Thanks to everyone for the support on my opening post: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@daut44/introduction-and-ama-ask-me-anything-about-being-a-professional-poker-and-daily-fantasy-sports-player-cross-post-from-poker
I read a blog by 
I’ve been a member of various forums over the past 18 years, with topics ranging from Starcraft to poker to philosophy to astrophysics. And in the few days I’ve spent devouring Steemit I’ve realized there are some fundamental issues which prevent it from improving.
I love the concept of Steemit. I have been writing thoughtful posts and contributing to forums for years without compensation, and in much worse cases writers for billion dollar websites like the Huffington Post don’t get paid. However, for this website to reach its potential, the distribution of Steemit rewards must change.
"It’s not your fault"
When scrolling through the newest additions, I often see a complaint post about why someone’s body of hard work producing content hasn’t received more upvotes. I mean no offense by this, but most of the content on this website is terrible. Steemit is littered with spam, plagiarism, third-rate descriptions of concepts that could be better explained by linking an article/video or doing a google search, with little thoughtful discussion or back and forth going on in the comment section.
Don’t get me wrong, fantastic original content does exist here. Example from 
It’s just few and far between and when it happens the comment discussion is not an ongoing insightful discussion of concepts and ideas, it’s just a quick comment saying “upvoted” and/or quick praise.
But it’s not your fault your content is bad.
It’s just game theory. Having nuanced and interesting discussion in the comment section has little to no monetary reward, but producing a blog post that goes viral does or upvoting a post early does, so people spend little time reading and participating in thriving topics/discussions, but lots of time trying to be one of the first to like something or pumping out content. The only way to change this is to change the opportunity cost of content production
“There is no Nobel Prize for Fact Checking"
The problem Steemit faces reminds me of a recent episode of Last Week Tonight where John Oliver describes issues with scientific studies:
There is no reward system for replication studies in the scientific world. Similarly success on this website depends on publishing new content, not doing followup discussion in the comments section of an interesting topic.
I’m going to post two threads I chose quickly from lesswrong and quora to illustrate the point.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jcj/an_ethical_puzzle_about_brain_emulation/
The opening post of this thread poses a unique, intelligent, and philosophical question. The comments have thoughtful, intelligent answers.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-objects-traveling-at-faster-and-faster-speeds-become-more-and-more-massive
The top answers to this question are thoughtful and educated responses which do not pay the authors more than the satisfaction of helping others. I do not see this level of education on Steemit yet.
Imagine how thorough these answers and discussions would be if everyone was compensated for their time financially instead of just fulfilling intellectual curiousity?
Pay the Commenters More and the Authors Less
I'm not exactly sure the best way to enact this, but people shouldn't feel their time is being wasted writing their best content in the comment section of a post they did not write. My best solution would be for the pay graph for popular upvoted comments to increase at a much faster rate than that for authors. All I know is that a change needs to happen. The comment section of blogs should be the lifeblood of Steemit
Post your thoughts below, I'll respond to them, you'll re-respond and let's start having a nuanced discussion in one place.
Pledge to Give 50% of rewards for this post to top commenters
I'm still new to steemit, but is there a convenient way to pay others on this site with Steem other than just upvoting? Either way, I pledge to give 50% of the money this blog brings in to the commenters. I don't fully understand everything, but push and prod me in the right direction so we can get this train moving