Devtome: Get Hundreds of Thousands of free Devcoins for writing

[markm]

Maybe we could do like Wikipedia, have featured articles, or some kind of flag indicating high quality articles, and pay only for those?

So that authors will have an incentive to keep improving their articles instead of spamming more articles?

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

Maybe we could do like Wikipedia, have featured articles, or some kind of flag indicating high quality articles, and pay only for those?

So that authors will have an incentive to keep improving their articles instead of spamming more articles?

-MarkM-

That would be cool. A section where only admins can put your work, and it's worth 3x as much or something.

[markm]

It might be worthwhile to lower the max number of words you can get paid for each cycle. Lower it each cycle for quite a while. Because the amount per share should go up when you don't have a few authors dumping 80k words and lots of authors who only write 1k or so words. Maybe have it drift toward the mean or something.

Meanwhile get serious about paying for income-producing development. For example we still after all this time do not have free open source code for merged mining pools. A pool could probably make a decent amount of money.

How much is devtome making now from adwords, anyway? I saw somewhere someone claim it gets some huge number of hits, but no mention of how much is coming in from ads on the pages. Maybe all those hits are search engine spiders not real readers?

There are so many topics there should be a lot of different topics context-sensitive ads should be able to make money from, if a smart system like google adwords is hard at work constantly trying to figure out the most lucrative ads - as in the ones that attract the readers of a specific page best - for each page.

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

1. It might be worthwhile to lower the max number of words you can get paid for each cycle. Lower it each cycle for quite a while. Because the amount per share should go up when you don't have a few authors dumping 80k words and lots of authors who only write 1k or so words. Maybe have it drift toward the mean or something.

2. Meanwhile get serious about paying for income-producing development. For example we still after all this time do not have free open source code for merged mining pools. A pool could probably make a decent amount of money.

3. How much is devtome making now from adwords, anyway? I saw somewhere someone claim it gets some huge number of hits, but no mention of how much is coming in from ads on the pages. Maybe all those hits are search engine spiders not real readers?

4. There are so many topics there should be a lot of different topics context-sensitive ads should be able to make money from, if a smart system like google adwords is hard at work constantly trying to figure out the most lucrative ads - as in the ones that attract the reads of a specific page best - for each page.

-MarkM-

1. True. Maybe continue to lower the max words as more publishers join. Even possibly get a system worked up before the people join. Like "When we have 50 publishers, 50,000 words. 75 Publishers, 45,000. 100 Publishers, 40,000." Just as an example.

2. Maybe advertise bounties better as individual ideas? Smeagol posted about a pool and it was done in a few days.

3. No idea, but here: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_page_views

4. I actually think it is not connected to adwords, it is a devcoin based system I think and the only ad that is up is BTC PR Buzz.

[FinShaggy]

But if we lower counts, we need to make sure the extra words still carry over.

[markm]

Well if it intended to actually make money it should be using whatever ad-provider yields the most ad-revenue per page or per visitor or something. Hopefully including some pay per view ads not just pay per clickthrough. Thus, probably, google adsense.

I think words always carry over. don't they? It counts your currently still there words, deducts the shares you already got paid total since forever, and pays either what is left or the max allowed per cycle?

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

Well if it intended to actualyl make money it should be using whatever ad-provider yields the most ad-revenue per page or per visitor or something. Hopefully including some pay per view ads not just pay per clickthrough. Thus, probably, google adsense.

I think words always carry over. don't they? It counts your currently still there words, deducts the shares you already got paid total since forever, and pays either what is left or the max allowed per cycle?

-MarkM-

Yeah, Adsense is probably best. And I just thought of another one, I need to go find it though. I'm not sure we could pay out to individuals with it unless we told everyone to make an account and track their progress, but it IS a way for Devtome to earn more. What it is is a independent game sponsor, and they are trying to get people to play the games on their list. So you share a link, and if someone plays the game you get like .10 cents- $1... Would ya'll be interested?

They do carry over right now, just saying if word counts go down then it would be good to make sure the extra words carry over. I don't know if that would be affected by a lowered count. But if it does it like that, then it should just work on its own.

[matt608]

Maybe we could do like Wikipedia, have featured articles, or some kind of flag indicating high quality articles, and pay only for those?

So that authors will have an incentive to keep improving their articles instead of spamming more articles?

-MarkM-

I made a thread about how to improve the writing quality but no-one seemed interested:

I have an idea.  It seems to me what Devtome needs is a better way to reward high quality writing, and to discourage bad quality writing.  Why don't we install this free wiki-voting software?

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.adaptavist.confluence.page-commment-vote-plugin

It's free for open source websites, such as Devtome.  It would allow for there to be a voting option on each page that is created.  

I don't think everyone who writes anything on Devtome should get paid.  That has been tried and tested, and we can see the results.  Content quality is lacking on many Devtome articles.  It's reasonable to say that only those with good enough writing should get paid, otherwise we will end up with a website full of crap.  So far we have had no fair way to decide which articles are worthy, but if we installed this voting system it will enable us to build a much higher quality website.

For example, if we installed the software and made a new rule that only the top 20 voted articles each round earn any money, people will have much more incentive to write good quality work, as well as promote their work to get more votes.  It will also mean that the money is divided up to a smaller group, so those who do get paid will get paid more, as well as reducing the amount of low quality work that is published.  I don't know how many articles are posted to Devtome each round so maybe it should be more like the top 50 get paid rather than only the top 20, but you get the idea.

A final point is that we wouldn't want voting to be possible on category pages, or the main pages where there are instructions, hopefully that can be configured in the settings.

I really think this is what Devtome needs to clean itself up, and raise the value of DVC.  

[FinShaggy]

I think we have a voting system, but we need a way for it to be unbiased. People get mad at people just for writing too much, or being new. So new people's stuff would automatically make less money, and that's just not fair.

[MAbtc]

Maybe we should check how many devcoins are at the writer's receiving address, and limit the amount of writing we will pay for accordingly.

So if someone wants to dump 80k of words, they would need as many devcoins already hoarded as they would gain if they got paid for all 80 of those kilowords...

That could filter out the people who just write and dump and never come back, because if they do come back, sorry, you are not a holder of devcoins so don't qualify...

Check the average number of coins they had at that address over the last cycle-period, for example.

-MarkM-

I thought this was about contributing content? When did it become about forcing people to become bagholders? If you want to discourage quality, then this would be the thing to implement. Sure, some people will hold, some won't -- but no one wants to be forced to do anything.

pretty sweet idea! that forces people to buy as many as they earn? I think people would do it! I know if I was struggling for cash and I knew I could double my current stash by just writing I would do it. That would weed out the people abusing the system for sure.

No, it would weed out the people that start off with no cash.

This.

[MAbtc]

For those starting out with nothign well not sure what to do about that... I mean you want to bring in talented people but you also don't want it to be a handout and you also want incentive to hold coins so later when there is a marketplace they can contribute to it.

The incentive to hold coins should be their value, present and speculative. That means innovation, press, marketplace, liquidity... and things in the pipeline. If the present state of things can't provide incentive to hold, it is only detrimental to devtome to force people to hold. No one wants to be paid in something that they 1) perceive to be losing value and 2) are forced to hold.

You want quality? Don't kill the incentive to create.

[FinShaggy]

For those starting out with nothign well not sure what to do about that... I mean you want to bring in talented people but you also don't want it to be a handout and you also want incentive to hold coins so later when there is a marketplace they can contribute to it.

The incentive to hold coins should be their value, present and speculative. That means innovation, press, marketplace, liquidity... and things in the pipeline. If the present state of things can't provide incentive to hold, it is only detrimental to devtome to force people to hold. No one wants to be paid in something that they 1) perceive to be losing value and 2) are forced to hold.

You want quality? Don't kill the incentive to create.

True-true.

[sidhujag]

For those starting out with nothign well not sure what to do about that... I mean you want to bring in talented people but you also don't want it to be a handout and you also want incentive to hold coins so later when there is a marketplace they can contribute to it.

The incentive to hold coins should be their value, present and speculative. That means innovation, press, marketplace, liquidity... and things in the pipeline. If the present state of things can't provide incentive to hold, it is only detrimental to devtome to force people to hold. No one wants to be paid in something that they 1) perceive to be losing value and 2) are forced to hold.

You want quality? Don't kill the incentive to create.

Do you think it will kill the demand to write if you add some collateral requirement? You think noone would write? As far as I know, no other coin offers the ability to be paid for work other than mining.

On the pro side it would limit people from coming in with no intentions to stick around but get your payment and get out. You need to also give incentive to users to start holding so that the cap can come up to provide bounties for innovative things you mentioned.

[FinShaggy]

For those starting out with nothign well not sure what to do about that... I mean you want to bring in talented people but you also don't want it to be a handout and you also want incentive to hold coins so later when there is a marketplace they can contribute to it.

The incentive to hold coins should be their value, present and speculative. That means innovation, press, marketplace, liquidity... and things in the pipeline. If the present state of things can't provide incentive to hold, it is only detrimental to devtome to force people to hold. No one wants to be paid in something that they 1) perceive to be losing value and 2) are forced to hold.

You want quality? Don't kill the incentive to create.

Do you think it will kill the demand to write if you add some collateral requirement? You think noone would write? As far as I know, no other coin offers the ability to be paid for work other than mining.

On the pro side it would limit people from coming in with no intentions to stick around but get your payment and get out. You need to also give incentive to users to start holding so that the cap can come up to provide bounties for innovative things you mentioned.

I'm pretty sure there is more of a goal to get a larger number of publishers (and eventually employees) right now than there is to force people to hold coins. And yes it will kill demand. Right now Devcoin is the ONLY way to get Bitcoins without putting cash into the internet.

[sidhujag]

For those starting out with nothign well not sure what to do about that... I mean you want to bring in talented people but you also don't want it to be a handout and you also want incentive to hold coins so later when there is a marketplace they can contribute to it.

The incentive to hold coins should be their value, present and speculative. That means innovation, press, marketplace, liquidity... and things in the pipeline. If the present state of things can't provide incentive to hold, it is only detrimental to devtome to force people to hold. No one wants to be paid in something that they 1) perceive to be losing value and 2) are forced to hold.

You want quality? Don't kill the incentive to create.

Do you think it will kill the demand to write if you add some collateral requirement? You think noone would write? As far as I know, no other coin offers the ability to be paid for work other than mining.

On the pro side it would limit people from coming in with no intentions to stick around but get your payment and get out. You need to also give incentive to users to start holding so that the cap can come up to provide bounties for innovative things you mentioned.

I'm pretty sure there is more of a goal to get a larger number of publishers (and eventually employees) right now than there is to force people to hold coins. And yes it will kill demand. Right now Devcoin is the ONLY way to get Bitcoins without putting cash into the internet.

The way I imagined it was the publisher posts the margin per round and the employee does the work and gets paid by the publisher just like in real life. The rate of payment is decided by the publisher, the employee agrees prior to working. Freelancers can be their own publisher by posting margin and earning the rest. It may not be the idealistic approach but we need to think through the situations and see how we can create the incentive. I'd rather have less demand to write than to have the current demand of ppl who don't give a damn.. id rather have that any day.

So far the only CON I can see of my approach is breaking the "Devcoin is the only way to get btc without cash".

[FinShaggy]

I'd rather have less demand to write than to have the current demand of ppl who don't give a damn.. id rather have that any day.

Then Devcoin will never grow, or go up in value. And you will be holding onto dwindling shares.

[FinShaggy]

How can something, which has NO applications (as writing and DVC bounty shares are the only uses, and taking away writing takes away most of the potential for bounty shares also) expect to grow?

If the coin had a few shops open. Or a few other programs to earn from. This might make sense (if we could find a way to accept new people still). But if this were implemented now, Devcoin would die.

[sidhujag]

I'd rather have less demand to write than to have the current demand of ppl who don't give a damn.. id rather have that any day.

Then Devcoin will never grow, or go up in value. And you will be holding onto dwindling shares.

The decision should b e consensus based on mulptiple ppl, maybe through asking random ppl. If you cut writers in half I'd still say its success. You have to prove disprove by going out there and proposing it,

[FinShaggy]

I'd rather have less demand to write than to have the current demand of ppl who don't give a damn.. id rather have that any day.

Then Devcoin will never grow, or go up in value. And you will be holding onto dwindling shares.

The decision should b e consensus based on mulptiple ppl, maybe through asking random ppl. If you cut writers in half I'd still say its success. You have to prove disprove by going out there and proposing it,

When I came here, Devtome was begging for writers, and I brought more. If you cut that in half, you are ruining everything they got. And leaving them with a bunch of trolls.

[sidhujag]

How can something, which has NO applications (as writing and DVC bounty shares are the only uses, and taking away writing takes away most of the potential for bounty shares also) expect to grow?

If the coin had a few shops open. Or a few other programs to earn from. This might make sense (if we could find a way to accept new people still). But if this were implemented now, Devcoin would die.

Some sort of new user procedure could be introduced like offering them to write up to x amount of shares per round for x amount of rounds before the training wheels are off and they graduate to normal user.

Also some sort of quality  metric needs to be implemented such that higher quality material gets graded accordingly and paid accordingly. Should be an absolute grading mechanism and not with respect to what was written during that round etc.

I'm thinking long term here, so anytime your bringin in people and then having them work for devtome over many amny rounds with this mechanism I'd consider it a success because they would bring value up in dvc because of the margin requirement.

Any short term deviations like offering no margin for rounds based on some competition where you post the highest quality content of the round etc, is not bad in my mind as it is short term. Just that the long term procedure of having requirements is maintained. I think a hybrid approach like this might work out. But again you would need to get a feel for the idea in the community.