RE: Open Letter to Ned and Dan: You Badly Need a Communications/Community/Content Expert and I Hereby Nominate @stellabelle or @donkeypong For That Job
Dear Richard,
Wow. That took some serious guts to write. I commend you for your honesty and I thank you for thinking about me in the context of what you see as a solution. I believe that @donkeypong would be an excellent choice in that role.
I have also been experiencing the same things you mentioned with regards to the cognitive dissonance. It suddenly dawned upon me last month that Steemit was not created by artists/writers/curators who would instinctively know what needed to be done for future artists/writers/curators. We have a very detail-oriented programmer/visionary and an ex-private equity fund manager who knows a great deal about finance and markets. Steemit is an excellent bank and I greatly appreciate the blockchain and all the technical aspects of its construction. I also feel indebted to this site because it rewarded me for my writing, in a way that no other client has ever rewarded me for. Like all things, however, now, I do feel that I am not able to speak my mind, for fear of backlash and flagging. I did not see this coming.
I agree with your assessment that there seems to be a lack of emotional intelligence and an inability to listen, take feedback and then turn that feedback into action. This kind of thing does require a certain kind of personality and it also requires life experience and maturity.
I see the primary issue as a tug of war between attempting to create a decentralized, transparent system and a centralized chain of command. By posting as individuals on Steemit and letting the community comment freely, it gives the illusion of a decentralized system. However, when an unpopular hardfork goes into effect, despite the fact that many prominent members, @donkeypong being the most visible voice, it gives rise to a pause. I don't think anyone really knows or understands why the vote count is going to be changed to 5 instead of 40. In my mind, a reduction of votes equals a sort of constriction effect, like a boa constrictor wrapping itself around my neck, which leads to a sort of rationing of energy which leads to stress, which leads to me wanting to get off Steemit in order to reduce the stress levels. And, no, I still don't understand what the restriction of votes mean. I read a bunch of posts and rebuttals, but to be honest, even I don't understand why it was changed. I doubt that many people even have the foggiest idea. Perhaps in theory it is a good idea, but to an artist, with a visually-enhanced imagination, I equate fewer votes with a scarcity mindset. An abundance mindset would mean that people would not have restrictions and would be encouraged to love the posts on steemit so much that they could vote to their heart's content. This is the cognitive dissonance that Richard is describing so well.
When you have Vulcans (And I use Vulcans in a good way, as Spock is one of my favorite characters) making rules for regular people, it turns out that the regular people don't really understand the rules at all, and continue playing their own game in spite of the rules, because they were never made for them in the first place. Vulcans just need to be balanced by regular people, that is what I meant to add.
I guess if I ran this place, I would send a huge apology to Richard. And then I would thank him for opening my eyes to the truth. Then I'd sit down, get several drinks ready and just sort of soak in everything that has gone down so far, while continuing to sip my drinks. I'd start listening to the people who are the power users and I'd really start reading everything that minnows are complaining about. I'd take several days off the regular grind, and dive into solving the issues for the users, because I'd realize that the users will either make or break my future. I'd start with reading every response from The Steemit User Survey because I would realize that the answers to the problems lie inside there. Then, I'd build my own surveys, in an attempt to collect more data on how to improve Steemit. I'd respond to the data and make changes based on what I found, not on preconceived notions of how I wanted to change it.
I guess that is what I would do. I would not give up, but I would not continue down the same path either. I would become more like water, less like rock. I would realize that I would still be in the running to alter the course of history. That is why I'd change.
I think the voting thing isn't really important, and may be helpful. It's just not been explained very well.
Because of the slider, it doesn't change how much voting power you have overall. It just means that you can give one single vote a higher percentage of your total voting power for the day.
So, you can set your power to 10 and vote 50 times, all at the same power. Or you can do 5 at 100%. Or you can do 25 votes at 50%. Or you can mix it up.
So, to me, this could be helpful, depending on how one wants to use it. Set your voting power at the right setting and leave it alone, then you'll have the exact same thing as if you voted 100% today. It just needs to be communicated better.
As for some of the other stuff, yeah... communication could go a long way.
this is absolutely false
Looking through your link, I really don't see where there's disagreement. Not sure how you could say it's "absolutely" anything.
If your article is accurate, then I said the same thing. Thanks for your article btw, it was helpful and lined up with how it had been explained to me earlier.
Again, this is absolutely untrue. Your total voting power will change. If you're an active curator, it will go down. If you can now cast $50 worth of upvotes a day, you will be able to cast some dollar amount less than $50.
Hiding behind subjectivity doesn't change this, and neither does misrepresenting it as a feature. Or a bug fix for that matter.
Oh, I agree that it's not a bug fix. I'm still not grasping the nuance you're stating.
I have $40 worth of voting power for 24 hours today and I vote 40 times at 100%, each gets a buck.
I have $40 worth of voting power after update and i vote 40 times at 12.5% and each gets a buck? Or I can vote 5 times at 100%? Either way I get the same $40 worth.
Is that wrong?
Yes, that's absolutely wrong. As I explain in detail in that post. I'm not sure if you just didn't read it or what. I literally have no idea how you could read that and think the above quote is what I believe or was trying to explain. In fact, in the comment section to that post, i even accepted a bet that the above statement wasn't true.
If you start at 40/day max before the fork, you will end at somewhere between $5 and $40 max per day after the fork. Either extremely is unlikely, and it will probably end up somewhere near the middle. It mostly depends on how many people prefork were casting their full 40 (the more that were the less you will lose)
But after biophil's comment, you seemed to affirm his accuracy - though you didn't expect folks to work that way.
Your response That seemed to click for me. But in your article you stated In this example, the total voting power drops from 400 to 170? Does this point to the inconsistency in the total between now and after the change that I am apparently not grasping? Don't knock yourself out. What happens will happen. I'm just trying to understand.Even in biophils comment that you quoted, he says "This wouldn't change any weekly averages, but he could grab a bunch of influence in spurts. Still, he was almost certainly a lot better off before the change."
Basically, what hes saying is that you'll still lose out overall, but you will still be able to cast more vote power with your 100% vote (just not much more)
Yes. So your 100% vote will be stronger, just not 8x stronger (like it would have to be for you to "break even" on going from 40 to 5 votes.)... How much stronger depends on how many inactive curators there are that get a bump from the change.
Active curators will definitely lose out.... it just has yet to be seen how much. If I had to make a spitball guess, I'd say theyll lose about 1/2 of their daily vote power in money terms.
Because the total daily reward pool is fixed?
If that's the case, then THAT is what wasn't clicking for me. I was stuck on individual numbers.
Its two main reasons:
Right now, infrequent voters are leaving a huge amount of meat on the bone. The change to a 5 vote target effectively optimizes them. The extra money infulence they get has to come from somewhere.
Now the question is, how many of them are there? Its tough to speculate. More than none, for sure.
Ahhh, finally. Thanks for taking the time. It was the total pool that messed me up. As soon as I saw that part, it all clicked.
So my perspective was certainly too simplistic.
Thanks again.
what happens if I do what I did the other day, which was I think I voted a bunch of times, maybe around 30 or 40 times with my voting power set to 100%? I have a habit of voting for almost anyone who leaves a comment on my posts, sort of a thank you for taking the time to interact with my post. So I vote a lot. If I can give 14 people each $1.39 for leaving my post a good comment, then I feel better, less stress. What will happen now if I upvote 14 people who leave a comment on my post at 100% voting strength. What is the result of that?
In truth, nobody really knows what is going to happen. If everyone used 100% on the slider now, and voted exactly the same way after the fork but reduced the slider to 12.5%, nothing would change (or at most it would be minimal).
However, there may be very significant changes in voting behavior, not everyone uses 100% (I use the minimum 1% quite often for example, and I will be forced into a weight 8x higher), so it all becomes a question of guesswork.
I agree the way this has been pushed out has been very problematic, including the fact that it was falsely labeled as a "bug fix".
I had this as a reply that was never submitted ... as you can see, our math (thankfully) agrees! I figured I may as well chime in as I had it written ... now if only I could click that button more appropriately ...
@stellabelle: The way I see the change is like this:
Today you vote at 100% and an upvote i (s worth 1.39$ and consumes a certain amount of VP (Voting Power) in a manner that 40 upvotes (the recommended upvotes/day) at 100% brings the VP to 80%. VP recovers back to 100% in 24h.
After the fork, if you vote with 100% the reward will be 8x what it was before, so it will be 11.12$ per upvote. At the same time it will consume 8x more VP, so 5 upvotes (compared to 40 before) will bring you to 80% VP which will recover over the next 24h.
If you would want to keep your upvotes to the current reward rate, at 1.39$, you will only need to adjust the slider to maybe around 13%. If you do that, the VP burning rate will also remain as it is now.
I know there have been many discussions around this, but I also see it as an advantage. You can keep your current voting habit without burning the VP too fast if you use the slider. If you really liked a comment/post, you can supersize your vote up to 8x compared to what you can allocate at the moment by voting it at 100%.
All in all, if this indeed gets implemented in the next fork, be careful. I understand you have habit to vote often, if you don't use the voting slider to decrease the VP used, you will burn through your VP very quickly.
Edit: following sigmajin's comment below and re-reading his last post there are some things that change what I have said above. After the fork, @stellabelle's vote value does not remain the same if she votes 40times a day and using the slider, it decreases as other whales vote also and their vote has now more power. @sigmajin's post is a bit hard to grasp at first read but the bottomline I see is this:
If @stellabelle and @someotherwhale would vote every day, @stellabelle 40 times/day and @someotherwhale 5 times /day, they would each have an upvote value of 1.39$/upvote if their's SP is the same (and vote at exact times to make VP efficient).
In total, their reward would be: 62.55$ (1.39$ x 45 votes).
After the fork, the vote value at 100% would increase the upvote reward for both @stellabelle and @someotherwhale at 6.255$/upvote but that means that @someotherwhale eats up half of the total reward with his 5 votes and overall @stellabelle offers less reward every time she uses the slider to vote 40 times and as a total, overall.
So after the fork, if @stellabelle is using the voting slider to still vote 40 times within those 20% top Voting Power, her upvote value would be 0.78$ (62.55$ /2 whales /40 votes) as opposed to 1 upvote at 100% would be 6.255 (62.55$ /2 whales /5 votes) .
I hope @sigmajin agrees with this?
this is absolutely false. You can read about the real effects of these changes in my most recent blog post. Ive already linked in this thread, so im not going to link it again. But if youre an active curator, this change will definitely decrease your total voting power in money terms.
Kind of.
Basically, lets say stella's 45 votes right now are worth 62.55 like you say. If she is voting at 100%, that 62.55 is probably the max possible value her votes could have before the fork..
After the fork, he the max daily value of her votes will be somewhere between $7.81 and $62.55. Both of these extremes are very unlikely. In reality, it will probably be somewhere close to in the middle of these two values.
WHich is to say, stella, and every very active curator, will most certainly lose some influence. How much influence depends on how many @someotherwhales there are who have been casting 5 votes a day and will now be "optimized" by the change in vote target
I'm not the techy guy, so can only give you my understanding. It might be a bit flawed, but it made sense to me when explained the other day.
All you'd need to do is reduce your percentage to compensate for the new voting power. So if you might want to reduce it to 20% or something like that to basically do the same thing as 100% today.
A post making it absolutely clear would be helpful. Maybe someone made one, but if so I missed it.
I actually like this particular change. As long as folks know how to use it, if someone with some real upvote power only wants to give a few folks strong votes on a given day, they can give five people several times more power than today. Kinda cool, IMO.
I do NOT want to reduce my voting strength. That is what I am asking, what will be the consequence if I do not reduce my vote strength and I continue to do exactly as I do?
If you keep voting the same, at 100%, then your voting will not recover as quickly. I suppose it'll average out eventually so that it's similar anyway.
Obviously I'm not tech support. I think I understand the gist of it though. I hope that helps. :)
so, basically, I will no longer be able to give 14 different people $1.36 ?
Please keep going Leah, Im having a party over this :)
Actually, you will. You might be able to give that many people more. It's just that if you go over a certain amount, it'll take longer to recover. If you're only doing about 14 or so a day though, you'll probably find that they'll all get a little more than they would today. You'll just never get back to 100% (which will be much stronger than it is today).
By the way, your ex husband agreed to the interview, no wonder
There is nothing impossible or even difficult to adjust your voting power. Just do it.
You really should adjust your voting strength according to the value of the post or comment you are voting for. That is something that humans should do, it's what separates us from bots. We should value great posts and nice comments differently. They are not equally worthy.
When you upvote nice comments with full power, you are basically allocating as much rewards as you can for people because they said something nice to you. It's great to thank for comments with an upvote, but it's not fair to distribute big sums of money for them. Powerful votes should go to great authors.
I just wrote about this: https://steemit.com/steem/@samupaha/humans-are-better-than-bots-at-valueing-posts
well why would you vote a just a commentat 100 percent, unless of course you really love them and what to make them a gift....why not indeed. But i think the voting slider is a great thing and helps me dose my voting like never before. So once this is truly realized !! Where indeed is the reason for complaining about this clear improvement brought by this new App ?? I think though that it could have been implemented differently as it did just happen over night without much notification to users and the general community. Would have been nicer to have discussed it perhaps more ! this i think is more the troubling part no?
Prospect theory!
What I've been thinking that there is a serious lack of UX chops in the Steemit's team. It is exactly the same problem that used to plague Linux community, as well as all other software in the early days. Oh, and a lack of communication is another hurdle. So I'd like to second the bit about learning the gripes of minnows, because it is one of the steps in good UX. But it goes a bit farther than just listening, and uses other tools as well, because people don't always know how to address the problems that they are having. That is the peoblems are often caused by something other than what user thinks, but listening to complaints is a good start to isolate the issues.
You're just now coming to realize this? You're absolutely right, UI / UX is definitely not a strong core competency with Dan's team(s).
The sad truth is @stellabelle that Steemit.com is not a democracy or even an anarchist paradise as we would like to believe. It is a Dictatorship run by two kings who have lost touch with reality and the will of the people. It is the "thirst for power" that destroys all great civilizations, governments and leaders.
As long as @ned and @dan (aka @dantheman) continue to act in "their own interest" the community will suffer and eventually wither up and die. It is already happening and they are too blind to see that they are just "adding fuel to the fire".
In the 3 plus months I have been on steemit the only true "glimmer of hope" I have seen was when they "Open-Sourced" steemit.com allowing for others to have the chance to create "Alternative Versions of Steemit". But now I even question that decision as they locked Steemit-Alternatives to the Steem Blockchain in the Open-Source Licensing. It seems as if they merely took that action in a futile attempt to expand their power and reign to an even greater pool of minnows and servants.
From what I have read of @dan's posts he is an absolutely brilliant person (or has a brilliant person writing his content). Either way it is blatantly obvious that he and the rest of the Steemit, Inc. team have become complacent, arrogant and completely oblivious to the effect their decisions and actions are having on the people who are fighting to survive and ensure the survival of this amazing platform.
Come on, Leah. This job was made for you. I can see you in an office helping to manage this community! New York or Virginia?
I agree, I would love to see @stellabelle as Communications Liaison for Steemit, Inc. but only if @dan and @ned actually allowed her to do her job. It doesn't appear to me that they have any interest, desire or intention on actually empowering the people who have made them and put them into their current positions of power. They appear to have become "power hungry" and only taking actions they feel will extend their power or the domain in which they reign.
Well said, @stellabelle.
@stellabelle
Can you please stop calling people anything other than people?
It feels dehumanizing. I know you mean it as term of endearment, but it's not endearing.
Speaking as someone who probably qualifies as vulcan in your eyes, your attempts to dehumanize us are quite illogical because they are detrimental to your efforts to build what people would call an emotional bond.
I'm sorry.. I had to laugh out loud at this. We regularly refer to people on this site as Whales, dophins, minnows and even plankton but calling a techy sort of person a Vulcan is dehumanizing? Umm... there is something missing in this equation
LOL - I agree!
One is a reference to their financial station and is more like a title, such as Dr.
The other is a reference to their perceived inability to connect with others at an emotional level, or worse to care about the emotions of others. So yes it's a huge difference.
umm.. right you roll with that if it works for you LOL
Someone build a safe spot. ;) (only said in fun)
No SAFE SPACES this site will never become REDDIT.....PLEASE!
Hell I hope everyone else actually got the joke too!
That's something I'm still trying to sort out about this place. Humor appears to be severely lacking.
Agreed! lol - You have to type: I AM KIDDING
What are you smoking dude, there was nothing about her reference to Vulcan's that was dehumanizing.....as if that is even possible since Vulcan's are not HUMAN. I read her comment and I saw nothing but admiration and respect for the Vulcan people, the same admiration and respect she shows to everyone. Even those who speak out against her, bad mouth her or try and discredit her!
Looks to me like a volunteer has stepped forward with a plan. A Steemit leader with a plan and a vision. The next step is up to @ned and @dantheman. Gentlemen?
Just go to sleep dear
No wonder you are famous around here! Nicely said. I hope it will be received.
I guess maybe I didn't understand as well as I thought I did. Of course, as @smooth said, nobody really knows. That was the way it was explained in an earlier thread on this topic.