Good Morning Steemians & Fellow Witnesses,
Over the past couple of months Steemit has gone through a lot, to say the least. From HardFork's to price fluctuations and user growth, Steemit has been experiencing some growing pains. I believe that there are things that need to change in order for this community to grow into the mainstream and become something great... and its more then just adding profile cover images.
Let's start with a hot topic that has been going in and out of the minds of many Steemians recently and this is...
Self-Voting
To get straight to the point, Self-Voting has become an issue. There have been arguments both Pro and Con to the issue but at this point I think its all bad. When talking with most people, even those in favor of completely eliminating the Self-Vote, they argue that without that initial self-vote their posts would never gain any traction. They look to the many many great articles by new or low valued accounts that go to the way-side due to no initial visibility. It's true, when users see a post has Value they tend more often to automatically up vote this content. Not to say I don't up vote my own content on initial posting would be a lie, I do it as well, but there must be another way... I'll get back to this.
Another major way Self-Voting is an issue is Reward Pool Draining by High Value Accounts Self-Voting and this is always a very hot topic. It usually ends in hatred towards other users , down voting or flagging, and just negative behavior in general with comments, revenge posts etc and this is all bad for a social platform, it will drive people away. There is only so many rewards in a given timeframe to be distributed amongst the entire platform and with large accounts reaping, large amounts from the reward pool, it takes away from the small guy. Although a higher percentage of the reward pool is still proven to be in the favor of the smaller accounts , shouldn't good content be rewarded over account value?
SPAM, now that is a major issue and to make it all the worse tie in Self-Voting and you have a serious problem. Recently, as we have all seen, there have been some grave attempts to reap the reward pool by extreme self voting and bot voting (which isn't really Self-Voting but then again the bots are all voting for each other, owned by a single person). Not only does this take from the reward pool but it also creates a massive amount of spam on the blockchain , unneeded garbage with a potential negative impact on the blockchain...
Some have brought up that the positive side to Self-Voting is to retain the larger investors who need a solid ROI ignorer to stay invested and without self-voting this isn't possible. This just isn't true, we have curation, and it can be quite lucrative. Yes I understand that Self-Voting is the ultimate in ROI, after my 100% UpVote Everyone experiment I released I could make roughly $600 every 5 Days with pure self-voting. In the experiment I didn't just up vote myself but I did see how much I could give and if turned inwards that is some serious ROI. Curation if done right and done alongside everyone else could be yield a very good return. If self-voting didn't exist curation would be the go to and this would push the rewards for all, over that of a few.
This would still leave open the Whale Circle Jerking as some put it. Whales without a easy revenue stream of self-voting would turn to other whales for vote for vote strategies, causing essentially the same thing, therefor maybe implying there is nothing we could do would stop the self satisfying nature of some. But this shouldn't stop us from trying to move in the right direction... I have an idea.
Partial Payout Declined Self-Voting
What do I mean? The idea is simple and would to have each post/comment have three types of post rewards, over the two it has now (not including out right payout declined posts) Example:
Total Post Payout $230
Author 75%: $172.50 - Auto Declined $45 (Self-Vote)
Author Actually Receives: $127.50
Curators 25%: $46.125 instead of $57.50
Reward Pool Reduction: $173.62 instead of $230
One of the main reasons for people to Self-Vote besides gaining revenue is post visibility and in this case you Self-Vote does exactly what is does now visibility wise. On top of that it shows that you decided your content is good enough for you to use your valuable Voting Power without any reward to yourself. Like fully declining payout on your post it drastically reduces the amount of rewards being pulled from the reward pool and will distribute the rewards more evenly (Even back to yourself!)
I also think showing this breakdown via the dropdown instead of the current simplified "Potential Payout" would be very beneficial as well showing what each author has chosen to do, self-vote or not. The more transparent we are the better this is a community built on openness, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and a decentralized community.
I know most, if not all of us, love the fact that you can actually earn money from what we do here. I understand that making money from your time and investment is important, very important to most, but don't let greed destroy it. If greed continues to rain over us on this platform , there will be no platform and the price of STEEM will fall to nothing. Invest in your future by not investing in the now, vote for good content, others content, share and interact and the money will come.
I'm going to push for this change, this idea, I do not know how difficult it is to implement and I don't pretend to know, but I know something along these lines would really push the platform in the right direction.
I know Cover Images are cool, visually pleasing and make us more like most other social networks but remember we are not like them in so many ways, and we have the chance to prove something groundbreaking.
What say you?
I'm going to consider this witness-update so I'll add some additional witness information...
I am now ranked Witness #51
I know so damn close to the top 50!! Which every witness strives to break into from the very beginning. It opens the door to getting votes much more easily as your name is visible on the witness voting page here on Steemit.
I have been lucky to have climbed the ranks very quickly thanks to some great support from a lot of great users, so thank you all! I don't take your votes lightly from the smallest to the largest I am here to prove my worthiness to all whom vote for me. I am here for the long haul and will not give up, I want to see a bright future that Steemit is apart of. I will strive to see whats best of the community implemented and brainstorm with other Witnesses and users on what best for it.
If you have every tried to communicate with me in any form you will know I try to respond to everyone, so if you have a question just hesitate to reach out. I will continue to have my mention bot running and I try to respond to every mention but please don't be discouraged if I don't respond right away. Also for those of you who take advantage of that don't expect a response, don't just mention my name just to get my bot to respond.
I hope this opens up to some great conversation, look forward to all of your thoughts!
Vote for @blueorgy as Witness
- Go to the witness voting page on SteemIt.com
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the vote box
- Input my name (blueorgy) and hit vote.
- Rejoice in self achievement!