My Fantasy Curation System

I post this as a personal contribution to the Blurt ecosystem and not in any official capacity. Having said that, I believe that changes will soon be taking place. However, it also strikes me that a melting-pot of ideas can lead to a lack of focus, hence, let me present what I would do to help the community curation efforts.

I was asked to articulate the Blurt Curators Guidelines because of my experience curating on Steem. I have curated for some of the largest initiatives on that platform, as well for my own community, and have experience of their differing levels of training and expectations of how curators should work. I was not involved in establishing the current community curation framework on Blurt, but felt it needed some help and change of focus.

So you wanna be a curator?

The very first thing is whether someone can actually curate! This invariably involves a level of personal judgment that can only come with experience. It also involves a level of trust from the Blurt community and a level of responsibility placed on the curators.

If any of these qualities are missing, we shall experience some conflict. The resolution of such conflicts can be swift and fairly simple, but it does take us back to the start in selecting a new lead curator. Those sections about the actual training of curators within the Blurt Curators Guidelines are based on my experience; those sections regarding the relationship with the Blurt Foundation come from current protocols. If there are any logistical clashes in the document, then my apologies, they shall be ironed out soon enough. However, so as not to blend together the current and future protocols, let me sketch out my own vision of what community curation should be like.

The Lead Curator is the person responsible for managing the community curation account with the support of some significant level of delegation from the @initblurt account owned by the Blurt Foundation.

The idea that such community accounts should be independent of any single curator, so that they can maintain some historical continuity and are the same names as their community tag, does have some merits. But I would like to also see support for private curation initiatives that have shown promise and honesty. If we develop along such a mixed-curation-economy then we should ensure that the benefits to such communities and their curators should be on a par. So what I say below would, ideally, apply to both sponsored community accounts and sponsored private initiatives.

The curators have the posting key, so they really should be allowed to express the progress of the community by posting community-related posts. These could be updates on the best posts or community contests or any other matters that are strictly related to the community. I also don't see anything wrong with that community account then voting on their own posts, as that income comes back into the community account.

The job of curating a large community can be very time-consuming so that each lead curator can nominate other trusted curators to assist in these tasks. Such curation assistants should not hold the posting key but rather act as advisers and filters so that the lead curator can more quickly go through a pre-curated list of posts and make a final decision. This, in essence, is how Curie worked at the level of decision-making on vote allocations. It works well.

If a community thus expands from just one lead curator to a team, they all really need to be compensated for their work and their judgment skills. Hence we come to the issue of distributing funds. There really comes a point where you have to trust some people. Curators are entrusted with funds based on having shown their trustworthiness; if any individual later proves to be the opposite, then they very quickly lose their privileges. I therefore think it is psychologically damaging to keep assuming that curators need to be kept on a leash, when they will do a much better job by being trusted. In the whole ecosystem, the damage that one "rogue curator" can do is very limited. Hence, my own philosophy is to make it challenging to become a curator, but at that point trust them to do their job.

To add a personal note, I went through the Curie training and at first it felt very cramped with lots of tiny things to check on, but after a while it all becomes very quick and the quality judgment-calls become the most important thing. I expect some others reading this went through the same training. But after passing the initiation, one was left free to do one's job as best as possible. If anybody found it too hard or time-consuming they could leave; the pressure was on finding the next great post, not on whether we were somehow colluding with others or promoting our friends. If any of us colluded with authors who wrote great posts, they were still great posts!

What about the money?

So, money... I think curators must be rewarded directly and commensurate to their efforts. This means a lead curator also has the funds to pay any assistant curators - and even funds for contest prizes, for example. The current Blurt setup where all post rewards are powered-up 100% makes this a little tricky to automate, but it also makes the arithmetic much easier as it is obvious how much the Blurt power has increased from week to week. I would say, give the lead curators 60% of the weekly income; the other 40% can be kept within that community account so that it grows. One thing looking far ahead is that such community accounts may one day require less delegated power that can then be used to kick-start new communities.

How much would this come to as curator earnings? This is approximate, but a 1 million BLURT delegation yields about 1500 BLURT in upvotes, so about 750 BLURT per day in curation rewards. So, 60% of this per week would come to about 3,000 BLURT per week. A delegation of 500k BLURT would yield half this amount.

Compare this with the current setup, where two 100% votes per day yield about 1,200 BLURT per week as author-rewards to the lead curator's posts - assuming a 1 million delegation and the curation-rewards go back to the voting account.

If we drop that 60% curator-earnings to 50% for a 1 mil BP delegation, we get a figure that is about the same as a top witness earns per month.

I think that direct payments are better for the curator and it frees funds to be able to pay assistant curators and possibly prizes for contests. The percentages can be adjusted, and note that the calculations are based on today's reward pool so can change.

The method of payment will depend on how rewards are distributed - whether we move to a 75-25 model of BP/BLURT ratio - but we are talking about some 30 community curation accounts so even manual calculations, perhaps by the CTM, are feasible. As for private curation initiatives, Blurt could delegate half of what they do to the official tag-based accounts. This avoids even thinking about the money - let them grow and, again, any issues can be dealt with swiftly.

The other thing is that being a good curator is not always the same as being a good blogger. There are those who can do both, but I have seen many people who work on curating with enthusiasm and energy and who, frankly, spend so much time reading that they don't wish to post very much. This is very similar to, say, literary agents or magazine editors who are surrounded by writers but rarely, if ever, put pen to paper.

So direct payment also frees the curators to do their jobs well without being forced to post twice per day just to earn some coins for their actual job of curating. It makes no sense to be paid for taking time away from the job you're being paid to perform.

So, in my fantasy curation system, I'd free the curators to do their jobs properly; let them build their community through both engagement and votes; reward them in such a way that is quick and aligns with their roles as curators; facilitate the building of a curation team as the community expands; and if any should prove disappointing, change the key to the door.

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