Steemit's Got Issues!
User Friendliness and Site Functionality
Take 1

For those of you that have not followed since the opening post This Post
will give you insight as to what these discussions are and how they are intended to work.

Ok, so as you can tell this discussion is about user friendliness and site functionality.

Site functionality and the lack of user friendliness on Steemit make this site a big turn off for new users.

There is such a large learning curve here that many new users just drop off or simply don't start once they've set their accounts up.

Personally I enjoy research to a certain degree but if I'm being honest I still got to a point that I just stopped looking for more to learn about the site or how to use it when I first started.

So, my intention was to make this discussion on a different topic then yesterday @fknmayhem introduced me to This Video of @sneak, the leader of steempunks discussing new and upcoming things for steemit at steemfest 2 this year.

I have to say, I love this guys enthusiasm!

You can genuinely tell that he loves what he is doing and what he is involved in here on steemit.

It's also clear when you watch it that they are really working on a lot here, even if it seems from the front end that they are not.

In the video he mentions that we, the users are steemit, and that they, the creators actaully want our input on how to make the site better. He even asked for people to blow up his email (sneak@steemit.com) with their ideas for how to (sounds like a lot of reading lol).

To save this guy some time and focus ourselves into one voice as opposed to the email version of everyone talking at once I'm thinking our discussions will help.

He also stated that they are updating the notifications here and will be done with that soon.

This was a big eye opener to me that also strengthened my idea to have these discussions.

@sneak, kudos to you man!

There is a lot of informality between users and creators here. This can lead to people being lost on the site, not knowing where to go for issues, not knowing how things work in general.

I know when I first started here I was enthusiastic as much as I was horribly confused (and often still am lol). I don't think that the majority of this separation is intentional.

Maybe once we have this discussion I/we can get some of this info to @sneak or his team. Or, if we are even luckier, him or one of his team members will join us here in this discussion or at least peer in to see our opinions. :)

All that said, let's get to the real meat of this.

Issues faced daily by users involving site functionality and user friendliness.
(Please feel free to add to this in comments.)

I personally believe that most of these issues are beta 1.0 and really should have been added in the first round of development.

1. Communication
   • Most of us have moved to discord to communicate.
   • Steemit Chat is really not cutting it.
   • Direct messaging should really be right here, on site. Click and ship so to speak.
2. Notifications
   • They... don't actually work lol.
   • They should show us mentions, upvotes, transfers, replies, etc...
   • Perhaps even settings so we could choose what notifications to see.
3. Feed is a mess
   • Filters, filters, filters. We need filters to sort out feed on all pages (search page, all tab pages (trending, new, hot, promoted), personal pages, tag specific pages, etc...
     • Filter ideas would include: Posting Time, Value, Alphabetical, Relevance, etc... and would be able to be changed between descending and acceding order.
     • Filters will also help users to gain more exposure from people interested in what they have to say specifically as will the next one, feed searches.
   • A search option that is within the feed list you are looking at would be super helpful!
     • Real world example: I saw a post i want to find later but now it is buried somewhere in feed. I remember what tag it was under and part of the name of the post. If I could just search this tag (or persons resteem tab) for the part of the name I remember I could find it and show/read it very easily.
4. External apps are great but ones that are best should really just be here on site.
   • For basic/advanced user functionality of the site we really should not have to (and many of us do not want to) go to another site or app.
     • I'm not saying to steal the thunder of these wonderful coders that are developing these apps. My thought is bring them on board. Help them to integrate their wonderful ideas into the site itself. A great example of the type of app I'm talking about is Steemit More Info by @armandocat. If anyone is frustrated with the issues I'm listing in this post, give this app a try, it's a really cool app. It does help overcome a lot of them. My point is that it really should be just a part of the site instead of an external app.
5. Resteems
   • Resteeming is great and should be seperate on our pages. Perhaps its own tab in everyone's personal pages. (This would again be a tab that would have filters and search built in.)
     • This way you can see them and their posts without the clutter of all of their resteems getting in the way.
     • This will also make it a matter of choice. If I like this user I may want to know what he/she also likes themselves and could just go to their Resteem tab to see.
     • This also prevents me from clicking a really cool post on their page that I think is theirs only to find out it is actually some other users post.
     • As a writer, painter, photographer or other artist/person that just wants to brand yourself in any way, you don't want all this clutter because it takes away from your brand, IE: you. This is preventing like minded people from sharing other like minded peoples posts (not very community like of us).
6. Customer Service/Support
   • A clear path needs to be presented from any page to someone that can help solve site issues.
   • @timcliff was gracious enough to let us know that there is an unofficial support in the help channel of Steemit Chat. Personally after 6 months of dedicating my life here I never knew that lol. Thanks for letting us know @timcliff!
   • Writing support@steemit.com has in my experience been hit or miss.

Ideas for site appearance that users might like.

I do not consider these things to be necessary. I just think that users would like them.

1. More formatting options for our personal pages.
   • It would be nice to at least be able to choose things like text color and perhaps even font.
   • Page colors and background may even be cool.
   • This could go a long way toward helping users brand themselves.
   • It could add greatly to the uniqueness that each and every individual on this platform has and most of us would love to let shine.

Ok, these are not all of the site functionality and/or user friendliness issues that we face. This is however all I could think of that really stand out off of the top of my head while making this post.

Please if you have any other issues that fit today's discussion that you want to bring attention to, add them in comments below.

Again, my intention here is to bring awareness to these issues and get that awareness into the hands of those that can help/change them.

It is not to bitch or complain.

This community is growing steadily and correcting any issues we discuss in this post, or future posts, can only help that growth and further our great community.

Thank you all once again for joining this discussion and adding your input to it. As a community we will grow and with one voice we will speak and create necessary change.
@michaeldavid
Master of @sneaky-ninja
and
proud member of: