Someone please make a steem clone

[generalizethis]

I don't like what many authors (I'm an author too so my criticism is on that level) are doing with the breaking in very small parts. Sure it's more readable, but 1400$ for 588 words? Huh? So if I have a 2000 word story, it would be better to milk it as 4 stories for 1400x4 ?

This is very inconsiderate to the reader I feel. It is disruptive to immersion and difficult to "follow" an author on when they'll publish part2-3-4. Plus by the time they do publish it, you've forgotten the plot and are out of the "feel". Stories, in particular, require a certain level of immersion in order to activate the readers imagination centers, where he start to get the "feel" of the story. 500 words aren't enough to do that, and 4x doses of 500 words won't cut it. You can't properly immerse and get the feel of the story.

Good point. Apparently another impact of the rewards system, that authors are incentivized to write for maximum audience superficial upvotes instead of maximum relevance to their core following. I also tried to keep my blog posts short, because I know that is essential to attaining widest readership.

One could point out that terse content (the age of snapchat and swipes) is more popular. But I presume bloggers don't always make their most money by targeting the most superficial readers. I presume they target a lucrative demographic and sometimes a target demographic is attuned to in depth time consuming content. We will be become a society on only tweets and no more books?


Also I want to say that in spite of this flaw, Steem is going to generate a lot of hype and grow from here. The issues I am pointing out are medium-term problems. In near-term, I think it is likely more and more users will see the $$$ and give it a try. We are essentially onboarding everyone who had some affinity to cryptocurrency. Until that viral spread has peaked, we should see more upside to Steem's signups.

It's not that complicated (guess I'm never going to bed) content producers know a joke when they see it (bad writing and bumblebee art is the equivalent in the artist world of Vcash and "accidental" mines--buyer beware).

Has anyone here heard of a Guggenheim fellowship or read The Paris Review? (I hope so) Centuries of artistic curation and established practices wont rollover into an algorithm, but they will roll into a project that promises to reward established practices and set a high bar for content.

Smooth has the right idea, I'm just wondering if there's enough establishment backing to see it through.

[iamnotback]

Hoping I get a frank reply to this:

Thanks, Stevo, not going anywhere

How can you be sure of that? Futures contracts reduce degrees-of-freedom. I guess you mean given what you know now, you don't expect to be leaving Steem.

May I ask what is the motivation for you to promote to Steem so significantly (you have twice already given exclusivity to Steem)? Is it predominantly ideological or is it your male reader demographic is well represented in this cryptonerd space? I doubt it is the blogging rewards, as I presume you're rich already from your fame.

The ideological motivation would appeal to me the most.

Tangentially, I was nearly the same kid as you describe wearing polyester clothes, often being a recluse in my hobbies at home, and often selected near to last for sporting. The difference was I was getting a bloody nose every day at 5 years old playing tackle football and I loved it. And when they selected me near to last, they sometimes paid the price in defeat or at least some shock. So I was the nerdy looking smaller kid, who was deceptively athletic. And by age 13 or so, I had already filled out and I was not a virgin after age 15. And by high school, I had already become very social. And my hobbies were not just reading (although I did read the Hardy Boy series, I didn't have access to many other books) and I was also very into engineering and hacker activities. In retrospect when I decided one day in elementary without any outside influence that I would stop wearing underwear, I realized I was a rebel and I loved it.

Oh my, I want to puke, Lol:

https://steemit.com/dance/@krishtopa/first-ever-steem-video-dance-tutorial-from-kate

Replete with steem T-shirt. What a circlejerk. I feel embarrassed for her just watching that. (No offense intended to her, I am not wanting to insult anybody, the reward algorithm is driving this result)

I won't downvote. I will just laugh. Every filipino in elementary school can do that dance.


Ah here we go, some more anecdotal confirmation for me of the disappointment coming in a few months from now:

https://steemit.com/life/@thehousewife/my-6-month-steemit-challenge

https://steemit.com/writing/@mctiller/dear-steemit-i-love-you-but-i-can-t-be-exclusive-anymore-i-have-to-get-back-to-my-book

Edit: and smooth was already getting similar feedback before I started my rants today:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@t3ran13/steam-community-is-popular-but-what-will-be-next

[iamnotback]

Being popular within a groupthink won't do anything for the bottom line profits or readership of a serious blogger who is not targeting the demographics of that groupthink.

See the example I linked to where the blogger has 119k followers already else where, and doesn't want to risk the disruptive effect given Steem's demographics are not tuned to his and besides Steem only has maybe 5000 - 10,000 ongoing users at this stage. Steem would need millions of diverse users before it could even begin to offer 119k followers to him:

Some serious superstar bloggers (e.g. @dollarvigilante) will seriously dedicate to Steem now, especially if their demographics fit to Steem's thus being winners in the quadratic weighting algorithm. But I currently believe the vast majority of serious bloggers will not see the incentive to switch to Steem. If serious and diverse bloggers are disincentivized to move to Steem, this is likely an Achilles Heel of Steem as currently immutably structured.

This lady who comes entirely from outside of cryptocurrency explained the dilemma:

PHASE SIX
Giving back - no I'm not a Whale, I don't hold much value. But before I leave a community I've been a part of for the last 3 years I'd really love to make a positive difference & impact. There are over 5000 members in the New Zealand Playcentre Association and over 400 centres. If you're unsure what Playcentre is we are a not for profit charity that provides quality early childhood learning - COMPLETELY run by the parents, VOLUNTARILY.

PHASE SEVEN
HOW - How on earth am I going to convince 5000 people to join steemit so that we can all upvote each Centres fundraising plans (Can you imagine 5000 upvotes)?. This is my goal. I know I'm going to need some back up and a really good speech to take forward in the hopes of changing the way we fundraize forever. No more applying for grants and getting turned down. No more pushing sh*t uphill.

[AlexGR]

An observation that reputation is working for me and saves me time: https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexgr/despite-the-bitching-i-think-the-reputation-system-is-working-ok

[cmtcoin]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1578741 - Based on Comet Platform
And of course CometCoin blockchain - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1477176.0

We saw this post when we come here to make the ANN post O.O

[iamnotback]

Some that I upvote which the whales are not going to upvote, because my personal tastes don't match theirs (they are too young):

https://steemit.com/music/@reelmusic/guns-n-roses-front-row-camera-footage-of-an-entire-houston-show

https://steemit.com/irs/@ericwhoru/how-to-beat-the-irs

https://steemit.com/value/@felixxx/why-steemit-doesn-t-fly-yet

Who in my age bracket wouldn't want to see Axl Rose still singing for the fences! Hell yeah Knockin' On Heaven's Door (we will be soon...).

[smooth]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason. However, I would comment as a counterpoint to your claim that Steem does, almost by definition, have a significant economic following, as long as it is able to pay competitive rewards to authors. Most authors and artists make so little no matter what they do that it doesn't even take much to be significant here.

[iamnotback]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

I don't blame you. I blame the design.

I argue that inorganic curation will be a false positive for the users, and they will realize there isn't the readership they are misled into thinking there is by the large payouts for diverse content. Once again, this is the white paper's design to fool users into incorrectly assessing their earning power on Steem.

That won't end well. I already see users getting pissed off, but they are trying to sustain their resolve to keep trying. Eventually they will blow their top. Just wait...

However, I would comment as a counterpoint to your claim that Steem does, almost by definition, have a significant economic following, as long as it is able to pay competitive rewards to authors. Most authors and artists make so little no matter what they do that it doesn't even take much to be significant here.

Economics 101 teaches you about the term opportunity cost.

The meal definitely cost more than what we have made from is post hhaha good job we have kept our day jobs and just blog about it for fun.

If you think anyone's time hour(s) are worth $1.32, then you've lost the plot some where along the way. Maybe in the third world, but they mostly don't even get $1 because the whales+dolphins are not from the third world (the blog posts the Indians write are so obviously money extractors that no one upvotes them).

Serious bloggers stay where the readership is. Blogging for fun means you have no competitive advantage against Medium and Facebook is adding blogging now too.

Edit: I think there will be a core of bloggers who know how to write in order to capture the whales and significant votes and this core will collect most of the rewards. If instead the whales adopt the concerted plan to not reward the same author too often, then they can end up losing this core by diluting it too much. In any case, this will not be viral growth. And then eventually the market capitalization and price will collapse to reflect the reality that it isn't viral growth.

Edit#2: smooth I expect your rebuttal should be along the lines of arguing that open source can add more new features faster than Medium or Facebook and thus will out innovate in terms of fun. And that for now it is only necessary to seed the database and usership in order to seed the ecosystem of open source clients other than Steemit (which could operate on different types of media and formats).

On that point I will concede it has a chance. But I still think there is much better model. And I better shut up and code, so please let's wrap our discussion. What insight/information can you add to help me not waste my time?

[smooth]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.

I argue that inorganic curation will be a false positive for the users, and they will realize there isn't the readership they are misled into thinking there is by the large payouts for diverse content. Once again, this is the white paper's design to fool users into incorrectly assessing their earning power on Steem.

Compared to anything else that exists today, there is probably more opportunity for the masses than any other method of monetizing their work. Typical opportunities for (non-star) writers and artists to make money are minimal to nonexistent. Until and unless there is something better, Steem is quite wonderful, even for the masses and not just the superstars. No, they won't all make money, and most that do won't make much, but more will.

Steem is reaching into a huge untapped market of theoretically-monetizable talent that has been completely untapped because existing vehicles for monetizing it have been so atrocious. I don't know how deep that is, but the bottom is nowhere in sight.

If you think anyone's time hour(s) are worth $1.32

I think nonprofessionals generally make literally zero from their writing and creative work almost always, and even many lower-level professionals struggle mightily to make more than $1.32. So, no I don't think $1.32 is good pay for an hour, but I also don't think social media is ever going to be a job for most, it will be a fun and potentially (occasionally) rewarding way to pass the time.

Edit#2: smooth I expect your rebuttal should be along the lines of arguing that open source can add more new features faster than Medium or Facebook and thus will out innovate in terms of fun. And that for now it is only necessary to seed the database and usership in order to seed the ecosystem of open source clients other than Steemit (which could operate on different types of media and formats).

On that point I will concede it has a chance. But I still think there is much better model. And I better shut up and code, so please let's wrap our discussion.

That may happen. It is indeed a huge competitive advantage relative to the fully-centralized platforms. As yet this is entirely speculative so we don't know how significant it will be. There does seem to be the start of a thriving effort in independent development for Steem with some very nice results. (I really like steemstats.com and use it daily for example.) We'll see if that continues to grow or dies out once Steem is less new and has viable competitors.

As for the much better model, go ahead and create it if you think it is really much better (since much better can overcome a first mover; merely better usually can not). If Steem fails because something much better beats it in the market despite the uphill battle of being much later, it will mean we have a much better platform, and I'll be happy with that outcome.

What insight/information can you add to help me not waste my time?

Just don't.

[iamnotback]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.

I don't know why you are reacting defensively on this point.

It is a simple fact that if whales don't upvote our post, we don't earn shit. Period.

And I do notice you are voting just about every post you can find that has any level of reasonable content and you are trying to spread your votes across diverse content that you yourself might not even be interested in, but because you believe that by promoting diverse content, you raise the value of the site (as you even said about the @dollarvigilante).

That is implied intent to promote diverse content, even if your conscious intent is not to deceive any one. I already stated that I don't fault you for the design forcing you to have that role. Eventually it will simply be impossible for you to keep up with enough blog posts to spread your vote around enough to create the diversity that would be the case organically if whales didn't have so much voting power.

My design won't abuse you that way.

It is up to you if you prefer to stay with the inferior design if mine comes to fruition.

I argue that inorganic curation will be a false positive for the users, and they will realize there isn't the readership they are misled into thinking there is by the large payouts for diverse content. Once again, this is the white paper's design to fool users into incorrectly assessing their earning power on Steem.

Compared to anything else that exists today, there is probably more opportunity for the masses than any other method of monetizing their work. Typical opportunities for (non-star) writers and artists to make money are minimal to nonexistent. Until and unless there is something better, Steem is quite wonderful, even for the masses and not just the superstars. No, they won't all make money, and most that do won't make much, but more will.

It is a mathematical fact that the masses can't make money on the site. The debasement is insufficient (~7.75% per annum) to pay more than ~7.75% fraction of each user's SP holdings on average to each user yearly.

Without another revenue source, it is impossible to pay all the masses significantly. So well paid content can't be the viral reason for them to join the site.

The onboarding gimick needs to be causing something else to happen that will lead to significant users remaining active for other reasons. And best if the onboarding gimick is viral.

Steem is reaching into a huge untapped market of theoretically-monetizable talent that has been completely untapped because existing vehicles for monetizing it have been so atrocious. I don't know how deep that is, but the bottom is nowhere in sight.

I emphatically agree an easier and clearer way to earn from doing creative activities than needing to establish a blog (or other creative content) and figure out how to monetize.

But the gimick has to follow through with something compelling that locks them in. If they are only there for significant earnings, they are going to be disappointed (unless another revenue stream is added).

Btw, I have devised that another revenue stream it is not external! Dan and Ned missed a very big opportunity in their design that they apparently did not see.

Remember the 2nd derivative of velocity is acceleration. And we can derive "revenue" from acceleration.

If you think anyone's time hour(s) are worth $1.32

I think nonprofessionals generally make literally zero from their writing and creative work almost always, and even many lower-level professionals struggle mightily to make more than $1.32. So, no I don't think $1.32 is good pay for an hour, but I also don't think social media is ever going to be a job for most, it will be a fun and potentially (occasionally) rewarding way to pass the time.

Naw we can make the onboarding extremely lucrative for everyone. It is just math. I'll show you all how.

And then we just need to have a plan of what to do with that large asset, so fully realize its value. But again I'll point to open source ecosystem...

Edit#2: smooth I expect your rebuttal should be along the lines of arguing that open source can add more new features faster than Medium or Facebook and thus will out innovate in terms of fun. And that for now it is only necessary to seed the database and usership in order to seed the ecosystem of open source clients other than Steemit (which could operate on different types of media and formats).

On that point I will concede it has a chance. But I still think there is much better model. And I better shut up and code, so please let's wrap our discussion.

That may happen. It is indeed a huge competitive advantage relative to the fully-centralized platforms. As yet this is entirely speculative so we don't know how significant it will be. There does seem to be the start of a thriving effort in independent development for Steem with some very nice results. (I really like steemstats.com and use it daily for example.) We'll see if that continues to grow or dies out once Steem is less new and has viable competitors.

Many will be reticent because they are rewarding the 90% premine.

As for the much better model, go ahead and create it if you think it is really much better (since much better can overcome a first mover; merely better usually can not).

It must be virally better. Steem is not that viral afaics thus far, but I am still waiting for more data as it is early yet. And better analysis of the data and/or giving me more raw data to analyse.

If Steem fails because something much better beats it in the market despite the uphill battle of being much later, it will mean we have a much better platform, and I'll be happy with that outcome.

There is far too much code and ecosystem help in Steem already.

The marketing battle is easier, because I know how to write and explain.

The uphill battle is one of resources.

[smooth]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.

I don't know why you are reacting defensively on this point.

It is a simple fact that if whales don't upvote our post, we don't earn shit. Period.

This is factually wrong if you believe, as I do, that earning $50-100 for a post, or in some cases even less, is still pretty good (not including heavily researched or longer posts that involve a lot of effort, but most don't). I regularly come across posts with no whale votes at that reward level. This will only increase as the ranks of the middle fish continue to grow.

And I do notice you are voting just about every post you can find that has any level of reasonable content and you are trying to spread your votes across diverse content that you yourself might not even be interested in, but because you believe that by promoting diverse content, you raise the value of the site.

This is also factually wrong. I reject a majority of what I find that has reasonable content, in many cases because I think the $50-100 it is already earning without any whale votes is good enough.

That is implied intent to promote diverse content, even if your conscious intent is not to deceive any one. I already stated that I don't fault you for the design forcing you to have that role. Eventually it will simply be impossible for you to keep up with enough blog posts to spread your vote around enough to create the diversity that would be the case organically if whales didn't have so much voting power.

For the third time, you have no idea why I voted for that post. Implied intent is something you create in your own model that may or may not represent reality. In this case I'm quite certain your statement of intent, implied or otherwise, is not accurate, but this particular case isn't important, except to indicate that your model is broken. Even that doesn't so much matter though.

The rest of your post was basically repetition of you claiming to have ideas how to create something better. In that case, go do it. Or publish them and let others offer their peer review and potentially implement your ideas, which would also be valuable. In failing to do either, you have no actual contribution.

That's not defensive, it is an honest assessment that at this point you are just spewing FUD and repeative promotion of non-existent, non-reviewed vaporware (also a form of FUD). You can stop doing that any time you want.

So well paid content can't be the viral reason for them to join the site.

I certainly agree with this part, because most people, even those who try, just don't have the talent or following for others to want to pay them a lot for their content, and no technology is going to change that. Either being paid a little or getting a chance to be paid more is the only way that pay is going to enter into any social media site for the vast majority of participants. The primary motivations beyond that will be enjoyment, passing the time, and for no particularly good reason but everybody else does it.

Also, one thing that has been stated before by the Steemit developers, and was reinforced in the Berwick interview, is that the social media component is just the beginning of what they have planned for the platform, especially in its current form (in the interview they called it a minimum viable product). I have no idea if any of the other stuff will work at all, whether or not the social media part does, except to say that it could possibly give other reasons to join and use the platform. Maybe that will broaden the ability of people to find value even if they aren't great content creators.

[iamnotback]

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.

I don't know why you are reacting defensively on this point.

It is a simple fact that if whales don't upvote our post, we don't earn shit. Period.

And I do notice you are voting just about every post you can find that has any level of reasonable content and you are trying to spread your votes across diverse content that you yourself might not even be interested in, but because you believe that by promoting diverse content, you raise the value of the site.

That is implied intent to promote diverse content, even if your conscious intent is not to deceive any one. I already stated that I don't fault you for the design forcing you to have that role. Eventually it will simply be impossible for you to keep up with enough blog posts to spread your vote around enough to create the diversity that would be the case organically if whales didn't have so much voting power.

For the third time, you have no idea why I voted for that post.

I wasn't writing about any specific post. I was writing about perhaps > 50% (I haven't counted but noticed so many) of the posts on the trending page has your upvote. I've noticed you are spreading your votes around quite liberally and I even said to you kudos because it seems you are trying to make sure both more people are rewarded and that the site has more diverse content that is rewarded.

Why would you in any way take that negatively? Is it because I also stated that is a mathematical deception as admitted by the white paper. And I even said it isn't your fault. So I don't know why you are getting angry for what I have stated which seems to be factual. Perhaps you don't like being associated with mathematical deceptions. Or perhaps you feel it isn't a big deal and at least some people are earning something.

I raised the point in the context of whether inorganic selection of content for rewarding, would build community (coteries) so that users have a sticky reason to stay on the site, regardless of earning money.

Now you've turned my desire to have a factual discussion into attack on me, just because I associated the facts of the situation with some imperfection or malintent in the design.

Hey I am taking this very seriously. If you think I am dicking around here, then why the fuck you think I've been awake for 18 - 24 hours at a time for the past 2 weeks busting my ass to make sure I understand every aspect.

I appreciated the discussion, but I tend to think you just want to beat me in debate and when you can't you get stern with me. I actually don't really entirely understand the way you are reacting. Maybe you are just tired of so much discussion. But for me it is damn fucking serious. I thought with your $4 million or whatever in Steem, it might be damn serious for you too, but I don't know your networth, maybe that isn't so significant for you.

Implied intent is something you create in your own model that may or may not represent reality. In this case I'm quite certain your statement of intent, implied or otherwise, is not accurate, but this particular case isn't important, except to indicate that your model is broken. Even that doesn't so much matter though.

I think I already explained above why I don't think it is broken.

I think inorganic is not engagement. It is not sticky. It is not real. It is fake. Smooth is 1/50 of the site activity (or something like that, not exactly that). It is not accusation against you. It is an accusation against the design parameters.

The rest of your post was basically repetition of you claiming to have ideas how to create something better.

I also stated that mathematically we can't pay the masses well with Steem's current design. That seems to be a relevant fact to not ignore.

In that case, go do it. Or publish them and let others offer their peer review and potentially implement your ideas, which would also be valuable. In failing to do either, you have no actual contribution.

I have said that myself, yet you accuse me of being redundant.

That's not defensive, it is an honest assessment that at this point you are just spewing FUD and repeative promotion of non-existent, non-reviewed vaporware (also a form of FUD). You can stop doing that any time you want.

Spewing FUD? WTF???

Did I not predict there would be a huge attrition rate before I had the data? And was I correct.

I won't bother to enumerate all the major work I have done on analysis.

I will just remind you that this discussion only began one page back when I started my work day and now I am at the end of my work day. And it was you who enjoined the discussion and I responded about how I thought the combination of quadratic weighting and whale voting power was working against engagement.

I hope you understand that a 90% premine pisses a lot of people off. I remember you (and others) wrote upthread that Bitcoin investors don't matter and investment should come from outside, and the users don't care about the 90% premine. I also think you want us to reach open source harmony (well so do I). Well sometimes shit doesn't mesh.

Funny you insinuate that I should give away all my designs and work for nothing, when you are in on a 90% premine. But I guess what you mean is I can't do it as well as Dan and Ned did, then maybe I better just admit I have to give away my shit for nearly free.

Also, one thing that has been stated before by the Steemit developers, and was reinforced in the Berwick interview, is that the social media component is just the beginning of what they have planned for the platform, especially in its current form (in the interview they called it a minimum viable product). I have no idea if any of the other stuff will work at all, whether or not the social media part does, except to say that it could possibly give other reasons to join and use the platform. Maybe that will broaden the ability of people to find value even if they aren't great content creators.

The ability to innovate on top of the block chain is incredibly valuable. I have also stated that. We are in entire agreement on that.

[generalizethis]

Steem+blog+sonnet= https://steemit.com/life/@generalizethis/what-black-swan-can-teach-us-about-ruthless-ambition

[smooth]

I wasn't writing about any specific post. I was writing about perhaps > 50% of the posts on the trending page has your upvote.

There are a number of different ways to interpret that. Maybe I vote for them once they get there (it is after all one of the few discovery methods that exist), maybe I'm effective in picking posts that will make it, maybe my voting a post increases its chances of making it, maybe it is a mathematical (near) requirement to make it to the very top (but not moderate top) that the biggest stakeholders support it. Probably some combination of these.

I've noticed you are spreading your votes around quite liberally and I even said to you kudos because it seems you are trying to make sure both more people are rewarded and that the site has more diverse content that is rewarded.

Why would you in any way take that negatively?

I'm not taking the general concept negatively, I'm just pointing out that your 'implied' motivation was incorrect. If anything that might be useful information in understanding what is actually going on?

Is it because I also stated that is a mathematical deception as admitted by the white paper. And I even said it isn't your fault. So I don't know why you are getting angry for what I have stated which seems to be factual. Perhaps you don't like being associated with mathematical deceptions. Or perhaps you feel it isn't a big deal and at least some people are earning something.

There's no anger, I'm just pointing out inaccuracy. As for the deception, I do pretty much feel that it isn't a big deal. It is deception in the sense of marketing that suggests to people buying a particular brand of clothing or even a beverage will make them happy and successful. It doesn't literally promise that, and when thinking rationally about it, they know it isn't true, but the marketing still works to some extent. It isn't deceptive in the sense that anyone is being promised something that isn't true.

People are being invited to sign up for free and if they enjoy a chance for a larger payoff more than they would enjoy it if rewards were flatter, then it will have more of a draw. I'm not convinced that is incorrect, but I'm not convinced it is correct either.

I have no real dog in the fight over how concentrated the rewards should be, as I pointed out in that comment where I said that n^1.5 or some other superlinear but flatter curve might better, or might be worse. I don't know. Even n^1.1 has been seriously proposed (but probably in connection with other newly-introduced incentives).

I raised the point in the context of whether inorganic selection of content for rewarding, would build community (coteries) so that users have a sticky reason to stay on the site, regardless of earning money.

Now you've turned my desire to have a factual discussion into attack on me, just because I associated the facts of the situation with some imperfection or malintent in the design.

I'm not attacking you, except in the narrow context of repeatedly promoting your vaporware. I think that is actually quite a negative way to approach things. Sorry if it was perceived as some sort of attack beyond that.

Hey I am taking this very seriously. If you think I am dicking around here, then why the fuck you think I've been awake for 18 - 24 hours at a time for the past 2 weeks busting my ass to make sure I understand every aspect.

I appreciated the discussion, but I tend to think you just want to beat me in debate and when you can't you get stern with me. I actually don't really entirely understand the way you are reacting. Maybe you are just tired of so much discussion. But for me it is damn fucking serious. I thought with your $4 million or whatever in Steem, it might be damn serious for you too, but I don't know your networth, maybe that isn't so significant for you.

I appreciate the analysis, but to be frank sometimes the repetition on points already well-covered such as your dislike of the quadratic rewards, when presented without anything new of substance is just tedious.

I think inorganic is not engagement. It is not sticky. It is not real. It is fake. Smooth is 1/50 of the site activity (or something like that, not exactly that). It is not accusation against you. It is an accusation against the design parameters.

Well it may be valid criticism of the design, the rate of redistribution, etc. We will have to see how that works out. I think the whitepaper discusses that highly-vested interests are important to some elements of the design (such as downvoting, and other myopically altruistic behavior, which is only incentivized at all by having a large stake in the overall platform and its success). Maybe there are better ways to do this, or maybe the downsides of having highly-vested interests outweigh the benefits. It is possible, but i don't think it is clear.

I also stated that mathematically we can't pay the masses well with Steem's current design. That seems to be a relevant fact to not ignore.

We agree on that, and I said so. I don't think anyone disagrees? The Steemit developers want to try to motivate people with the chance of something big rather than a guarantee of very little. That might work, or it might not. It is unclear to me.

Spewing FUD? WTF???

I think I explained clearly what I was referring to there (in terms of repeated claims to knowing how deliver a better product and claiming to be working on doing so, with no details or peer review to back it up), and it is clearly correct. It doesn't mean you have no useful analysis as well because obviously you do.

Did I not predict there would be a huge attrition rate before I had the data? And was I correct.

I'm still not sure you are correct about actual attrition rates (meaning real users who actually start using the site, not account scammers, or even, as a few people have stated, failed attempts to sign up which leave a dead/"abandoned" account when the user signs up for another one, with only the second being used). We need to analyze the blockchain data better.

[iamnotback]

Did I not predict there would be a huge attrition rate before I had the data? And was I correct.

I'm still not sure you are correct about actual attrition rates (meaning real users who actually start using the site, not account scammers, or even, as a few people have stated, failed attempts to sign up which leave a dead/"abandoned" account when the user signs up for another one, with only the second being used). We need to analyze the blockchain data better.

Too many signals are getting crossed:

...but I am still waiting for more data as it is early yet. And better analysis of the data and/or giving me more raw data to analyse.

The data I have seen seems to show a huge attrition rate. I have no idea if they are mostly Sybil accounts, even though I know most are now coming from Steemit and not mining. But even if they are 85% Sybils, then it points to abysmal signup rate and reach of actual unique users. And that is a factual (no FUD!) statement.

Btw, in my design we will verify every user is a real human, but of course not on signup. I make this very small so I am not accused or promoting vaporware.

I'm just pointing out that your 'implied' motivation was incorrect

I wrote "implied intent" not "implied motivation". And I even said it need not be conscious. Meaning it is nothing you are thinking of doing. I mean the effect is the implied intent. By implied I didn't intend to mean you had any cognitive involvement in the intent.

Your cognitive intent is probably just trying to apply some personal equation of maximizing value and user satisfaction. And I am positing the design causes the implied intent that I outlined in the prior posts, meaning it is not in your control, no matter what you do (other than not voting but then all the whales+orcas would have to recuse themselves). My point was the design is thinking for you and causing you to have a very big footprint.

I think the point is too abstract to discuss in this tedious medium.

As for the deception, I do pretty much feel that it isn't a big deal. It is deception in the sense of marketing that suggests to people buying a particular brand of clothing or even a beverage will make them happy and successful. It doesn't literally promise that, and when thinking rationally about it, they know it isn't true, but the marketing still works to some extent. It isn't deceptive in the sense that anyone is being promised something that isn't true.

People are being invited to sign up for free and if they enjoy a chance for a larger payoff more than they would enjoy it if rewards were flatter, then it will have more of a draw. I'm not convinced that is incorrect, but I'm not convinced it is correct either.

I don't know for sure either. So let's discuss this rationally.

1. Will users find something worth sticking around for, so that they forget any initial reason they had for joining?

2. Will they ever cognitively associate the promise of large rewards with failure to receive them and be negative? Negativity and anger can open the door for a competitor which offers them an outlet to vent their dissatisfaction in a positive way (and that could be Medium or Facebook, not necessary referring to my project). Btw, viral adoption has a large emotional component. Emotions are what motivates people to share virally.

3. Are there are other rewards we could give which would lessen the odds of user disappointment/disillusionment?

I have no real dog in the fight over how concentrated the rewards should be, as I pointed out in that comment where I said that n^1.5 or some other superlinear but flatter curve might better, or might be worse. I don't know. Even n^1.1 has been seriously proposed (but probably in connection with other newly-introduced incentives).

I argued upthread that near to linear would perhaps present an opportunity for users to join voting pools to defeat voting as a differentiation metric and maximize their rewards. I argued that is always the case for whales, but so far afaik the whales are not doing this. So I argued that moving towards linear would be more risky on the game theory. None of us are exactly sure what would happen.

Any way, let's assume Steem could successfully flatten the reward weightings. This still wouldn't solve the concentration problem until they take voting power away from the whales. And they can prevent whales from splitting their voting power to avoid some future threshold on voting power, because it is all locked up in SP. Whales could split 1% a week though so Steem would need strong anti-Sybil verification to make it sustainable.

I raised the point in the context of whether inorganic selection of content for rewarding, would build community (coteries) so that users have a sticky reason to stay on the site, regardless of earning money.

I think inorganic is not engagement. It is not sticky. It is not real. It is fake. Smooth is 1/50 of the site activity (or something like that, not exactly that). It is not accusation against you. It is an accusation against the design parameters.

Well it may be valid criticism of the design, the rate of redistribution, etc. We will have to see how that works out. I think the whitepaper discusses that highly-vested interests are important to some elements of the design (such as downvoting, and other myopically altruistic behavior, which is only incentivized at all by having a large stake in the overall platform and its success). Maybe there are better ways to do this, or maybe the downsides of having highly-vested interests outweigh the benefits. It is possible, but i don't think it is clear.

I certainly believe it is possible to eliminate the highly vested footprint on anything other than being a passive investors as you should be. But as you say, talking about vapor is boring as fuck for everyone who doesn't have access to my bong. So I guess we can't discuss that further at this time.

Btw, you know someone who knows the entire design spec thus far. Maybe you can bribe him for some smokes. I heard he lost a lot BTC lately due to heists. (I don't think you bribe people...)

[smooth]

Funny you insinuate that I should give away all my designs and work for nothing, when you are in on a 90% premine. But I guess what you mean is I can't do it as well as Dan and Ned did, then maybe I better just admit I have to give away my shit for nearly free.

Not at all. Dan and Ned spent months developing the details of their design on paper and in code, and only then did they try to sell it to the world (other than pitching it to some private investors I guess). That is what I am insulating, not that you should give it away for nothing, unless you want to. Certainly the latter is an option if you think that wide peer-review will benefit your efforts, but I'm not telling you how to distribute your work.

The data I have seems to show a huge attrition rate. I have no idea if they are mostly Sybil accounts, even though I know most are now coming from Steemit and not mining. But even if they are 85% Sybils, then it points to abysmal signup rate and reach of actual unique users. And that is a factual (no FUD!) statement.

Sybils, if they exist, basically have to come from Steemit signups because the situation in the mining market with some high powered miners getting most of the blocks means that only a very small number of accounts can be created that way per day. My guess (without data) is that it is cheaper to cheat Steemit out of $7-10 plus an account name than to mine $7-10 of coins plus an account name.

I agree that if a lot are Sybils than the account signup rate is pretty low. Even without Sybils the absolute rate is pretty low at only 1K-2K per day. That is where I agree with your response to the hype-isn "viral" post.

Your cognitive intent is probably just trying to apply some equation of maximizing value and user satisfaction. And I am say the design causes that implied intent, meaning it is not in your control, no matter what you do (other than not voting but then all the whales+orcas would have to do the same).

Of course, everyone is applying some equation, you just haven't necessarily identified the correct equation. That is the disagreement here.

You do make an interesting point about not voting, because a very significant portion of the whales do not vote, or vote very little. I don't know how that translates down to other parts of the distribution, or what the effects of that are, but it seems to me the affects of voter apathy overall have to be pretty significant. For example, if other whales don't vote and I do, then my influence is further increased, at least assuming all else is equal with the rest of the distribution. That may be part of why my votes so-often end up on the top of the Trending list despite my "only" having 1-2% of the theoretical voting power.

[generalizethis]

Here's a timely email from an amazon vendor:


"Castle Art Supplies"

" Hello [redacted, for my privacy],

 I see that you recently purchased one of our products! I just wanted to send a note to say thank you
 Here are the details for Amazon order: 105-31...........
 Castle Art Supplies Drawing and Sketching Pencil Art Set (26 Items)


 We at Castle Art Suppliesâ"¢ try our best to provide the ultimate art supplies that you love as much as we do!

 If there is ANY reason you would not rate this a 5 star experience, we would like the opportunity to talk to you first! If you run into any issues at all or have any suggestions on how we could improve, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm ready and willing to help, all you need to do is reply to this email

 We appreciate your business and hope to serve you again!

 Sincerely,

 Aaron at Castle Art Suppliesâ"¢"


Now, I don't about you, but I read the funny name spelling as a plea, "Amazon's got us by the balls--please, please, find our site and buy directly!"

--they could even put-up a nice "how-to" window/blog on steemit. <--this is a niche

[iamnotback]

I'm not attacking you, except in the narrow context of repeatedly promoting your vaporware. I think that is actually quite a negative way to approach things. Sorry if it was perceived as some sort of attack beyond that.

Spewing FUD? WTF???

I think I explained clearly what I was referring to there (in terms of repeated claims to knowing how deliver a better product and claiming to be working on doing so, with no details or peer review to back it up), and it is clearly correct.

I urge you to go back to evening of Aug 6 or morning Aug 7 and count the number posts and points I made and the ratio of them which were mentions of my project.

And also I want you to take a look at the title of this thread.

Sorry you've just written FUD (except note the admission of "duly noted" below).

Of course I am promoting that I want to work seriously on a competitor and I am demonstrating my investment in effort to do so. But I don't think I have gone overboard on promoting or mentioning vaporware. Two others have come into this thread trying to sell ICO for what appeared to me to maybe be vaporware using fancy visual mockups. I haven't done that!

And of course I understand that I want to stop writing here. But if you have something important to say, I want to analyse it because in some cases it is much easier to fix a design at the inception than later. When I make a mention of something I am designing, it is because I use this thread as my notes. I don't keep copious private notes at this stage. I work very fluidly. You are alienated by my work style, but that is the way I work. It has its tradeoffs.

I understand it is boring and unfair as fuck to not be able to respond to specifics that are obfuscated. So in that respect your criticism is duly noted.

I think we are both a bit overworked at the moment. Let's squelch our misunderstandings.

Note it is also possible that some discussion might convince me to not continue with a Steem-like project. That is another reason for me to be so engrossed in this discussion. I didn't really pay attention to when I was mentioning obfuscated design ideas I have. It was just coming out in the flow of my thought process as I am replying.

[AlexGR]

I hope you understand that a 90% premine pisses a lot of people off.

Nobody cares...

The world isn't "fair" and even when "fairness" is introduced, it's just a matter of time where the substrate of fiat/assets wealth inequality will lead to a re-concentration of wealth.

Dogecoin and LTC have like 51% in their top100 wallets (BTC 19%). How the hell did a coin like Doge get so concentrated, when everybody was mining it with their GPUs, people were tipping off one another, etc etc? It's because fair distribution is a mirage.

Poor people will sell it at first opportunity (as it will be something they have to sell to keep up with life's necessities), rich people will buy more of it with their excess wealth - because they can throw millions around to anything they want.

If you had started with 10.000 people having equal steem (not SP), right now it would be -again- concentrated to some whales. A market spike would be enough for most people to cash out.

[iamnotback]

I hope you understand that a 90% premine pisses a lot of people off.

Nobody cares...

I don't think you understand what the killer app of blockchains is.

@anonymint - I would say the payment for content and the potential it has to completely change certain things for the better. I mean maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself with this whole steemit thing. Could I just be gullible? maybe. You seem like a pretty intelligent person, more so than I. So this is just what I have gathered and "assumed" about Steemit so far.

I am thinking ideologically at the most generalized generative essence of what is inspiring us is that we are driven by the concept of a better result for humanity via cooperation. The monetary rewards because the money system is owned by no one so the debasement goes to the rewards instead of to the central bankers, no one owns the data on the blockchain so anyone can built a user interface on top of it, open source, degrees-of-freedom, ... on the march to what social networking should be. Unfortunately please do note that Steem was sneaky mined ("pre"-mined) about 80 - 90% for a few whales who are profiting on all of us. Some 40% of that (money supply) is controlled by Steemit Inc. and is earmarked for give away to free signups. But there are potential issues that the 40% might end up abandoned if the signup attrition rate continues at 85% at it appears to be from the steemd.com distribution data. And that still doesn't move the effect of the unfair initial distribution. Power-law distributions form in any economic system, but having 80 - 90% initially controlled by 0.1% is orders-of-magnitude worse than any natural power distribution. This is why I am both supporting Steem but also contemplating making a competitive project which is more fairly launched with other better design attributes. But I am also not sure yet, because Steem has a first mover advantage. But the actual active userbase of Steem appears be only about 5000 thus far which is microscopic in terms of social networking. See the blog post I made about the rise and fall of Ello for example. So apologies to tell you there is still some competition going on amongst us although I also want to be part of cooperative system. Today I registered the domain cooprate.com.

That is an interesting observation. For me, it is the social aspect with intelligent people. I couldn't talk about water contamination or gas leaks on facebook--no one cares. Here, however, not only are people interested they themselves have other great information to share.

I am thinking ideologically at the most generalized generative essence of what is inspiring us is that we are driven by the concept of a better result for humanity via cooperation. The monetary rewards because the money system is owned by no one so the debasement goes to the rewards instead of to the central bankers, no one owns the data on the blockchain so anyone can built a user interface on top of it, open source, degrees-of-freedom, ... on the march to what social networking should be. Unfortunately please do note that Steem was sneaky mined ("pre"-mined) about 80 - 90% for a few whales who are profiting on all of us. Some 40% of that (money supply) is controlled by Steemit Inc. and is earmarked for give away to free signups. But there are potential issues that the 40% might end up abandoned if the signup attrition rate continues at 85% at it appears to be from the steemd.com distribution data. And that still doesn't move the effect of the unfair initial distribution. Power-law distributions form in any economic system, but having 80 - 90% initially controlled by 0.1% is orders-of-magnitude worse than any natural power distribution. This is why I am both supporting Steem but also contemplating making a competitive project which is more fairly launched with other better design attributes. But I am also not sure yet, because Steem has a first mover advantage. But the actual active userbase of Steem appears be only about 5000 thus far which is microscopic in terms of social networking. See the blog post I made about the rise and fall of Ello for example. So apologies to tell you there is still some competition going on amongst us although I also want to be part of cooperative system. Today I registered the domain cooprate.com.

Edit: I followed up:

You seem like a pretty intelligent person, more so than I

I am focused in my area of technology so it may amplify the sense of my knowledge being greater, but on other aspects you may have insight that I don't have. I don't think any one person is omniscient. I agree with you that with blockchains we have the potential to change the world for the better. We have to be careful with idealism as we can fool ourselves. Yet I am deep in the technology and I will tell you our ideals may be possible. Please stay with us and help us spread it mainstream. We need to make sure people won't associate cryptocurrency and blockchains with scams, which is why it is so important that we get the details correct. Many of us are working on that. The insights you shared are very helpful. Please don't hold back your sharing thinking that you are not relevant. Thanks again.

For me, it is the social aspect with intelligent people. I couldn't talk about water contamination or gas leaks on facebook--no one cares.

I get your point about the demographics being populated with many intelligent people who care about bettering our world. I don't think any one person is omniscient. Via the technology of blockchains we have the potential to change the world for the better, but the technology is meaningless if it doesn't engage people. So the blockchain is both technologically empowering the freedom-of-information (no one owns it), and it is also creating a magnet for intelligent people who believe in a better world to come together.

We have to be careful with idealism as we can fool ourselves. Yet I am deep in the technology and I will tell you our ideals may be possible. Please stay with us and help us spread it mainstream. We need to make sure people won't associate cryptocurrency and blockchains with scams, which is why it is so important that we get the details correct.