Steemit is a newbie nightmare. What's the difference between Trending and Hot? Heaven knows. I must have died and went to heaven today though, because thanks to this interesting post by @meno and its comments, I now know the difference. And... %facepalm%
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Let me rewind a bit. But before I get started, I want to remind anyone reading that I'm a terrible writer. So thank you from the bottom of my heart if you make it through my rant.
I was originally reading this article by @aggroed about the plight of the dolphins and whales in keeping Steemit a place everyone can enjoy– really the post is about whales upvoting and downvoting MF'ers. 😂 Moreover, how influential those decisions are— and how important they're done with wisdom.
Rewinding even FURTHER, I was checking out Aggroed's article because I bumped in some other articles previously about Grumpy Cat and his war against folks (including plankton and minnows— without any forewarning) using bots outside of his self-imposed 3.5 day rule. That's what made me search on the subject of Whales influence on the success and demise of articles, authors, etc.
Whew
Well... When I got on Steemit, I didn't expect this much drama 😠— which may in the future become the topic of another post. But I digress...
I noticed that I don't know where to go to make site feature suggestions. And so I'm going to make them here (in this post) and give some thought on the aforementioned threads here— because this post would be too large a comment.
A Few Observations
1
It seems to me that Steemit.com was originally envisioned to be a blogging platform. I can see from reading articles around the community that a lot of emphasis is placed on quality content— and that's a subjective thing. That being said, common advice includes:
- Make long ass articles
- Make sh—t interesting
- Don't be a douche
Sounds reasonable.
However, now that there's lots of projects being built on the blockchain, that vision has challengers. We have a meme generator, an Instagram-like app that posts dozens of tags, media apps that autopost to the blog when uploading and yet format their description fields differently, and more. And we're getting ALL OF THAT SH—T in our feeds at once.
2
Steemit is International. I noticed the first time that I logged into the Minnow Support Project discord group that there was special channels for countries. That's awesome, however, all total the entire platform is less than a million users right? So that means there's lots of posts in all different languages being just tossed in together. And we're getting ALL OF THAT in our feeds at once.
3
It seems since Steemit is beta AND decentralized, the obligation to onboard and educate users is left mostly upon the community. That leads to a A LOT of repetitive posts about the same things— Steemit. In addition, a lot of folks here are interested in crypto and making money (which should not be a sin, duh) yet, are forced by the nature of social justice to pretend it all about something bigger. It is— but it's not. As a result, there's a lot of beating around the bush type of articles, spinning everyone's real interests into socially/politically correct bulls—t.
A Few Ideas (in no particular order)
Trending should be the same algorythm as Hot, and based on speed of engagement as COMMENTS. When people buy votes, sometimes it's not one vote. Sometimes it comes in as 100 votes for .01 or something. In addition, people can pay for resteems and votes- but not COMMENTS. Yes, some bots leave comments, but they might leave ONE despite the number of votes. In most cases, real votes are accompanied by a real comment. That could be a way to rank things better.
Add a star ranking, if just for ranking, using something like Ajax that has nothing to do with the blockchain but only filters and ranks on steemit (and maybe not other platforms built on the blockchain.) And make it so bots can't star articles. So where votes may represent financial worth, it doesn't have to represent CREATIVE worth.
You know that neat feature in the settings that allows/blocks Not For Work content? Yeah that. That same ON/OFF function could be expanded on so USERS can turn various things ON and OFF. For instance, items posted from other platforms like DTube or DMania (imagine) or Steepshot. If it's OFF, I won't see it. If I won't see it, I won't interact with it.
Filters. I've been using various tools lately to find content. Steemfilter.space lets me keep all of my posts to English. steem-buddy.com lets me find users with common interests. SteemPlus plugin gives me an array of features. Thank you so much to the creators of these programs— Buuuuuut, if I'm new to Steemit, and I don't know ANYTHING about crypto, blogging, etc. (for instance, I'm onboarded from a Facebook friend) It's a whole HOT MESS. Some of these filters could be added. One that is much needed is a Language filter. And sometimes, that's important because people post in 2-3 languages sometimes. I might want to follow you, but only see your English posts.
One of the things I noticed is becoming a trend on a lot of platforms is an OFFICIAL ACADEMY. That is something I think would greatly reduce redundant on-boarding education posts. Of course we all want to start our own fanclub and people want to learn from who put them on— but sometimes it's just ridiculous. I see various people trying to start steem schools and stuff. Great idea. But I've yet to see anything established enough for me to learn. I've learned the past 20 days mostly by sacrificing my real life to sit here and read a bunch of the same things over and over.
If the Trending tab is currently the highest payout articles, then that could somehow be merged in with the Promoted tab. They're pretty much the same thing now. Simply give the articles Promoted a little ICON or different color DIV around them.
All of my friends feed BY DATE should really be a thing. One of the things I absolutely HATE about Facebook is the Algorithm. It's a selection bias nightmare. Same on Instagram. I hate that I can't see ALL the posts from ALL the people I follow in Chronological order. Want to compete with EVERY social media platform----- DO THIS!
The Ability to SILENCE TAGS, or follow them. Another thing that could sit on top of the platform as a layer without actually being a thing. What if I don't want to see anything from the tag DOG. Maybe I'm scared of dogs? (I'm not) What would the front page look like if we could turn off all the tags we're not interested in at all? Hm..ehem dMania
Enable users to SELF-CENSOR more vs. Whales throwing their weight around all the time. Censorship is bad bad bad when someone else dictates what's going on. You're robbing people of their adulthood. In addition, it's tyrany and a bit narccistic (which is abuse) when disagreements lead to buried content.... — cough— Google....Give us some power- maybe not steem power, but can we think of ways that we can make our OWN accounts IGNORE dumb sh—t without literally having to mentally ignore it. I realize that may turn a blind eye to those raping the rewards pool. But consider attacking them from another angle— such as giving BOT owners more responsibility to share a black list, meet online monthly, etc.
Make ONBOARDING easy for regular people. I have 2 celebrity friends and a blogger friend who are still waiting over 2 weeks for their accounts to be approved. Meanwhile, any old hacker can go on Anonsteam and start dozens of accounts. Being picky about who signs up via the dummy friendly version of the sign up form makes zero sense when those abusing the system are likely NOT signing up this way. Now it may be impossible to stop those kinds of signups, but by making it easier for regular people to sign up and learn to use it, there will be more real people using it for real things.
Now I realize my opinion isn't that valuable. My vote is worth 2 cents tops. And I haven't been around here long. Plus, I suck at writing and I'm sort of an airhead. But I'm thinking about practicality here. Sometimes less is more. K.I.S.S. philosophy.
If this post was of any value please consider showing me any kind of love. I really could use some steem power and a few SBDs to stay afloat lol x_x #deadfish
Omi
xoxo
Icons via Pixabay smooshed together with Canva