So today I spent the day analyzing the way that Mana works in both Steem and Whaleshares.
My Steem alt account that I used had 6.1 SP and my Whaleshares account has .010 Whalestake. From a newbie perspective, it is clear that my ability to do anything on Steem runs out after about 40 minutes of engaging, while I am free to comment and engage with users as much as I like on Whaleshares.
With 6.1 SP, I was given 15 comments (posts and comments on steem are called "comments"). So, after engaging less than an hour, I was left with being locked out of Steem, due to running out of Mana. Every action on Steem reduces one's Mana: commenting, posting, voting, sending memos and transactions. Also interesting to learn that after I made several votes, the number of comments I could make went down too. This means that all activities are treated equally, and doing a lot of one activity reduces one's other activities. My vote is worth $0 in Steem.
In Whaleshares where I started out with .010 Whalestake, I was able to freely comment and post without using up my Mana. Mana is not affected at all by commenting. My Mana was affected by voting on other people's posts, so even if I ran out of Mana by voting too much, I could still comment to my heart's desire. So, I could have in theory spent many many hours on Whaleshares, even if I had used up my Mana with voting, since commenting doesn't affect Mana at all. My vote is worth .01 in Whaleshares.
Psychological Effects of These Two Systems: Cognitive Load
When new users experience a set of thoughts which revolve around restricted actions, and thinking too much about their social behavior/interaction it's called cognitive load. Cognitive load exists when you have to weigh your future actions, and make decisions about what to do. So, in Steem, due to the Mana restrictions on commenting, it adds significant cognitive load, and pressure onto a social activity that should be without such a load. Commenting and socializing and making friends is something that should feel free and easy. If not, people will begin holding back their natural social behaviors, or most likely, they won't even bother logging in due to the existence of this cognitive load.
On Whaleshares, I feel much freer to be myself, and to be social. I don't know if it will stay this way forever, but I can say with certainty that the brand new users are fairly miserable on Steem due to these Mana restrictions and excessive cognitive load.
The weirdest thing about this situation is that it would be easy to fix this in Steem. All it would take is awareness and a desire to make user experience the #1 priority.
If you’re a new user or have less than 15 SP please comment below about your experiences with Mana and how it’s currently impacting you.
Interested in joining Whaleshares?
Here’s how to get an account: https://whaleshares.io/whaleshares/@stellabelle/tutorial-how-to-get-a-whaleshares-account