updated post-0.17.0, you can expect comment rewards and post rewards to use identical curves.)

Learn More on Github

Want to learn more about the 0.17.0 release? You can find more about them at the Steem GitHub Repository. (edit to clarify timing* A final release candidate is probably coming this week and a hardfork date will be set for one week after that.)

And remember to vote for the Witnesses who upgrade to the changes YOU want to see! Steem’s evolution depends on your votes!

NEXT: The New Steem Development Process

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Changes to Reward Curves: Not Yet

I am disappointed by this bad news. Here's why.

We considered proposing a move from the n^2 curve (to either modified superlinear n or a linear n), which would mean more influence on rewards for smaller holders of Steem Power than is the case today.

The way you recognize the new curve is inadequate. It's not about increasing small holder's power, but about give fair influence proportional to all holder's stake. Concentration on concentration is a big social problem in Steem IMO.

A modification could be good, but there are game theoretic challenges that haven’t been fully modeled.

Please stop using game scheme, unless you want to create gambling site. Creativity and positiveness come from encouraging and fair social base, not from win-or-lose arena.

Rest assured, we’ve completed the implementation. We just need to see how it functions. If it performs better than the current model, we may include it in the 0.18.0 release.

You cannot know how it exactly works until you implement it. Different rule makes different behaviors and outcomes.

These changes are about rewarding the best content, so we’re handling any voting curve changes with care.

n^2 has no relationship of rewarding best contents. It's all about concentration of power on few whales. And it's obvious that the current system are generating many serious problems now.

What Ned told me is that n will encourage self-vote abuse and hence decreases amount of reward to other authors. But this is not a fatal problem, and can be addressed with community efforts IMO. We are already not rewarding "best contents" and many people are looking forward to a flattened curve. I hope that we have the new linear curve ASAP.

Actually, what seems to be happening now is that whales are doing their damnedest to drive new users from the system. It's disgusting.

New users do not get autovoted by whales so they are not impacted by this.
Actually they are benefiting since more users have influence in the platform so they are more likely to get rewards for their posts.

The people whining about this experiment are a minority of people that gets autovoted by whales and think of steemit as their main job. Most of them are shortsighted and are not interested in growing the value of the platform as a whole.

No this is not true. I know of several instances of new users getting hit with a whale auto downvote. And their posts were less than 1SBD in total.

I know of auto upvote but not auto downvote. Why would whales auto downvote minnows posts with 1SBD? Isn't that SP abuse to target someone like that? I've experienced Whales downvotes but not on a consistant basis.

Because other whale(s) upvoted it. The point is be no whale influence for a period.

We still intend to do so. It's coming.

IMO, the "We" should be this community together, not only the devs.

The dev team makes the releases; without working and reliable software, no amount of community decisions result in any changes. The bottleneck isn't the community, but software development.

That said, what I said is still true: We (the community together) still intend to do so. It's coming.

Discussion or active comminication in the comminity can set the goal and direction that we are aiming together. Several dev team members can write the code better, buy thousands of comminity members sometimes provide insightful inputs to be coded.
What if the community don't accept changes you made? The code may not be adopted, or if the devs enforce the implementation community members will quit. Any of them is fatal to Steem; much more serious than some potential abuses by new code.

Theres no discussion or asking opinions to the comminity with HF17, while the new curvr code was being changed three of four times and ended up with reverting code. Is it really efficient?
Please stop only focusing on code and come to the community. They are valuable customer of your product, and the best marketer too. The reason why I am pushing the linerity is that while there are many dissonant opinons on other issues, it is the only thing the community members strongly agree for a change.

Theres no discussion or asking opinions to the comminity with HF17, while the new curvr code was being changed three of four times and ended up with reverting code. Is it really efficient?

I am happy to be able to say that I don't think we're going to have issues like that in the future.

A downvote was applied to partially counter earlier whale votes as an experiment to reduce whale domination of voting influence. Not intended to express an opinion on the content nor result in a net reduction of rewards or reputation (automated notice)

Please stop using game scheme,

They are referring to Game Theory. It is not about playing games or gambling. It is a study of how as you create rules there are ways to use them exploit(aka game) them etc. This is why they use the term GAME. It is more about studying systems and rules and how people using those rules can do things. It is intentionally trying to think of ways to exploit or take advantage of those rules and if possible try to find a way to eliminate or at least have a way to counteract the exploits.

It's not perfect. Yet when they use the term that is WHAT they are talking about, and why they use it. It has nothing to do with playing games, gambling, etc though all of those things ALSO are subject to game theory.

In a way LIFE itself is subject to game theory.

So when you see that word in the future hopefully that helps you know why it is used. It is a very suitable word and is a very accurate word as long as you know what they are talking about. If you don't then it likely is pretty confusing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

@dwinblood

You are correct about game theory. The thing is that no one really explained how n^2 prevents people from gaming the system. Apparently this curve was meant to discourage self voting so the assumption is that self voting is a problem. Here I explained briefly why self voting is not a problem https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/reward-curve-doesn-t-discourage-self-voting

Self voting is like trolling, someone who were to do it repeatedly and excessively would get downvoted, put on the cheetah list and lose reputation in the process.
Also anyone who actually chose to upvote themselves will earn very little curation rewards as they would be wasting their power on post/comments with no community support.

Like I already said, the curve is similar to government banning encryption because a few terrorists used it to commit their crime. You basically penalize everyone because a few bad apples. ( which I havn't even seen yet on steemit)
Self voting should be dealt with downvotes not some curve that maximize the effect of stake disparity and remove the incentives for minnows/dolphins to buy steem power.

I'd be fine with removing self voting, I considered that, then I applied game theory type thinking and realized all I'd have to do is create another account and have them vote on each other. Suddenly I bypassed the restriction on self voting. That is an example of game theory thinking.

Part of the problem is that there are some BIG PROBLEMS that we haven't found a good code solution for. So we do need to experiment, but we need to do it at the code level and set a time period for how long before reviewing the results.

That would remove guessing, and speculating about who is right and who is wrong which just leads to decision paralysis.

I think we need to experiment with some things other than n^2 and while that is not in 0.17.0 there is a good chance it will be in 0.18.0.

Self voting is not a problem, selfish voting is. Votes which are at the expense of community engagement and satisfaction, such as auto votes and circle jerk votes that result in the same users getting to the trending page every day. Those things cause disengagement and do not even benefit the short sighted selfish voter.

As for a code solution, I suggest incentives to seek out new users, by varying the ratio of curation rewards to post rewards according to how many followers a user has and how many vests those followers have.

https://steemit.com/curation/@beanz/the-problem-with-the-current-curation-system

Yes, there are ways this can be gamed, however I don't see the results of this to be bad for the community.

It would reduce the benefits of current system of automated voting if curation rewards for popular authors were lower, and whales could also prevent "pile ons" for curation rewards by using their SP to follow authors that are being voted for out of speculation of the curation payout.

Whales and dolphins would be incentivised to seek out new users for higher curation rewards, giving all new steemians a welcome and proper chance of achieving recognition.

Doesn't if feel good to take part of this "Experiment/Beta"?

I only wish I could of found it sooner and could of possibly contributed more input with no upfront cost!

In the meantime, this will have to do.

Let's ALL continue to STEEM on...
Frank

Man, this experiment with the whole Steemit Platform is exciting and addicting. I am very Honored to have this opportunity to witness, take part, vote, comment, & continually learn and grow with the company. A lot of GREAT, POWERFUL, and WISE users on this platform, if you are keen to spot them...(notice I didn't have to actually say anything about my pay or a salary)

Just my 3cents worth again...

Yep. :) My discussions actually have little to do with price. I don't truly care too much about that myself. I do care about perceptions, and how actions can impact the community. We can get a bit too focused on the mathematics of it all at time and forget that humans are not all Vulcans based purely on logic and mathematics, so only paying attention to the stats is a recipe for disaster that any large group of humans can explode into pieces due to all the differing opinions, perceptions, etc.

Yes why not post the actual reward, the reward under the new formula and maybe one more. Payouts are based on the first but people could see what they would get under other foRmulas for reference

(nesting limit)

If I go into a store I am not pulling out a marker and putting big Xs on products I don't like.

The supply of those store is already miss products whom demands are already nullified by 'big shareholders'.

For e.g., I cannot go to a store and buy heroin, though, I'm pretty sure there is a demand for it. However, I would like to mark it as bad if I were walking next to it in a store. That isn't nullifying the demand. Who want to buy it, will buy it.

@baah (nesting limit)
Legal / Illegal <== Marked
It's a real world example for marking products. The difference here is you are the gov (part of it) and you mark it directly.

You would mark heroin bad because you perceive it to offer no redeeming qualities, but if it was legal, in a store, to buy, marking it as bad would be ridiculous because you have basically damaged the product and therefore create more demand for it and second because nobody does that in the store, in real life, nobody goes to the gun store and marks guns with x because they kill people, nobody goes to the kitchen section and marks knives with a black marker, x, or any other product, people are sensible like dwinblood has pointed out and would not do something like that. Take drain cleaner, sure you can use it for it's intended purpose but if you were bombarded with numerous accounts of people using it to get high (hypothetically) and then dying because of that, then you will also go and mark drain cleaner as bad, therefore damaging the product, creating more demand for it etc? It's pure nonsense therefor, regardless of the fact that heroin does have redeeming qualities and has been used in the past in treating numerous things, as everything has value in various aspects, where as marking x on products you don't want doesn't have value.

It says:

A modification could be good, but there are game theoretic challenges that haven’t been fully modeled.

As much as I like playing with Game Theory, I'm unconvinced game theory will make a correct prediction for choosing a reward curve. It's a candidate for an experiment, and the sooner the better.

Part of the problem is that there are some BIG PROBLEMS that we haven't found a good code solution for. So we do need to experiment, but we need to do it at the code level and set a time period for how long before reviewing the results.

Such as? ive never seen any details (or any community discussion) on these 'big problems'. just n^2 staying because INC decided to put it back in.

Well a BIG PROBLEM example... and "problem" could be subjective. If you prefer use the word CHALLENGE.

I was a proponent for UP VOTES only, but that leaves this place open for way more exploitation. So that is an example of a BIG Challenge. How could you do an up votes only (except for spam, plagiarism, abuse) without opening the door for it to be completely gamed?

I stopped calling for an up votes only system simply as I haven't come up with a solution to that Problem/Challenge. Dan said he was interested in an up votes only system, but again he does not do it for the same reason I stopped calling for it.

I would like to see the platform more like an economy than a share holders meeting. If I go into a store I am not pulling out a marker and putting big Xs on products I don't like. I walk past them and buy the things I am interested in. Other people walk in and might buy things I am not interested in.

Being able to put Xs on things you are NOT interested in is nothing like a market or economy. It actually allows you to nullify the interest of others as though it did not matter. It gives a false impression of demand due to the voting power being tied to a share like approach.

The demand can be there, but nullified by one person.

Yet solving that... Big challenge/Problem.

In a market demand = WHO IS GOING TO BUY THIS
It has nothing to do with WHO IS NOT GOING TO BUY THIS
that is more something a marketing department would focus on to get more of the NOTs into the WILL column.

Yet ultimately the NOTs do not get to nullify the demands of the WILLs.

If I have 10 people that want to buy something that is a demand of 10.
If there are 100 people that will not buy the thing that does not make the demand -90. There are still 10 people that will buy it.

Right now with the way steem/it works we get that -90 effect.

nesting

ell a BIG PROBLEM example... and "problem" could be subjective. If you prefer use the word CHALLENGE.

youre misunderstanding my point. The contention is that n^2 is staying because of a "big problem" in the GT of removing it. But no one has detailed precisely what that "big problem" is. In this case (as you mentioned elsewhere) the "game theory" thing is just an appeal to authority.

Yeah I wasn't talking about n^2 as the big problem. I only brought up Game Theory because of the response that they need to stop talking about Gaming.

The rest of what was said I had no problems with. The big problems came out of the responses discussion to my reply, and had nothing to do with n^2 or the original article.

All I was talking about in my initial reply was in the statement that they need to stop talking about Gaming unless they are going to become a gambling site or something of that nature.

Thus, my response was to explain game theory and WHY the use of gaming was relevant to the discussions. That was the only purpose of my original response. I don't believe I've referenced n^2 once here unless it was responding when someone else mentioned it in a reply to me.

The big problems I am referring to are the ones that are unfamiliar and difficult concepts that we as humans have not had to solve before. I don't consider n^2 a big problem. That is an easy problem. Implement a different curve, test it. If it doesn't work try something else.

I wouldn't call that a big problem. :) when I call something a big problem I am talking about those really big mind bending problems that we don't know how to solve yet, we suspect there is a solution out there, but it takes a lot of effort, and trying new things to find it. IF we ever do.

I knew they are using the term game theory to make people cooperate. It requires people to expect other peoples bevaviors and decide based on the estimation.
But is it really good for contents system? I don't think so. The game theory enforces people to choose posts strategically and somewhat discouraging them to freely choose what they really like.

I knew they are using the term game theory to make people cooperate.

This is not why they are using it. Read the wiki link I supplied you.

Game Theory is not used to shut down conversation. It is to put into context of understanding that WANTING something means you need to think of possible ways that can be EXPLOITED if it is given to you.

Everything has rules. How do these rules balance each other out? How can they cancel...

I friggin' hate the flag as it exists... for a long time I was an advocate of an up votes only system and I wrote asking for such for a good 5 months.

It was a game theory explanation that made me stop advocating for removing the down vote.

That doesn't mean I don't still want an up votes only system. It simply means I haven't thought of a way to stop an UP VOTES only system from being extremely exploitable. Until I can solve that I cannot advocate for removal of the down vote as it is currently the only thing that CAN negate such systems where people game/exploit the system.

This is not making you cooperate. This is life. Actions have consequences. When building things from code we do them, but we also need to think about not just technical hackers, but social hackers, who will exploit weaknesses.

In an up votes only system someone could create infinite accounts up voting their own single account and over time drain the pool and be very powerful without ANY interaction from other users. Down Votes from other users can stop this. This is but one example. Yet it shows how it is exploitable.

Personally I'd be willing to experiment with up votes only and having something like being able to flag stuff as spam, plagiarism, abuse and if witnesses agree they can do the equivalent of a flag or some system like that, but I don't know how feasible it will be.

Yet using the term Game Theory has absolutely nothing to do with wanting you to cooperate. It is two words that define the situation. They don't solve it. They put it into context. Every action has consequences. Wanting something doesn't mean there may not be bad consequences so game theory is about trying to determine the positives and negatives and ideally it will be a balanced system where every positive and negative has a counter balance.

I do think the flag as it exists in steemit/busy now has more negative impact than it does positive, so I do not think it is equally weighted. Numerically it is equivalent. Psychologically and system impact it does not seem to be equivalent. This is a problem, and Game Theory could actually indicate that if it were pursued with other factors such as PR, Social, Psychological, Communal perception impact. Just on raw money, votes, and reputation though it is equivalent.

Game Theory is not used to shut down conversation. It is to put into context of understanding that WANTING something means you need to think of possible ways that can be EXPLOITED if it is given to you.

Not in this case. Game theory is mathematical. Saying "we decided to keep n^2 because game theory" is exactly a way to shut down conversation, and its not real game theory at all. its just avarice masquarading as it.

Sure... people do that a lot. Yet that is not Game Theory shutting it down... that was actually an appeal to authority fallacy being employed. Much like saying "that is heresy". It didn't actually make Game Theory the source of the problem. It is people accepting appeals to authority and giving in that is the issue.

Be advised the context. While you are talking about flagging, the context of OP and mine is about n^2 that intends cooperation on purpose.

Actually that is only where it ended up. I was only responding to the initial quote of yours I quoted where you asked them to stop referring to game unless it was going to turn into a gambling site.

That is what I was responding to as Game Theory has very little to do with that and does play very much into a lot of the discussions here.

As to the rest of what you had to say, I didn't necessarily disagree with any of that. I only thought it important to clarify that use of the term GAME is much larger than I think you were considering and it is appropriate. Game Theory is a rather back alley study that has been gaining in favor and applies to human interaction, animals, logic, and computers, and since this system deals with all of those and runs on a computer it is relevant.

As far as n^2 and such though it won't really matter one bit. n, n^2, nLog2 in Game Theory doesn't mean shit as long as they are consistently applied.

The game theory enforces people to choose posts strategically and somewhat discouraging them to freely choose what they really like.

I know you've written that in the context of author rewards, but this is why I'm against curation rewards.

basically I support a flatter reward curve. however, an idea occurs to me: if some want linear (n^1) and some want or want to keep longer n^2, is it possible to fork it like n^a and 1<a<2? a can be decided like feed prices determined by witnesses.

I know this doesn't make things simpler. Just a thought and welcome any criticism.

1.x is technically not desirable as far as I am heard.

It could be possible as I understand it as long as it's on the same blockchain, but that would mean new accounts and how would that translate to transferring steem from one version to another as they run in tandem and one can move their steem to the more profitable flatter reward curve if they are a minnow and the whales will see no value in doing that effectively fracturing the community.

indeed, that's a problem. didn't think of that. thanks for the feedback.

"Hmm... that's a grounded view of things, for you see, without the ground one could not tell where the sky begins." - Justin Harvey John Ashby

The curve is the biggest reason steem has failed to capitalize on the July august sign ups..

The most necessary change (flattening of the rewards curved) was left out. I WAS excited about this HF, too :(

This post is nonsense.

The changes being made do not make the system simpler, they make it more complicated.

They also make it far less transparent.

Steemit inc abused its users' trust when they decided to collude secretly with steemguild to use the reward pool to fund individuals casting massive self-upvotes.

And literally everything proposed here would make such an ill-advised endeavor easier to conceal or more lucrative. All the while making unconvincing excuses about why that won't give up their super-exponential advantage in distributing the reward pool.

I get that many top witnesses are hesitant to vote against a proposed hardfork, but i urge all of them to carefully consider the negative reprecussions of this one before agreeing to it.

Rather than another pork-filled gong show, say no to this and tell INC that you want a more linear reward curve before anything else changes.

Can you make a post asking each witness's stance and collaborative community movement?

yeah, ive been waiting for the 'official' announcement on steemit... i am writing a post now... how many of the top 19 need to agree... is it 10/19?

IIRC, 16/21 witnesses need to agree to pass HF. Some other can clarify :)

All the while making unconvincing excuses about why that won't give up their super-exponential advantage in distributing the reward pool.

hear,hear!

hear,hear!

For the record, snowflake and i have both written quite a bit about the platform, voting and changes we would like to see... and i think this is like the one thing we agree on.

Indeed, even the biggest enemies agree on this feature :) It's clear that there is unanimous support for this, the question is why is it being ignored? Like you said I have yet to hear anything convincing that warrant keeping this curve.

Yes, I missed this post and was under the impression that this was set in stone more or less.
@sneak I think you should revisit this important issues asap, granted Dan has left there is no reason to remove that from the proposed changes, and @ned like sigmajin has said before and as any developer knows or anybody that has basic understanding of programing, changing code isn't excused by money. Ctrl+F god damnit.

Steemit inc abused its users' trust when they decided to collude secretly with steemguild to use the reward pool to fund individuals casting massive self-upvotes.

"And literally everything proposed here would make such an ill-advised endeavor easier to conceal or more lucrative. All the while making unconvincing excuses about why that won't give up their super-exponential advantage in distributing the reward pool."
As a minnow going through the few whales downvoting and controling Steemit community I find this depressing and wonder why more steemians are not talking about this. If this continues for minnows/creatives you will lose the good content. Please, talk more about this.

As a minnow going through the few whales downvoting and controling Steemit community

To be perfectly honest, i think the 'expirement' was an OK idea. It could have been executed and explained much better, IMO, but i think the idea behind it came from the desire to improve the user experience. @abit (who iiuc came up with the idea) has done a lot with voting to try to improve users experience (including going out of his way to upvote comments when almost no one else does).

Its relatively easy to shit on people like abit and smooth when they try to do something good and it has some negative consequences.... but you have to keep in mind that the net effect of their efforts is to make every users vote worth more.... I don't necessarily think its the answer, but i think its a good step to figuring one out.

At the end of the day, theyre trying to clean up the mess steemit inc made and refuses to take responsibility for.

OK > thank you for you answer. I appreciate all the understanding and knowledge I can get.

Beyond the unfounded and one-sided personal game of 'blame', it appears that these points (back to the OC) are based on leap-to judgement, misunderstanding and lack of complete information. Sorry.

Are you arguing that giving the majority of users more say in the platform is not important? I'm trying to understand reasonning behind this comment.

of course he isn't arguing that. Why argue that super controversial, bad PR point, when you can just kick the can down the road and say "yeah i totally support it maybe well put it in (some unspecified amount of time) later"

Its like campaign finance reform. Everyone supports it. Later.

More SP = More say.

It's an interesting experiment but lets not pretend the top tier trickles all the way down. Whoever is next in line becomes the most powerful and who is to say they are better voters or deserve the power more. The vote abstinance never gave "the majority" more say.

@beanz It actually did, I have seen my meager 300SP raise up one cent on a post worth $1.64 and 10 cents on a post worth $17.39.

(back to the OC)

took me like 5 minutes to figure out what this meant. thought it was a reference to the TV show or something.

I guess when you make a bunch of bad decisions, and don't want to take responsibility for them, everything seems like a 'game of blame'.

As a side note, if youre the one concealing information -- saying the other guy is using incomplete information isnt a dis to him. just sayin.

Its like campaign finance reform. Everyone supports it. Later.

Except that we have actually been developing and spending money on it. This is just blatant disregard. Much of this information is available in GitHub. Thank you.

@sigmajin The developers who are working on the code are paid (I assume; no inside knowledge). It is fair to say 'spending money' when they are paid to develop code, which you can see in github.

Except that we have actually been developing and spending money on it.

on making the reward curve more linear? How do you spend money on that... did you commission a study or something.

@smooth idk if they get paid by the hour or theyre salaried or what, but it seems to me (based on looking at github and also a couple of theoretical posts) that implementing the rsahres to vhares conversion is fairly modular like vote regeneration. That is to say, there's a line that says something like vshares = rhsare ^2 and you change that line.

Looking at it, it seems like the reality is a bit more complicated. But still all told youre talking about changing the variables in like a dozen lines of code. How much of an money-investment is that really? Especially if the devs are salaried (which you would think so, right?). Enough to prove just by virtue of its magnitude that theyre serious about it, and not just floating it to appease the many people who want to see the change?

(fyi, looking at 913 which changed it back, cuz i know where that is, to figure out what changes it took).

This is just blatant disregard

noticed this after the fact.... are you searching around for 'reckless disregard' like in times... cause if so, LOL.

Its relatively easy to shit on people like abit and smooth when they try to do something good and it has some negative consequences..

What negative consequences are you refering to?
Price is up 25% as a result and minnow/dolphins have more influence.

Price is up 25% as a result and minnow/dolphins have more influence.

That's childish. There's no causality between the bullish trend and the experiment, on the contrary. If you look at the timing you'll see the bull trend started way earlier and when the flagging came to the peak, it stopped both in velocity and volume and now it's static. I see a bearish trend forming, based on what happened.

The "experiment", which I supported in the beginning (wish I had waited more) was just a pathetic attempt at taking over the reward pool. There's no methodology, no metrics, no public announcement about how the experiment will be measured, no consensus among the whales, just 2 lines written by @abit, and those 2 lines of text are taking down an entire community of more than 10,000 people. The sloppiness emerging from those 5 edits in @abit's post (in which he downvotes pretty much everybody on Steemit) is unbelievable. Please be aware that this is not an ad hominem approach towards abit, I'm neutral on the person, but the actions of the person, in this case, were deeply toxic.

I think it's time for all to take responsibility for what we are doing and yes, I'm talking about this so called experiment, which was, at its best, a childish and egotistic manifestation of irresponsible people, and, at its worst (which I start to believe it's closer to the truth) a collusive attempt to game the system even more, for the benefit of the few.

Smooth has adjusted his votes accordingly and saying there's no methodology is not correct, not only is there the methodology of downvoting where bots/whales have upvoted therefore the rule is evident but its neither sloppy in that regard nor outside consensus, because it's also evident that it wasn't a singular effort and for consensus to happen for such an experiment is unfathomable in the real world, so the consensus happened between those that took part.
How did they game the system if they used the voting power to effectively negate any gain? The experiment allowed me with meager 300SP to influence posts not worth even $2 by one cent and post worth $17 by 10 cents, therefore it's a success in that regard.

I think that there were a lot of people who didnt understand what was happening with the flags, and that caused some bad feelings that were probably avoidable. Also, using the term 'expirement' was questionable PR, imo. It implies that the people getting downvoted are lab rats.

At the very least, i would have liked to have seem more people on board ad-initio so many downvotes would not have been neccessary. But with automated voting, that may not have been feasible.

Also, if youre a guy that maybe gets lucky once a month and gets a whale vote, and today was the once a month, it kind of sucks to be you right now, which is pretty negative. Im not saying its a good enough reason not to do it... just that omelettes require broken eggs.

Price is up 25% as a result

I think youre assuming a causation there that really hasnt been established. IIUC, it was a pretty bull day overall for alts

If all whales would have participated in this experiment smooth and co wouldn't have to downvote anything, unfortunately there will always be a few whales that won't go along with the plan so Im not sure how else this experiment would have been possible..

I think youre assuming a causation there that really hasnt been established. IIUC, it was a pretty bull day overall for alts

It's been bull day for weeks for alts and steem was always the only one in the red, why is it different today? Also the price hasn't gone up for a very long time so why is it up today? I don't think its a coincidence. These blockchains have value because they empower people, the more they do the more value they have.

As a minnow going through the few whales downvoting and controling Steemit community

You got it backward. They are not controlling anything, they are giving community control back.

Not from my experience. As long as the old timers who are in the cool kids group get the few whales to auto upvote them and then downvote those who get a little pocket change for good content (that took many hours of hard labor) I see that as a scam. Especially when steemit has promoted themselves as something completely different.

Whales involved in this experiment are auto downvoting whales who autovote the 'cool kids' group. They don't downvote content that wasn't upvoted by a whale prior.

I got upvoted by @dantheman on a post about HF17, which was written and published before the test was announced and that post was downvoted twice by @smooth and @abit. How does that plays with what you wrote about

They don't downvote content that wasn't upvoted by a whale prior.

Please look at my rewards and at the votes I'm receiving and tell me I'm one of the 'cool kids'. Pretty please, with sugar on top.

This "experiment" was not intended to give anyone anything back. This was a false flag operation to level up the rewards, rooted in greed and selfishness.

-nesting limit-
@dragosroua
If you look at smooth's votes you will see that he was considerate in using his power only to counter the stake of other whales and didn't vote with 100% unless it was necessary.
When you say it wasn't intended to give anyone anything back you're arguing that it wasn't intended to nullify the influence of whale votes on the reward pool in lieu of the fact that it was clearly intended to do that and that it did achieve that. I have seen it first hand that with just 300SP I could upvote 1 cent a post worth less than 2 dollars and with 10 cents a post worth 17 dollars. It wasn't rooted in selfishness or greed as they gained nothing out of it, calling it a false flag is very simplistic and short sighted.

Yep, Steemit Inc. should have just set the Steemguild folks up as contractors if they expected wage-level compensation. There's such a chain of consequences from that choice of how to compensate SteemGuild curators. Social platforms can sure change in a hurry!

I disagree with these:

  • Standardized payouts on a 7 day timer
  • Comment reward pool

Neutral

  • keep n^2 for longer time

Others are OK.

//Edit: The point is to bring author reward beneficiaries and SP delegation this time. If it's too hard to decide a curve, we can keep it unchanged for a while.

Instead of the 7 day timer they could just change the
24h+30days >>>>> 24h+7days

and my opinion is the author:curator reward ratio should reverse...
The curators should take the most rewards since the curators are hundreds (or potentially thousands in future) but the author of a post still only one (authors will continue to take the lion share)

Instead of the 7 day timer they could just change the
24h+30days >>>>> 24h+7days

Seems like the best option to me. And for long-term revenue to authors, then can simply add a tipping function/option to posts. It would make tipping more intuitive, at the very least.

simply add a tipping function

@busy.org has a pull request of that.

EXACTLY THIS ^^^^

Well, they're not going to do perpetual payouts, so that's not really in the cards. And one seven day period is too long, considering nobody votes after the first few hours most of the time anyway. A 48 or 72-hour period should be the max for the initial payout. Seven days is just too long and arbitrarily so. What's the point of seven day payouts, anyway?

In the real world (where bloggers aren't mining steem) most people post a blog weekly. Probably because they don't expect all their readers in one day, their readers come different days of the week.

7 days gives gives curators more time to catch up on the content they like without "missing out" on the opportunity to add their vote (which is useless in the 30 day period)

What he said!! ^^^

Won't it also create a one-time, seven-day pause in reward payments? I wonder if we will see any reaction in Steem price. Not important, but maybe interesting.

Scalability problem because with posts remaining active forever the consensus dataset grows quickly?

Fair concern.

While not in favor of that much of split I do think curation rewards need to be higher... 75/25 is not nearly enough to make curation really worthwhile for most people or to really encourage many people to vote. Especially since early voters forgo some of that curation which makes the actual curation split somewhere in the low teens...

An author/curator split of something like 60/40 seems like it could work. It might still not be enough but it would be better. Some say that curation is not needed while I feel that curation is a great incentivisor to get the most people to vote...

Good points by the way about the curators being hundreds/thousands of people vs. a single author... hadn't thought about it like that before.

and don't forget that people that vote the first 30 minutes give more rewards to authors... so it isn't 75:25 but rather 88:12 !!! So a reverse make absolute sense because for the same reason it would not be 25:75 but about 38:62 (author:curators)

Unless the 30 minute penalty was also adjusted or thrown out :)

there was a discussion to adjust to 5-15 minutes...
throwing out would once again favor too much the bots I suppose

Some say that curation is not needed

Curation is needed, but not the curation rewards. I, for one, would vote without curation rewards, and I think many of us would do.

I would too. I'm unconviced that curation rewards are the main incentive for voting, however often it is repeated; it is untested theory. It is the main incentive for using voting bots and otherwise gaming the system without caring about content. Another experiment to test the theory, perhaps?

Completely agree, curation rewards rewards bot voting much more than actual curation, making curation what it is right now: 10:1 ratio in some cases of votes to views. That alone is disparaging to any new user when they are obviously confronted with the fact that "people" vote for content that they haven't even read, and the other aspect that @beanz was arguing is that clearly it makes everyone compete with machines, and following that to the conclusion is that to compete with a machine you have to employ a machine. Remove curation rewards as people have incentive to vote and reward authors and it removes incentive to vote for rewards. Voting/curating is a fine endeavor but not necessarily worthy of any rewards, the rewards come intrinsically not extrinsically from allocating whatever portion your vote can from the reward pool.

24h+30days >>>>> 24h+7days

Wasnt it already that way at one point...?

Yeah, I think people are really going to miss the 24 hour payout. People really want instant gratification. Especially new users who think the platform is too good to be true.

"SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!" says the new user.

Now it will take 7 days to prove to them that Steemit's not a scam, LOL instead of 24 hours. I hope they remember to login a week later to check.

I remember waiting on the edge of my seat for my very first payout to see whether this was actually real or not.

But I'm all for experimenting so I haven't really voiced this opinion too loudly and I assume there's a good reason for getting rid of it... I just haven't heard it yet.

I can chime here as a new user...(brings popcorn for everyone and shares)

I have to say that I have noticed an increase of STEEM & SP rewards in the last day (24hours).
I cannot verify exactly if it is because of this experiment.

Just my 3cents worth.

It's hard to verify because of the nonlinear reward curve. Now, if others voted before you, (it seems) your votes worth more. Actually, I, who have been here since a half year, noticed the same (my votes worth more). Even when I upvote promoted contents with @pipes, which is a new account, I see some changes in the rewards (and nothing before).

Man, this experiment with the whole Steemit Platform is exciting and addicting. I am very Honored to have this opportunity to witness, take part, vote, comment, & continually learn and grow with the company. A lot of GREAT, POWERFUL, and WISE users on this platform, if you are keen to spot them...(notice I didn't have to actually say anything about my pay or a salary)

Just my 3cents worth again...

I can second this, the rewards are far more spread out than before.

"Show me the money" is true, but 1 week has its benefits.
And as I see everyone much stake is used to upvote new users. If they don't interested in enough to wait a week for that, next time when they get nothing for their post they will leave, or exchange to BTC then leave, or cry a little about justice then leave.

1 week is simpler, and one could have more rewards then with a split period when a nonlinear reward curve is used. Now, at the end of the day, when a minnow's vote is starting to change the reward, the system starts the whole process again with a 30 days period that nobody uses because the votes worth nothing (those, who could fill up the shallow part of the curve have already voted as curators in the first period with a bot with perfect timings).

With one week, there is more room for the investors to act when the rewards are different from what they would want.

keep n^2 for longer time

How much longer? IMO part and parcel of keeping it for a longer time is the very strong possibility/likelihood that it falls through the cracks entirely.

The point is to bring reward beneficiaries and SP delegation this time. If it's too hard to decide a curve, we can keep it unchanged for a while.

Everyone wants a flat curve, why too hard to decide?

I don't know. They didn't answer. Or I missed it.

Neutral
keep n^2 for longer time

why keep n^2 longer when the majority don't want it?

Change one thing at one time.

^ this

^^^^^^^ @ned and @sneak, Evidently the community agrees, this comes first.

Was hoping reward would lessen the n^2 curve that favors the rich.

fair influence proportional to all holder's stake ~ clayop Agreed!

Small Steem Power curators need value from curating to incentivize them to curate more. There is incentive to post. But we need more readers and curators to grow and these users should be rewarded. Shouldn't they?

24h+30days >>>>> 24h+7days ~ liondani AND tipping function/option to posts ~ ats-david

Being used to the 24 hour payout and how 30 days doesn't seem to make much difference I believe the 7 day payout would make more sense currently. Adding a tip function would allow for rewarding STEEM aferwards if chosen to do so and has been brought up many times in the community.

author:curator reward ratio should reverse. ~ liondani

Agree with a larger amount for curators. Plus part of this goes to the authors which will help smooth things out further.

Not necessarily incentive to curate as much as incentive to allocate more of the reward pool.

Does a separate reward pool for comments make things more simple or is there another reason to have one? I guess I still wasn't sold on exactly why we need one...

it's needed for steemit inc. to put comments on other web sites, like what discuss does, this is a great marketing tool for the steem blockchain

I was wondering if that was the purpose but have never directly heard as much... Here's to hoping that is the case! Thanks for the response.

I think the comment reward pool will create an insanely awesome new dynamic to Steem. At first I was very skeptic but now I'm really excited to see what will come out of it.

I have also joined the pro-comment-reward-pool camp. I think it will probably increase engagement a lot. Now new users will be able to actually make some STEEM just from commenting, so there won't be pressure on all the new users to become professional bloggers.

Less people blogging and more people commenting sounds pretty good to me.

Plus, it's a lot harder to game comment curation convincingly because the content of the comment becomes verification that the post has actually been read. For instance, I can vote on a blog post without reading it and no one will ever know but if I vote on a comment that has nothing to do with the blog, then it's obvious that I haven't read them both.

I'm also excited to see how it plays out!

Websites owners are only going to integrate steem if it benefits their existing userbase. Unfortunately most websites's cutomers will never spend 10k usd to be able to reward a couple cent to other comments.
If steemit inc was looking for this type of integration they would have flatten the reward curve or just removed entirely. I am yet to hear a valid reason to keep it and self voting is not it.

I'm looking forward to the 38% reduction in rewards for blog posts, and new users earning lots of steem from comments

I think it's not good that this comment is competing with posts in which authors shares a part of their book. Why one should comment with this huge handicap? Therefore I agree with the separation. I want that my comment compete with other comments.

The comment pool makes discussion and comment rewards more simple to achieve. It is proposed to lower the barrier to entry for a new user's a-ha(!) moment and to stir discussion.

Wouldn't the simpler solution be to adjust rewards curves and treat all posts (parent and child) the same? In any case, the fact that another pool is being created doesn't "cut complexity." It increases it.

Like I said above I was really skeptical of the comment reward pool at first but now I'm really excited about it. The discussion will become so much more intense and valuable as soon as it is implemented.

The first person to upvote a comment on the new fork will see his upvote worth more than a thousand but more to the point I really think this will be a major benefit to Steem.

The discussion will become so much more intense and valuable as soon as it is implemented.

How do you know this? Are you sure it won't simply lead to more spam and abuse that's less visible than parent posts...which most people don't even read now?

You're bringing up great points. I think the upside will make up for the downside.

A-ha(!) ;)

Think smaller SP holders need to be able to add value by curation comments of other smaller SP Holders possibly. Why not show rewards in STEEM instead of $? Then $0.22 would be 2.528 STEEM and 0.001 STEEM curation reward from a smaller user would be possible by a 100X smaller SP holder. Then that smaller holder would see their reward worth 0.001+ STEEM as opposed to $0.00 and feel like they are actually adding value that they could see.

I think this is another great point, why not remove the dollar amount and reflect the steem allocated thus far to the post/comment?

Yes, I'll explain more in a post soon.

Update on Simplicity: Cutting Complexity with Steem 0.17.0

Adding another rewards pool isn't "cutting complexity" - especially when the pool still pays people for posts, even if the posts are child posts instead of parent posts.

I would love more simplicity for the platform mechanics/functionality as a user, as I think most people do. Still waiting for that...

I think we should have a minimum requirement of SP to earn rewards, so it's more concentrated with higher rewards and with reason to buy and stock more Steem.

minimum requirement of SP to earn rewards

While I may try to understand the reason for this. I struggle as to why one would have to have SP to earn rewards. That would not be fair. Reason to buy more STEEM is to have influence. That is a choice. Believe anyone should have the equal opportunity to earn even new users with minimal amounts of STEEM.

Looking forward to it!

And oh man oh man I am really looking forward to the removal of that pesky nesting limit! Better strap in for some almighty comment discourse!! Weeee!!

We considered proposing a move from the n^2 curve [...]
A modification could be good, but there are game theoretic challenges that haven’t been fully modeled.

Wow, it must be very complicated. How about this challenge: people having double your steem power now have four times your voting power, and this will be still true after fork. Correct?

I would like linear curve or, even better, logaritmic. Not quadratic for sure.

We'll be releasing the proposal for 0.18.0 for the community to mold very soon, probably next week. I think we're starting from a "let's go linear" position.

Nice to hear this!

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