I try to stay abreast of all things Steem, but at times - things simply go over my head. I need to see them in action and watch how the application affects me and others around me.
This is sometimes good, and sometimes bad. For HardFork 20, I think we all know that seeing things in action were pretty devastating for newbies. Necessary for the future? Yes, we've been told that now, our platform will be much more scalable for the future. But maybe, just maybe - the timing wasn't exactly right?
It seemed to me that we took an awfully big hit. As the founder of a community almost entirely filled with newbies - perhaps my perspective was a little skewed. However, I know that people like @shadowspub, @simplymike and myself (along with countless other unsung heroes) handed out delegations to newbies as fast and carefully as we could, in order to help them stay and keep our platform from losing people as quickly as we were signing them on. Were we successful? I don't know. I know that we lost a lot of good people who were enjoying the platform.
The reality of that makes me pause a bit on HF21, specifically on the content rewards proposal. HF21 will move the current rewards from 75 (author) 25 (curator) to 50/50.
I'm concerned that though this push for greater curation rewards is intending to put a greater emphasis on rewarding the recognition of quality content - that what will actually end up happening is a loss, once again, to the small accounts.
Small accounts already have small percentages of the curation rewards because their rewards are based on their vote (which... is small). However, large accounts will be taking an even larger chunk of the curation rewards, since now more is available to them.
Is this not the makings of "the rich keep getting richer, while the poor keep getting poorer"? Will this cause an even greater divide between the Steemit classes, making it MORE difficult for newbies to grow? At least with 75% author rewards, we are giving Steemians the chance to make their content attractive enough to lure curators. We ALREADY have a system in place that encourages quality content. Abuse will always happen and can never be truly eradicated from a system. Why are we making it that much harder on the people who are really trying to produce good content?
Especially when their small curation rewards won't make up for what they're losing in author rewards. Are we really considering taking from the poor and giving to the rich?
This proposed 50/50 change may or may not work to the end that it intends to implement. That's not the point of this post. The point of this post is this:
There are enough people who are worried about this change that I think it would be wise to table this change for now, and consider it for another Hard Fork.
There is enough going on in HF21 that will bring potential progress -WITHOUT adding in this curation rewards change. For the sake of the community, (that is mostly minnows with small votes, and therefore small percentages of the curation rewards) let's allow them to grow instead of the continued slaughter that seems to be focused mainly on them.
I know that there are a lot of people that feel this way - but are there enough voices to be heard? Instead of talking amongst ourselves, let's just see how many people agree that we should wait on the change from 75/25 to 50/50 rewards.
If you think we should wait on this change and take it out of HF21, please simply put your name as a comment below. If we have enough voices, perhaps our witnesses who represent our community will speak for us.
P.S. I had considered not writing this. I don't like drama, don't want to stir the pot, and quite frankly - feared that it might cause retribution! And then I reconsidered. If I can't speak my heart and mind on the platform that I love, out of fear of being silenced , then this isn't the platform that I thought it was. If I would rather stay silent than possibly effect change, then I am more concerned for myself than my community. And so - I spoke.
