Case Study: Splintertalk Curation and My 10% Downvote Rubric

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Right now, the SPT last price is 0.007 STEEMP / $0.001444 USD.

Looking at the top 10 posts on Trending, the average pending payout (for 7 unique authors) is: 3757.280740 SPT, worth 27.428 STEEMP / $5.426178 USD.

If all 10 of those payouts were sold on the market using the actual volume/prices of the buy book, 37572.807401 SPT would sell for 267.519 STEEMP / $52.923936 USD, bringing the price down to 0.006800 STEEMP / $0.001343 USD.

It's unlikely that the top 10 Trending posts would all immediately dump. The authors and curators would all have to dump at the same time. I was just trying to determine what kind of support the market had for this amount.

In my opinion, the order book is pretty healthy.


However, there is a small problem happening on splintertalk.io itself. It's a small problem with a simple solution. In my opinion, Splintertalk Trending needs some better curation. It's the kind of thing that any tribe/community can deal with fairly easily.

Splintertalk Trending is full of quest status updates and contests. In and of themselves I have no problem with this kind of content. The problem I have is when Trending is 75% quest status updates and contests.


Solution

Here's my "10% Downvote" curation rubric:

  1. Is the author on Trending?
  2. Is the author always on Trending?
  3. Did the author appear to put minimal effort into the post?

If these criteria are met, I issue a 10% Downvote. Let's break it down:

Is the author on Trending?

This isn't hard to figure out. There are many authors who show up on Trending every day, so you get to know them over time. New authors on Trending should get a chance to do their thing.

Is the author always on Trending?

On the other hand, there's something fishy about an author who always gets on Trending for every post they write. Can it happen? Certainly. That's why there's more to this rubric ...

Did the author appear to put minimal effort into the post?

Again, an author that isn't always on Trending who puts minimal effort into a post but made it to Trending is not the focus here. They can just do their thing.

There are times when a chronic minimal effort author will put in the effort sometimes. If that happens, usually it's still pretty low-effort. I have a different rubric for that situation.

My goal here, with this "10% Downvote" rubric, is just to communicate my dissatisfaction with a particular pattern of posts that are always on their way to earning daily 4,000 SPT or whatever. I don't just blindly cast these 10% Downvotes. I'm looking at the post. Is it just someone phoning it in, talking about their daily quests every single day? Why would I want to highly reward "I got these cards" from multiple people, every day?

It's one thing if "I got these cards" posts got 100 SPT every day. Not ideal, but hey. On the other hand, I'm seeing 2,000 SPT over and over. That's ridiculous.

So why don't I 100% Downvote these? Well, for one thing, there's too many right now. But there's another reason. If this happens for 10 days on one account, that's as good as a single 100% Downvote, once in a while. Over time, curators will hopefully notice that blindly voting for these is a waste of voting power.

Instead of concentrating on one post every 10 days, casting 10% Downvote helps me track things over time as well. Since I'm only focusing on Trending for this rubric, once I vote I can move on. It helps my cognitive load if I see I've already voted on something on Trending, rather than try to remember if I've already dealt with a particular author in some other post and I can ignore the others. That would be tiring. So 10% Downvote it is.

Conclusion

Does this work? At the moment, it appears it does work.

There's a large segment of reasonable people who are receptive to criticism. I'm also trying to be reasonable. I don't think these posts are worth 1,000 SPT, but I'm willing to transition in that direction because that would at least double the number of non-quest status rewards. We'll see if it actually makes any difference. Maybe they'll just double the number of accounts that write these useless posts. Or maybe they'll expand their curation scope. Let's see how this plays out.



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45 comments
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I think I will adopt a similar approach for steemleo.

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Yeah, that's the real goal here. To model behavior that will improve other tribes/communities or at least figure out what doesn't work.

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To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

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It's the way to go. I am glad that there are people receptive to the reasoning

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Those large rewards on trending will work against the coin in the long run.
I know it's not the same on them all.
Those getting above average rewards will either dump at some point, or use their advantage to the detriment of other holders, imo.

It's just a matter of time for some of them to catch up to steem's distribution, except without the buying pressure steem currently enjoys.

That said, this is much better than what we had waiting for stinc to save us.

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Thanks for going into detail on your reasoning.

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(Edited)

There is no consistency in your logic.
According to your logic, a quest or contest-related article should be down-voted to everyone. But you're only going down to the big three.
One of the reasons for becoming a big sensation is evidence that the company has invested as much in SPT. Those who have been down-voted are the ones who are leading the SPT's price rise.

You are not reading all the writing in Korean, but you are downvoting with a bot.

My posting isn't just about quests and contests.
Stop downvoting in my article.

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Thanks for informing in detail what the background of the action from the account @inertia is. I am maybe not that active on SPT, but an active user of Splinterlands and also the KR community.

I will not say that the thesis from @inertia is wrong, nor can I say that it is right.

First of all, you will have to see how the distribution of SPT has been done.

The SPT distribution was done on a specific way, as so called Steemmonsters mavericks (accounts that have bought more than 500 packs, which equals to an investment of at least 1000 USD) were able to claim their SPT when verifying their discord name with their Steem ID.

It means that the Genesis Qty was created mainly with high stakers of Steemmonster players.

Currently KR users have a stake of about 35% of the whole SPT, which may explain the trending issue.

If you look into the account numbers, under 4.2% of the accounts are holding the 35% stake from KR.

If you look into the current orderbook of SPT, about 40% of the buying orders (have excluded the @inertia order for a way too low price under the current market price) are also from KR.

KR users tend to keep between themselves when curating, which comes mainly because of the language barrier. It is by the way not different for other languages, as an example my Korean posts are mostly not curated from any international users. (I know that @intertia is upvoting also KR SPT material)

So, IMHO downvoting on these targeted groups is not helping on the long term but the international community will first of all need,

  • larger stakes of SPT to distribute the curation field, means buy in more SPT to get a voice and be able to curate a wider field, as @interia has done.
  • An UI change, which a Nitrous tribe CAN do. https://kr.tripsteem.com/ is a good example for showing content as the tribe organizer wish to show it (BTW, not nitrous). TripleA is also working on a solution to show the content based on nitrous as it would benefit the tribe the best. It is something that the nitrous tribe organizer has to do.

I have also forwarded the conversation between @inertia and myself (the captured screenshot in the main post is a conversation between us two) to the KR community and the reaction is as expected not overwhelming.

The action has indeed got attention for sure, but I am not sure if it will have the actual effect that was planned for this action. I am more worried that it will not solve any issue but create only deep emotional barriers, as the movement to get "better" postings on SPT (which is always relative from how to see it, as getting a quest done would take at least 30 min. to invest into Steemmonsters daily!) is coming from a good mindset, but without the matching system or SPT operator working on it, it could just end in a meaningless downvoting war. And unfortunately I don't have an idea how to stop it, because a disagreement on rewards can go both sides.

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It really annoys me when people are blindly putting this tag on their posts with actfit and other stuff. I have started to downvote them when I get the time and leave a comment as to why the downvote. The message gets through pretty well. Just that alone would clean up a lot of needlessly wasted space and people fishing blindly for votes or circle jerk voting on steemauto. Thanks for the effort.

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Hi, @inertia!

You just got a 0.92% upvote from SteemPlus!
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Heyy :) I received a downvote from you on these two posts:
https://steempeak.com/steemace/@loler555/steem-game-jam-win-prizes-for-competing

https://steempeak.com/palnet/@loler555/gdd-special-episode-coming-up-where-is-it

I just wanted to ask why :) (Especially the first one, cause the second one is -1% which is totally negligible)

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I absolutely agree that there should be a better curation for the spt tag and even messaged aggroed about creating a upvote and downvote trail or something. He said it is not on the agenda yet, which I find kind of strange seeing you would want to see the best post about your own product trending, not a daily quest as you mentioned. Whenever I have the time I downvote and upvote posts and my stake in spt in big enough to get noticed, but a official trending spt (like the gg tag is doing) would be way more impactful.

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So, what do you think about a post like this? https://www.splintertalk.io/zzan/@travelgirl/5-days-till-splinterlands-season-ends
Travelgirl is a valued member of the Splinterlands community, but over 4000spt for saying the season will end in a couple of days might be a lot, no? And then again, who is to say what is valuable and what is not and what is the max reward a post should get.. The Koreans are very dedicated to this game and strong as a community where I almost feel like if someone posts something about Splinterlands everyone votes no matter the content. And isn't it their right to do so? It's a very tricky thing, because they also invested a lot into the game and spt, but that is an issue with Steem as well, so in the end it's about the people thinking about their actions and how they should be in the best interest of the game/community, not so much about a couple of individuals..

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That’s specific post would not get downvote under this specific rubric. But that’s just me. I agree that it is overpaid, though.

It’s difficult, and it shouldn’t be difficult. Yet, I don’t think there’s a silver bullet solution like rubrics and trails.

What I really want is to normalize downvotes such that nobody has to post their rationale. Just downvote and move on. In this case, I felt compelled to post because, unfortunately, people are still confused by downvotes.

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You don't have to kill a mountain lion to make a meal for someone in need.
You don't have to build a train to stand up for a weaker person as soon as it fills up in the morning.
I could go on all day...

Wasting your energy on censorship by downvoting makes you a better person, I'm sure. Props to you.

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Huh?

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You've decided to go on a mission to regulate by using automated censorship via ur power, that undermines everything this platform is standing for in an ideologic and moral way.

You might wanna watch:

and then go over to rethink your actions while standing in front of a mirror.

Do not expect justice where might is right.
'Plato

You might piss off one peson at a time, but you treat whole groups of people unfair and that to be said, I muted you - and that will stay that way forever now. Goodbye.

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...that undermines everything this platform is standing for in an ideologic and moral way.

Did you miss the part of the platform where downvotes were baked into the system, specifically for when another stakeholder disagrees with the rewards that are allocated to a post, for whatever reason that stakeholder desires?

It’s called “subjective value” and it’s how content is ultimately ranked/rewarded on Steem. So no, downvoting doesn’t “undermine” anything at all. In and of itself, it’s neither an ideological nor a moral decision. It’s almost purely an economic one.

If you have any questions about these concepts and how they pertain to Steem, I would suggest reading the relevant sections of the Steem whitepaper.

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(Edited)

I understand the reasoning very well and I'm familiar with the concepts. On top of what you mentioned it also burns rewards, which was also one of the key intentions. Furthermore, downvotes are needed versus abuse & obviously ill intentions. So that means it is all good right, well not really.

To understand the real consequences, you can't just talk about “subjective value” and "concepts ... of the Steem whitepaper". Bring it to the streets and make a case and especially in the tribes,

it will come down to this:

Small and minor accounts get revenue burned, for the sake of the greater good.

and in best case:

The System will automatically regulate harmful postings and the overall user experience gets better.

You know YouTube and Facebook have mechanisms like that. Maybe call them and get some great advice, that can spare you a lot of time working on your censorship bots.


Now let me showcase you a very common scenario you're creating with these silly actions at the moment:

  • small account (early minnow at max)
  • a not English native, therefore spends good amounts of time creating content
  • buys STEEM via FIAT deposit for promotion/bid/advertising bot usage
  • and starts growing vvvvvvery slowly but at least steady

These are at least 90% of the people you will hit and 100% of the people that you actually hurt with it.

Well, guess what you just achieved against that person? You did punish, censor and scare him or her.

But Manni you foolish boy... how can you be so sure?
Good question! You did it to me and only you know to how many other people in this single comment section. Do you feel the power of the dark side? It's great!

With great power comes great responsibility.
Uncle Ben

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On top of what you mentioned it also burns rewards...

Downvotes do not burn anything.

Bring it to the streets and make a case...

There’s no need to make a case for downvoting. It’s one of two types of votes that can be cast in this system. Both serve the same purpose: to reach consensus on reward allocation based on the subjective value preferences of voters.

One person may upvote, another may downvote. Both are equally valid decisions on any given post. There’s no need for philosophizing and moralizing. You can vote up or down on any content you see, for whatever reason you want.

You know YouTube and Facebook have mechanisms like that.

This isn’t YouTube or Facebook. It’s Steem. There are rewards being distributed by stakeholders from an inflation pool. There are rules for how that works. You should learn and understand the rules if you want to willingly participate in the system. And you should especially learn and understand them before making arguments that explicitly contradict the code and the rationale for the code.

As to the rest of your comment - I have no idea what you’re carrying on about.

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(Edited)

So Downvotes don't burn pending rewards? Which had to be created by wasting mana of a stakeholder?

As I see it, downvotes do that - and also have a negative impact on the reputation level.

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This isn’t YouTube or Facebook

.. and I never said that

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You can vote up or down on any content you see, for whatever reason you want.

Anyone can do that, but not everyone has enough power to use downvotes efficiently.

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As to the rest of your comment - I have no idea what you’re carrying on about.

With a reputation of (74) and 50k Steem/SP combined, you don't care to get a little downvote here and there. Who cares about small fish in the seas, right? HAHA right?

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(Edited)

With huge Power, you can silence any small account here and all it takes is just your downvotes. I mean you do disagree with me, go ahead and downvote all my content so that I'm screwed, easy.

You do that for some short time, also add your bots to it, my rep will drop very low and none can even read my comments anymore very soon. That would be fun.

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(Edited)

It bothers me that I don't leave an explanation of why so many red flags.
I told him everything because I was so upset that it would damage my reputation.

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For the record:

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I think you do wrong by giving negative feedback without leaving an explanation, you can save what you want, I don't care, you should leave a comment explaining that your label cannot be used for other things, announce before giving a lot of negative votes, but who can beat you, son God because you have Sp, or at least they believe that, I'm just going to leave it to God, which gives you for giving me 4 red flags, without explaining because, after a while, I find out that his label is only for steemonsters, and if you are avenging because he sells all the cards and I left the game it is something else, I accept that I did wrong to use his # in another publication, but It was to ignore that your label can not be used for anything else, of course as now they will earn money for giving negative votes, starting the party to destroy others, when you want to sign giving negative votes, you are God.

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(Edited)

It bothers me that I don't leave an explanation of why so many red flags.

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