A big Thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion. I wanted to mention earlier that your comments should be in question format like Jeopardy, but once I saw how the discussion was going and the amount of sincere replies, I am glad I did not ask for short questions. It will probably take me three days to read and put all the comments into a few important questions without injecting my personal views into them. Then I will forward the questions to pre-selected eight people like I promised and try to get answers from what we all think is opposing viewpoints. Note that the people who will be asked to answer, do not know if they have been selected or not. If you want your question to be put in your own style please contact me on steemit.chat or steemspeak and leave me a PM with your name and question.
Also a big Thank you for those who wished me a happy anniversary and a happy birthday. Sorry I did not reply to each comment, but I assure you I read them all, and will be reading them again when making my shortlist of questions. All your feedback is valuable and appreciated. Never give up on Steemit my friends, because together we can all make it a huge success, do not mind the hurdles, do not quit, if you are frustrated take a little break, I do sometimes and come back feeling better and refreshed. Think of ways we can improve the system overall, we can not fix people, but we can fix the system if we keep on trying and giving our positive insights.
Sorry about the all Caps in the Title, Yes I am SHOUTING to you out there, I want to hear from you, take your questions to get you answers.
A big Thank you to all of you who participated in this discussion. I wanted to mention earlier that your comments should be in question format like Jeopardy, but once I saw how the discussion was going and the amount of sincere replies, I am glad I did not ask for short questions. It will probably take me three days to read and put all the comments into a few important questions without injecting my personal view into them. Then I will forward the questions to eight people like I promised and try to get answers from what we all think is opposing viewpoints.
By now it has become clear there is a lot of frustrations on steemit, enough to make some of our creative writers bag their talent and leave. This makes me really sad, but what are we doing about it other than complain to deaf ears? yes we do make these frustrated posts and quit posts and rant posts. We try to balance our words so we do not insult anyone because deep inside we want leave the olive branch extended.
Yes frustrated writers are not calling it a duck. And there is a good reason for that, inside each of them I can sense that deep love for steemit the idea, the steemit they love and want to hold close to their hearts. They still have hope that the steemit they imagine and adore can still exist and flourish.
Where did we go wrong, are we even listening? did we go so far in asking for content that we alienated the basics of social media success? yes, it's that meme, it's that joke, it's that video I saw that made me laugh and I want to share with fellow steemians, friends, and family.
Heck My 25 year anniversary passed and I posted about it, and no one said " happy anniversary @joseph ". My birthday is coming soon, will my steemit page be full of happy birthday from all my social contacts on steemit?
Yet in our pursuit of content we actually are losing content, why? because people will still vote for people they know, people will vote for friends no matter how tight that circle of friends is. While we are not promoting any real social interaction between steemians, the vote has become a simple business transaction. We started as a reddit competitor and evolved into a medium competitor, then evolved into some sort of social media platform that I can not describe in words without being indecent. We need to protect the basics of social media.
A measure we use is " because he/she is adding value to the platform " , let me tell you something here, I did not vote for $vigilante posts at all, well maybe my curation bot did once or twice based on a dumb algo, but never me in person. I always voted for @charlieshrem posts. No I did not care who added value and who did not. I simply enjoyed the posts about Charlie's true life experience, his honesty in telling us what happened to him in jail, without any discomfort, well maybe he had some, but he was successful at hiding it, if it existed. The doom and gloom posts of $vigilante on the other hand lacked any human feeling to them, it read as an infomercial. If you are a fan of late night network TV infomercials about getting rich with real estate, you will most likely enjoy $vigilante's posts. Do you see how content can be subjective to an individual's taste?
This is starting to sound like a rant? I assure you it's not, I love steemit the idea, the dream, and I love the tech behind it. I know deep inside each one of us we want to see it succeed. So why I mention the two cases about added value? because I want to point out it's not about content, not added value, it's about that enjoyment you get when you read or view a post.
So what's all this about?
I want to hear from you all, want to hear your frustrations in details, want you to ask questions, and voice your concerns. Do not point fingers, we are all one community. Pointing fingers does not work. In the past few weeks I had conversations with a lot of people, and what I know is this, with all the disagreements, everyone wants one thing, for steemit to succeed.
I will take the questions and concerns of people who want to make steemit a better place for everyone. And ask eight people to answer them. I will not tell you who I will ask, I will just bring you their answers. You will be surprised.
Will this change anything? maybe. But I am hoping if I can bring answers from a select few at the top and from people with opposing views, most likely they will be able to see what can be done more clearly. Starting with what we all agree on.
Retention of talent, is a big concern of mine but at the same time making Steemit enjoyable as a social media platform with the basics of social media activities, yes my friends that " Happy Birthday " will mean a lot coming from all of you. And I do enjoy that occasional meme, joke, and YouTube video you post, but I am guilty like anyone else of making some automated votes for stuff I never read :/ , at the same time have a sense of guilt for those leaving. Has curation become our Achilles' heel? Bring your ideas and questions, without insulting anyone, be positive and creative. Let's get some answers.
PS. Please do not address your question to a specific person by name.