We, who have been here a while in Steemit are witnesses on how unbalanced the rewarding system is at the moment.
I am calling the attention of our steemed developers: @dan, @ned, and the other Steem/Steemit devs like Valentine Zavgorodnev, Benjamin Johnson, JamesCalfee and Michael Vandeberg
Please, closely consider what I am about to say.
A post can gain thousands of dollars in a short while, if and when it caught the eyes and fancy of the Steem/Power rich. No matter the content. No matter the topic, no matter the time. Once a post gets more dollar score, more and more upvoters are attracted to it with the hope of getting a share of the growing bonanza. The attention, the time and the dollars funnel to those kinds of posts. Leaving little, to no space for other posts to be even noticed.
Its okay, we know how the system works and its working the way it is designed. We are all a part of it these days.
But what would happen, if this current system is not reformed or adjusted?
As the membership sign-ups grow, posts and other Steemit activities grow concurrently exponentially. While in comparison, the Steempower rich number is growing in a much slower pace. Their attentions and interests to reward handsomely the new posts diminishes, for whatever reasons, among them being humanly tired, to check time and again if there be someone who posted a reward deserving article. So they become more choosy, it is their time, effort and money at stake anyway. This situation is magnified a little everyday.
Unless the new good-content contributor is relatively famous, or popular, he or she will run into the danger that his piece won't even be noticed nor get a dollar. They will inevitably open the trending category and find people getting so much, for something so simple as a self introduction. Maybe he will try again, but although he may get some votes, if those votes were from accounts of new signee, it will not really make a dent. Some may succeed, that's true, but we should be concerned about those WHO DON'T. They are potential Steemit builders too. Losing them disheartened, means losing all other people that they may influence to join the platform in one way or another.
We are happy that some of us are getting rich overnight thru Steemit. Yet, if we expect the platform and its goals to really flourish, another algorithm to reward posters and good content is in ORDER.
What can we suggest?
We can elaborate the voting process a bit. Instead of just simply upvoting a post and let it receive the total Steem rewards with that one click, we can segregate the PARAMETERS which will identify a post, if it is really a good content or it just caught the fancy of some whales.
For example we can have radio buttons instead, denoting a post parameter. Something like the following:
Originality (Checking this by a voter will mean it is not a mere quotation of posts from somewhere else which can be given a certain percentage rate of the over all steem reward, which our good devs can decide upon)
Creativity (How was the presentation? Was it well thought out? Was it attractive to read? same reason, different percentage)
Usefulness (Is the content have any practical application? Will we benefit if we read it? another percentage from the Steem reward)
Correctness (Are the data and info presented precise? Or will it only lead to misinformed decision to the readers?)
Formatting (Is the post properly formatted to help the readers read it and understand it easier? For example the last percentage goes to the poster when this fifth category is checked.
AND OTHER PARAMETERS THAT I MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF.
Now, at this point, this voting process, only made curation harder, and there's no net difference on the reward that the a posts will receive as before, posts voted by the Steempoor will still receive little to no reward, while those posts which are voted upon by the Steempower rich will still get much.
How can we resolve that?
There should be a trigger, where the system itself will reward a post because of the REASON OF: it received many votes(a certain number of votes) from legitimate Steemit accounts. The amount, will also depend on which parameters are voted on and how many votes were gathered.
This way, even if the POSTS were only voted by lesser Steem holders, for whatever reason that caused that (maybe the whales were asleep?) It will still get some rewards from the system itself. (Have you seen a post with 40+ votes and NOT even a DOLLAR score? That kind of situation will be eliminated by this method.) (THIS!!!)
Where will the system fund come from? The devs can allocate 10% of all votes to automatically go into this system rewarded Steems. If they so decide that this is the only way to fund this. maybe they can even adjust it from somewhere else. Don't we know that there is even a budget for market makers? So this one is not impossible.
This way, even if no Steem whale ever notices a good post, those who votes(even if they don't hold much Steem yet) will help the platform take care of the more deserving contributors with some system rewards. No one, will feel neglected, no one will feel left out for them to leave and criticize Steemit. Then all good contributors that are attracted by Steemit will then STAY on the platform and we can ALL GROW happy together. -east
