In the last survey a couple of my readers suggested that these are the problems:
- Auto voting encourages curators to not read blog posts
- Curators tend to vote for their favorite bloggers (many of whom are established bloggers)
And some solutions were offered:
- Require curators to upvote new posters with a percentage of their voting power or they lose power
None of these solutions have much to do with the bloggers as bloggers don't decide anything except how often to post, what format to post in, when to post, what to post. The blogger must follow the economics set in place by the developers, and must provide content of sufficiently high quality for their curators.
On the question of returning to the top level post cap:
- Some bloggers and readers think a return to the cap is a good idea.
- Some bloggers and readers prefer longer more elaborate posts than the current trend.
- Some readers and curators seem to prefer shorter posts because they don't have the time to read many long posts.
My thoughts on these solutions are that I don't think most of the solutions will make that much of a difference but I do think some of them are interesting. The reward capping in my opinion will encourage longer higher quality posts again but then the rewards will likely to go fewer posts and this seems to me a decision made during a time of scarcity. The price of Steem is going down so the reward pool is something some bloggers might think should be rationed.
At the same time the solution to require curators to upvote new bloggers is interesting but under the current economics I can see a problem. What would encourage the new bloggers to produce quality content? Established bloggers are established because they have a track record of creating quality content but new bloggers aren't necessarily going to create quality content. This to me seems to favor the short quick posts as curators will have to vote for any new blogger no matter the quality to avoid being punished themselves.
New questions
Now I have some new questions but the gist of this debate seems to be centered around this fundamental question:
- Do we want to encourage established bloggers to keep blogging on Steemit or do we want to encourage new bloggers to start blogging on Steemit?
This may be a matter of balance but if the balance tips too far in favor of encouraging new bloggers then established bloggers eventually will leave for other places where they can be more successful. The market for blogging on Steemit is finite and if people want to see more content from their favorite bloggers long term then they'll have to find a balance which allows their favorite bloggers to continue posting while also not alienating new bloggers. This becomes more difficult when Steem goes down in price and this same thing happened last winter when Steem was spiraling in price and people blammed the top bloggers and excessively high payouts.
If new bloggers are favored completely over established bloggers then from day to day or week to week it will be like a lottery. No matter how many times you post, or how good your posts are, you might win on some days and lose on others, and over time as more people post the odds of winning go down. If reputation, being known, having a lot of followers, all are removed, then new bloggers have an even playing field but blogging as a whole becomes less attractive.
We see similar on Youtube where you had at one point in time popular Youtubers who made a lot of money, had a lot of subscribers, but then one day Youtube decided to demonetize thousands of Youtubers. These Youtubers have resorted to Patreon and other means to continue to produce content. The same in my opinion will happen for established bloggers on Steemit if the balance tips too far in favor of new bloggers. Established bloggers on Steemit will produce more sponsored content, and rely on subscription models.
Are auto-votes a prelude to the subscription model/Patreon model?
In Youtube when demonetization happened we saw established Youtubers go with the Patreon model. Patreon on their website advertises itself as being a way for creators to get "sustainable income". This is something most established bloggers on Steemit seem to benefit from, but it's also something that established Youtubers or bloggers anywhere on the Internet benefit from through Patreon. Is the auto-voting just a mechanism to enable something better in the future?
SMTs will enable bloggers to have the Patreon like business models. Bloggers must run a business to continue blogging and popular bloggers with good reputations will only be able to blog in a sustainable way if enabled to do so. New bloggers in theory should be able to gain subscribers too but if no bloggers can gain subscribers then established bloggers may have to actually use Patreon on top of Steem which to me seems ridiculous given Steem is a superior technology.
Thoughts?