Welcome to CI

https://www.collectiveintelligence.red/

I, @anarchyhasnogods, have built a platform for Steem.

Collective Intelligence is a new platform built to work with the Steem blockchain. At the moment there are a limited amount of features, but what feature are available are powerful on their own. The focus of the platform is its alternative model of curation and a purpose-made trending feature. Going forward we intend to expand into a variety of other areas of Steem, ranging from new implementations of posts to entirely different uses of the chain such as games. This platform is still in beta, and not guaranteed to fully work.

Rather than users voting using the Steem blockchain directly, our curation system refers to the votes submitted by users to determine how our central account (@co-in) votes. Like the Steem blockchain, votes do not always have the same impact between users; unlike Steem, however, these votes are not based on monetary wealth, but on our measurement of curation ability. We currently determine this measurement based on the agreement between the user in question as the rest of the users on the service. This is the same general idea as curation rewards on Steem, but with one key difference: large amounts of Steem are not needed for users to personally earn curation rewards. Users new to this blockchain can make money reading content without needing to invest time in anything other than reading content.

The curation system works in multiple steps.

First, users manually submit posts to the curation system at the price of one of our tokens (more on that later). The post is added to one of the predetermined categories. A single post can be submitted to multiple systems for users to vote on, but our central account will only vote on the post based on whichever submission finishes first (whether it hits the vote cap or time cap).

Next, users on the post within our system. Users can choose the category they want to see posts from, but they are not able to choose specific posts. (This helps with vote manipulation and ensures each post reaches a required number of votes.). Once the user receives a post the user can rate it -1, 0, or 1. After enough users have voted on a given post, the overall rating is calculated based on the users’ votes and their curation ratings. The overall rating is then used to determine the change to be applied to each user’s curation rating, if their vote was similar to the overall rating their curation rating will go up in value, otherwise it will remain unchanged or go down. Every user’s curation rating starts at 0, and will be raised over the course of rating posts (this helps with avoid malicious users and bots being able to manipulate votes). This does not pretend to be unbiased, my goal is to simply create a platform that attracts a specific kind of person, and then let them decide where it drifts from there. Although, I may give it the occasional nudge.

Finally, when the post has been voted on, the post is added to a list to be displayed on our trending page. This trending page does not distinguish tags or categories of any kind. Currently it is just the top voted posts that have gone through our system in the last few days. (Formatting works on markdown or html, but not both.)

Future Plans

I spent a year and a half working on this, often five or six hours a day. I learned much of what I know about programming from building this and I refuse to allow it to stop here. This is my first programming project of this scale.

Our most exciting upcoming feature is a platform for debates. As of yet we are unaware of any major platforms like this on Steem,and would require a specialised frontend and judgement system to work out well. Debates between only a few people can miss a lot of facts, finer details, and important points, often simply becoming a scripted affair where each side merely repeats the points they always do; however, if we create a system where anyone can join the debate as equals, we’re more more like to capture the whole story, and hopefully give people a much better understanding of all sides. There are other forms of debates that are interesting too, spectating debates between political rivals is popular in many circles. A major problem of debates is that people on each side never change their mind, but what if they had to argue for the other side to make money? To avoid looking foolish they would have to actually get an understanding of the other sides arguments, which has a chance to change a few opinions at the very least. After I finish the debates aspect, I will move onto even more creative uses of Steem.

Blockchain games can be interesting, and can often be another way for users to make money at the same time as having fun. I think @steemmonsters is taking a step in the right direction in this regard, but from playing Runescape, CS;GO, TF2, and Magic the Gathering I realised one of the largest problems of a game economy. Unless you go through the effort of creating some way in which as many items are destroyed as are created, you have to keep putting in the effort of creating new iterations of items to stave off inflation and keep the community buying crates, packs, or whatever it is you sell. Intended or not this is usually what keeps games releasing re-skins, getting needlessly complicated to learn, or slowly making old cards/items useless with power creep. If this platform succeeds I plan I creating a game that uses blockchain technology to help fix these problems. (Destroying all game items on use, and keeping them locked into tiers, would alone do wonders for long-term stability and usability at any price-bracket. I already have it mostly designed, and I definitely didn’t stop there with the changes from a “typical” game.)

The existence of groups is an integral part of the Steem ecosystem, and they have potential to be unlocked. Lack of user interaction is a problem, and not one that the groups themselves are necessarily at fault for. Many of them are formed around curation, and how much can the average user really do when it comes to that? The answer seems to be not much. Bringing curation to the average user is a step in the right direction, but I don’t think that’s the end. The next step is bringing groups to the average user. Giving groups their own curation systems, running group debates, running game tournaments, and so much more could bring a new level of user interaction to groups. Gamification and bonuses for being an active member of a group could push groups to never before seen heights on this platform.

Rewards

Reward distribution is still under development, but I can explain how it currently works. The currency of the platform is called “GP”. This is not an “official” token in any regard, it is centralised and stored as memos on the steem blockchain (head over to @co-in to see it in action). This is not the most efficient method, but it works for now. Payouts for users are 33% Steem, and 66% GP. Users can also deposit Steem for GP at any time. This GP is used to buy “tokens” that have different positive effects for them when using the platform. There is an “upvote” token that gives users a slightly larger vote on their posts, an advertisement token which makes their post more likely to be seen (both in our system, and our trending), and the token for adding posts (each user is given 10 of these for free on first using the platform, for now). The rewards for voters are calculated based on the curation rewards on the post, and on their curation rating (the higher the average curation rating, the higher the total rewards). Ten percent of the curation rewards from a post are given to the user that submitted it. Steem rewards for voting are not paid out right away, and are instead saved as a value called “steem-owed”. As steem makes it to the @co-in account roughly 50% of it is used to pay users the Steem-owed, roughly 45% goes to users who delegate to the @co-in account, and roughly 5% goes to people marked as owners in the system (which is only me right now). To avoid shifting through massive amounts of data, only users active in the last 30 days or so have their steem-owed paid, this may change in the future. Currently Steem that goes towards tokens will not be distributed right away. (They may be delegated back to CI, and saved for use on later projects, they may be used to payout accounts if that gets too far behind, or they may undergo the normal distribution of rewards.)

This platform is very different from the typical vote bot, and I’m not going to lie, right now delegation to it will likely earn less than voting for yourself or selling your votes to someone else. That does not mean it is not a worthwhile effort, especially if it helps Steem in the long run, and as I release new updates I may give special bonuses based on current delegations. Free items in the games? Special debate formats?

Want to join in on the platform? The link is https://www.collectiveintelligence.red/.
Warning, it may take some time to log in or multiple tries. It uses the blockchain to login and can be slow at times.

I haven’t tested it in anything other than chrome and firefox was doing a bit of weird stuff for me early on, so we recommend chrome. Also nodes are down so logging in may take a few tries.

Oh, and here is the github. Not everything is on here, I do need to keep a secret or two. (Actually it’s because I’m afraid to leak my keys because somebody stole 150 steem from me and I can’t figure out how they got out smh)

https://github.com/Collective-Intelligence