Summary
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is full of falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” —Thomas Jefferson
One could easily paraphrase this quote for todays writers and readers:
“The man who reads nothing at all is better informed than the man who reads nothing but blogs.”
This proposal attempts to address the issue of ephemerality on the steemit platform by creating incentives for timeless content (in addition to timely) at a minimal funding cost to the system.
Introduction
As it stands, Steemit is incentivizing daily content creation and curation. A person can post 4 posts per day, without diminishing returns, and after 24 hours has elapsed, a post gets it’s first payout, and is no longer editable. After 30 days, a post gets it’s last payout and further up-votes and comments are not counted.
- Showing up every day
- Identifying quality content first
This all sounds fine and good in theory, but lets look at some of the consequences of this incentive system, specifically the more subjective modifier: Quality.
Two Philosophies Pertaining to Quality
To address this, I want to refer to a mind which was far better at identifying quality than my own and whose work on the subject directly applies. Dr. Steven Sample (November 29, 1940 – March 29, 2016) invented the touch buttons on your microwave and was the president of The University of Southern California from 1992 to 2010. He was a smart guy. And he had this to say about quality content in his 2001 book on leadership:
Suppose [you] were forced to choose between reading the New York Times on a particular day and reading Machiavelli’s masterwork The Prince. Conventional wisdom would favor the Times by a country mile. After all, today’s Times is fresh and new, while Machiavelli’s little handbook is stale and old. And besides, [you] may have already read The Prince. …
But contrarian wisdom argues just the opposite. … [You] can miss a day or a week or even several months of the daily newspaper and be none the wiser for it, and in some cases even be the better for it. But missing an opportunity to read or reread … any of the super-texts [The Bible, Quran, Shakespeare, Divine Comedy, Confucius’ Analects, Aristotle’s works, etc]… could be a major loss for both [you] and your followers. …
Almost everything that’s written in the world today (e.g., [blogs], [comments], e-mail) is read by one or a few people and then discarded. Even a font-page story in the Los Angeles Times, which might be read (or at least scanned) by as many as a million people, has essentially no readers twenty-four hours after it hits the streets. For a scientific or scholarly article to be read by as many as thirty people five years after it is published is extraordinary. And fewer than one in two hundred of all books published in the United States are still in print and being purchased ten years after they first appeared in the bookstore.
So to write something—anything at all—that is still read by even a small audience fifty years later is a major achievement.” …
One approach is to think of all published reading materials as a continuum or spectrum, running from the most ephemeral (newspapers) on the left to the most enduring the super texts on the right. … Near the newspaper end of this spectrum are magazines and trade publications [blogs], followed by most (but not all) newly published books. Next we might place journals and other periodicals of substance and a few of the more widely read textbooks. Closer to the super text end of the spectrum would be novels, biographies, plays, histories, poems and essay which are still being read fifty years or more after they were first published.
Contrarians Guide to Leadership, Ch 4: You Are What You Read, p. 55-67, 2001
I realize that Steemit is not out to find and publish the next Shakespeare (maybe it should be?), but I do feel some interesting notes can be gleaned from this passage that apply directly to the stated goals of Steemit.
Further, I would like to make clear that this analysis (and this author) has not assigned value to either side (unlike the Thomas Jefferson quote in the beginning). Timely content is no better or worse than timeless content, both have their unique and important purposes. In other parts of the chapter Dr. Sample openly notes that news is extremely valuable in the short term, but it does not have longevity, and likewise, famous or old books may not be pressing at all, but have extraordinary longevity that continues to hold influence on culture, language, and how people think.
These are two very different and very important mediums, and need to be addressed as such.
Another look at the Stated Goals
- Showing up everyday. If the goal is to get people to show up everyday, then clearly the best way to do that is two fold: incentivize the creation of timely content—which the platform presently succeeds at: news, jokes, entertainment, and offbeat posts are all enjoyable and keep the community alive, active, and at the cutting edge of the internet. But further, if we are to keep a spectrum in mind, incentivizing the creation of timeless content—reads that keep getting passed around and up-voted long after their release, must also be done. Alienating one over the other will either mean the content can be missed without impact on the reader (erring on the side of timely, and in which case, why show up everyday?), or that the content need not be read at all (erring on the side of timeless, in which case, why read this now?). The trick is finding balance between the two types, so the user is simultaneously getting fed the meat and potatoes, as well as the dessert, without going through bouts of addiction, withdrawal, or disillusionment.
- Identifying quality content first. Without addressing the "first debate" If the goal is to reward people for up-voting quality content, likewise, it should follow that a two fold perspective on “quality” should be taken into account. Timely quality is probably accurately accounted for. However, in Steemits present state it may be at odds with timeless content. It should go without saying that one of the primary ingredients into timeless content is a lot of time reading, researching, outlining, drafting, and editing. It is simply impossible to do four deeply researched investigative journalism pieces a day, none the less 4 in 6 months. Yet, those investigative journalism posts may be the most important posts a vast number of users read out of the thousands of posts they read over the entire year. And further, it may be those posts that keep users coming back every day to check for more. However, when the vast majority of users can post 4 posts or more a day, this much rarer content will get completely drowned out, and will never be able to reach the majority of it’s intended audience, nor will the authors be compensated for attempting to do so.
Surely it is in the best interest of Steemit to highlight, incentivize, and reward timeless content along with timely content for its long term survival and scalability.
Potential Solution
“When a new book is published, read an old one.” —Samuel Rogers
In light of these issues, I propose this solution: two post types.
Timely Posts
The first type is already established: The Timely Post. At 4 posts per user per day, I see ample opportunity for all users to contribute engaging, timely, newsworthy, and entertaining content. I do not think this should change for the purposes of this proposal.
Timeless Posts
However, I believe a second post type should be created. All users should be able to write a timeless post which adheres to a different set of rules, rights, and responsibilities than the timely posts:
- Extremely limited supply. The amount of these posts should be far less then the timely posts. Perhaps 1 timeless post allowed per user per month, or even 1 every 6 months. (Or rather, after the first post the reward rate limit curve drops to zero until the period has elapsed). This will ensure that people will think twice about posting a timeless post, matter of fact, it will ensure that they think quite a lot about which content they spend on their very rare post.
- Elongated editing schedule. Instead of locking a timeless posts after 24 hours, there should be a long vetting process where errors can be corrected as they are discovered over a long period of time, especially in the cases of new information coming to light, or legal issues that may require alterations. To prevent complete redactions, overhauls, and abuse perhaps only 1% of the article can be edited in a 24 hour period, and the article can be edited for the first month after publication. Or an article can have a one time addendum added to it.
- Elongated payout schedule. Votes and comments should not be counted and paid out on in the first 24 hours, but should be counted and paid out on a much longer timeframe. Perhaps once every two weeks, or once every month until the 6 months or 1 year mark. It might even make sense, if the supply of these posts is extremely limited, to never disqualify timeless content from payouts. Once a user up-votes, they would not be able to up vote again in a new period.
- Dedicated funding. To incentivize timeless content creation, a dedicated amount of mining rewards should go to it. The vast amount of content on steemit will remain timely and rotate on the 12 or 24 hour payout schedule. However, if timeless content operates on a far longer timeline its funding source can come from a very small % of the daily funding pool which then adds up over the course of the timeless content payout period. For instance, (I am not certain of daily rewards, but the example should scale), at roughly $100,000 of rewards issued per day, if $3,333 is set into a fund for timeless content each day, at the end of a 30 day period, the total timeless content reward would be $100,000. And less posts would be competing for it, by an order of magnitude. Or on the extreme end, of that $100k, if $10k is distributed to timeless content rewards daily, a massive influx of written looking to publish novels and the like would flock to steemit. However it is accomplished, some kind of parity or balance between the two types must be reached where users must weigh the importance of their posts to maximize their returns.
- Long form content. Though it is not exclusively the case, it should go hand in hand that timeless content is longer form. If a user wanted to post a book under these guidelines, they should be abel to do that. However, the posting of books and other long form content may benefit from the ability to break up chapters or parts. This should all be able to be done as an aesthetic interaction with the content that is perhaps reflected on the viewed web page but not on the blockchain (I say “should” loosely, I am no web developer or cryptographer). For instance, if a reader is not interested enough to up-vote until clicking through and reading to Chapter 4, that up-vote and all up-votes, no matter where they happen, count toward the book as a whole and are seen on all chapters. With comments, each comment could to be encoded with a tag so that it only shows up when viewing certain chapters or parts on the webpage, but when viewed on the blockchain, all comments are shown with the entire piece.
- Preventing abuse. Accounts should have to earn the right to post timeless content. Perhaps a certain reputation is required before being able to post, or a grace period between creating an account and being abel to post timeless content, or a minimum account balance, or a minimum word count must be met, whatever it is, there are many ways to ensure this. Further, these posts could also require sponsorship by another user to get posted—similar to how Medium has “contributors.” This would ensure quality content as two or more users would be associated with the post (Steemit already does something similar with TaPoS and account recovery). Or a bot like Cheetah could check for fraud (though that might be giving one account too much power). Because timeless posts would be much more rare and assumedly harder to abuse, the distribution curve on them could (or perhaps should) be flatter. This ties into the next point:
- Trending page. The front page of Steemit should not change, it is timely, and timeless posts should only hit it if they can compete with the daily timely trending statistics. This may mean that a timeless post could be on the trending page for weeks on end, but only if it is deserved, say, if someone writes the next Harry Potter or Hunger Games on steemit, that should be seen for months. I can not propose where this threshold should be, as it would depend on the timeless content payout schedule, funding amount, and distribution curve, but targets could be made for examples. If the number 1 timely post on the steemit trending page is making $10,000, perhaps it might be good to have the single best timeless post at the end of it’s elongated payout period, targeting somewhere around $3333 (or the bottom of the first page without scrolling). It will leave the trending page on the next day, keeping the timely tending page fresh and it will allow room for the next timeless content winner to rise. Or, if it’s just that good, it will find that seat again. With a flatter distribution curve, this repeated exposure should not affect payouts as dramatically, and allow for other competing timeless posts a chance to unseat it during the elongated payout period. The same should apply to individually tagged topics. But again, a lot of math and metrics predicated on the timeless post settings would determine how this is accomplished, and many people may have different input on what constitutes “parity” between the two types of posts. Additionally, if there are two types of posts, it should be fairly easy for the website to allow any user to elect to see both types, or only one type of post. If a user elects to only see the top trending timeless content, that page could soon evolve into a New York Times style best sellers list.
Potential Results
“There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears, one should read an old one.” — Winston Churchill
Implementing a method such as this has a few larger benefits.
- It is commiserate with user effort. In the current system, some posts require little effort, yet reap massive rewards. The number one post on Steemit at the time of writing is bragging about how the author spent 12 hours and made $15,000. Good for them! But imagine if they had spent 12 weeks writing something? You would hope that it would be of monumental quality, and would be compensated accordingly, but Steemit does not presently reward authors for this type of quality (just look up the hashtag circlejerk). The more effort someone puts into a post, the more opportunity they should have to benefit from it—there are absolutely no guarantees, just a better opportunity.
- It is commiserate with user experience. If someone wants to share an extremely personal, defining story on Steemit, there is rarely an unending amount of these stories per human. Once the story is told, one should not have to tell it again from different angles or break it up into different parts to try and win the reward they think it deserves (or in some cases get the compensation they are owed). When a rape victim has to testify in court about the experience, often times re-telling the experience is akin to re-living the experience in front of a jury of your peers, and can be just as traumatic as living it the first time. And to that effect, these kind of stories should not need to be campaigned for by their authors in hopes of hitting the 24 hour hype cycle. It is bold and courageous enough that they hit "Post". Story is king, and everything should be done to make the process of getting the story out there as painless as possible, and I believe this proposal helps in that regard.
- It incentivizes a pause before posting. Though someone might make only $100 in the first month on a timeless post, under this proposal, they could make $1000 every month thereafter. This will give users the ability to not just put their best foot forward the fastest in an attempt to win the lottery by playing the most tickets, but by putting their best foot forward, period. This model is more in-line with other successful creator funding models like the Youtube Partnership
Conclusion
Again, I am no cryptographer, nor am I a web developer, but it seems to me, that for minimum funding resources invested, a robust system can be built to incentivize timeless content, ensure user interaction and retention on a larger scale, ensure the longevity of the steemit platform, reduce energy devoted to "lottery ticket" postings, and generally improve the user experience with the absolutely best content possible. These methods are inline with what Steemit has stated it stands for and is trying to achieve, and I hope they are taken into consideration!
Thank you for reading this proposal. Please do not hesitate to share your views in the comments!