When posting, there are 3 options related to how a post manages payment: 50%/50% payment, decline payment, or 100% SP.
I suggest the introduction of a new option: "minimum comment fee". If author chooses that, then commenting will incur a minimum fee (0.1 STEEM?) or a custom one, as high as the author wants, set only for that post. If author chooses this option (which may be combined with any of the 3 above) then commenters won't be able to comment unless they pay that fee.
The comment fee may go to various places and, if this suggestion gets traction, I suggest a poll to crowdsource ideas. A few suggestions:
- comment fee goes to Steemit fund dedicated to the creation of new accounts (hence supporting the growth of the platform)
- comment fee goes to author 100% (as a form of tipping)
- comment fee is split between author and all commenters, on top of curation rewards
The rationale behind this suggestion is that many low-quality, irrelevant or spammy comments won't be posted at all, with a positive impact on the blockchain size and overall members experience.
The above text was posted identically, as an open issue, to the Steem GitHub repo.
If you want to contribute or debate, I would love to hear your ideas.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
This is a good point, since any limit on spam-type comments would be beneficial and refreshing.
At the same time, wouldn't it also be a good idea to limit those POSTS that are " low-quality, irrelevant or spammy"? From what I've seen during my 10 weeks on Steemit, it's more of a chore to work one's way through the constant streeeeeem of posts with trivial content than it is to read through any short comments.
Of course, limiting the posts might defeat the whole purpose / objective of Steemit. Quite possibly, we just have to learn to live with all those insignificant posts, and learn how to weed through them to find the quality posts.
That said, I do agree with your comment re the "impact on blockchain size." While it may not be seen as a serious issue now, it could became a major issue once Steemit grows a few thousand percent.
You can always curate your own authors feed, if you don't like them. It's not very difficult, you can just keep following the authors you like and unfollow the ones that you don't. It will create a "bubble", that's true, and when you'll get "out" in the wild, you'll always see the sea of meaningless stuff, but that's happening in any sort of social networking setup.
I believe you are very correct when you say "always see the sea of meaningless stuff."
I guess there's not much we can do about it, except to simply ignore it. Kinda like many things in our daily lives. :-)
I never go on 'New'.
I just keep as many followers as I can keep up with, and let them resteem new, interesting authors into my feed.
I see. Sticking to "New" is probably the best approach.
I'll most likely do that after a few months, but since I'm still relatively new, I'm going to keep searching through various feeds, searching for Steemians to follow and working to grow my community.
Then, I'll feel confident to screen out the "New."
Thanks for the input / advice.
p.s. Actually, over the past week, I have been going on NEW for only one reason. I go to the INTRODUCE YOURSELF stream and read which ever ones attract me. I've found some well-written intros by people who clearly have plenty to offer, and who will most likely produce quality content.
I give them a bit of advice and an upvote. And if the conversation with them seems to be substantive / interesting / worthwhile, I follow them.
I believe that's good for the future of Steemit, and hopefully for me too. :-)
Good piece of advice. Today I'm completing my first week here, and I've been reading and learning a lot about steemit. I'm mostly interested in blockchain technology and crypto, but can also enjoy about any good and constructive topic in general.
The way I use steemit, is by going only to the tags I want, like #gaming and #anime... yeah there's a lot of spam... But even new section is tolerable when you only choose the tag you want. (can't say that for all the tags though....)
Yeah, in one year I hardly remember going on "New", it's like drinking water from a hose. After a couple of months I also stopped visiting "Trending" too and stick with what I can manage.
I visit the new tab way more often than I visit the trending tab.
But when I want to discover new authors to follow and read from, I often "snoop" on other people's feeds and @majes.tytyty, I think you might actually like that little trick a lot.
When you are looking at somebody's profile you just add
/feedat the end of the url and suddenly you get a stream of fresh content that is curated by somebody that you respect or follow. You get direct access to their feed with posts from the people they follow.Here are two examples:
https://steemit.com/@dragosroua/feed
https://steemit.com/@mattclarke/feed
You broaden your steem horizons a bit without having to swim in the sea of meaningless stuff!
Great, thanks. I'll keep that in mind, and will soon give it a whirl.
As I commented on @majes.tytyty, I don't go to new section but the only in the tags I want... I think sticking to what you can manage is the best approach!!
If the other option is to limit the good posts? then I'd prefer to live with the insignificant posts.
How about, taking a fee from the author for every post they make after their second daily post? this will lessen spam... right?
A thoughtful and on its face practical sounding suggestion.
Although I've seen somewhat of a reduction in spam comments lately, I think your idea would help reduce them almost to non-existence.
Actually, the entire reward mechanism at Steemit needs an overhaul, but I don't have any original ideas at the moment. I'm glad to see that @mattclarke chimed in here, as I've also found his ideas appealing.
Steemit desperately needs some change to rewards that would encourage a change in the balance to a mass quantity of reader/curators supporting a smaller number of quality content creators.
😄😇😄
This sounds like Medium on steroids. Or on Steem.
I'm glad to have seen accounts that fearlessly flag spammers. It's a lot of hard work! Rightful flagging of spam must also be generously rewarded (after due investigation). - To me, it sounds complicated enough. On the other hand, having to pay, maybe 0.01 steem just for commenting wouldn't discourage me to post 'real' comments.
Glad to hear that :)
Now here is an awesome idea. Not only would it be awesome to see a lot of people paying to have their comments placed but it would rule out spamming comments for sure.
It would also give a little more reward to those that are authors and the people commenting and getting attention from all the followers now would have to pay something for it.
I would have to suggest this be something that the Author has complete control over and is able to use or not use to their discretion.
Also, the ability for the author to choose what happens to the "payment" would also be a great idea as it would be easy to add it as a "Tip" but also for the whale accounts maybe they would rather see the payments go to steem... or even possibly other steemians?
All in all I think it is a great idea and would love to see some type of implementation!
Great idea for sure, you got my gears grinding,
~ @Timbo
Yes, that's how I see it implemented, full control to the author.
Thanks for your support!
For sure, I would hate to see something like this not be implemented in the right way. It for sure has the ability to send shock waves through the community either good or bad.
Glad to be here to help out with supporting you.
I don't think I support this. If such feature becomes popular, it will severely limit the interaction that new users would be capable of. The small accounts will suffer alongside the spammers and I see that as counterproductive.
Additionally, I feel this goes against the free-speech ideals that are part of the essence of this platform. I really don't think authors should be able to make their posts into pay-to-speak areas.
I would rather keep seeing some spam comments than having such feature implemented.
'nice post'.
That kind of interaction?
All kinds of interaction. There is no practical way to systematically differentiate between the spam and the insightful comments that lead to meaningful engagement. I don't think we should deprive ourselves of the chance for the latter to limit the former. Spam is annoying, but not as annoying as a paywall, at least not to me.
He said that it would be optional.
You can do what you wanna do...
I noticed that, yes. Thus my "if this feature becomes popular" phrasing. In my opinion the idea has been presented clearly along with the reasoning for it. I'm just not in favor and wanted to make my opinion known. At least for now, I remain more or less convinced that such a feature goes against my idea of what this platform is and should be and the interests of the platform as a whole.
I like your suggestion because I also receive unrelated comments and spammy links. It also helps stop this form of reward-farming by 'just commenting'.
that's a very interesting term, never thought of this: reward-farming :)
'reward farming' is a big deal.
one account has thousands of sockpuppet accounts and thats what they do..then the comment-rewards are transferred to the mother account.
I like it.
I've previously suggested an option for the OP to set a minimum rep required to comment.
You're going to hear a lot of 'What about the people who don't have any SBD yet?', just like I hear 'What about the people who don't have a reputation yet?"
Objection handling is the same for both of our suggestions.
If you're new;
Thanks for the support, didn't know about your rep suggestion. The problem with rep is that it's a vanity metric (you can still post with low rep if you use the cli-wallet).
As for the mitigating the potential objections, yes, I agree with both.
There are still a few edge cases in which the comment fee can be abused, like, for instance, when someone posts an insult about somebody else and sets a ridiculously high comment fee, thus limiting the number of comments (or the possibility for the target to defend at all) making it seem legit. That's a form of extortion and I'm thinking at ways to mitigate this. Ideas?
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that cli-wallet workaround.
I just envisioned a warning above the 'reply' field.
We're a pretty smart bunch. If I post a furious rant or specific accusation about you, and set the requirement at anything but zero, I'm going to look like a bit of a putz.
You can always respond by downvoting the post, as I'm sure would many others.
That's true. Also funny :) And yes, downvoting is always available. I'm not resorting to it at all, by principle, but in some cases it may be a solution.
One big issue I can see with your suggestion would be that commenting would trigger the 'sign in' popup box, as it requires the Active Key, since it's spending from the wallet.
(Unless I'm missing something)
As things are right now, yes, it will trigger an active key popup, unless people are signed in with their master password.
Two thoughts.
Could it be set to apply only to steemians the author doesn't currently follow, perhaps even an automatic refund if the author likes the comment enough to follow the commenter?
Good morning
Commenting is essential for newcomers, you can write amazing blogs but you need to interact to tempt folks in to taking a look.
While I agree It may reduce 'spammy' comments, i think there's also a risk that some users may have 'fear of commenting' - and really, we need comments and interaction to grow.
Of course we need comments and I agree about reluctance from newcomers. But as long as this is optional, each author will see how this works for himself and if it doesn't work, he can just stop using that option.
The question I think is why should there be time spent on developing something that is essentially speech-restrictive that might or might not work. If it works well, it will become popular and participating on the platform will become largely protected by a paywall. On the other had, if it doesn't work well and the feature remains unpopular, then the time and effort to develop it would have been kind of wasted. To me at least, the possible cons seem to clearly outweigh the possible pros.
Are you aware that even your own "participation" or your account here on Steemit is behind a paywall? There is a fee paid for every account creation transaction. It is paid by Steemit INC, but it may not be paid if accounts number increases too much.
My point is that everything has a cost. If we make the cost of commenting obvious, spam will naturally decrease. And STEEM, as a token, will get more economical value. An advertiser who wants to appear as a commenter on a post will just have to pay a fee.
It's in line with the whole "attention economy" that Steemit is based on.
I am aware of that but surely wasn't thinking about it. It's very easy to forget about a cost when somebody else is paying for it ;)
Still, I don't see this as sufficient justification for more fees.
The best option is to ignore the comments which doesn't make any sense as long as they don't spam with external links and for those we already have the option to flag comments, so i don't think implementing something like this is needed.
Posting fees should be imposed on the authors too.
Yeap, that could be feasible. I can see an on / off situation: posting for free and allowing only free comments, posting for a fee and allowing only paid comments.
nice post, well i think it will be a good development and it surely reduce the irrelevant comments and also reduce spam and i like to go with second option of that proposal.
because good authors are spending hours and hours on creating posts and they truly deserve that tipping on their content.
nuther idea.
variation on the theme.
presently we can 'mute' an account..
how about having the option to 'pay to talk' an account..
over time that would differentiate the bots from the meat.
Or those the author follows are automatically exempt from the fee. If they really like the comment and follow the commenter, then the fee is automatically refunded.
perhaps a drop down menu full of options?
On the surface this looks good but I'd be worried that it would also present somewhat of a barrier to growth of the Steemit front end, as a whole. It could easily be seen as "newbie unfriendly."
Maybe if it were coupled with something else (number of comments left in the past 24 hours? Current voting power?) it might become more workable.
Still, it sounds like a pretty good idea... but I'd need to sit down and truly "get inside the heads" of your typical spammers and scammers to fully understand what an effective tool would look like.
It all depends on how many authors will use this. If it gets widely adopted, yes, it may create some barriers. But look at the typical Medium post: a lot pf claps, but hardly any comment. Only really viral posts have dozens of comments.
We may have a lot of comments on Steemit right now, but the real contribution to a meaningful conversation of many of them is close to zero.
What worries me about the comment level at the moment is that so many are left by upvote bots. I look at some of the daily stats, and comments per post are declining... I just wonder HOW badly they are declining, once you remove bot comments. Can't be pretty.
I really wish there were a way to increase interest in human curation and interaction...
Buna dimineata Dragos!
It can be an option... the other one that i can see is the author to choose a minimum regarding the reputation level of the persons who are going to add comments.
Most of the ones that are adding spam comments(or at least 90% of them) have the reputation level under 40. So the author can choose the option that only steemians with reputation level over 40 to be able to add comments.
Just a thought regarding the topic and like this we dont need to complicate with the fee as the big problem in this case will be distribution!
Have a great week-end!😉
Reputation is more or less a vanity metric, meaning you can still post via cli-wallet if you have zero rep.
I agree that reputation is more or less a vanity metric but i did not know via Cli-wallet somebody can post even with 0 reputation.
From what i notice around steemians with reputation over 50 add good quality content and comments and from here my idea...
Seems like the obvious solution is tying reputation to accounts on the blockchain so it can do what it is designed to across the board and limit garbage accounts/engagement - Is that possible? Does Reputation just exist as a component on Steemit?
Great minds think alike, George. I suggested the same here, sounds like it's not workable though.
Thanks a lot Matt. Yes sounds like its not workable. Dragos idea is great but then i think the fee will create a lot of talks about the distribution. On the other side i did not sow at least till now somebody with reputation level over 50 to spamm.
But something most be done with all this spammers!!!
While this will limit spam, I think it will also limit the quality posts from genuine people too. But I agree it's a good method... It's just one that's easily abused...
If the fee goes to the author, I'm pretty sure most people will make their posts need a fee to comment on... If it was dedicated to steem development I don't think this problem will happen.
I think this is a good solution, but will create new problems so I hope people brainstorm on it to make the (close-to-)perfect solution.
Good idea but it will not stop spamming. Only good control may stop this @dragosroua
If you have to pay to post crappy stuff, then you will think twice, at least.
Yes brother, you absolutely right...
Ooh well I better comment while I can for free. 😝
Interesting concept. Being a minnow, I quite like the comments. But ai can see a point, if I received many comments, that I would only prefer the quality ones.
Kinda stumps the "freedom of speech" scenario.
Could it create a situation where only the rich can comment? Or "Elites" or "Cliques" control the dialogue, whereby, they suoport each other, to reduce the financial impact?
It adds to part of my thinking that Steemit will create further Guild dissection.
Another, skeptical part of my brain, also keeps an eye on any Pyramid Scheme type of platform.
Very interesting post yet again.
All of the scenarios described by you may unfold. That's why I'm interested in a debate first, to try to see as many "holes" in this construction as we can.
I think that if we make this optional, we will be able to track trends better. We may see which authors are "colluding" with other authors. It will probably segment the conversation leading to more vertical conversations (more root posts compared with comments).
And if it's optional, people can reverse back to it at any time.
Notification of this post popped up while finishing the intro to my #Roadmap2018 draft which will focus around the fundamental economic 'backwardness' of STEEM becoming sustainable and thus scalable. Thus I'd add my support for this relatively minor 'feature' in its contribution to resolving the larger problem of 'Revenue generation' for the currency to function in rewarding 'valued content'...
which I guess I should briefly summarize as the exclusive function of leveraging of USER-ATTENTION in satisfying [their] objectives/interests, which is addressed:
A-KA "MARKETING".... as we must speak in terms of business, 'ACTION' would mean buying a product, but analogizing this closer to STEEM's content based function-context it could mean Voting, commenting, tagging, reporting; simply participating in some way that generally adds value to the system/network
So to avoid over-complicating this hat-tip of a comment for the particular idea of 'Pay-Per-Comment' or in reality 'written Advertising slots'..., I'll end by re-iterating the VALUE-GENERATION spawned by your idea of 'Pay-Per-Comment' as an OPTION granted to creators is both in:
PS- Right as I was about to end this rant I thought of the added implementation of 'turning on paid-commenting' being that the comments are then somehow more predominately displayed, perhaps via a customization mix of AD-like display configurations throughout the TOP-MIDDLE-BOTTOM of the actual post via HORIZONTAL banners, Verticles, embedded box ad formats, etc where the those interesting in paying to comment can maybe even have greatly option in HOW their text is displayed, like teaser/preview mode for longer text OR enabled images when default is then disabling embedded images in comments. There's a ton of opportunity to leverage here for greater demonetization of 'VALUE' created on STEEM by 'POSTS' and the users that actually CONSUME them.
Wow, that's a lot to take in : )
Thanks for the contribution, for the support of this feature and also for getting involved in the Roadmap2018, that's how a community grows.
As for the last part, related to how comments can be displayed leveraging many visual forms of attention-grabbing, this is at the UI level and I think it deserves a separate discussion. My proposal is at the core blockchain level, on the backend, and I think we shouldn't mix in UI components.
Other than that, I really like the idea of different UI options for comments (premium slots, for instance, displayed regardless of the votes received by a comment, etc).
I agree.
If we MUST have bots then charge them to exist.
A similar fee for Wallet Spam would be nice...
That's a bit more complicated, that wallet spam feature, but equally necessary. I'll think about it.
A minimun transaction limit could work for that.
This is a radical idea. When i first read it I though "no way" but the more I think about it, the more I have warmed to it. I don't know if a .1 SP fee would work, but maybe .01, and even that small amount would stop a lot of spam from being produced. The idea of paying a fee to interact is tough though, I certainly do most of my posting through commenting on others posts, so if I commented 100 times throughout the day, that would leave me down $10 SP (at the .1 SP rate). If I am spending my time interacting with others and also losing money, I don't know how long I would continue doing it. Interesting idea though
I wonder if tightening the bandwidth allocation would be a better approach. Would be fairer, IMO.
That could work as well, I suppose. An advantage that I see in this proposal is that Steem gets some economical value, it's actually worth something. Advertisers can use that if they want to post on someone's post, for instance.
I've thought about this for a bit and I like it.
People don't tend to value anything that's free.
If they find that they canNOT comment for free...
.......then they're gonna WANT to comment all the more.
I sense a business opportunity here...
...it would only work for posts that are worthy of comment though.
@dragosroua I love the idea of commenter fee and I hope something like this gets implemented. It would be HUGE !!!
good post
@dragosroua
I've been thinking about this idea of yours for a while now and I have a counter proposal. Why not have commenting or even posting power that gets depleted much like our voting power does right now. Or course, no slider and when it falls to a certain percentage, you can't post anymore until it regenerates. It can probably be adjusted in such a way that you can still comment relatively actively, but still would put the brake on accounts that create an excessive amount of comments and this is what the spammers need for their operation to be successful.
And if you have depleted your commenting/posting power, you can burn some steem to regenerate if you don't want to wait. And I do mean burn, not pay a fee to somebody. So it can counter a tiny bit of inflation too.
I was thinking that getting upvotes on your comments might also increase your commenting/posting power by a bit, but I'm not 100% sure it's a good idea. Maybe it is.
There is already a similar concept, called bandwidth in the Steemit whitepaper. Did you read it?
I read it months ago, but a lot of it flew over my head back then. But I have heard of the bandwidth thing, but as far as I remember, it was tied to the Steem Power you have. But yeah, maybe modification of the bandwidth thing that is already part of the system might be a solution I would be more likely to support.
That would be a thing to look upon