Root Cause Analysis
If you've never heard of Root Cause Analysis you're probably not alone. I hadn't heard of it until the first job I was sent to training to learn how to effectively develop an RCA (Root Cause Analysis). An RCA is a method of investigation to break down all the gaps in a work process and determining the best possible solution without it becoming a witch hunt.
Source
An RCA is basically asking why until you can't think of a question to ask anymore. You initially start off with a single row and build from there. For instance, in the below example they started off with Safety Goal Impacted well why was it impacted, because we lost 1,500 lives -> Titanic Sank -> Water Filled Hull -> Steel Plates Buckled -> Ship Hit Iceberg. That becomes the "backbone" of the analysis.
Then you start branching off. 1500 lives were lost because the Titanic sink "AND" because there were not enough lifeboats on the ship. The Ship Hit the Iceberg because of an Iceberg being present, the ship didn't turn quickly enough, "AND" the ship was in the water.
You may think to yourself well, of course, the ships in the water, that's ships are designed to do is transport people and material across the water so that one seems silly. I will then ask what if we decide we don't want to ship stuff by boat anymore and instead by airplane, well then we wouldn't have to worry about Icebergs anymore and the problem of the sink lives lost due to a sinking ship would be solved.
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Once you've come up with all the why questions you can think of then you start deciding on ways to solve said problem. In the example above they came up with the following 4 solutions:
- Add more lifeboats
- Slow down with Icebergs
- Improve bow watch communication process
- Change steel hull design, materials
The further left you can find a solution in the chain the more beneficial that solution is. Also, not all solutions are practical or economical. For instance, one solution may have been to not make any crossings in the colder weather when Icebergs are present or pick a warmer path for the ship that doesn't have icebergs. The company shutting down for months at a time or directing their ships far enough south might not be economical for the company as people would quit shipping products with them, or not want to pay increased ticket prices for a slower journey.
Solutions are chosen to get the issues that are discovered down to an acceptable level of risk which can vary from person to person and company to company. This is why it's always important to look at the issue from multiple angles to come up with as many causes as possible and solutions to solve said problems.
Bid Bots
People like to complain that Bid Bots are evil and that they are killing Steem. I counter that bid bots just fill a gap that the market has yet to find a good solution for. In my opinion, if you want to see a demise in bid bots this is what needs to get changed on Steemit or other Steem Dapps.
@deanlogic
A better way to bring more visibility on the platform to "good" content. I put good in quotes because I know that is subjective, but think this can be accomplished in two ways:
Get rid of the trending and hot tab and come up with something besides monetized based sorting. In theory, this is the perfect way to sort good content as can be seen from the Reddit interface, but not so great in the era of bid bots. A new algorithm needs to be developed that can sort out material so that good content will have a better chance of rising to the top.
Give users more control of filtering content on the trending or hot tabs. @enjar shared a useful tool with me to filter out Steem posts that appear to have been developed by the @curie project. I find myself coming back to this site a few times a week as it's a great way to help filter out some of the noise on Steem and to find some good and great articles.
Support for more automated and manual curation projects. This will solve the problem 2 fold in that it will help good content get more visibility in the current system and it will prevent people from using bid bots because their posts aren't making enough.
OCDB
Check out @ocdb is another solution to the Bid Bot "problem". This bot is not what I would consider a bid bot, but more of a content promotion bot. The reason I say this is the way that OCDB works.
Most bid bots you send your Steem in based on watching https://steembottracker.com/ and wait for a good time to get the most ROI which on most bots is limited to 15%. The bigger the bot gets the higher the minimum vote becomes using this method as they can only make their votes so small.
@ocdb
OCDB on the other hand just has a queue. A person can send in let us say 10 Steem to the bot. Once the bot hits it's Voting Power requirement it then calculates what percent vote to give you so that you get 150% It may be a lower percentage, but this is the last percentage I could find) vote in return or this case 15 Steem. It's not really a 50% ROI as some of that vote goes to the curators of the post.
Another benefit of OCDB that some people may not know about is that 100% of the profits from running the bot goes directly back to the delegator, this includes curation rewards as well as liquid Steem used to pay for votes. This is the best ever example I've found of a true "community" bot on Steemit that votes on content creators that create good content.
How do I know it's good content? Because this bot has a whitelist of either previous authors that have been showcased and upvoted by @ocd or because they've been reviewed/approved by OCD curators. Am I saying that every vote that is being cast by @ocdb is the best most amazing content on Steemit, well since I'm not the best writer, no it's not, but it should be good content with some effort thrown into it.
Source
While we won't catch everything I know myself and other currators do review the queue of posts every now and then to ensure what is being updated by the bot is good and have the ability to suggest people be removed from the whitelist who are abusing the bot or upvoting sub par content.
Thoughts
If I get the time one day I may see if I can put together my own RCA for the issue and to help me out I would love to know why you think people use bid bots in the comments below. Preferably something that a solution can be made for and not just human nature or greed that will never change.