Steem - Reward distribution Proposal
Hey everyone, in the last months I have been thinking a lot about the future of Steem/Steemit and I've noticed a lot of problems with the fairness in rewards distribution and I also noticed that there is a huge discordance going through Steem resulting in Flag-wars and people insulting each other and similarly ugly things.
What is the problem?
This is happening since while some people spend hours working on their posts, others post a Poem and a "Merry Christmas" and get 400$ out of it.
While some people get rich with a few Bikini photos others post photos of amazing trips around the world and get $3.
There are even tons of people out there who don't get anything for their hard work and would be happy to get $3 per post.
But, while a lot of people think the problem are the people who vote for others I think that's not completely accurate.
A short case study:
Let's say, someone I follow posts something I like, I will leave him a like, and I most probably won't consider how many rewards he already got for it and if his post was really worth all of it.
And, to be completely honest that's also not the question the current voting mechanisms asks the users.
How the System works right now you are asked:
How much of the rewards YOU can give does this person deserve?
While the question it should really be asking:
How much is this post worth in TOTAL?
But, how do we get from the question a) to b)?
How I would solve it:
That's why I propose the following:
When upvoting in my "ideal future" you would be asked how much of your rewards you want to be used at max AND what you think is the max value you think the post deserves.
Let's say, my friend posts a merry Christmas post with a small Christmas video he found, I obviously want to upvote it but I also will restrict the reward I want him to receive, to 10$ since he spent no effort at all writing the text and posting the video.
When I read an immensely interesting post, on the other hand, I'll definitely upvote it and will want it to deserve as much as possible.
I believe implementing this system can result in a fairer reward distribution and can also help the people to decide how much a post is worth for them.
Definitely, this will change how voting works right now, this means that your vote power would not be removed already, it would be reserved and slightly paid back as soon as the value reaches or overcomes the value you think it is worth.
This way you will still be able to vote for something you like, but, make sure that the reward of the post won't be more than what YOU think it is actually worth.
Additionally, following the nudge theory (read more about it: here) the initial total value bar value should start off at the average value of the category and not at 100% to make sure users have to think before assigning a high value or assign automatically the average value.
But how exactly would that change the rewards?
The result would be the following, let's imagine someone made a post and 3 people upvoted it:
| Upvoter 1 | Upvoter 2 | Upvoter 3 |
|---|---|---|
| 50$ max 75$ | 50$ max 200$ | 50$ max 90$ |
In the current system that would result in 150$ rewards which is higher than what Upvoter 1 and Upvoter 3 had planned.
The new System would work as follows:
| Event | Post value | Secondary result |
|---|---|---|
| Upvoter 1 upvotes the post with 50$ | 50$ | - |
| Upvoter 2 upvotes the post with 50$ | 75$ | Upvoter 1 receives a return of VP in the value of 25$ |
| Upvoter 3 upvotes the post with 50$ | 90$ | Upvoter 1 receives a return of VP in the value of 25$ & Upvoter 3 receives a return of VP in the value of 10$ |
This way the payout value is way closer to what the majority of the voters thought it should be than it is currently the case.
I think this would be a way to balance rewards on Steem and to distribute them more fairly among the users.
This way a whale still can upvote a post with 100$ because he thinks other people should start noticing it, but he if he thinks the max value should be 100$ as well, he will start getting VP back while others appreciate it.
Concluding
This addition can help to balance the rewards on Steem and also help people to really think about how to distribute their rewards to create a fair competition without having to regulate anything.
Sounds Interesting :)
I agree with u again haha :D
I like this in theory, but more thought needs to be put behind how the vote is refunded. If I'm reading/understanding correctly it looks like voter 1 receives 100% of his vote back?
Maybe this is more meant for whales and not necessarily dolphins/minnows, but if I get a good vote on a low-value post, but lose all my curation rewards due to it exceeding my post limit what's the point of my curating?
Once again, I think this is a great idea, but I feel like some thought still needs to be put in the refund/curration side, but that's just my opinion.
Yeah, definitely still deserves some thought regarding the curations.
That's why I put my Model up for discussion to get some interesting input to improve it.
I agree on that since someone will try to abuse it anyways!
Sounds interesting and I very much appreciate your thoughts, but I don't think that the solution would be very user-friendly. There are already many questionmarks for new users when using STEEMIT.
And for STEEM(IT) to go mainstream - it has to be as simple as possible.
Also - this won't help with cycle-jerk votes from users who upvotes each other - most of the time with a huge stake.
To be honest - the biggest problem right now are our human flaws. On the one hand we want fairness and give people what they deserve, but on the other hand we want to support our friends, colleagues and family.
And why would I want to cap the amount that my family-member can make on STEEM? Wouldn't make any sense for me. Even if it were just a simple post.
STEEMIT has to decide what it wants to be: social network? Medium alternative? Reddit alternative?
All those things have different priorities when upvoting something.
Yeah, we won't be able to save the system from abusive users who do things on purpose, the idea of my system would be to make people think about the rewards they give. Like I mentioned to another user, if we can reach 10% of the users with that, that'd be a huge success already.
About the usability, I agree that we have to make it as easy to use as possible for new users. It wouldn't be much of a problem to hide this bar for users with less than x VP and enable it with a explanation as soon as they reach it.
I totaly agree with you.
Upvoted
I think it's a pretty darn cool idea and this also increases the power of the people with less SP - everyones vote will matter
Exactly, that's what I am thinking
cool mate
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that capping the rewards is something that should be left to the voters (if you think flag wars are bad...).
I still believe that the easiest solution is to limit your ability to upvote a specific account to 2 times per week: Upvote work as before (possibly with the two upvote options I mention below: a "upvote for money+rep" or "upvote for rep"), but you can't upvote a specific user name more than twice a week.
That means people who write posts or comments can be guaranteed some form of payment (through self-vote) without being allowed to spam the pool, while also limiting the power of people who run bots or circle voting schemes. (But still allows people the flexibility to up-vote posts in their interest/friend group ).
Also, steemit needs to get a lot clearer about how that reward pool works.
The problem is that people would just distribute their steem to different accounts and upvote them with these.
It still increases the effort required at very little cost to other users: an easy fix that should at least remove the low-level vote spamming.
People are always going to try and vote-spam: low effort=high payoff. The only way to fix it is to increase the effort (without discouraging others), or lowering the payoff.
The problem with giving users the power to lower payoffs is the flame-wars (or the current run of downvotes). Potentially a fix that is less likely to be abused is to simply cap the amount of the reward pool an individual can claim in a day/week/monthly period.
I completely agree with you! I appreciate your strategy how posts should be upvoted, in a way that nobody gets rich with ridiculous posts.
Really nice post, @raycoms!
Your proposed way of curation would be a much better reflection of the actual value of a post!
wow very good article sandiers got +500$ per post only writting FK GAEJIN or what they make there soo not fair
thx for share this great article