Thoughts about proposed changes in 0.17
This response is a little delayed, because I was a little intimidated by the number of changes. There were some that I was comfortable commenting on immediately, but other changes that I needed some time to consider.
With that in mind, I'd like to urge the development team to seek out ways to elicit feedback from the community on individual items, and implement changes in such a way that unrelated proposals can be treated as distinct from each other.
That out of the way, I'm going to post this in two parts. The first will address the changes identified as simplifications. The following post will address the new features.
Removing Over Posting Reward Penalties
I think this is a great idea, and I fully support it. I also supported the penalty when it was originally implemented to curtail an overwhelming quantity of spam... But since then, things have changed considerably. Spam is less of an issue, and the current payouts make it unlikely that it will return in force... at least not in the near term.
I'd like users to feel free to engage with the platform however they choose. "Posting too much" should not be a concern. Abuse can be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
Single Payout Period
I'm somewhat skeptical about the change of payout from 24 hours to 7 days. The reason for my apprehension is pretty straightforward... 7 days is a long time to wait. The instant gratification of a 24 hour payout is attractive in my mind. Seperating the behavior (posting) from the reinforcing reward (payout) by that much time would seem to lessen its impact.
I'm also somewhat confused by the statement that:
It is our belief that authors (and curators) will earn more by a single 7 day (fixed) payout period than the combination of 24 (variable) and 30 day (fixed).
Unless there is going to be some increase in the rewards pool, I don't see how this could be the case. I'm sure that some authors might stand to earn more, but it's not clear to me exactly who would benefit and who would have to absorb the cost of the change.
The elimination of the second payout is something that I personally won't be affected by. But I have heard from many users that they would like to be able to consider Steem an archive of their work which could be accessible well into the future. Such users would like to be rewarded for their work, even if it doesn't find immediate success on the platform.
All in all, the change to a single 7 day payout period is one that I would not be excited to see... I think it's just tinkering that won't contribute to the growth of the site, when it comes down to it.
Comment Payout Independent of Discussion
I think this is a decent change... though it is presented in a way which assumes a 7 day payout period, which I'm having a hard time supporting. For comments in particular, it would seem that less distance between activity and reward would be helpful in reducing cognitive load for users trying to stay aware of what is driving their rewards.
For that reason I don't consider it much of a simplification to move to a 7 day payout period. I think it actually adds to the overhead of site users, since it will be far less obvious where rewards are coming from.
Removing Comment Nesting Limit
Not much to say about this. I will be happy to see the nesting limit removed.
Allow Editing of Any Past Post or Comment
Another change that speaks for itself and has my full support.
I would like to see a way of rewarding users for maintaining a useful post and keeping it current over time. I think this goes hand in hand with the desire of users to be able to be rewarded for content months and years into the future.
Normalize Payout Rates
This one is a bit over my head. The way payouts are calculated has always seemed a bit arcane to me. I'm hoping this might make it seem somewhat less mysterious.
Removing Proof of Work
I emphatically support this change! I have long questioned the benefit of PoW mining rewards given the existence of Subjective Proof of Work, which distributes the currency more widely and democratically among everyone who engages with the platform.
Remove Bandwidth Rate limiting from Consensus
This is another obscure detail of the system, designed to prevent abuse. I have not yet fully wrapped my head around it... Fortunately, this change will be transparent to site users.
Thanks for reading! I hope that you got something out of this, and that it is a meaningful contribution to the discussion. Keep your eyes out for my follow up post addressing the proposed new features.