One of the biggest problems with Steemit from the perspective of possibly nearly half the people here, by that I mean people who have only recently joined in the last couple months, is that the ability to organize things is non existent. I figure people who have been around longer have either adapted some how or given up on organization.
As of this writing I have been on Steemit for 24 days. I already have a shit ton of posts in three piles, one called Blog, another called Comments and the last one called Replies. Now I suppose this works for keeping up with conversations, but it’s terrible for long term organization. And Steemit wants people to be long term, don’t they?
If I want to go back to one of my posts I have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll through my posts and the posts I’ve reSteemed until I find what I’m looking for. Now if I’m already frustrated with this at 24 days, what about those who have been here for a year and have 10,000 posts? And what if I come across someone who has been here that long and want to look at their older work? I’d be scrolling for days. One Steemian who has created his own work around for his readers, after certainly a TON of effort is @creatr as described in this post: @creatr/introducing-my-steemit-library-a-better-way-to-steemit
But let’s say I do scroll for days and find something from six months ago that answers something I need right now. I want to reward them but the time for paid upvoting is long passed. I wasn’t around six months ago and cannot reward this author now. Unless that author somehow monetized their post with Google Adsense, (barf), some kind of affiliate program or product for sale, they can not earn on their work for more than 7 days. But no one is likely to see their work either. Unless their post starts showing up in Google search...
I can’t organize other peoples work if I want to refer back to it either. There may be a recipe I want to try, or a how to article I want to do in the future. If I want to have access to it I have to bookmark the link in my browser, copy the link to a file I keep on my hard drive, or gasp, write a recipe down on paper. Better yet, maybe I’ll just go follow the Steemian on YouTube... if they even have a channel. So this cutting edge technology called Steemit is going to make me go old school and write down a recipe? Apparently.
I know there are people who work on apps and websites, and plugins that can help people do things when Steemit falls short, but this is not something you can work around and stay on site. I’ve heard someone is working on a browser plugin, I’ve heard there is a wordpress plugin so you can automatically post from Steemit to your website, which does have a place, but this needs to be addressed right here. And I have an idea.
On a similar but side note before I tell you my organization idea, I’ve also noticed that as a new user there are many topics that you don’t learn about unless other people are talking about it. Many of them important like how things work around here. One topic I addressed myself in this post: @aboutyourbiz/want-something-you-don-t-have-follow-people-who-do-have-it-to-get-what-they-got-both-in-steemit-and-in-life is the whole follow issue. New people need to know.
I had also experienced what I could only call a whale drive by. I had a post that suddenly made over $100 but did not have the views to match the votes. I found out just today in this article: @jerrybanfield/upvotable-day-1#@aboutyourbiz/re-jerrybanfield-upvotable-day-1-20170709t210512024z by @jerrybanfield that it’s a way of curating articles to encourage and help us little guys. It was encouraging for sure.
But people who invest their time to produce a quality piece want people to see it. Yes, we want to get paid, but there is a satisfaction factor when your content is seen and appreciated. That’s where slave drivers like @merej99 I mean, er, compassionate people like @merej99 invest their time in people by creating challenges like this: @merej99/putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is-a-community-challenge#@merej99/re-aboutyourbiz-re-merej99-re-aboutyourbiz-re-merej99-re-aboutyourbiz-re-aboutyourbiz-re-merej99-putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is-a-community-challenge-20170709t062326644z
I bring these up to say it would be beneficial to have some of this stuff explained, or links to explanations that can be read when a person first starts, like maybe a recommended reading list. The example posts above may be past their lifespan next week, but still potentially valuable to new people.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
First, to solve the organization problem, we can steal an idea from Pinterest. Pinterest users can create their own boards so they can organize their pins by topic or however they want. So the functionality we need is to be able to create some kind of storage area.
Here’s what that could look like to the user. Since Steemit is often compared to a train, and Steemit would be the engine, users need to be able to add their own cars to the train, how ever many they want/need. Freight cars can be added for the content they have created. So if I want to write about training dogs, I create a freight car for all my dog training posts. If I want to write about how to garden, I can create a garden freight car. This way too, when someone comes along three months from now and wants to know about dog training, they can see my dog training freight car and not have to see my gardening car. Freight cars should be able to be partitioned too, so that if I have a
photography car with all my pictures I share, I want to keep mountains together and beaches together each in a separate space.
Similarly, a user needs to be able to create passenger cars. The passenger cars are for keeping access to other authors posts. So I can create a recipe passenger car, divisible to keep dessert separate from main dishes, if I want to collect recipes to try. Or a Crypto car or a gardening car. And sometimes the gem is in a comment on a post, so we need to be able to save the comment in the cars.
Second, authors need to be able to monetize their older content. Whether that be an ability to go back and edit to add outside monetization or...
What if an author could periodically re-publish their older content? This may already be possible in terms of an author just doing it because it’s been a while and no one would likely notice, but what if...
What if you could re-publish your content, once a quarter, twice a year, whatever the interval, but it only went to the feed of people who were new followers since the last time it was published? I don’t know if that would be beneficial or not since new users don’t have much voting power, but maybe it gives someone who knows more an idea? The point is, there should be some way to make money more than just once on a post. People who do this in other ways, like their own website, are looking for residual income, which doesn’t appear possible on Steemit as it is now.
So these are some thoughts from a new user, hopefully if enough others agree, someone can make these suggestions happen or knows someone who can. Or takes the ideas and makes them better, I’m down for that too.
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