Curating content isn't easy. We're expected to sift through posts using archaic methods for hours everyday for negative pay? We could just be upvoting ourselves amirite? To bad the system would implode and all our stake would tumble to zero value (it wouldn't).

Curation and upvotes are just a small helping hand that make this platform great. It helps distribution in comparison to other projects. In relation to a proof-of-work coin, the only way they have to decentralize stake is to mine and sell on the open market. Curation/upvotes give us an extra tool in the toolbox.

That's all curation is: an extra feature.

It is not the crux of the platform like many claim. The quest to reward high quality content is important, but overrated. We would do well to remember this going forward.

As a Palnet/SteemLEO whale, I've been giving this a lot more thought. I never really had to think about it as a Steem dolphin.

Upvoting people over content.

I'm willing to bet that all of us have done this. You begin to trust certain accounts and no longer see the need to actually check the content they've made (or you skim it really fast). Upvoting a trusted account is easier than vetting content. I also tend to upvote holders.

@meno @krnel @taskmaster4450 @tarazkp

Here's a tiny list of accounts I know I can upvote and the inflation won't get dumped on the market. You can't really go wrong upvoting people you know are going to hold, regardless of the content they put out (which is also good).

I also tend to upvote people who comment on my blog. I feel like this promotes engagement and gives my content more value. However, it would be nice to be able to branch out and find new people rather than sit in my little bubble where I follow less than 100 people (many of which are not active). Also, the accounts above are already big stake holders... so upvoting them doesn't decentralize the platform much, if at all.

How do we make curation easier?

Well, I could find someone I trust and delegate them all my SteemLEO coins. I must admit, I've thought about this more than once. However, I've seen where delegations lead; they lead to laziness, corruption, and apathy. They lead to nepotism and corruption. Hard Pass.

So what then?

I'd like to see a system created where users compete to curate. It is a three-tiered hierarchy.

1. At the top of the pyramid you have the stake holder who controls everything and has the final word. If everything goes to plan, this person won't have to do any work and they can just check in from time to time.

2. Here we have the arbiters; one or more people responsible for casting votes for the stake-holder.

3. The bottom tier consists of the actual curators. These are the people sift through the muck looking for content/accounts that deserve upvotes.

All the real work happens at the bottom tier. Curators compete to cast the vote of the stake holder. Essentially, instead of being delegated the stake, curators cast a virtual vote in the form of custom JSON. The arbiter then checks the posts that have been virtually upvoted and chooses how much to ACTUALLY upvote them.

All of the curation money that is generated in this process goes into a tracked fund. Money from this curation fund is then distributed to the arbiters/curators. The details of how this is done could have some custom variables. In general, one would expect that curators who virtually upvoted the posts that got actually upvoted would receive more money.

This system creates a healthy competitive atmosphere where curators actually have something to lose if they do a sub-par job.

Scaling

Nothing would stop a stake-holder from also being their own arbiter (effectively turning it into a 2 tiered system). There are a lot of options with this setup.

In addition, the system could scale up to a curation trail where there are multiple stake-holders in the top tier and multiple arbiters. You could even go so far as to limit the permissions of arbiters so that they can't cast the votes; they just filter them even further for the stake-holders to decide.

Conclusion

This post might seem a little hypocritical considering how vehemently again curation I've been in the past. However, I still think curation is valuable, just that it should be optional and deleted from the consensus layer. Curation is hard work, and I think that work should be rewarded with the same tenants as the tipping model that Steem is founded on. There are so many improvements to be made, I'm just trying to do my part.

What do you think?

Return from Multi-Tiered Curation Idea to edicted's Web3 Blog