Rethinking the 7 day payout window
There has been some debate over time about whether Steem should be payed out on a post indefinitely - rather than being limited to 7 days. Since having a few days off Steem I have given this some more thought, and think that having a limited payout window leads to pressure for content creators to push out subpar content. Although there is some good content on here there is also alot of crap aswell.
Limited payout window, limited quality
I feel that if the payout window was scrapped completely then I would be inclined to post alot less often, but put alot more time and effort into what I was writing. Knowing that your post could still earn payouts in 6 months time, or even 2 years is intriguing!
I know the idea behind the 7 day payout window is to encourage users to keep generating fresh content (which it has done to a degree), it has also led to more people putting out crap on a daily basis and just hoping for a few rewards. It would be better to put in more time and only write one or two quality pieces a week.
Passive income
I hear alot of talk on here about passive income through avenues such as delegation. If the payout window was unlimited then we would have alot more opportunities for earning passive income through our past posts. Imagine if you were getting payouts from past posts on a regular basis - over time the amount your earn each week should increase.
The more ways in which users can grow and earn passive income, the easier it will be to grow the user base, and keep people here for the long term.
Lost and forgotten
The way Steem works at the moment, after 7 days (more like 5)... your post is lost and forgotten and most likely never to be seen again - sad! No matter how much effort and time is put in to your post it is likely that people wont read it after those 7 days. Compare this to sites such as Reddit and Pinterest, where the date of something being posted doesn't matter, and it creates a much nicer catalog.
Additionally, giving unlimited time on payouts could further clean up trending, and ensure that truly valuable content will be seen be newer users and encourage them to stay. At the moment trending is alot better, but still has more work to be done.
Just a few random thoughts for the morning :)
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I don't see this encouragement as a good thing, it not only pushes people to write shorter crap, but it also makes the reward distribution less even imh o.
I'm with you, the best thing is having fewer posts with a better quality generating more votes over time, then a bunch of spammy posts milking the pool everyday.
Wonder whether it will change though. Probably no!
I fully agree with you. There are now apps on Steemit like Actifit which encourage people to post everyday but there are also posts that involve more content and consequently require more work and that increased amount of mental labor should be available to receive compensation beyond a restricted time limit.
Yeah thats true, people use Actifit most days which is great, but other posts take alot of time and research and 7 days aint enough to get rewarded
I agree wholeheartedly, being one of those who posts in a blog style and thus has a deep catalogue of long articles.
There's also a lot of writers with serial works who would benefit from dropping the 7-day cap.
Yeah. I guess it suits some people who are prolific writers but others not so much..
The 7 day window is not ideal. There will be posts with long term value that cannot earn when people find them useful later on. I think there are issues with processing rewards forever, so there has to be some sort of compromise.
Yeah I dont know the coding side of it, i am sure its a major mission. Doubt anything will change. More of a rant than anything :P
I don’t believe the intent was ever centered around encouraging authors to continually push out content. Discussion around it years ago centered around technical limitations. It is much more stress on the blockchain resources to keep all posts active and capable of receiving payouts. Whether these technical limitations could be overcome I don’t know.
I think alternative systems like authors staking resource credits to keep posts “evergreen”, or a resteem with comment feature that generates a new post with the resteemed author auto set as a rewards beneficiary could bridge the gap to making worthy content receive ongoing payouts while pictures of peoples lunch aren’t clogging up resources three years later.