Steemit is in my opinion one of the greatest social experiments to ever come along.
I know almost all of us come into steemit and it's like this...
But consider this for just a moment
Each and every one of us now have the ability to help others to earn a meaningful living in a world where the only thing scarce are jobs.
Unfortunately, the waters are a little choppy right now.
@Dan just quit and many people are flipping out, and now we have major players like @dragosroua shutting down their nodes, powering down and dumping their steem. We have whale wars going on and an experiment, that sadly is beginning to seem like a particular experiment from Stanford...
Nothing personal @abit and @smooth but here's the truth. The experiment is awesome for the reward pool, but it's going to kill steemit if you and the others continue with it. The negativity associated with a flag is too much for most people emotionally to bear. You can claim it's not personal, but people feel like it is and that perception is all that matters. They feel hurt. You can get the same result with far less effort by just upvoting whatever content you do like.
But that's pretty much all of the bad news. The good news is that steemit and steem are still in great shape, and we as a community can make this even better.
So here are 5 easy steps that we can all do to make steemit great again!
Power Up 100% on every post, every time! - Doing this reduces the amount of new steem actively entering circulation, plus it gives you clout, weight. This additional clout is power for your upvote and means that your voice carries more weight. With major whales powering down and you powering up, your voting power will be worth MUCH more in the near future.
Never flag! - unless the post is a violation of copyright, or it's trolling or abusive. I know the design here is that downvotes/flagging redistribute the rewards pool. But the part that was missed in the design of the system is the emotional impact of being flagged for earning too much money. This isn't a communist system. Yes there is the option to forceably redistribute someone's earnings. But the same effect can be achieved just by upvoting the content you like. The downvoting to remove rewards serves no purpose that isn't better served by just upvoting only the things you like.
Share your posts here on other social media! - Not just the posts themselves, but also talk about steemit on your other social media. Make your initial posts here and share there. If one of your posts happens to attract a lot of attention on other social media networks, then it brings attention to this platform. That attention is the real currency behind steemit. The more attention we get, the more valuable the efforts of each and everyone of us becomes.
Get involved! - Not just here but also on Github. A lot of discussion occurs on Github that never even sees the light of day here. But these discussions are vital to the long term future of the platform and as an example
Here are 2 feature requests, that will change the face of steem as we know it...
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/848
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/947Consider buying steem whenever it droops a little! - Right now we have people that bought in at as much as $5.00 trying to exit. These people are taking a major loss just to exit. But here's the thing. This won't last. If you're an American, dumping your excess steem for a loss is a tax write off. There is a good incentive to dump because Uncle Sam is paying for all your losses and there are people including myself that are powering down for this reason alone. But this will only be true for a few more weeks. Once April 14th rolls around, the price decline will stop and most likely reverse as a lot of the pressure to sell abates. That means that there HAS NEVER been a better time to buy than right now, and there may not be another chance like this again.
Stay happy! Because there has never been a better time to be part of this than right now...
Some final thoughts...
As the whales power down, yes it pushes the price down for everyone, but it's also redistributing the economic power of the steemit platform into a more democratic arrangement. These whales who are dumping are doing so at a loss. But if we endure this short term pain, I am still confident that in a few years time steem will be trading at $10 each. We just need to focus on the long term and take proactive steps to make that happen and one of those steps is acquiring steem on the open market. As new businesses adopt steem and use it in new and innovative ways it will attract more businesses and consumers to the platform. @tradeqwik for instance powers up it's entire cold wallet and uses it to upvote our most active traders. That's hardy the only business giving steem a long hard look right now. But these things take time, so have a little patience because it will pay off in the end and you'll get to be part of all of it!
Steem On!
This post is 100% Steem Powered!
These images all came from various google image searches, if you know who's they are, let me know so I can provide attribution, thanks!
Your post has been a real breath of fresh air!
Attitude is Everything!
Promoted and resteemed.
Thank you so much for doing that! I really appreciate that you liked it, the resteems are great, and promotion is always an awesome feeling!
You have done a great work @wiliambanks! I love it!
You are doing so many things for this community! I hope one day to become like you! 10 more people like you on steemit and it will blow up! Cheers @onceuponatime!
You are making me blush lol
That's not what I want :D
I can say in the name of a lot of people that you are very generous and they will admit that! That kind of person I want to become! Maybe next time when I will have the chance to meet you like I had at Steemfest, I will thank you in person for your generosity you provided!
Love it! That´s the way to go, YES. Thank you!
Resteemed :)
Wow! Thank you for the support!
With @dan dumping I feel we could be looking at another 13 weeks of depressed prices .
I have my doubts he'll keep dumping past the April 14th deadline. The tax penalties would be awful and when push comes to shove he's dumping at a major loss. Who knows though. But either way it's one less whale in the pool.
FYI, dan said that he will be powering down at old speed (2 yrs). But I don't know how I can check his current rate. Information from -
https://steemit.com/steemit/@berniesanders/why-did-ned-lie-to-the-steem-community#@dan/re-berniesanders-why-did-ned-lie-to-the-steem-community-20170315t031525677z
I agree with every point, @williambanks! Great post. :)
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
You bet! Looking forward to that price rise.
Oh boy, so am I :D
Upvoted and resteemed. Thank you!
Thank you so much for doing that! I really appreciate it!
It is the stated argument but the reality is that a group of whales and bots always vote for the same people regardless of the content of the post.
The experiment partially broke this pattern
Removing curation rewards would also break this pattern. Like I said it's great for the reward pool, but it's actively harming the perception of the community to the outside world and frankly it hurt's people's feelings inside the community too.
Great post 😁 And love the attitude.
On one point you're incorrect though
To counter the effect of an up vote using only up votes you'd have to up vote every other eligible post in a very precise way to raise the overall up votes considered for reward pool distribution. Down votes work very well in a much simpler way.
However I really agree that flags have a negative emotional impact. I believe this could be solved by a UI change and outreach.
I disagree with the idea that ui change and outreach solves this. And yes upvoting things in a very specific way may take more time and effort, but if you care enough to downvote, my question is why waste the one resource this community has very little of, i.e. good will, in order to save a little effort?
Furthermore, how can anyone really support the idea of redistribution of wealth like that? A simpler solution would be to keep what we have but ditch curation rewards. The automated upvotes exist solely for 2 reasons. #1 is curation rewards and #2 is solidarity. You'll never do anything about solidarity voting. But ditching curation rewards removes an economic incentive to run a mindless bot.
Great comment though and thanks!
If curation rewards were ditched, what would be the incentive for holding Steem Power? After all, we already got rid of the hyperinflationary interest rates, and so far as I can tell that hasn't really made more people want to invest in Steem as was hoped for. Sure, having a greater ability to help others out is nice, but there has to be at least some personal benefit to holding SP or I suspect we would see an acceleration in power downs and sell offs as a result.
For example, VIVA has the dividends based on liquidity pool stake, so in VIVA you can get away without any form of curation reward since that compensates for it. But Steemit has no such other mechanism to take the place of curation.
Curation rewards incentivize the mindless bot behavior and it's the mindless bots that are being given as the reason for the whale war.
Ditch it and give people an interest rate for holding SP equivalent to what they would have gained from curation. It's simpler and it serves a valid purpose.
Curation will still occur because of solidarity. People like who they like and we upvote our friends even when they shitpost :D
VIVA was designed partly based on lessons learned from steem, so the comparison is a good one.
Under VIVA your ability to upvote tomorrow is partially related to whether or not you used your upvotes the previous day. The longer you sit idle and do nothing, the lower your power creeps. It's the opposite of steem in that regard. That's why it's called "participatory income". You get paid more for what you do, than what you did. But you continue to benefit from all your efforts, for life.
Steem could mimick this in a way by ditching curation rewards and causing all new funds regardless of source to be autopowered up, instead of entering general circulation. Then when people want money they could just start powering down. The incentive there is the price of steem will have risen dramatically because it pinches hard on the supply.
gee, I have been lowly participating the participatory VIVA and highly participating the anti-participatory Steem... What's wrong with me!? LOL... Gonna hit the viva chat later...
Loved your post. Much inspiring :D
100℅ power up now too.
Exactly!
Thank you! I'm glad we agree! :D
Followed and resteemed :D
Let's hope you are right. I do have to say though that this experiment has been a good thing,minus the flagging.My curation rewards have doubled(to the whooping 3.6 steem per week,lol),and lots of people are seeing higher rewards,and now their votes count. I think the idea to turn the whale accounts into investor accounts with higher interests is a good one.
Upvoted and resteemed.
I agree that the experiment is good for the rewards pool. Thereby making those of us who finally can upvote and see results feel better about ourselves. The problem here is that the indiscriminate flagging in the whale war experiment is harming feelings. No other social media network pays it's users to participate. Yet they all get along fine. Why? Because a flag is not taking money from someone that they feel they've earned.
These people who are getting hurt by this, have made a choice to be here rather than wherever else it is they could be. Many of them have large audiences outside of steemit, and by punishing them for earning too much we're putting fodder in their mouths for a rage quit. But that's not even the whole point.
The same effect could easily be achieved by people just voting the content that they like. Period.
If you're a whale with enough voting power that your downvote can take money away from someone. You can also use that same power to make some random person's life better.
Why waste time and effort and most importantly, the community's good will on a downvote?
I agree on all points.But it seems to me that the mistake was starting the experiment without consensus. I'm very curious to see if this will lead to changes however,coming up in hardfork 18,whenéver that might be.
thank you for sharing some positivity :) I have resteemed to spread it around :)
Thanks alot! I'm following you now.
nice post. I'm already on the 5 steps. unfortunately, my actions count about zero.
(the experiment is really a deadly childish fight. the redistribution of voting power is not a positive thing if it is forcedly created during the beta. it has to come with the growth of the platform, in my opinion)
Well I think the dilution now is actually a positive thing. These people selling are doing so for the tax writeoffs. People don't usually sell at a loss unless there is some other way to compensate. This means we have a light at the end of the tunnel. The redistribution was planned to take a couple of years, but by getting out of the way sooner rather than later, the entire system becomes more democratic long before it has a chance to develop a reputation for fascism.
Great post - followed and resteemed - and I'm following your suggestions too.
Fully agree - Steemit is going places!
Thanks for the resteem and follow! I've followed you now too.
Your reward for being in
Promotedis an upvote and 0.002 SBD extra promotion.Good job, keep your contents promoted! :)
Wow! Thanks for that! I really appreciate it!
A positive attitude is so important. Thanks.
Thank you! I'm super glad you enjoyed it!
Very nice post. Thank you. Nice energy. I am inspired to buy more Steem.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Happy Steeming!
Great! I totally agree with you!
Resteemed ^_^
Awesome! Thank you so much for the resteem!
$10 per STEEM!!!
Wow, I am going to have to be MORE conscious from now on...
Steem on,
Frank
This $10 value comes from a post I made in early august back before they removed liquidity rewards. I predicted that the fair market value for 1 STEEM should be around $10. This is based on the value that we as an audience would have to marketers and what the price would do when we attract advertising companies.
I stand by that assessment. If you're selling for less than $10, you're leaving money on the table. Just wait until we pull our heads out of the sand and start bringing in companies that want to talk to us about their products. I know ads can be annoying, but at some point it will be a major driver of the price of this currency, mark my words.
Thanks for the comments!
I agree, when the first MAJOR company targets Steemit, STEEM, SP, SBD and sees it's marketing value.
It's going to be steeming hot!
Well I've been away and have no ideia what the hell is going about... but your post clarified a bit of this foggy business that steemit is for a lot of people, me included! Thanks!
Awesome! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
This is the most important! :D Nice write-up! :)
I agree, of all my tips I think that one is the most important!
Totally, in those time of high toxicity ^^
Good post. Resteemed
Thank you for the resteem! It's very much appreciated!
Great post with some sensible suggestions! I always do the 100% power up option and have never even considered powering down, because I eventually want to become a respectable dolphin. As you said, with whales powering down and the little guys like me powering up, the Steem distribution will become more even and a whole new dolphin class will be empowered. It's just a matter of time, and smoothing over these rough patches until then. I'm also buying Steem on the dips, with a series of staggered buy orders each sitting about 25% lower than my previous order. After all, when there's blood in the streets it's often the perfect time to buy. But I wouldn't go all in, cost averaging is King as nobody can predict exactly what the bottom will be.
I do think the much talked about "experiment" was well intentioned and has certainly benefited me personally, so I'm in favor of it. I've seen the impact from my voting increase and my curation rewards double. But it's definitely a double edged sword, I can understand that a lot of people feel hurt from the flagging. If only all the whales would cooperate in not voting, that could be avoided. But achieving such consensus is very difficult. I noticed downvotes are being accompanied by explanatory comments which is good, but probably communications around this could have been done in a more effective way at the start.
If they were all commented you'd be right on the mark. It wouldn't make it "ok", but it would help smooth things over. However even this post just got flagged by @smooth with no explanation given despite no whale votes and only being worth about $20.00 something dollars.
I think in that case it's not really so much abstaining from voting, as lashing out. I could be wrong, but without an explanation I'm left with the unenviable position of trying to imagine why someone I consider a friend and regular supporter, is suddenly flagging me. And that's sort of my point. This hurts, emotionally it makes anyone on the receiving end feel slighted.
There are no whale bots that ever upvote me, same with several others and I think this is what @berniesanders was getting at when he mentioned he didn't want to take part in the experiment anymore . We're mixing personal opinion up with fair distribution of rewards.
Is a post telling people that we're nearly past the worst of it, and now is a great time to buy, really worth $20 something when the rewards pool is so low?
I think only the community at large has the right to determine that. But downvoting when there are no whale votes present just because you disagree with someone, while claiming to be part of an experiment to see what happens when whales "don't vote". Makes the result invalid.
I still don't know why @smooth downvoted this post and coming from a person I admire and respect so much, I'm just baffled.
Hmmm, now that you mention it I'm a bit curious too. $20 doesn't seem like that much, makes me wonder what the threshold is for triggering a downvote. And I thought it was only to counter votes from other whales that don't want to play along. Seems there is some lack of consistency here... would be nice to know the exact criteria being applied. Also I wonder if it's being done manually? To ensure the experiment is fair, running a bot to apply the criteria equally across all posts and ensure comments get left would be best.
A downvote is still a vote. That's my point. Whatever the reason, you can't say you're seeing what happens when whales don't vote and then suddenly start voting, regardless of if that vote is positive or negative.
You're just being intellectually dishonest when you do.
Even more so when you flag content that doesn't have the requisite criteria of having any whale votes at all in the first place.
I'm just curious because I've never seen @smooth act this way. I expected better and it makes me disappointed. He's usually my biggest supporter.
Excellent positive post. I pretty much agree with all of it.
Keep the flagging but remove the part that takes away rewards.
As you say, just vote for the post you like. Simple as that.
Strange how I dont feel that Steemit is finished but just beginning.
Not sure why after all that has been going on here the last few weeks.
Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that Steemit has gone through hell and high water and yet look how much posting is happening and how much positivity there still is.
Thank you for the awesome compliments! I really appreciate it!
I wrote a proposal which I think would eliminate the need for "redistribute rewards" flags 90% of the time.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@demotruk/loss-aversion-on-steemit
Excellent and well written post, I upvoted it! Great job @demotruk
Steem on my friend ! Nice.
Thank you very much and Steem On!
Aside from #5 and paying to play, I live all 5 of those. Full Steem ahead!
Awesome! I'm so glad you're doing this already.
Full steem ahead!
Doh! That was me forgetting to log out of @tradeqwik, anyways...
Full Steem Ahead!
Just curious, as a newcomer I am unsure what 100% power up means. Thanks!
It's an option when you post. There's a check box to 100% power it up. And then this converts the earnings on the post to steem power.
Thanks for answering my question!
My posts are 100%Power Up. Absolutely agree with you. Resteem for you )
@williambanks, love the post. I'm juiced up now. We steem on and we steem On really hard!
Now I can pretend to know what I am doing :-D
I, for one, am very happy to be here... and I actually have YOU to thank for that; one of your Viva posts made it onto a friend's Facebook feed. Still checking out Viva; glad to be part of Steemit!
I'm all about the long-term potential of Steemit, and about the vast ocean of possibilities for developing and adding features and apps under the Steemit umbrella... hoping there can be some version of "decentralized development; centralized implementation" meaning the ability to run a bunch of different apps from one Steemit interface.
I'm working on clarifying some ideas for creating an outstanding user experience here... something that truly could help Steemit compete with other social platforms and look really attractive... while also shoring up an underlying business model for Steemit, Inc. It's in the works... my problem tends to be that I suffer from "Too Many Interests Syndrome" and end up spread too thin.
Anyway, thanks for a very encouraging post!
Wow, thank you for that! And I agree steemit has a lot of long term potential. That's why we're such big supporters and power up our entire cold storage wallet and use it upvote our active traders on TradeQwik.
Steem sucks. A better way has to be found to distribure tyhe rewards.
I disagree with that. There probably are better ways to distribute the rewards. But for right now, this is what we've got and it works well when everyone is on equal footing. The problem is when there is a huge disparity in power between people. Some people feel left out in the cold.
It's not only a problem of the distribution of rewards. There's a problem also with the reputation system. If you don't have anything good to say about Steem, then STFU or we'll destroy you.
The market price tells all.
I don't think the market price really tells us anything about the long term. It's been in a slide since they removed liquidity rewards and that slide was accelerated by the change to 13 week power downs. This tells me the coin is just being traded on it's hype or lack thereof more than anything.
Rep is interesting and the fact that there is no seperation between a removal of income and hit to reputation, tells me they need to go back to the drawing board on some of this. But it's still the best thing out there right now and I don't see any competitors with what I would consider viable alternatives.
I've noticed today that practally every new post is making money. And at the same time the price of Steem is going up. Did they finally figure out if you distribute the coins to a bigger base they'll be worth more?
No it's a pump n dump as Ned and Dan make for the exit. But thanks for playing! In all seriousness though someone is working on their tax write-offs, check the volume and the pricing. And look at who's exiting shortly.
UPvoted, rEsteemed and followed!
Thank you for posting THIS instruction manual.
I highly agree with #MSGA.
Marketing will in fact rush into this platform soon.
But We are all interacting on a pretty resilient Blockchain.
I came her to power up for the long haul ; )
Wow thank you for that! I'm following you now too!
hi william, great stuffs! previously I was like 80/20 supporting the experiment. have read various posts discussing this issue, for and against to highly-against :) ... Now my position has changed to 40/60 ... It's time to stop. Reasons being:
Your post probably pushes me from 50/50 to 40/60 (It is the best one from the opposite camp... no, just kidding.. we are always in the same camp). But, anyway, as usual, just my 2 cents! :)
Upvoted and Tweeted !!!
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Your post has been a real breath of fresh air!
Attitude is Everything!
Promoted and resteemed.
If the flag / down vote is too negative then there needs to be another method to distribute the rewards more evenly. I'm still arguing that upvotes should be switched to voting for an amount the post should be worth ie. smart votes. Right now your vote is only to adjust the reward up or down from what it is at the time that you the post. We should be voting on the end result.
i am new over here, i have doubt i want to know what will happen when all th steem are mined and in the market?
Make it great again? Dear william, it always was great! :D
This is a great summary of the current state of Steemit, and real helpful to me as I'm trying to get back into it. I actually am powering up 100% of all my posts right now, but not sure how to do that for comments which happen to earn rewards.
Lol I don't understand the money part I just have fun steeming but I'm not ignorant with bitcoin and ether I have great faith in them I check it everyday , but here? No clue