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RE: Steemit idea number #??: Upvote markers
I vote no. I understand that there are bots, but I would prefer if we did not add any more complexity to them .. instead I'd prefer that we just got rid of every one of them!
Anyway, that's my opinion, and apparently many many others think that I can go fly a kite with that opinion .. oh well! :)
The problem with no bots is that manual curation is needed to use the power. some accounts are run by very, very busy people but are very invested. This system would make the bots manual in a sense as there would be human curators for each vote but they would wield the bot's power.
I don't honestly feel that curation adds that much value to the platform. As a young platform, Steemit needed it to attract a user base, but as it matures, I see curation becoming more of an anchor than a float that encourages participation. I think this is probably partially the reason why the curation percentage went from 50 down to 25 in one of the semi-recent forks.
Yes, Voting for others and earning a portion of the rewards as a curation "bonus" is nice, but you should be manually curating content. Otherwise you're risking promotion of poor quality content, which then cheapens the entire platform because quality content is no longer being rewarded. I believe that Bots have created a vicious cycle of promoting the wrong (low quality) content. And people see this happening and wonder why their own low quality content doesn't get the same value, so they use another bot to help promote their low quality content.
And around and around we go until the quality content providers get too frustrated about their work not being appreciated or valued and they leave, or decide to produce crappy content too and use the bots to promote their crap!
I'm sorry if I went down too deep of a rabbit hole or stood on my soap box for too long...
I have spent half my life in rabbit holes and on soapboxes.
Without bringing in advertising, which will come one day and be detrimental to content, curation reward is likely the only way to get big investors in. I don't agree with the self-voting using pay for vote bots as this rewards poor quality content.
The return to manual curation is what I am trying to drive at but again, for massive accounts to spread their power usefully, they likely need help. For example, Blocktrades current vote is around 300 dollars and when time is good for Steem at only 2 dollars, that becomes 600. So, if they manually curate and want to give 100 dollars to each currently when Steem is low, they must read 30 articles a day. at 600, they must read 60.
Their kind of vote is the kind of money that should be going to good content and authors but there is probably no way one person can consistently read 60 articles a day AND do what they do in the normal world that has allowed them to have that kind of investment. But, with a couple curator employees, they can easily spread their wealth widely.
let's say they give 15 x $100 votes (33% votes [5 full] ) and then 75 x $20 votes. That would be equal to 10 full votes. To do this they need to read and check for quality and find 90 worthy articles. What are their chances? Delegating the curation part may be able to give finding the 75 to 3 or 4 people while they themselves can find the 15 they want to vote a lot. I think my maths works..
For better or worse, bots aren't leaving anytime soon so actually having manual curators control them helps.
Well, being on the receiving end of a blocktrades upvote this week, I can say I am for this proposal, If the big guys need help I would happily provide it for them. This does seem like a good way to "spread the wealth" without doing it unsupervised
So I think that you're looking at Steemit as a purely investment strategy as opposed to a social media platform. I'm looking at it from the Social Media perspective. Rewards are ancillary. Therefore, blocktrades not using all of his votes on a daily basis does not negatively impact the quality of content provided on the platform. On the contrary, bot votes for poor quality content does negatively impact the platform.
Now, the rewards are definitely a draw for any new user. Other users will like the idea that this is all based on a blockchain (others will never adopt for the same reason-something about my writing lasting for eternity is partially harrowing).
I don't think that whales need to be 100% active on the platform in order for it to be successful as the platform grows. There will be plenty of medium size fish who keep everyone afloat (think middle class in an economy). The uber rich do very little, the upper middle class does the most (trying to become uber rich), the rest of the middle class does what they can, and the poor are trying to climb up the ladder.
I think that in a mature Steemit economy, we will see something like that. And if a whale wants to augment their income on the platform again, all they have to do is put in some manual effort themselves (or to a delegate).