I think devoting a large slice of the reward pool to comments is a great idea (for context, see: proposal). A lot more people are comfortable writing comments than authoring posts. But the incentive just isn't there at the moment.
Once this dedicated comment reward pool is funded, there's a real incentive to engage with the platform. Yes, there's a possibility of $1,000 comments. One time, I wrote a comment that earned $781.50, and that was under the current reward pool.
But that's great. The possibility of huge payout is one of the things that makes steemit compelling to content creators. Why not open that possibility up to comments?
Does that mean we'll have more comment spam? Yes. I'm for it. Because that will reduce the amount of post spam.
The incentive is there just as much as the regular posts in terms of the reward pool. The problem is that most of the users aren't really users, they are bots or trail followers. This doesn't change anything for the actual people who can do the engaging. They aren't even engaging now. Upvoting as autovotes or trails isn't engaging. You're own individual consciousness needs to get involved if you want to be engaged in something. If people do it change their bots and upvote and trails to add comments, nothing will change for real engagement. It's just more reward incentives that mask the real issue, and don't deal with the real problem: consciousness of individuals and their behavior. Actually get people to engage in posts, and therefore comments, and then you will get more real engagement. Setting another rich target niche through another reward pool mechanism for bots to exploit is not a solution.
I suspect that people who post actual comments will become more inclined to flag spam comments.
Yeah, hopefully the bots won't be voting for their own comments.
That's the main thing I missed about reddit when I moved over here. Often times the comments were far more engaging than what was actually written and there was a lot of knowledge buried in them. Since I started comments on steemit are more like product reviews than genuine discussions.
Indeed, this article says about these platforms:
* Golos is the Russian Steemit.
Comments don't seem to be upvoted as much as posts as a general rule. Also, I think they need to fix the comment system. The whole maximum depth and having to reply to a post that isn't really the one you are replying to is weird and sometimes makes things hard to follow. And ordering comments by trending or votes doesn't make sense except for maybe top level comments. I don't know, I just find the comment system a little awkward and I think that is one of the things that prevents more engagement.
They are removing the maximum depth limit
I agree. I'd rather see comments in order...like a conversation and without regard to popularity(# upvotes)
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Jan 10. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $7.02 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jan 10 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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Totally agree
I try to get involved in comment discussions and will vote on the good ones. I am here to engage with people and so will encourage that. Bigger rewards for comments may help, but I expect some spammers to try to exploit this. I already see 'nice post' comments here that I tend to ignore. I don't generally flag unless it's real spam or abuse
Comments and posts are engaged in a popularity contest.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mattclarke/comments-aren-t-being-upvoted-so-they-re-not-being-written