Following up a conversation held in the chat (steemit.chat/channel/general) yesterday, I am wondering about steemit´s current rewards system and eventual improvements.
This idea also pays tribute to numerous voices who have been criticizing the current trend of automation and anonymization during the voting process on steemit.com (e.g. increasing number of bots and trails).
Is quantity more important than quality here?
Paying rewards according to the user´s attention level
One of the revolutionary and outstanding selling propositions of steemit is the fact that users get rewarded for their contribution to the network. I consciously haven´t used the term 'content' since we don´t only get rewarded for our own posts but also for the upvotes of other users´ (successful) publications.
I´d like to take one more step forward: in my opinion the big revolution is not only the fact that users get rewarded for their input, but also the fact that steemit could be able to reward users according to their different 'degrees of attention' paid during the content consumption process. What does that mean?
A fictitious steemit attention span
(sorted by attention level - from low to high)
- View (since one of the last updates even displayed for users by the 'eye symbol' at the bottom right of eacht article.
- Retention time (time spend 'reading' a post)
- Upvote *
- Reblog (resteem)
- OnClick link (in case article includes links / videos)
- Comment (simple text vs. included picture)
- View / comment (ratio between views and comments, % of comments per views)
- ..... ? what else?
*If there were even more possibilities to 'evaluate' an article (not just upvoting it) the list could grow even longer. I am definitely NOT talking about heart icons ('I love this post') used on facebook! I think we are on another level here.
Intelligent evaluation criteria for articles might be for example:
- Content teached me something new.
- Content was of high quality.
- Content made me laugh.
- Content was entertaining.
- Content was innovative.
- ... etc.
A simple upvote doesn´t really 'reflect' the user´s opinion about the content. There are so many different ways content is able to gain our (1) attention and (2) perception.
Why do we need this debate?
What currently happens is that we are not differentiating between attention levels. That means for example that a user who fields a bot in order to vote for him/her is rewarded exactly in the same way like the user who (I exaggerate) spends hours studying a post, reblogs it and even leaves a personal comment. Is that 'OK' for us?
This is not merely a question of 'justice' but especially a chance to make a difference.
It´s not only about the difference between attention levels paid from one user to another but a difference compared to other networks. We want quality? Well then we should reward quality accordingly - not only the quality of the content itself but also the time users spend in evaluating. This is an eco-system where everybody is constantly contributing anything. That means that the feedback given on an article is as important as the article itself. Without these mutual interactions the network wouldn´t even work. So shouldn´t we reward these contributions according to their quality?
Quality in this case is especially measured by time - the time a user spends reading, commenting, reblogging, interacting, etc. inside the network. Depending on the time spent, a user passes from one to another (a higher) attention level.
Why don´t reward the user´s time - paid with the 'currency attention'?
It would be a question of redesigning the rewards system, so nothing to implement overnight. But I think we should at least discuss about it :-)
I would be really happy to get your comments on that. They won´t be rewarded (yet), but highly appreciated :-)
Cheers,
Marly -
Picture source girl: http://theinfong.com/
Picture source quote attention: http://i.quoteaddicts.com/
Picture source quote time: http://cdn.quotesgram.com/
Picture source quote vision: http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/
