There is in the world a great discussion today about inequality. Some of it is pertinent and enlightening, yet as with lots of things, most of it is noise. Indeed, this subject is so ideologically and emotionally charged, that one can rarely have a fruitful discussion on it. Still, I think the try is worth it, and a fruitful discussion is what we desperately need.
Equality of Opportunity and Inequality of Outcome
It seems to me there are two critical things to distinguish when talking about inequality: inequality of opportunity has to do with children born and effectively locked into poverty, lacking the instrumental chance to overcome their condition and reach their full potential. A tragic situation we all should strive to improve. On the other hand, inequality of outcome seems to be a rather natural, and even necessary effect of the free market. Indeed, if high productivity people work and risk 10x more, well, it’s common sense that they should be rewarded proportionally more. If you would want to cut off this kind of inequality, you would end up in a damning situation, where you would also have to cut off startups, inventions and general progress through various innovations(Bitcoin and Steemit included).
In fact, I think it should be fairly clear by now that the latter kind of inequality is, perhaps ironically, also strongly correlated with raising people out of poverty.
Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free. – Unknown
To drive the point home, lets do a simple thought experiment. Imagine for a second that we could start from scratch, redistributing equally all resources we currently have. The next day, each of us would do what he does best. Some of us would immediately start spending and consuming, being able to finally afford what we never could. Others would start building and producing, catering to the thirsty consumers. How would the distribution of resources look after, say 1 year? How about 5 or 10 years? Well, I suspect it would not take very long to be back in the position we started from, namely a rather natural inequality. Indeed, it seems very few of us truly grasp how deep the effects of our decisions run. Producer or consumer? You decide, but the effects come with the package.
Steemit: Equality or Inequality?
Applying the same principle to Steemit, we should all strive for equality of opportunity, which is granted by being able to join and bring contributions. Equality of outcome however, cannot and should not be granted. Yet decent rewards proportional to contribution should be strived for.
Still, one of the problems I see today is that the platform has not reached a critical mass yet. When this happens, specialization emerges and posts in different niches are curated by hundreds or thousands of people which make sure to reward quality and relevance by incentivizing it.
Indeed, until then people rely on various heuristics or hacks to bootstrap themselves into popularity if they did not have the fortune of joining before July or do not dispose of an already popular reputation.
In fact, perhaps the most effective way to build your profile on Steemit today is to do the obvious: know your strengths, use them to add real value to the platform, be gracious and kind to others and connect with other valuable contributors.
Whether you decide to write science or drama, the one key aspect to keep in mind is relevance to your particular audience(Steemit community). To the extent that posts resonate with the community, they will be significantly rewarded.
The Minnow Lottery
Before attempting to deal with the obvious tension points repeatedly expressed by the community, I’d first like to address two flawed premises which seem to distort the discussion and create lots of confusion.
Firstly, the word fair has been repeatedly used, yet as we can clearly see, it has proved useless for all practical purposes. Indeed, I suggest we abandon this confusing term and start using equality of opportunity and inequality of outcome to more clearly articulate things.
Secondly, whether we decide to post things or contribute in other ways, it should be clear that there is no guarantee of reward. This may be due to several reasons, like much more content being created than curators can effectively go though, minor conflicts of interest in rewarding mechanism, content being irrelevant to this particular audience, or simple randomness.
That being said, we do strive for equality of opportunity and decent rewards proportional to contribution, it’s just that our current mechanism still needs some tweaking.
Resource Distribution And Content Quality
Whenever we are addressing hard problems, it’s useful to take a step back and put things in perspective. Indeed, we have to remember that Steemit has already offered a solution that is 99% functional, it’s the refinement that we are currently debating about. It seems the last 1% we'll only be able to solve through collective effort, persistence and lots of trial and error.
Indeed, if you look at the resource distribution, the one thing we need to improve is minniows possibility to become visible and be reasonably rewarded, even without the blessing of large whales.
I may have a hunch here, though I’m not sure how useful it will be. We could implement a certain threshold of active minnow or dolphin votes, say 30(stage 1) and 50(stage 2), where a synergic effect would kick in, boosting the votes and allowing the poster to become more visible without the need of large whales. The synergic effect would begin boosting when 30 votes from active users would be casted. It would be most potent in absence of whale votes and would gradually decrease with every whale vote being casted. This synergic effect would allow lots of minnows and dolphins to practically serve as a small whale, further empowering the community for effective contribution. This is only a seed, I do understand that it will be tricky to define active users in such a way as to prevent abuse, but I will leave it to more experienced and technical members of the community to decide if this could turn into a feasible solution.
When talking about the quality problem, it seems to me that it is very easy to overreact. The overall content posted on Steemit has been slowly but steadily improving. From mostly drama and introduceyourself posts, people are now gradually diversifying to more substantive posts. Indeed, as the community is being educated and made aware about identity theft, plagiarism and other forms of degenerative content, and more sophisticated detection measures are put in place, the incentives for such behavior will decrease significantly and we will hopefully see less and less of these problems.
The more important note though, is that relevance of posts is a two way street. One the one hand, you are signaling something through your post, one the other, you will only be rewarded for your post however qualitative it may be, to the extent to which the community can relate to your signal. If it’s either too sophisticated or too simple, you will miss your audience. At a meta level, the trending page is a simple yet useful reflection of where we now stand as a community: what our quality level is, what we care about and what we pay for. Apparently we have improved quite a bit, but there’s still long way to go.
Few Pertinent Suggestions: Small Changes, Large Effects
There have been countless suggestions along the way, and many more will come. What I want to do is help with some suggestions which apparently require small efforts but could bring disproportionate benefits.
1. Legibility and aesthetics:
Ever since I first saw the design of the post page, it was obvious that it could be improved significantly. One of the most effective improvements in both legibility and aesthetics would be to restrict characters to up to 70 per line. This seems counter-intuitive, but I suspect it will become obvious once you see it. It’s fascinating how overall user experience can be significantly altered though so small of a change. Just take a look at medium or one of Paul Graham's essays as an example.2. Adding number of views to posts:
Presumably one of the most addictive features of the traditional blogging platforms is the view count. It is also a very useful metric of attention. I think whoever finds a way to implement it, will surely be well rewarded by the community.3. Mobile friendly apps and tools:
It’s great to see how many devs create tools and apps for Steemit. It would be even greater if those apps and tools would be mobile friendly. You can post about it once you’ve done it, I’m sure the community will gladly reward such efforts.4. Post feed enhancement:
One way to further enhance the value of the post feed section is to make it the default page which appears when you open your own profile page(www.steemit.com/@xtester). By replacing the Blog section with the Feed section you effectively add significant value to the feed section, encouraging more interaction rather than concentration on ones own posts.References
Photo credit: