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The tipping modal shows a 0.001 tip size by default as a suggestion only. The user can lower a tip down to a minimum of .0001 XMR, which is 5 cents at the moment. It is not prohibitive to tip at all, the user has the choice. The thing I could do: change the default tip size to make it clear that a user can tip less.
The thing is that tipping can potentially earn users more than what they tipped if the rewards pool has grown sufficiently large, which it has in past weeks. I have deliberately refrained from tipping because on the first week I earned over 50% of the rewards pool even though my accounts on stasher have a hardcoded 50% handicap on weekly rewards earning (I will earn 50% less than a user who tipped the same items at the same time.) When there is high activity, this isnt a problem, but due to lack of competition over the rewards, I took the rewards in the first weekly distribution despite the handicap, just by being an active tipper. (I donated the rewards back to the rewards pool after).
Once we have more active users we'd likely see some competition over tipping, because it literally is a job that pays. Its a win-win situation because content creators get tips, while tippers get rewarded. But it is a chicken and egg problem. Stasher needs more activity for these mechanics to surface as designed.
Also, to touch on the "more free posts and comments", Stasher already provides much more freebies that our upstream partner Stacker News, in order to compensate for the added friction of on-chain Monero payments.
The problem arises that if Stasher gives too many free comments and posts, then it just becomes a regular forum where Monero incentives play no part or can be completely avoided.
Posting fees contribute to the rewards pool, the rewards pool incentivizes tipping, tipping incentivizes good content. If we break that chain then the system falls appart. Its a careful balancing act.
Fair point, maybe my pain points are more so a product of a lack of engagement which may be due to either a quality of my content (relative to the subjective value of the consumer), the relative wealth of my engagement base, or the size of the broader stasher community at large. All this being said, using a bitcoin community of upstream as an example of functionality is a dangerous precedent. In the monero community, I (and I'm sure you) recognize their failure to identify and align against problems such as privacy, decentralization (ASICs/lack of sufficient privacy for miners), and sustainability in funding mechanisms (tail emission) (amongst other things). I think your point regarding the upstream is valid, but I would urge that its application must still be used with caution. Maybe it's also a broader incentive problem. I as a creator and commenter want to do things like be polite and encourage those who engage, but maybe I should aggregate indication of appreciation into larger posts/comments where I express appreciation via callouts as opposed to upvotes. That wouldn't significantly affect weighting/sorting though. Maybe an added filter for callouts by OPs?
All this to say, I appreciate what you guys do here. You guys have successfully made the only social media in history I've found compelling as well as an article format that preserves writer anonymity and balances that with engagement and financial incentive. That's no small feat. Please don't take my comments and suggestions as anything other than a genuine desire to improve a product I greatly appreciate.
and I truly appreciate your contributions to the discussion here. It helps to see all perspectives and brainstorm solutions.
I guarantee you though, the lack of engagement on your content is purely due to low adoption of the platform at this time, not the quality of your content. There have been ~230 signups in the first month of operation. As of last week's real platform stats, I can tell you that about 56% of all signups also registered a Monero wallet to their account. Of those users who registered a wallet (indicating they intend to participate on the platform) I would be conservative and assume 10% of them are active on the platform daily or every other day. That equals an average of 13 daily active users, which is consistent with what I've observed.
Of those ~13 active users on any given day, what is the likelyhood that they are interested in the topics you talk about?
Its become clear marketing and adoption should be the current focus. We're only a month in, the stats are decent for such a young platform, but there is plenty of work to do. I am taking note of all your suggestions, don't think I am dismissing anything.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply and let me say that I understand that both Ailla and yourself are very much in a slightly calculating position as neither of you may want to be considered to be sympathetic to some of my more controversial views as key contributes to the platform and monero community at large. Considering 13 DAUs I think I'm actually probably killing it in terms of generalizable metrics for whatever they're worth as applied to this platform. Not to mention cumulative reputation matters (in the eyes of the consumer) so I'm probably better off dominating discourse where and when I can. I'll take this into consideration and use that as an impetus to increase my writing output. Thanks for the feedback!
I would say a secondary form of upvoting that isn't weighed as heavily that's free. Paying $.35-.99 to send an upvote is a lot if you engage heavily on here and we're not yet at the scale where you can make that back from engagement with your own materials. It's one thing to have economic incentives to drive quality and prevent spam and bots, it's another to make it cost prohibitive to participate. More free posts and comments would help too. Alternatively, you could make "thanks" free to send or include a button like upvote and respond which would allow you to give someone an upvote, but also engage with them without having to spend extra or send two separate txs.
I think fostering the substash style writer and consumer would be the best target. Or you just make it a great reference hub where the model optimizes finding useful information on how to do certain things without falling victim to the negative incentive structures of algos in other socials (or seo honestly).
Eventually as it grows I think this could actually be the first application of a monero layer 2 or something similar to make it cheaper to engage, but without discarding the model.