> I'm not from steemit and I don't claim to have all solutions. I just disagree with your claim that the solution is easy.

The solution is always easy, even to hard problems. And the solution runs thus:

"If what you're doing isn't working, do something else."

That's step one. Step two involves looking at the problem, figuring out what causes the problem, and then focusing your action on the causes of the problem.

Step three involves making a plan. Step four involves executing on that plan. Step five involves examining the results of what you've done in determining whether it fits the metrics that you intended.

Step six is go back to the top and start over.

"Double down on bad decisions" is no part of that process. That's one of the things that makes it harder.

But it's easy. You just have to be willing to do it.

> Maybe it is my fault for lacking imagination, but I can't see how treating all votes the same for one day will play out. There are many things unclear as to how you imagine that happening. Can you calculate an example on how you envision your change?

How is that difficult to imagine?

No reverse auction. No attempt to "bid at just the right time." No "front running." Absent those things, no need to return any portion of anything to the reward pool.

Pick a percentage. For the sake of argument we'll stick with the current "author 50%/curator 50%". The post goes up, the upvote period begins. People encounter the content, and they vote it up or down according to their desires. Their votes have impact on that post's accumulating reward pool in accordance. At the end of the 24 hour cycle, all of the funds that have been put in the pool by votes (or taken out of the pool by votes, in the case of flags) are put together, divided up by the aforementioned percentages, and given out equally to everyone who was involved. If the author themselves were involved, they get whatever share of the curation pool that they represent.

Simple. Easy. And the next day it starts all over again. Ideally, this cycle goes on forever, without any seven-day cut off. It doesn't need one. If people don't vote for the content, it's cycle is empty and nothing changes – no work needs to be done.

Of course, with this system the percentages will need to be seriously adjusted, because 50/50 Is way too big a cut for curators in this architecture.

But that's a different question.

> Also new curation bot: check all posts in the first 20 to 24 hours and pick the best performing ones. But probably no one will vote after 24 hours as then curation will drop immediately.

Sure, that's a trivial exploitation. But optimal action is going to be more than a little complicated to figure out. Your best bet is to have a bot that waits until the very end of the voting cycle, examines the sum of all votes cast on that article, considers how much power they have to throw into the voting pool, and whether or not the predicted return after whatever split goes in is worth it.

I would be shocked if a bot that could do that sort of thing didn't exist right now – but it would be meta-gaming the current vote bot architecture. Maybe it would be worthwhile to do, maybe not – and the best you could do would be to dilute the influence of human/manual curators on any given post, but since that's exactly what a human being could do and they don't have any particular advantage in doing so, you end up with a situation where the marginal utility of the bot is pretty close to epsilon.

I could put together a Monte Carlo to try and look at what overall action would look like in that environment, but I'm not getting paid for this. And frankly I don't care that much. It's not my job.

> Because you said that it was easy.

Okay, having done it now – will you be acting to implement it? Because if so I have a lot more ideas that I just want to see somebody else put into place. I gave up being a programmer in the code mines many years ago because it just wasn't the job for me. I'm the guy you want in system design and management, not cranking out code.

> Steem is about community and the community has to give a shit and invest their time to solve the problems. You saying that you found the perfect easy solution and then handwaving away any effort to define and defend it is condescending to all the users working hard on solutions.

Stop right there. We are never going to get anywhere as long as you lie to yourself or to me.

And worse, you *know* it's a lie.

STEEM is not about the community at all. Steemit is not about the community at all. At best, some of the people in the community give some thought and reflection on the community – but neither of the underlying architectures are about the community. We can look at the mechanics, we can look at the operation, we can look at the function, and we can ignore what we are told that the *intent* is to look at the *results* – and they are not about the community.

The community is an incidental positive side effect. And that's all it is.

Steemit presents itself as a social network, and a very small society/subculture inhabits it, but if we look at what it actually is – it's a very lightweight proof of concept for the idea that you could, theoretically, build an actual social network on top of the STEEM blockchain, and Steemit Inc. saying, "men, it would be really cool if someone were to do that. Here are some tools that do part of the job. Now go forth and make our enormous nest egg stake even more valuable."

That's the truth. If we can judge what the truth is by what people actually do and not what they say – that's the truth.

Is that a problem?

Yes, I have put forward a solution which addresses the major issues which are in play today. It's relatively easy to put in place, frankly, compared to some of the solutions which are actually going to be implemented in HF 20.

I've even given solid arguments why my solution is better adapted to addressing the issues in play than others.

I am sorry that I am not a mindless, height driven cheerleader. I realize that's what I'm expected to be, that I need to be in order to be a respected member of the community, and which will be rewarded by the Powers That Be with manna from on high.

Just not my scene, man. Not my scene.

> And if you really think, steem can't be saved, you would not have bothered to respond 😉

Or – possibly more believably – I enjoy game theory and system design combined with an understanding of the functioning of social networks both historically and currently enough that wasting a few minutes of my day here and there talking about those subjects gratifies me enough that I continue to do it. Moreover, my enjoyment of schadenfreude and my sadistic nature, may very well suffice to keep me on Steemit, taking advantage of the convenience of the markdown editing environment and the minigame (from my perspective) of the funny money numbers.

I don't actually think that Steemit can be saved. Or rather, that it will be saved. The things necessary to "save it" or at least turn it into a useful, functional, competitive social network are very much at odds with many of the stakeholders' desires to keep it as an investment engine which, not surprisingly, spits out more money in their own pockets.

I can accept the truth. That's not a problem for me. I didn't come here expecting to get rich – or to get paid in any real sense. The platform has lived up to that lack of expectation, so I'm generally satisfied with my experience.

I continue to be amused at the infinite hype train, which at first I found irritating, and then I found shocking at the depth of self-delusion, and now I just find amusing. It's amazing how far you can come in a month.

If the developers want to solve the problems on Steemit, it's not hard. They just have to start with step one.

I don't see that happening.