Hey @happymoneyman, thanks for the video!
Would you mind sharing the source of @ned's quote from Korea? Do you have a video link or something? It's interesting to know that he considers an account-based voting system for steemit, I don't think this has been mentioned before in the communication with this community.
Actually the vision that was defined for Steem in the very beginnings was this one here:
Steem was created to return value to those who create value. [Keynote Speech Ned Scott Steemfest Amsterdam 2016]
Now on one hand that refers to content creators (as you perfectly mentioned in the video), but on the other hand it also includes the curators who provide their valuable attention.
So the vision wouldn't just be to sort or organize content (bring the best to the top as you said), but to create a self-sufficient eco-system where value is created and evaluated through the members of the community.
With excessive vote buying that vision has been currupted lately, since attention doesn't necessarily have to be earned (through value creation) but can be easily bought now.
Steem actually aims to be the modern version of local communities we all know from real life - where one can meet and interact with like-minded people. In contrast to centralized systems, the value that's brought into the network by the members of the community, doesn't belong to one single account who runs the network but to all participants - and is then distributed among those who contribute most.
Lately, we've distanced ourselves a bit from the original idea of Steem. While value creation, community building and the overall growth of the network were the main ambitions of Steem in the first year. Now personal financial benefit, immediate return and inflated follower statistics seem to be trending.
I by myself believe that only organic growth is sustainable growth, and that we need to be careful to not become one of these unsubstantial platforms where no real social interaction is taking place anymore.
If I had to define one single goal for Steem in 2018 then it would be: retention. The user experience is the single most important KPI for a social network - whether it's decentralized or not.
Enjoy Yosemite @happymoneyman!!! I'm a bit jealous now. Was there for the last time at the age of 5 and loved it :-))
Hey @surfermarly.
I think this video is what you're looking for.
Personally, I have a strange feeling much of what was said has been misconstrued and people are jumping to conclusions.
I'm looking at the SP I earned. I can't see why Steemit Inc. would want to make that worthless. So I'm guessing, maybe the most organically popular to the point of trending post could have $2 worth of rewards next to it, but since it received 10000 votes, it sits in the number one slot. That would solve many problems(at least in the reward pool department). These folks could then spend $1000 for their 5 votes and stay at the bottom and from there they can stop misleading other members into thinking they are popular and good at what they do.
People seem worried about abuse but imagine if someone made 10000 accounts just so they could trend every post while their post only has $10 beside it. They could just sit there and look foolish. It would be incredibly easy to figure out if someone is using a trail of sock puppet accounts. We wouldn't have to sit around arguing about whether or not that member is exploiting the system because it would be painfully obvious. And their rewards would be much easier to flag away. They'd be left with one option. Organic growth.
I'm not saying this is how it's going to be. I'm saying that's how it could be. A wild guess. A shot in the dark. We wouldn't have to be guessing if these communications were clear.
Clear communications would relieve a huge pain point for the community. I should have to watch a 2 hour talk that is half in Korean for a 30 second quote about Steemit Inc's vision. Agreed
I think there are a lot of solutions on the board for blockchain identity that may help with the multiple sock puppet account. It will be really interesting to hear how they solve for that. It will need to be addressed or it won't make sense.
Moving from one experiment to the next just means leaving old problems behind and creating new ones. The issues many face now could be easily solved by placing posts like yours(don't take it personally) into the promoted tab when the use of these bots is detected. Then make the self vote something that can't contribute towards trending status. Those tiny changes would help push all of the organically popular content to the top. Something so simple yet seemingly unimaginable to so many. The common sense approach. Your post here today would be marked as an advertisement/paid programming. The high value self voted content would lose it's automatic advantage over everyone else, and from there everyone is given an even playing field. From the wealthiest to the poorest, it would be the content coming first, not the bank account or the false image presented when one purchases their fame.
That would be indeed an excellent solution.
Ned gives a talk in the beginning and then speaks a panel for quite a while. It's great info. I used the 10 second skip ahead button a lot to get to the english parts.
Yea, I was really interested to hear him talk about his vision. He answered a lot of questions I had in my own mind for the future or Steemit. He also mentioned the "super linear rewards curve" This lines up to your good point about being rewarded as curators. It sounds like it will be shifting towards rewarding people who vote on content first, get the biggest reward.
Now some speculation:
I would guess that the number of votes per day would need a cap. Let's just say 10 votes per day per account. Then curators would need to be careful to only vote on the very best content. If they were using bots, their bot may waste the 10 votes on sub-par content. So real curators would have an incentive.
I love the analogy of "local communities". It's true. I interact with people on Steemit, who I would want to be around in the real world. That's definitely different from my Twitter account. It's a special thing about Steemit that shouldn't be lost. Ned's north star seems to be curating content with cryptocurrency incentives. His main goal is to find a way to sort the best content towards the top. He will keep tweaking the algo to make that happen.
You make a great point that retention is a big part of it. I was recently a little discouraged with the overall state of the platform. I felt the shift you mentioned away from community, content, and curation and towards gaming the system. I would imagine a lot of others felt the same. I've been more optimistic lately because the community stepped up and slowed the spam. It's constantly changing. I'm happy to know Ned's vision and that he's going to continue to tweak Steem to help it thrive. It was really interesting to hear him talk about the SMT's as an experiment ground for changes we may use on Steemit someday.
Yosemite was wonderful. I did ice water dips in crystal clear ponds under waterfalls. I just freaking loved it. That place is stunning. Nature and moving water is energizing for the soul as you know very well @surfermarly Cheers