Word count: 1.500 | Revised: 2018.4.9

Most incompatibles aren't really incompatible.

We ought . . . to improve the signup process for steem . . .

Here's how I think we can do that.

As usual what most people imagine are alternatives are not alternatives.

Getting something for free andpaying to get that something are not really alternatives.

@themarkymark posted a link revealing significant problems with the signup process to use steem.

@samueldouglas has also found similar account carousels and windmills that use steem.

Scammers and spammers make thousands of accounts with 15 SP delegation each. All approved in minutes of each other, in some cases. These accounts get total > 500000 SP in delegation and ring upvote themselves.

With a fixed rewards pool this is at cost to honest users.

At cost to content producers. Who generate the proof of brain.

Meanwhile real users waits for a weeks for accounts. That's not good.

Real users have to create accounts, giving some of their own steem. For honest users who want to join, but can't get approved soon enough. Before they lose interest.

``There are some things that must be done quickly or not at all. [Like] if someone asks you if you love them you cannot hesitate.'' — Mark LAWRENCE, Red sister, London: Harper Voyager, 2017.

In logic this is called a rate calculus. Much like other systems operate with thresholds, like neurons. Some systems operate with rates, like thresholds.

Let's call this the LAW17 rule for the present.

Correction. Steemit, Inc. hesitates. How's that working out?

So in Discord I was chatting about lessons learned with the current platform with some other programmers, when I was hit with a dose of silliness and decided to punish myself by reading the trending page. The trending page which is mostly shit, as everyone agrees.

And lo, there was the article. So.

I pinged @themarkymark on Discord in one of the servers we're on, while I read his post.

Asked him his thoughts about how to make the sign up process less gameable. There need to be no pure dominant strategies with nasty side effects.

He suggested:

eliminate Steemit, Inc from that process.

;)

Well, that's one option. It is one option:

Let existing users either use some of their own steem to create an account for acquaintances they know, or for their friends.
Let other users buy minimum usable accounts.
~~Let the Steem, Inc. faucet create and delegate to accounts they freely create for prospective users.~~

I suggest with option (3) gone that this also is not fast enough for people near the indifference line regarding using and not using steem and front ends like Busy and Steemit. The idea would certainly reduce the prevalence of scam and spam, but it too violates LAW17 for the honest user.

You don't want to annoy too much the honest user.

That is when you're seeking technology acceptance for your new technology. And let's face it, steem for most persons is a very new technology. Technology acceptance takes years. And it takes decades for the new to become the mainstream.

And what do I suggest? I'm so glad you asked . . .

I'll tell you what I suggest. It's a good idea, I think.

Let's have fun. Fun.
With second price auctions. Let's use second price auctions.

What's that? What're second price auctions, in this context?

First let us introduce such things by way of pointing out a problem on the trending page. What's wrong exactly with bid bots having most SP in a proof of brain platform combined with a the trending page . . .

The problem is using first price bid bots on every post will catch on and lead to winners curse (Richard THALER, The winner's curse, Journal of economic perspectives, 2(1):191–202, 1988.12).

But if you don't do it on a post, it doesn't trend.

Lose/lose.

(You can skip this part: So far as the platform is concerned professional content creators will not switch. They want to earn by making content, not paying to post content. Some are celebrities. They already have followings and active subscribers. The main attractiveness of using Steemit instead of Facebook is the lack of censorship. The rewards are there, first of all, to create the incentive structure for decentralized archiving. Nobody throws out money. Content printed on money is archived. But that doesn't work if the money isn't worth much, and if there's little content being added to increase its worth. The weird tit-for-tat and pay-to-spam, spam-to-win strategies dominating the site are keeping the value of steem relatively low, user retention low, etc. There are 200,000 more accounts now in March than in back in December. But according to bandwidth, there are fewer active users posting content.) /

Right . . . Well . . .

Auction structure is also a technology. Exactly like culture, language, just about everything, is a technology.

We people are tool users; we appreciate new tools.

Thaler got Nobel prize for this — if I remember correctly.

Let me check . . . Yeah. He did; he got a Nobel.

^ How to get a Nobel in social science.

^ Observe; repeat.

^ Note to self.

The same goes for advertising, when that's combined with the fact that almost nobody has the resources for an above threshold search. So they don't search at all. (See Al RIES, Jack TROUT, Positioning, New York: McGraw Hill, 1981.)

Returning to the subject of bidding for exposure when everyone must do it, because bid bots have sufficient or more than sufficient stake on the platform. And stake controls exposure on the platform. Which is a proxy for user participation.

You overpay, basically, if you buy trending position by a bid via an auction for a vote, and win. And if you don't get trending position few persons will bother search. You get no exposure. If you want exposure, you pay more than the position is worth to you, when you win. But if you want exposure and to get paid by producing content, you lose. On average. As the trend catches on — as happened in advertising in the broader world.

The solution is to use second price auctions, which are known in literature to reveal values (William VICKREY, Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders, Journal of finance, 16(1), 8–37, 1961.3).

I suggest Steemit, Inc. continues giving delegations, but with one caveat.

This requires a hard fork, new code. But it should be code that's easy to write.

New accounts created by the Steemit, Inc. faucet must, without a time limit of a month, bid in a sealed second price auction to keep their account. Something like that.

Otherwise it becomes inactive.

They will bid what it's worth to them. And no more and on average no less. Because they want to win.

Some classes will result and Steemit, Inc. will reward bids above a threshold with a larger delegation for a month.

A few accounts will produce no content, but will acquire Steem in other ways, once they have an account. Others will ask their friends who know them. Effectively vouching for them. Yet others can have friends pay for their account and initial steem therein.

By the way, here's a fun idea: — Bot owners, have you ever considered using Second Price auctions for bids on you bot? It's know to lead to no Winner's curse, though in the short run the operator of the auction earns less . . . Users should prefer to use your bot . . .

Using second price auctions and switches existing during month 1 there are strategies that can disable entirely spam voting rings. Deincentive them. For starters. Incentivize honest users. That's the next step. A major problem is that due to bid bot concentration even thousands of SP are basically ineffective. A proverb in Japan is that if I'm your shadow and you're just a shadow of somebody else, then what am I? Maybe some auction solutions exist for that, coupled with some review, review of review, etc, system for content.