Steemit is a social phenomenon. But there's a reason why it's still in Beta.
Steemit is created around several core concepts. The most important one is that everyone will be paid, even if by a small amount, for their participation. Steemit users are also keen on posting original work and frown upon content copied from elsewhere.
But there's a reason why content copied from other sites constantly appears here. Would a professional journalist work at a rate of $0.01 per article? Not really. So, if the typical payout for an article of a new user is so low, why bother investing your time in research, interviews, good writing, taking photos, and anything else that makes a good and original article? Just copy-paste or rephrase and get a couple of cents for ten minutes of work.
I hear some you shouting: Curators! We have curators!
We do. About 99% of all users have no weight to curate any articles (they can work for free, of course), while the remaining 1% (whales) are too few to curate all articles and drive the content in the right direction.
There's also another side effect of this system - why upvote a well written article by an unknown author (probably a professional journalist, trying Steemit), when you can upvote a 20-year-old origami/makeup/halloween mask maker with questionable writing and language skills, but whose articles always get hundreds of dollars?
To sum up:
- Whales can't manage to curate all content by themselves.
- Minnows, even though they are more than the whales, and can curate all content, don't receive almost anything for curation.
- Authors, which are new and provide good content, will find it really hard to compete with users, which were the first to register on the network, regardless of the quality of their content.
Some of you will be annoyed that I critique the philosophy behind Steemit, without offering a solution to the problem.
So there - a solution:
A progressive scale. The less money (STEEM + SP + SD) an author has, the higher the percentage of the final amount to be given to curators.
Right now authors receive 75% and curators receive 25%. How about keeping this distribution for established authors (i.e. those having high STEEM + SP + SD) but reversing that for new authors, so curators - both whales and minnows, have a better incentive to vote for new authors.
This way, curators will know that if they vote for an author who is consistently getting high payout on his posts, they will receive only a portion of 25% of the earnings. But if they vote on an article which is good (and how else to know that it's good, than to read it - we just solved another problem on Steemit), then they have the opportunity to receive three times better payout by receiving a portion of 75% of the final post payout (as opposed to only 25%).
Benefits:
- Minnows and whales will prefer to vote on new articles, which they think others may like and upvote (actually reading them!)
- Good minnow authors will receive 25% of (some amount > $0) instead of 75% of $0, as it stands right now
- Minnows will receive a few more cents for curation.
- Wealth will be distributed better - new and established authors will both receive cash, as opposed to only established authors now.
- Established authors won't spam us with several new articles every day (they know each will cash out), as the richer they are, the less attention they will get from both whales and minnows.
- Bots become much less useful. They can't decide on the quality of articles and will only work with established authors, effectively reducing the income from automated software.
Drawbacks:
- People actually have to read the articles they vote on.
There you go. Steemit saved. Please let the developers know about this solution - I'm not sure how to contact them (@ned, @dan, @dantheman, are you there guys?). Certainly upvoting and sharing will get their attention, so please do!