New to steemit, I decided to watch and learn and I have this to make of it – ‘upside down’.
The Peter Principle is a special case of an ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.
The Peter Principle is a concept in management theory formulated by Laurence J. Peter and published in 1969. It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."
José Ortega y Gasset:
"All public employees should be demoted to their immediately lower level, as they have been promoted until turning incompetent".
Ortega y Gasset died in 1955, about 14 years before Peter published The Peter Principle. His works embodied another more complex question about the “meaning of life” and our freedoms.
Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom: "is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny."
In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a "project of life"—thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.
Turning to steemit.com, the Power Struggle has become an unhealthy and messy display being played out upon the platform.
The ‘whales’ determine the rewards structure and the whales have to look at their results. The results include:
The price of steem.
The number of subscriptions.
The rate of retention.
The rate of decentralisation.
The ‘feel-good factor’.
Steem has gone from a high Market Capitalisation of $380million down to $26million, losing 93% between July 2016 and February 2017.
The number of subscriptions is stated as being over 130,000. The system itself only follows 61,873 and there are about 3-6,000 active accounts, of which it cannot be known how many are multiple accounts in one owner’s hands and how many are in fact robots set up to profit via systematic algorithmic processes.
Retention figures are hard to know as there are so many accounts which appear bogus. A lot of actual ‘people’ have left because of how the rewards structure treated them.
The rate of decentralisation is zero.
Frustration and anger is at all levels of the structure.
The first steem was at basement prices. Mining brought massive instant rewards.
The purchase and mining of steem has put these people known as ‘whales’ into a position of management.
The Peter’s Principle would suggest that they are in a position which displays their incompetence.
Ortega y Gasset would suggest that they are unwilling or incapable of seeing that: “We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny”.
If the top 4% of an organisation is receiving 98% of the rewards for 4% of its output, then the system is ‘upside down’. I hope it changes.
Your analysis is-- sadly-- spot on.
About a month ago, I decided to give this place a try because it looked like it had promise, at least "on paper." I'm a writer, blogger and content creator... the rewards and the whole "alt. economy" and cryptocurrency thing was an interesting and nice fringe benefit.
I would suspect a fair number of the so-called Whales are really good at blockchain and they are probably really good developers, too. What they know about running a company and building community remains to be seen... for me, there's an inherent dichotomy at work, namely that the blockchain structure is all about decentralization (APART-ness) which community is all about TOGETHER-ness. It's a nifty idea to wrap a social platform around a blockchain structure... but how does one execute that?
As for quality original content... it seems a lot of people (myself included) are somewhat sitting on the fence, as far as recommending this to others. I know a dozen people whose "alternative" views would make this a perfect fit, and they could bring their thousands of followers with... but I feel hesitant to stake my reputation on recommending (or pitching) something that seems a bit dodgy.
Anyway, welcome to Steemit!
Well said, many feel that way for sure. It would be high time to get some of that community on here.
If we can actually act out in a "decentralized" platform. I can see the appeal, but for my time on here, things have went from bad to worse :|, sure they were great, but then we got a boom and a bust, everybody had their dreams shattered and most left. And we have things trailing off until about now.
So unless there is a change in pattern, I'm not sure how long authors will go on getting some of that inflation for their daily creativity.
And curators and readers that get 0.001% of the rewards because they have nothing to stake, it seems a bit of a let down, no community, no connections, no decentralization, well what is the point :D
That's one hell of an elephant in the room. Although the problem for me isn't the decentralisation. It's the fact that when it comes to marketing and any kind of strategy, they seem decentralised.
When it comes to updates, reward system, look and feel, then they start to behave like a centralised organisation.
There is zero marketing plan; which for a company with a $26 million dollar market cap, is pretty crazy.
As I said on @dr0ctl's post, I feel that Steemit will stagnate or decline, and a competitor that understand's marketing and a few other things better than Steemit, will come and swamp the marketplace.
I could be wrong though; it's happened before :-)
Cg
yup they actually might start marketing, since the only people doing it were the users 6-8 months ago :D
This kind of thing has been before and it will be seen again. The possibility of bucking the trend of a quick trip to the morgue is a slim one.
Thank you kindly for your remarks. Let's hope that the whales employ their full senses! I shall follow you for more learning!
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Resteemed
You have done a nice analysis of what many people have been saying for more than 10 months. Some want to prove an ideology more than manage a business!
What is the principle: "How do you keep your job when you have become incompetent?"
I am very humbled. Thank you sir.
Hey, I resteemed your post when you commented earlier with the link, after skimming, but I just finished reading now. Glad you got some more traffic! You make good points which parallel what I was saying in my post, thank you for linking this. Following you now as well ;)
Thank you ... it is all pretty new but I have just looked at what matters in a business. The whale people, whoever they are have got shit for brains! I bet they have never run a company before - any of them. I might do a case study on it.
I hope you aren't a whale ...sorry if you are
Where are the serious people in the different subjects?
I don't mean serious but the people who can write an original piece of prose.
Any directions would be great.
Thanks for resteem - i guess that means you sent it back out. Thanks anyway
I have over 1200 followers, so you reached more people. ;) I'm not a whale, my votes give $0.03 hehe. Directions for someone who can write? I don't get what you're asking.
if you have 1200 people following you , you have about a third of the whole thing watching you! I guess I found a rich seam first up with you then! I just guess I will fool around with different subjects and see what I find. It looks like there is a lot of serious crap being suggested - so I shall try to find a way to sift the good from the bad.
Believe me, when I stumbled into here 8 months ago, I almost lost my mind with questions. I didn't know much about blockchains, and I'm still learning a lot. This site is bootstrapped which means that it is building itself through trial and error. It's like an onion and the deeper you go, only reveals another skin to uncover.
The reality is that in its core, it's supposed to function like a decentralized autonomous company, without a hierarchy, but as you can tell, the massive concentration of wealth which was done in the early mining phase has created unique and entrenched problems. In theory, the powerful and wealthy whales who do not see the value of this platform will, in time, power down, and create other whales who do indeed care for this platform. That's the optimistic outlook.
Right now you're seeing the whale society who most likely are not the best picks for the cultivation of culture, society and growth. At least that is how i see it. Artists and creators, like myself see and understand the value of this place because it's exactly what I have been wanting/needing: a way to earn income from the creation of work without middle men. But right now, middle men exist in the form of whales. This is the central problem that needs to get fixed, but no one is sure how this will be done. Once such a wealth gap exists, it's hard to ever bridge it. If creators and true cultivators of communities were in the central role of guiding this site, we would see a very different outcome. It seems that people who read and honestly curate are in the minority. This is also a problem. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on how to improve it. Wait til Hardfork 17 because many things will change with that update.
?
How to improve it? Make curation great again :D
I would like to see how the hardfork does, I don't like it, but who's asking anyways :D personally I would like to know too and have some ideas, but nothing solid
Well I'm sure at least 100 are probably no longer here hehe.
it's 467 to be exact.
Come to discord to chat here anytime
Text: https://discord.gg/CK8CWwr
Voice: https://discord.gg/6Cj4jtc
Or at 7pm EST, here for the steemtrail daily hangout
https://discord.gg/qKyp5kc
Most people have a high percentage of "dead followers" which means that they haven't logged into Steemit in over 3 months. His real count is 814 real live followers and 467 "dead followers". http://steemit.deadfollowers.info/
Ah, so the people who have left can be counted via that site - I shall have a look and see if we can actually make a proper evaluation of the departed, shall we call them. What happens to the rewards they have received if they are still in their account? Is there a cut-off time when they get reincorporated into a fund or something?
Sorry, I am full of questions, aren't I?
I have more dead followers than live ones as you can see from the graphic below:
If we got everyone to put their dead followers into an xel file we could do a merge/purge and see how many deaths there have been! Macabre sense of humor I know - sorry.
I have a very dark sense of humor! No worries there.
According to Dead Followers, your true count of active followers is 814.
Here's your stats:
http://steemit.deadfollowers.info/
I resteemed this as well.
Everyone seems to be terribly nice - I write two observations which are damning of the management of steemit and I am welcomed like I have rarely experienced! Thank you, @stellabelle, you seem to have a very high rank so I hope I have not upset you.
I think I might have upset one of the founders who commented below - But with no management, there is a free for all exposure of the truth. He did not vote for me - I suspect that that is the mean-spiritedness which pervades!
I have been watching the platform but only joined recently. Why are people so blind? The numbers are there for all to see... less than a dolphin 1% - that is your lot - be happy for that!
I welcome different perspectives. Myopic glasses are the downfall of most companies! I've been saying this too! I'm a controversial one, I suppose, and the reason is that I don't want Steemit to fail! If I wasn't concerned, I would have just started writing vapid posts!
I thought I would let you know that I have written a follow-up - I am not sure how the behaviour systems work but thought you were a good person to latch onto!
Steemit Ants and Bees
Thanks for sharing your excellent opinions. I have been on steemit for a bit more than a month now, and I've noticed plenty of flaws between the theory and the reality. I'm not sure what the devs/owners are doing about it, but I concur that if something isn't done, this experiment will go belly up, whales and all.
There doesn't seem to be any real system to sort the wheat from the chaff so that the articles worthy of attention all rise up and the rest sink down into anonymity. Using new, trending and hot doesn't really help unknown and new users, and there is no effective way to use the tag system. The minnowsunite tag doesn't guarantee support, either.
The fact that the more you accumulate, the more you can increase your influence is a direct imitation of the real world, which means this is NOT an "alt" platform at all. That there are multiple accounts and bots that work to collect wealth from the daily pool means that those without the skills, wealth, will to defy ethics, etc. are much less likely to climb the ladder. Indeed, I've seen politics in the form of cliques that take advantage of up-voting and flagging for reasons from the spurious and immature to the desire to spread the wealth more evenly (admirable, but impractical unless the daily pool is large enough that everyone worthy can get enough before the deadline).
Aside from the abusers, the cliques and the trolls, there are those who are just trying to make a quick buck, and this is reflected in the quality of their offerings. Links, single images, quotes, plagiarized materials, spam and other forms of drivel abound. This is not to say that they are universally bad - links by the author to their work are certainly fine but, if I post a link to someone else's work, I do not expect to be rewarded - I'm just sharing something I think has value to others. Some people seem to think this is FB and so they just pass on whatever they find as if that deserves something.
On the other side are the artists, authors, academicians, vloggers and others who either create original content , or synthesize the work of others. I'm not fond of articles which are a rewrite of one source, however, nor do I like it so much when a photographer posts just a single photo (a painting of high quality is an investment of weeks, months or years, in contrast to a photo that may take no more than a couple hours, excepting wildlife and specific landscape shots which can take days, weeks or even months of patience), although I'm sure there are exceptions.
I guess I could go on and on, but the point is pretty clear. This system is full of flaws and there seems to be no real management to deal with people who abuse them.
For myself, I produce original work without references listed because, in most cases, it is a synthesis of numerous resources that I no longer recall and half a century of experiences. I rarely put up short messages with links to the works of others. That some of my articles have received no notice despite being worthwhile is, of course, a disappointment, but I'm not surprised.
Welcome, find your thing and build that up :)
Following if you have questions feel free to ask anything :)
ooops already have guess I have to read your blog more often :D
Cheers and good luck!
Thanks!
Welcome to Steemit! I look forward to reading more from @fidelity!
Thank you. I am not sure whether people want to hear honest observations but this is a very honest summation of my observations. The management of this is so weak and defensive of its record that in the real world it would be ridiculed as a prime example of what not to do. I will probably get hate mail as a result but ...
I'm new here myself, two weeks, but it seems there are many whales with an open mind. If the others would understand they will benefit financially from the platform changing then growing, maybe they will have a change of heart. I believe we need to hear what ails us to truly find lasting solutions. Also, most humans are interested in financial gain, so to quote @papa-pepper "steemit like you mean it!"
Also, I just proved a minnow can top the Steemit HOT list!! Thanks for the vote!
Ok, I shall follow the papa man - my second, you were the first. I am a keen observer of business management and this ... is set up to disappear up its own arrogance but time will tell. I hope to be wrong.
maybe you can work for Steemit! I think they would benefit from your perspective.
Are you suggesting that steemit needs management -- hooray for you -- you appear to have seen the frailties of the few which feed off the many and have a form of myopia which is riddled with denial!!
Oh, believe me, I see its flaws which I point out. The devs, most of them don't see what I see. They don't understand the human happiness factor.
But I will say that the coexistence of bots and humans is something we'll have to face in the future. The curation bots are not the issue, it is the poor management of these bots that is problematic.
However, you are not seeing the useful Cheetah bot, without which this site would be full of spam, plagiarized material and other foul things! Find Cheetah!
Thank you for your honest observations and agree I with them. I see the very similar thing and hearing from a new user is just as important as anyone else on Steemit, with large stake or not.
Resteemed.
There are loads of people with an open mind, but they are sometimes hard to find. The algorithm that determines rewards will be changed soon and it will be interesting to see the differences.
You see, everything has been bootstrapped. You should have been here 8 months ago. If you think it's crazy now.....it was aboslutely nuts back then.
But nothing has really changed - the ownership has barely moved and people have come and gone ... I find it a fascinating case of justification. There is no justification but there seems to be an entanglement of proud words to suggest that there is. It is a Greek Tragedy of certain calamity. Oedipus Tyrannus and the gouging out of his own eyes is a good parallel.
I have followed you and hope to find the nuggets of reality!
that's not entirely correct. See how one person with no prior investment managed to gain wealth through his commenting, posting and community building:
http://steemwhales.com/thecryptofiend?weekly
Now, look at a whale who is currently powering down:
http://steemwhales.com/berniesanders?weekly
The one thing I don't know is if he is powering up a different account or cashing out. If he's cashing out, then Dan's prediction about the wealth transferring to those who actually think the platform has value is true. We still don't know if this will happen or not.
I will say, though coming in at a later date....it's quite hard to gain rewards without dogged persistence. When Steem had a higher market cap it was much easier. The lower market cap yields lower rewards. Personally, I think the trending page should be spectacular. Right now it's not. But believe it or not, it's a lot better than it was 6 months ago. There's more distribution now than before.
You are being very kind, and helpful to someone who has been following and observing and now Pointing things out. I thank you!
My question still remains though - though there may have been some movement between this account and that and the fiend person you mentioned before has obviously done great things.
If 90% is held by 2% and 98% by 4%, how is that distribution? 4% of the set-up is being rewarded with 98% of the revenue - it is a slavery system with pretty packaging!
That is why 12 of us got together and co-wrote a post about this exact issue. The devs are changing the algorithm to lessen the distance in rewards. I'll find the post if you want to read it.
Sure! Thank you. Does the new system give a target distribution model. What i would like to see is that, much as ownership has its benefits, the extent of those benefits. So, if you take a month, any month, plug the activity in at one end, what comes out the other end - does it make the distribution 60/40 for our 4% and 96%? Or is it 40/60 as it should be closer to?
please read this post, then we can discuss:
https://steemit.com/steem/@clayop/making-steemit-better-a-proposal-to-flatten-the-rewards-curve
Well, the real problem lies within the issue of sybil attacks. Are you familiar with this? Basically, sybil attack means that bots/sockpuppet accounts could vote for a post say like 2,000 upvotes. In order to prevent gaming of the system, all upvotes are not equal. This means that because I've invested a ton of time and energy into this system (8 months to be exact and over 7000 posts), powering up most of it, my vote currently counts for $.05. I think what the problem is, is that there's too much distance between new people coming in and whales. Also, even with my investment, I'm not able to significantly affect the rewards of those I vote for. It takes too much time/money to get Steem Power. This is what I hope the algorithm fixes.
I have read your post - parts of it a couple of times. I can see the struggle you are facing with the 'whale' people. They will not let go. The top 20 or so, who really do control the whole thing (less if you want to be corporate minded), they do not want to surrender their control and are not really concerned about price of steem - it is a grab and hold - they will be grabbing more in other accounts so as not to appear opportunistic with the price as it is.
There is a demand from them to be allowed to keep what they have AND to be allowed to boss the 'pot' of money in the meantime. This is called having one's cake and eating it too.
Meanwhile there are others who are in the 20-60 range who are getting fed up because, despite their position, their rewards are looked at as Return on Investment and they are getting grumpy with diminishing returns. They can see their stake being better employed elsewhere because the blockchain throws up opportunities more and more frequently -IT people, like doctors and professors and so forth think that they can take an idea and make it worth millions. They cannot, they are IT people and doctors etc. They are also looking at the ROI in terms of today's value or even July's value, rather than what they actually paid for their stake, as one should.
As to your post, it is a nice pleasantry, I am afraid. If you cannot show absolute numbers, which this does not, it is what we used to call flak. When a missile is approaching a ship you throw up all sorts of stuff to distract the missile and take it off-course.
I am sorry if that sounds a bit insulting. It is not meant to in any way. It is just that the explanation doe not really explain.
"Your December would have given you 'x', rather than the 'y', you actually received" - That is an absolute demonstration which is what the non-algorithm centric mind needs.
To what % is the rewards structure changed? If it goes from 98/2 to 96/4, people will say that one's rewards have been doubled. The actual distribution, when it is done, does not work that way though and this is one of the veils which the average person does not see. Hence my suggestion of a weekly distribution summary. It can appear anywhere. It will, though, show up the true distribution which is a case of whales profiting at tremendous leverage off the average blogger.
Incredibly important Open Intelligence work here!
Resharing @phibetaiota
Keep up the good work
~The Management
What a surprise - I thought I would be receiving hate mail! Thank you. I am following you now!
This Peter Griffin principle is interesting.
I'll have to remember this IRL.
Upvoted and Resteemed!
Very informative, great read!
If you really want your mind blown, check out all the tools that have been made for this place:
http://steemtools.com/
I have seen many of these - it was the conduit to my seeing the thing as a termite hill - many many passages in which to deploy robotic reward grabbers!
hhahha well we need to learn how they work so we can combat the bots better all the while it is entertaining for the whale population :D
The ideas were to get a community going, some interesting data easily accessible, some comic relief
At least that is what I see looking at the tools, don't worry bots are real :| very real indeed
Yes Steemit is not worth 380million but if you put positive attitude and quality post you still get payed.
Ah, yes, thank you for commenting as you have. My second post might explain this to you better. If 98% of the rewards pool as I understand it is known goes to 4% of the accounts on the platform, how is that equitable? The performance of the 'whale' accounts has led to the price descent through their avarice. The true split of the rewards pool needs to be published, as I suggested in my second post. There is an imbalance of huge proportions.
Are you happy to get paid when there is someone profiting to 'en' hundred percent more from your activity?
If you ask an investor to believe in positive attitude, you will not be taken very seriously. Positive attitude is a wonderful thing, when adopted in the right circumstances.
You are saying Steemit is not fair. OK I get your point.
But I'm still earning more than my posts on Fb. I shared some of my music here and made more money than all the music platforms I put my music combined.
Steemit is in its infancy. There are very few really powerful accounts, who put lots of money in the platform. No wonder they rule the payouts.
Think of steemit as a lottery.
Dear Mr @rossenpavlov, I am sure you are very nice. If it is a lottery, why do the 'whales' have all the tickets? The observations I am making are that the promise of the platform is in stark contrast to its reality.
Making more on steemit than you do on Facebook is wonderful and I am very pleased for you. The reality that the 'whales' are making an enormous amount more than you - off your content and that of others does not concern you? If not, then I am happy for you.
A whale is someone with at least 1000M VESTS
It's obvious that only with posting and curating one will never become one. Did you personally invest thousands of dollars at your own risk into the platform?
Btw steemit is a lottery, it's written in the whitepaper. You can come up with the best story and can earn 0.01$ or you can put a stupid meme and get 20$. There are no guarantees.
Of course, you can try making money on other platforms.
Look at Youtube
Total monetized views: 1,048,305
Cumulative revenues: $64.60
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/02/27/music-1-million-youtube-views-royalties/
People are just greedy, that's all. Youtube is greedy, the average person is greedy, I'm sure some whales are greedy for the payout pool etc.
Forget about the money for a moment. Stemit is still add free, censorship resistant (you can hide posts but can't delete them), you can build apps on top, there is a great community and so much more.
If you are using it just for the money, I feel sorry. You missed the whole idea.
I rest my case
I get your point but if you contrast that to the 7k spread around
Wooow so 1mil =65 usd or 65k 65k would be too much but that is insanely small, I'm guessing even with ads the pool there is being split with around a third going to the creators, another third to the developers and another third to the interests they have to return value to, just guessing.
Anyways I agree with you on everything, that still doesn't mean things are great here and I'm sure the price of the token reflects that, people were willing to spend 100k to buy in, where are they now? when the price is 10 times lower. Well Why would they have to spend 300k so that they can bump the price on everyone else here and be just another whale.
Problems need to be addressed and sustainability and growth need to be the top priorities, they are so far but a lot of what is necessary is still missing and it might be a while before everything is settled and the platform is fully featured. Early 2018 maybe who knows :)
Good post @fidelity
I share the exact same sentiment. I've tried to bring up solutions to the many issues mentionned in your post. I hope that you keep posting so people can see steemit for what it really is and improve on it.
I ll leave you with a quote from denmarkguy which perfectly describes the current situation
Followed and resteemed.
Thank you for your kind words @snowflake, I shall follow you too and @denmarkguy - he seems to get the conundrum of interests at play.
Not a lot of whale votes on this one, odd. ;)
No, but one of the founders dropped by to sneer at the truth behind the self-interest which he designed! He did not vote. He left some cryptic message and a very long code which is a mystery to all it seems.
Do you still have the same opinion now?
omg