Who deserves more? Authors or curators?
Response started as a comment, but quickly became clear that it's a post:
My Verbiose Response
You're putting words in my mouth, but if you want to make that leap, lets go there.
The discussion is always argued from the basis of 'content creators do all the work, so they should get the reward'. Why is that the case? Where does STEEM get it's value? (Not Steem, that's a technology and it gets value from powering various use-cases). But STEEM?
Steem uses DPOS technology to secure the blockchain. So obviously the witnesses should get rewarded, since they provide the technology. But why should authors/curators get rewarded at all?
Do authors deserve to get paid just for publishing? If I stand on the street corner and sign, do I deserve to get paid just for doing so?
Curators get paid for holding stake. In effect, they are being paid for taking financial risk to hold stake. The default behavior is for a stakeholder to get 100% the stake rewards for their stake. The opt to give some of that to the witnesses for securing their stake. The rest comes out of their pocket (inflation on their stake) and their receiving it should be the default assumption.
The game theory equilibrium status quo is that curators receive 100% of their upvote - because 100% of the reward pool comes from inflation on their stake (or depreciation). That's why we have seen a whole system migrate toward that (with massive rewards going through bid-bots, where close to 100% of the upvote is returned to the curator via bid).
Every time a curator upvotes anything without getting paid by the author for the vote, they are doing it because some external factors convince them that the author deserves it more than they do.
It could be because they were paid for it in advance (like with a bid-bot or subscription service) or because somebody else paid for it in advance (like with @steembasicincome) ...
or it could be because they think the author's work will increase the value of Steem (and maybe even STEEM) like with automated upvotes on @steemauto or @steemchiller
it could be because they think they might earn more in curation from the votes of others (like early votes on big vote-buyers)
Or in the most unlikely and extreme case... it could be because they got some qualitative satisfaction from consuming the content and want to reward the content creator.
Content creators do not deserve their upvotes or rewards just for being here. All their votes literally come out of the pockets of the curators (via inflation). Content creators need to convince curators that their content has value... and giving curators a higher percentage of each vote makes that an easier argument, because the curator gives up less value with each vote, and stands to gain more from being early in recognizing the value of the content.
I am opposed to the EIP, but not because content creators will lose value that they deserve. I am opposed to it because changing the rules makes the risks of holding stake higher. Risks devalue the technology and devalue the stake. I am opposed to it because it's a diversion. I'm opposed to it because the changes don't anticipate 'bad actor' scenarios.
If it has to be done (which I don't think it does) then it does not go far enough because it still operates from the idea that content creators deserve the most because they work the hardest.
Whence Value?
Where does value come from? Marx said it comes from labor.
The rest of modern economics is built on marginalism: the value of anything comes from somebody's subjective willingness to pay.
Steem is breaking down because all the content creators are Marxists, while the money comes from Marginalists.
Can a marginalist survive in a marxist world? Can a marxist survive in a marginalist world? Which kind of world is Steem?
I'll give you a hint... the code-base is marginalist, but the culture is Marxist and the schism is causing the breakdown.
For those who say authors don't earn enough for their content, I would encourage them to try using YouTube or building out their own independent blog and monetizing it or using medium and seeing how far they get. I don't get why authors come here demanding rewards and complain they not earning enough if steem is an income source for you you need to be looking at the bigger picture why you relying on this site to pay you then add more income streams. Any rational person knows that if one source doesn't make enough, get another.
I think 50/50 is fair and I think that it provides more validation that you should HODL if you want to be a part of this community. Unfortunatley the bigger accounts do have the most say but who are the ones buying up all the cheap steem authors flood into the market as they cash out and then want to complain?
Unfortunately, or fortunately? Shouldn't the people that are committed to building within the community, and to growing their stake have the most say?
This is already the status quo everywhere. In developing countries it's 'corruption' and in developed countries it's 'lobbying' and 'special interest groups'. At least on Steem we are honest about and it codified it as 'stake-weighted consensus'. If the people with the most to lose are the one's making the important decisions (including the decision of which content deserves rewards) that makes the blockchain the least likely to fail.
Put another way... if Steem made critical decisions by popular vote instead of stake-weighted consensus, it most likely would have already failed.
Can you use #palnet tag in your post? I love to curate your posts with PAL. I believe @palnet community will like your contents too.
Thanks for the reminder! I have been using #palnet tags (and curating there) in most cases. This time I forgot.
I don't think that adding the tag will make the votes before it was added count on palnet, but I have added the tag now.
Maybe we should just stop paying to authors?
Whether authors should receive rewards is a question of Steem's values and purpose. If Steem's content creation community is an important part of Steem's value proposition, then it should continue to be rewarded.
I believe that it is, and I've put a massive amount of time into building something that strengthens and supports it because of that believe.
My project acknowledges that the value implicitly belongs to the curators by default, and turns that on end by making the creators into indirect curators - using stake and leverage to create a permanent support base for content creators that participate. Curate somebody once, but for a much more meaningful amount than a single upvote, and that somebody receives ongoing support for as long as they are active - but it's entirely stake-driven, which is why the people that are the most generous in enrolling others are still earning the most. And in case you didn't notice... it's a 50/50 model and works really well in providing incentives for people to curate accounts instead of content.
pls make a proposal on that, it´s brilliant :D Or at least one could down-vote each author and give them an auto message like "you are a piece of shit - kind regards, God"
Well said. If in the future you get a comment saying content producers should earn more than upvoters ask them that question :
Is it harder to buy 100k steem to upvote or to produce content ?
You're welcome.
That's a good rhetorical question. For anyone with the fundamental basics described in my post, it's obvious. For anyone that doesn't understand that curation is a return for holding stake and influencing content distribution, not a return for clicking an up arrow or deploying a bot, it starts to point them in the right direction.
Now here is a viewpoint that I can understand. I am neutral on the HF21 discussion because no one has given enough material explanation on why the EIP changes are good or bad. They mostly say it will be bad or good but have no real numbers to say why. Some say it will stop bit bots, but people will always find a way to make money from any system.
Only time will tell. So I HODL and wait.
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There are no numbers because good/bad are qualitative factors. To show quantitatively whether it's good or bad, you have to first define what good and bad are. Most people just aren't that rigorous in their thought processes.
If you define the intended outcome, you can evaluate whether the changes will make the outcome more likely. I define the outcome as 'increasing the value of the technology and the currency that runs on it' because after all we are here to make money, aren't we?
Having defined the outcome, I don't think the EIP will help, because it pits the different marxist/capitalist cultures against each other without ever making clear that's what is happening. As soon as one side starts winning, the other side will sell their stake.
Now, if the capitalists win, then STEEM will go up because (let's face it) capitalists have more money.
Incidentally, the socialists hate my creation because it's too capitalist, and the capitalists hate it because it's too socialist. Where does that put me?
Well as long as they leave you alone to help the little guy, does it matter? Yes, I am here to earn. I enjoy the engagement and try to leave comments that enable discussions like this and find the posts complaining about quality, while not defining quality are just being negative. I prefer positive things that enable positive engagement.
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It puts you in the same camp as I. That is, a camp where cases are taken on individual merits and each issue evaluated on its merits and value without feeling the need to follow a specific herd.
Maybe you should have named SBI Steem Freedom Dividend... ;)
All said, done and dusted here but I can hardly imagine myself writing a book and expecting those who invested in the book and sometimes consumed the book to earn more than I do.
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Why are so many ppl saying that a curator will earn more than the author? Let's use the incredible power of mathematics and take a look at an example:
Jimmy writes a post and to make it easy the curators vote for $1 each so the post gets $10.
In the end that's 5$ for Jimmy and $5 for the 10 curators, $0.50 for each of them. The whole mass of curators is earning the same as the author yep, but the author is earning it as one person and the curators are only getting a part of it.
The curators are bringing in the STEEM we all are earning atm. Each vote an author gets comes from an investor and it's a normal thing that an investor gets some of the money. They are not buying one book to read it and the author gets some of the money (and a book author for example doesn't get 75% or even 50% if he sells a book xD).
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And there comes a pissed off whale and flag it to the zero because he thinks the book is shit ;)
Haha yep, that is the way of Steem xD
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But there were still 5 upvotes and one downvote, which means that if the whale is wrong and the book is not shit, those 5 upvoters can rally and post about the book and its unfair treatment and expand the consensus that the book should be rewarded.
Final outcome is very different than if the whale can push a button and the book is completely deleted from the platform.
How long would @berniesanders survive on Facebook if his beef was with Zuckerberg instead of with @ned (and had similar relative influence)?
That's one awesome point indeed! :)
Sir it downvote now :P
That's a good point. There is a mistaken focus on single upvotes. If content is genuinely 'quality', it's an easy sell to get readers to dust it and if enough of them do then the creator will earn more than any single curator will.
Your analysis is explicit. Both invested in something - the author invested in knowledge and time while the curator invested in his wealth/money. So I don't see any concrete reason why the later should earn better than the former.
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If you write a book and there isn't sufficient demand for it, then they will because you will earn nothing and be out the printing costs while they paid nothing (and get nothing).
People buy your book because they value it more highly than the money... so they are getting something out of it. Whether what they get out of it is more than what you get out of it is a function of demand, price elasticity, competitive options, etc. You should want your readers to get more out of it than you do... because they're a lot more likely to spread the word that way.
Like it or not, it's a DPOS blockchain. That means the chain literally belongs to the stakeholders (SP holders) in proportion to their holding. Convinced the owners that what you're doing on their chain is worth their support, and you will do just fine. Convince the owners that what you're doing devalues their chain and you will be obliterated.
The value of a vote belongs to the curator (it is inflation on their stake - and they control the distribution) by default. Rewarding the curators isn't to pay them for finding your content and putting a vote on them. It's to encourage them to vote your content by making it relatively cheaper to vote for your content than their own. And if it's cheaper, then it's more likely that they will pay for it with their votes.
I would rather have 1000 people send me 3 cents each than have one person send me $3, and if selling my content more cheaply (making voting on it cheaper relative to self-voting) makes a lot more people vote on it, then it's worth it.
On the other hand, if you churn out shit because you think you need to produce 3x as much to offset your 'lost' entitlement, you are going to get a lot fewer votes (because even 0.001 is too much for shit) and when you do they're more likely to be off-set by people that realize 0.001 is still too much for your shit and don't want that coming out of their inflation - even though the vote value belongs to the curator, it's actually the consensus influence that belongs to the curator, and somebody else may use their consensus influence to remove you from receiving rewards completely.
I appreciate that those who invest to become high value curators are important, but if content creators do not earn then they will go elsewhere and then Steem in general loses value. Creating content requires an investment of time and possibly money too. It's like saying those buying shares in a company are more important than the product, but they are interdependent.
Investors have plenty of other options to make a good income from their money, but creators may be more limited.
Steem had great potential to get rewards to people who struggle to earn due to a poor local economy or other factors. If it is considered to just be a way for already wealthy people to make more then it will not grow. I think that is already a perception of it.
I've done okay from Steem, but I don't rely on it. I'm using what I've earned to help others and am not too worried about my curation rewards. I really don't want a 'Lambo'.
If the target audience for each create post is one person, then authors should earn more. If the target audience is 2, then 50/50 results in the creator earning twice as much as either curator. If the target audience is 100, then even 99/1 would result in the creator earning more than the curators. If the target audience is thousands and the rewards are 50/50 as proposed, then the creator would earn thousands of times what any curator earned.
So the question then is this... if the curators earn an adequate return on their stake from curating, will it help the creators reach a larger target audience and attain more votes?
Let's stop thinking of it as curator earning more than author on the basis of a single vote. For the curator it's a single vote, and their reward for giving it away instead of keeping it is totally inadequate. For the creator, it's one vote out of potentially thousands and if letting the curator keep more of it results in more than a 33% increase in total votes received, they should be jumping for joy about the changes.
I have a 100% expectation of earning more after the HF because I know that my quality is high enough to attract more than 33% more votes when curation incentives are improved. Is your quality high enough to attract more votes?
You have some points. It tends to be that one or two big accounts vote on some posts. It will be interesting to see how this changes their behaviour. I have no illusions about my own content. I have done well by making connections and I get a lot of automated votes. That could well change.
Great analogy and great post! Resteemed for more visibility.
Thanks for the support. My ginabot went a little crazy while I was sleeping... It took a bit to figure out that this post struck a nerve.
Ok, you got me with that last section.
Mind. Blown. 🤯
I could see the disharmony, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and now I realise it’s because I’m not a coder, so I don’t have an insight into that side of things. So thanks for that illumination.
So here’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around... (and a little context to preface).
My last post I explored my discomfort with promoting downvoting, or at least making it have no RC cost. I’m not claiming this mechanism won’t work, I just don’t know if it will. I do however think there is something in the 50/50 split (maybe even increasing curating %), because I think positive reinforcement is more effective from a behavioural change perspective.
Are we all in agreement that the 💩posts and spam-n-scam are the problem with reward pool share? That’s my understanding at least.
If curators have greater incentive to reward “better quality content”, then it means less of the crap, more of the good stuff.
(Although I still think there is an unsolvable problem with the subjective nature of ‘quality’)
From a technical perspective.... can witnesses/devs run the numbers to see what will work? By this I mean, can (e.g.) the last 7 days of posts be run through a model with the different systems and see what happens? Is that possible, is that what y’all are doing anyway?
Like I mentioned in my last post, people really do have different value-systems. I don’t like photos of your dinner, but you don’t like self-absorbed naval-gazing. While you happily upvote photos of food, I’ll upvote long-winded boring stories that get me thinking about life, the universe, and everything. How do we define ‘quality’?
Content creators just have to hope that there are curators who share the same ideas and value what they do... which is what I think the value of Communities/Tribes is.
Looking at this platform (PALnet) as an example... what’s to stop 💩posts from starting to use the tag, thus ‘polluting’?
I’m asking this question because myself and a couple of others have been thinking and discussing creating a Community/Tribe with own frontend and token (like this), and how do we realistically maintain the integrity and quality of what is rewarded?
Your SBI program will have less incentive under the set of rules of HF21.
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My analysis shows the opposite, actually. SBI units stack for the members, and votes are delivered when minimum thresholds are exceeded.
In effect SBI is a parallel curation mechanism, where you pay liquid STEEM to curate an account instead of paying an upvote to curate content. Then SBI curates the future content of that account. And incidentally, SBI has always been 50/50. The curator (sponsor) and curated creator (sponsee) each get 1 unit from the enrollment.
SBI will pass the extra curation earned by the voting accounts directly to the members, so that 'after curation' rshares delivered will remain constant. The impact of downvote pools and Convergent Linear is harder to predict, but I expect them to make promotion services more necessary instead of less. Every post will need enough promotion to get onto the 'linear' portion of the curve, and SBI is still the best 'set and forget' option available to make that happen.
My full analysis is in these two posts:
https://busy.org/@steembasicincome/sbi-in-an-hf21-world-part-1-50-50-rewards
https://busy.org/@steembasicincome/sbi-in-an-hf21-world-part-2-convergent-linear-and-downvote-pools
The best is to wait for HF21 to be implemented and let wait what is going to happen. ;)
Well put!