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After making this post: #821642
I started thinking about ways authors could more easily earn bitcoin in this territory. The current method of pure value for value seems okay, but I think longer form content is less likely to receive attention, even if it's really good, and even if it is released in serial form.
I remembered learning in school about how Charles Dickens was paid for his writing. I found this article, excerpted from a book. I'm not sure it provides an answer to my question, but I enjoyed it regardless:
Dickens was being paid by the newspaper, and the revenue was generated either by readers buying the entire publication or under an advertising model, or both.
The author writes:
Good writing, we’re told time and time again, is born from love, not avarice. But this romantic picture of the writer, toiling without regard to money, is itself a fiction—one whose roots stretch back several millennia, and whose effects we’re still dealing with today.
In response to a proposal made in this post
@k00b said this:
I don't even want paywalls. I tolerate them because there's no better way to fight free riding, but I certainly don't want to pay per page of a book, or per scroll of a webpage, or per minute of a video.
What I want:
  1. good content
  2. creators to be paid, so in the future I will get good content
In no way, do I want to be charged per page.
What creators want:
  1. to get paid for producing content
They do not want to be paid per page afaict.
So, who wants to pay per page? If you, the reader, do, I'd ask:
  1. How many substacks/patreons are you subscribed to?
  2. How many sats have you streamed podcasters this month?
  3. How many geyser funds have you contributed to?
If the answer is 0, I'd guess you'd pay for 0 pages too.
The above isn't an optimistic take on value for value. I read somewhere that something like 4% of the users contribute to v4v revenue.
Perhaps v4v is really a return to something described as the "gift economy." Again from the article:
Asked to write for love, not money, the writer is asked to exit the money economy and return to the gift economy. This obligation is a means of ensuring that goods and services stay in circulation in a given community, and it is also the means by which social status is determined. In Potlatch—a festival of elaborate giving practiced by various cultures of the Pacific Northwest—the goal is to give so much, and so lavishly, that your benefactors are perpetually in your debt. As Mauss notes, the gift economy may be “apparently free and disinterested but nevertheless constrained and self-interested.” The gift, Mauss writes, appears generously given, but this is at best a “polite fiction, formalism and social deceit,” behind which lies “obligation and economic self-interest.” In gift economies, the obligation “to reciprocate worthily is imperative. One loses face for ever if one does not reciprocate,” writes Mauss. “The individual unable to repay the loan or reciprocate the potlatch loses his rank and even his status as a free man.”
It may be that the term “gift economy” is a misnomer; it is a circulation economy, and it doesn’t work if it consists only of gifts given in one direction. Georges Bataille describes potlatch as “the solemn giving of considerable riches, offered by a chief to his rival for the purpose of humiliating, challenging, and obligating him. The recipient has to erase the humiliation and take up the challenge; he must satisfy the obligation that was contracted by accepting. He can only reply, a short time later, by means of a new potlatch, more generous than the first: He must pay back with interest.”
In my experience, Stacker News works pretty well for posters who provide good content, but there is a length limit set by our attention spans. What is that limit? I don't know, but for me I don't really want to invest more than about 15 minutes of time in any one post, no matter how much I like it. If more time is required, I'll bookmark it for later, and maybe never get back to it.
I'm sure some of the book writers here have suffered from this problem.
Maybe this will be less of an issue when SN territories achieve the autonomy planned by @k00b. Then, readers would show up with the purpose of reading long form content. Or, maybe we will have to come up with new compensation models.
I've been thinking about a related thing since I've come back, and found some intriguing new paradigms active on the site, like #824642 and #822572.
I've only begun the process of re-inventing how I want to inhabit this place, but there's something very powerful in how people have started to add higher layers of structure to existing SN content, so that the past is not dead, or inert, but present with us. Meaning emerges. This post of yours that I'm responding to is another lovely example of that -- callbacks, adding layers of interpretation, keeping things alive.
It's been clear for a while that not everyone values this quality -- some people just want an aggregated news site and nothing else -- but if you are looking for that, it's damn hard to find. The incentives of The Platforms don't encourage it. SN, on the other hand, has some interesting tools to bring to bear to encourage such a thing. I wonder if there's some aspect of the V4V story that intersects with this idea?
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I can't wait to hear what you come up with. I have more questions than answers. BTW, it's great to have you back😀
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Long form writing, especially long form fiction, has aspirations to be relevant for a much longer time span than a post or comment.
One aspect of the v4v model on SN that doesnt work with such aspirations is that value and attention mostly goes to "fresh" content.
The long form fiction I've seen on here gets a bump of zaps in the first 12 hours, and then the zaps quickly fall off. Also, there is a bias in v4v toward new content. Very few readers seem willing to zap old fiction.
I'm not clear if this is true for readers as well (do you get 99% of your readers the first day as well?). Even though there are aggregation newsletters for ~BooksAndArticles, it seems difficult to garner attention after you publish. I suspect that this is particularly true on SN, but it applies to v4v in general.
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Part of what I liked about the e-book idea was just getting that format in place and getting people used to looking for longer form content on SN.
As you note, SN operates mostly for people looking for 5-10 minutes of thoughtful content. However, if we knew there was a trove of longer form entries, we (or entirely different people) might peruse those when we have the time available to do them justice.
I know k00b hates it, but I'm increasingly on board with letting OP's set fees to read and comment on their posts. It's not an accident that multiple business models exist on the market.
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It sounds like you and @grayruby have both already given this more thought than I have. All the possibilities you two are laying out make sense. There is probably no one size fits all solution.
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I like having more optionality. We all want slightly different things, so having more tools available to tailor our experience is great.
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I'm very guilty of skimming before diving in to longer posts. Therefore, I find I'm more likely to engage intellectually with something that contains a premeditated structure and is well written. I usually make a judgement in less than 20 seconds. To your point, well-articulated and thought provoking posts are more likely to grab my attention.
Sn Ebooks is interesting but when it comes to books in general I'll probably not invest my time into something until I've convinced myself that it's worth it. My belief is that most adults are very pragmatic when they have to invest intellectual effort, such as a book requires, or try to learn something new. For fiction I think they want to know something has cultural value (maybe via a book review or reccomendation) or that it will provide a good deal of enjoyment while reading. For non fiction, they want to feel they are learning something that is immediately relevant. All of this is just to say, I would gladly opt into reading an ebook on SN if it satisfies these checks and I think adults generally operate similarly.
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In my perfect world, the fix here is volume; if/when SN reaches Reddit levels of usage, that'll be more sats around to keep rewarding valuable posts of all kinds, while freeloaders won't impact things nearly as much.
For longer posts, I note that short attention spans are an issue web-wide; there are certainly Reddit and Substack posts (and magazine articles) that are ten minute reads, but while they achieve deep engagement with the people who engage, it also seems like the actual amount of engagement is a lot less.
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If more time is required, I'll bookmark it for later, and maybe never get back to it.
The same for me.
So, I must admit that I liked the proposal but after reading that @k00b's comment, I got confused.
The real problem that I see, may be I'm wrong, is the lack of discovery for old content on SN. It'll become better, I'm sure. When it'll be better, there won't be a problem.
Territories really need subs. For example - ~booksandarticles need books, articles, poems, essays, novels, dramas, writers, reviews and some others so as to easily navigate through.
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To comment on my comment: I'm suspicious of solutions that haven't articulated a problem1. That LLM was prompted by the OP to elaborate on what is in effect a convoluted paywall. Ignoring the convoluted part, paywalls exist to solve the free rider problem. It's natural to impose the rules of material goods on information goods, but it's naive:
  1. information wants to be free (ie trivial to copy/jailbreak)
  2. to determine information quality, absent some trusted source grading it, you need to see the thing to determine if you should pay to see it (chicken<>egg)
These are the problems that need to be solved. They have been solved fairly well in some cases. Regardless: the size of the good/payment is mostly irrelevant afaict.

Footnotes

  1. This endemic in bitcoin because most bitcoiners contribute to bitcoin primarily by talking about it ... so they take little risk when they engage in solution fantasies ... like ecash solving non-custodial UX non-custodially by being custodial.
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TLDR
Is @siggy47 now providing an income subsidy to me and @denlillaapan and @cryotosensei to just write content?
Im in
Might as well publish it in a physical publication too while we’re at it 🤣
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Not yet, but I would like to figure something out along @grayruby's idea. I'm not sure how it would work logistically, and how it would differ from a simple post.
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This might not be related but I'm interested in looking into some of the similarities that Buddhist countries might have with V4V in the Bitcoin world. Monks rely on the householder to give food or money everyday. I think a lot of it depends on keeping face which was similar to the shaming you quoted with Mauss.
There might be some hints or ideas in that system that could give SN (or specific territories) ideas to grow the platform.
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I would really like to read about this some more. Do you have any recommended links?
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123 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 27 Dec 2024
I was looking into it, but so far haven't found anything specific. I only know a bit from my travel through Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. Every morning the monks go through the streets to collect alms from each business and household. Most seem to give rice and/or cash and they collect it all in big bowls.
I spent some time in a meditation center in Myanmar where they rely on donations to run the center. The largest ongoing cost seems to be the food. They had a calendar with breakfast and lunch orders (no dinner BTW) with the names of the donors. I picked a day to pay for a lunch which I think was about 100 USD in 2016 for 300 people or so. There's no charge for the meditation as they believe that the information is too valuable to put a cost on it. You'd think this would invite a lot of people who want to come and stay for free and get fed too! However it doesn't seem to be the case (probably because they're expected to meditate for more than 12 hours a day). It just seems to work. My guess is that most of the funding comes from rich people who like to have prestige or think it will get them a better position in heaven. IDK
I do see a lot of similarities between bitcoin and Buddhist culture, but I think bitcoin culture might be a bit young and fragmented at this point in time.
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I would like to visit a place like this someday.
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Could SN implement Substack style post type?
Where the user can read the first 2 paragraphs or so (up to the author discretion) and then pay sats to unlock the rest..
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I feel k00b is right about this. The people that will freeload will still freeload. Even if authors were paid for each page, would more people actually read it? I think they would remain in the same situation. People dont have the attention span or time for long form anymore. Hence why youtube shorts are doing so well.
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Are you thinking like a paid subscription tier?
I like your content so I pay 2,000 sats a month to get all of it, while regular subscription only gets me a certain amount or Siggy posts a month.
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Honestly I don't have an answer. I just feel like existing compensation models don't work for some things we're trying to do on SN. I'm thinking that an idea like yours might work, but I didn't have it in mind.
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Would you consider paying people to write for the territory?
Maybe rather than a contest. You can have a weekly feature and pay a base sats rate and then share the sats with them.
There are obviously some issues with this because you don’t want to pay for people to write crap and people don’t want to be told what to write about so there would need to be some coordination between you and an author.
Just spitballing here.
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Yes! I have thought about that a lot. I have also thought about paying curators to more usefully organize the content as it grows and expands into different areas.
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Maybe try a weekly feature. Whether it be a short story or long form blog style post.
I think 10k sats plus 50% share of the zaps is a reasonable offer to test this idea.
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Good idea. In fact it's such a good idea I think I'll do it now. To start I will make the offer to just two stackers, @SimpleStacker and @denlillaapan, and let them choose the content.
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I'm intrigued. How do you envision this working, logistically?
I would've been happy to continue writing academic article reviews without explicit compensation, but having some agreement in place would likely encourage me to do them on a more regular basis, as well as branch out into other types of content. I also would be happy to be part of an experiment in supporting more value to territories.
Btw, I did have another article review planned and was thinking of doing it some time after the new year. I've been traveling with family for the holidays so mostly been just lurking for the past few weeks.
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Enjoy your holidays, or what's left of them. I probably jumped the gun on this, but I definitely want to do it. I'm formulating a plan now. I will let you know when I'm ready and see if you're interested. General framework: A SN territory sponsored publication with very high quality writing with a general bitcoin/economics subject matter, but I'm open to ideas in adjacent areas.
Uhm, okaaay.
Not sure I grasped the parameters of this — and it's too late for me over here to figure out how serious this convo is — but... What exactly would you like me to do?
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I probably jumped the gun on this, but I definitely want to do it in some form or another. I'm formulating a plan now. I will let you know when I'm ready and see if you're interested. General framework: A SN territory sponsored publication with very high quality writing with a general bitcoin/economics subject matter, but I'm open to ideas in adjacent areas.
Awesome. Looking forward to this experiment.
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But that essentially is a pay wall.....which doesnt seem to work out. Is it possible to sponsor content? But how do you choose who to sponsor, and how do you get the capital? Its a super complex problem.
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Is there a way to add word count or estimated time to read for a post?
My limit is 15 minutes or less because I'm famous as Amos
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