Steem Debates #3 : Steemit Engagement Challenge - REVISITED
It is a couple of months since the last Steem Debate looked at the Steemit Engagement Challenge.
There was a general consensus amongst those who commented on that Debate post that change was needed for the Engagement Challenge.
Since then in Season 19 Steemit Inc made some changes with the introduction of the Teaching Teams.
Have Teaching Teams worked? Is that the right direction for the Engagement Challenge? Are more changes needed?
Teaching Teams
Teaching Teams were introduced in Season 19 as an alternative to the usual Challenges run by communities.
There are currently four Teaching Teams providing weekly lessons and assignments in the areas of teaching, cooking, electronics and web development.
They are definitely a welcome change for the Engagement Challenge but unfortunately participation numbers have been considerably lower than in the standard community challenges.
Do these low numbers indicate that the Teaching Team concept is not suitable for the audience on Steem?
Or is it that the teaching topics are not of interest, or the lessons are too difficult, or not presented well enough?
Should the Teaching Teams be continued in Season 20, or should something else be tried?
Other Ideas for the Engagement Challenge
Amongst the comments on the last Debate post there was a common feeling that the Engagement Challenge should be used to generate more worthwhile and better quality content.
Not being so restrictive on the challenges, and giving people more freedom to write would help produce better content.
The Challenge posts, and the required commenting, have all become very forced and of little attractiveness.
The big question is how can the Engagement Challenge be restructured to produce more valuable content that is more interesting for people already on Steem, and also more attractive to the wider world through search engine discovery?
A secondary question is whether the Engagement Challenge might be more useful to the platform if it is freed from the constraints of being tied to specific communities?
In the comments on the last Debate post @rashid001 remembered the Better Life with Steem initiative Steemit Inc introduced during the 1000 Days of Steem program...
A Better Life with Steem
This is not a game or a challenge, but rather an invitation to tell us about the positive things you are doing to improve your own life, your family's, your community and the planet.
We are inviting you to write under these seven themes...
Acts of Kindness [ #actsofkindness ]
This could include volunteering with a charity, cooking for an elderly neighbor, helping a local youth club, giving a home to a stray dog...Planet Positives [ #planetpositives ]
This could include planting trees, recycling bottles, installing a photovoltaic system, cleaning a local river...Grow Your Own [ #growyourown ]
This could include growing your own food in a window box, a backyard, a garden or even a farm. And it might also be about raising chickens, ducks, pigs or any other animals for food...Crafty Content [ #craftycontent ]
This could include any sorts of craft from knitting and crochet, to woodwork and metalwork. Or maybe jewelry making, or pottery...Crypto and Me [ #cryptoandme ]
This could include how you are using cryptocurrencies to help improve your life. Which cryptos you use, and how you use them, for trading, or for transactions or payments. Your favorite exchanges...Mind, Body and Spirit [ #mindbodyspirit ]
This could include what you do to look after the health and wellbeing of you and your family, including natural remedies, fitness training, yoga, meditation...Learn With Steem [ #learnwithsteem ]
This could include any skills you are learning, or courses you are taking. Or it might include teaching or training you are giving to others...
Could a framework like this be recycled and repurposed for a new look Engagement Challenge?
These broad subject areas could be used as writing guides, but still give writers considerable scope for free thinking and variety.
It would also be good to find some way to use the Engagement Challenge to encourage and reward the small band of developers who are working to bring improvements and new opportunities to the platform.
Taking this Better Life approach would though raise the question of how this would fit in with communities?
What Do You Think?
Are the Teaching Teams a good development for the Engagement Challenge?
Should there be further changes as well as the Teaching Teams?
Would writing themes like the Better Life themes be a good way to bring more freedom and variety to the Engagement Challenge?
If so how should they be managed and administered?
The Engagement Challenge is one of the long running 'economic instruments' that Steemit Inc uses to support and stimulate activity on Steem.
It would be good to find ways of using it more optimally as a marketing tool to generate higher quality content that might attract new people to the platform.
Using Steem for teaching and learning through the Teaching Teams is certainly a worthy goal but it might need some refinement.
Steemit Inc seems to be open to suggestions for improvements.
It is up to all of us to put forward our thoughts and ideas.
Thank you
Pennsif
OK, I'll bite!
What do we ultimately want the engagement challenge to accomplish? And while contemplating that what lessons can we pull on from the past?
If you think about it, this is really looking at the gamification of social media which is a large part of the entire core principle of Steemit.
What makes for actual participation? People love seeing their name in print on ”leaderboards” and ”rankings.” Perhaps this angle most success
@pennsif, I think you might remember what was perhaps the single most successful engagement initiative Steemit has seen, which was active some years back when @abh12345 ran the weekly ”Steemit Curation and Engagement Leagues.” It started as almost nothing but soon there were hundreds of participants every week and everybody’s efforts were ranked according a fairly complex algorithm that took into consideration original posts, comments, length of comments, ”conversations”, votes given, penalties for self-voting and more.
I vaguely recall some analysis run on the weekly total engagement, and sometimes the League participants would generate as much as 6-8% of all activity in the ecosystem. We’re talking may hundreds of posts and thousands of genuine comment. And people were mostly doing this mostly just to ”see their name in lights” because the prizes were actually pretty modest, all told, including SBI shares, modest liquid Steem and some modest week-long delegations.
We have a different structure now, and (perhaps) the benefit of having one of the top SC accounts sponsor such a thing with the value of 2-3 100% upvotes weekly, divided into smaller percentage prizes after some equitable formula.
The point here is that people used it, and they participated, and the initiative wasn’t overcomplicated by some huge number of required rules and what have you to follow. Even getting into the weekly list of the top-100 often required leaving upwards of 80-100 real comments and perhaps 3-4 top level posts.
I have watched some of the initiatives run in more recent times, and two things strike me:
Too many rules and regulations to follow, limiting original creativity. That tends to make things a bit formulaic, and dull, after a while.
Not really that oriented to actual interaction between users. That lowers the sense of ”being part of” something… and that also becomes boring.
If part of the objective is to present a thriving community to the greater world, formulaic is not the answer.
Those are just some initial thoughts…
Yes I remember @abh12345's League.
Just went back to find the last time it ran - @wakeupkitty was the winner that week...
There were a whole bunch of metrics used in calculating the league. I wonder how comments were determined to be genuine or not? No AI then 😉
@alejos7ven runs his Weekly Engagement Report...
I wonder if that could be developed along the lines of Asher's League?
La gran cantidad de reglas lleva a matar la creatividad, pues te atan las manos para escribir libremente.
Bendiciones.
For a writer, the most important thing is the freedom to write. And on a decentralized platform, this aspect is like a question mark, where you are forced to write within a limited circle. As far as engagement is concerned, it's not possible without comments.
But comments should be such that one wants to respond to them and have further discussions (2-layer or 3-layer comments). The current engagement challenge and the teaching team's experience are proof that people are forced to comment (just to get support) even when they don't want to. And the post they are commenting on is not according to their psychology.
Now, as far as the engagement challenge is concerned, should it continue or not, and is the teaching team's initiative effective or not? In my opinion, the engagement challenge should be stopped now because it only benefits a few communities and writers. And to participate in the challenge, one has to follow the community rules and the tags generated by them, which is mandatory.
In my opinion, along with thediarygame and 'Better Life with Steem' topics, Steemit Inc. should start a new initiative with more topics (like CreativeCorner, FunFacts, BehindTheScenes, Q and A, HowTo ,DidYouKnow, VisualQuest ) that have their own specific tags. For example, A post can be shared with 4 main tags, such as #learnwithsteem, #steemexclusive, #countrytag, and #club5050,75,100. In which user can change the first tag, according to topics from the announced tags.
This way, users will have the freedom to post in any community they want, and by this all communities will be involved.
In every community, there are moderators who will moderate posts. As Steemitblog will announce specific Tags, community moderators will not face much difficulties in moderating those posts.
As for support, it can be made very easy. To highlight high-ranked posts, the services of Respected Steem Representatives can be utilized. They can recommend better posts for SC01 and SC02 votes. Many communities also have booming support, Communities can recommend good posts for booming votes. And for the curation of other posts, Respected Community Curators are also available.
And there's another idea. If the voting percentage of SC01 and SC02 can be reduced, like currently 30 to 66% vote is cast on a post. By reducing it to 20-45%, More Posts can support daily. This way, users will be happy, and no need for more big accounts.
You may disagree with my views, but I have shared these ideas keeping in mind the psychology of writers. However, if my comments have hurt anyone's feelings, I apologize.
Saludos, todos tus puntos son los que realmente han llevado a los retos a ser fastidiosos, tediosos y a tener pocas participaciones.
Un ganador de un reto recibe un voto de 30%, no estoy de acuerdo que ese porcentaje sea menor, ahora el porcentaje a una comunidad que organiza es del 66 % ese si puede bajar para así apoyar a mas usuarios.
Bendiciones.
Saludos estimado amigo @yancar.
El tema de los concursos en los SEC es bastante dinámico, hay quienes están a favor y quienes están en contra, ahora, una gran verdad es que las participaciones han bajado exponencialmente.
En cuanto al % que recibe una comunidad por organizar un concurso en el SEC, recuerda que dicho % se divide entre los 5, 6 y hasta 8 moderadores que tiene la comunidad, y eso es una pequeña recompensa por la moderación de las participaciones en el evento.
De bajarse el %, el cual es dividido entre el número de moderadores, se hace mucho menos del 10 - 12 % real para cada miembro del equipo, los cuales, pasan largas horas verificando en cada publicación contenido (Texto e imágenes) que no sea plagio, generado por IA, que no tenga bots de votación, que cumpla las normas del desafío, que tenga un CSI por encima del 5%, que se encuentre en los clubes y que por supuesto no esté en power down.
No obstante, luego de terminar la semana, deben discutir los 3 post ganadores o destacados entre todos los participantes.
En fin, tiempo, mucho tiempo que pudieran dedicar a trabajar sus propias cuentas.
Saludos
Saludos amigo, es cierto hay comunidades que les dan ese porcentaje a sus MOD, otras no lo hacen, es un plus por el gran trabajo de moderar.
La cuestión no es bajar porcentaje tampoco a los post ganadores, es a lo que quiero llegar, mas me centro en que la SEC ya es una dinámica aburrida, repetitiva y muerta.
Feliz y bendecido día.
Agree.
I haven't been involved in a community running a challenge but I think it must involve quite a bit of work and coordination.
Would communities still want to run the Challenges if they received lower votes on their weekly posts?
Si es trabajo, tanto para los administradores como para los moderadores, por ello ese voto es valioso, pero lo dije porque no creo que sea tampoco bueno bajar los votos de los ganadores.
I do think change is needed. It will be interesting to see how the Engagement Challenge changes if it keeps going.
Having as wide a range of curators as possible is important to spread the curation rewards across the whole community.
Yes, I also hope that changes will create some positive opportunities for content creators.
I also think that there should be an increase in curator accounts. but I remember that when I once demanded this, I was asked by SC01 , that where the power for those accounts would come from, and I had no answer to that question.
Hola pennsif, un gusto saludarte y dejar mi opinión por acá, lo hago con todo el respeto del mundo y con mi punto de vista, es mi opinión al 100 %.
Para mi los Steemit Engagement Challenge no son agradables, ya el tiempo de esta dinámica paso y murió para mí, es aburrido, es repetitivo, prefiero no publicar a participar en estas dinámicas.
Cada temporada los números de participaciones son menores y los que participan se puede ver su desánimo, ya ni provoca leer una publicación que tenga que ver con los retos.
Los equipos de enseñanza son un total fracaso, he podido ver que estas tareas son demasiado exigentes y que participan muy pocos, se requiere mucho tiempo para participar y como sabemos los votos no están garantizados, eso lleva a preferir no participar y mejor uno dedica su tiempo valioso a otra cosa.
Si es cierto que las restricciones, reglas y tantas cosas de los retos es fastidioso y nos encierra, reciclar Better Life con steem es muy buena idea, nos liberaría, nos daría libertad para escribir sobre nosotros mismos.
Con las etiquetas es suficiente para que estas publicaciones sean apoyadas, no importa en que comunidad se publiquen, siempre digo que lo que más debe mejorar es la curación, se deben diversificar los votos de Sc01 y Sc02, seria genial que existan dos cuentas con el poder de Sc02 para apoyar a más usuarios.
Los debates son la mejor manera de ver que esta funcionando y que no, los retos funcionaron en su momento pero ya caduco, los equipos de enseñanza no funcionaron, son un total fracaso.
Bendiciones para todos.
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Yes I think further change on the Engagement Challenge is needed.
Running them through Communities probably has an unbalancing effect across the community as a whole. Maybe too many votes concentrated in the participating communities?
I haven't tried the Teaching Teams but I guess they do need to be challenging so that people can learn from them. If they require more time and resources perhaps they should get higher votes to compensate.
I believe that the engagement contests have become boring and less interesting. As an emotional person, I usually write my posts and comments with genuine feelings. However, it seems that the rules of the engagement are forcing users to comment even when they don't genuinely connect with the content, making everything feel artificial because they are only commenting to win. Furthermore, the topics being chosen are repetitive, suggesting a lack of fresh ideas in these communities.
The teaching team was a great initiative, but it didn't fully achieve its purpose. Aside from the cooking team, I find the tasks for other teams to be too demanding and difficult. Therefore, the team might want to consider taking a break. I believe that the Better Life team will remain the best because users are free to express themselves without being confined to strict rules. We have really missed the art, craft & DIY content, as well as acts of kindness such as #planetpositives, #growyourown, and learning with Steem content. I think we should consider returning to these topics, at least for the time being.
This is my opinion though. Thank you, for creating a forum like this for us to express our feelings.
It will be interesting to see what changes come next !
Alright, We can't wait for it!!
Saludos cordiales les voy a compartir mis pensamientos como una usuaria que solo crea contenido, se puede decir que veo los toros desde lejos.
Aunque yo participo en los equipos de enseñanza sobre todo el de gastronomía he notado poca participación, posiblemente porque necesitas mucho tiempo para preparar tu publicación, si tienes otras actividades se hace difícil a menos que tu tiempo sea exclusivo de steemit , creo que esa puede ser una razón porque los usuarios prefieren concurso que no requiere tanto tiempo. ( ojo es mi pensamiento)
Los desafíos es como todo llega un momento que se vuelve más de lo mismo y puede llegar al aburrimiento incluso hay algunos que son prácticamente lo mismo con otro nombre, la regla de los 5 comentarios para ganar es una desventaja para los nuevos usuarios, que se sentiran motivados si seleccionan su publicación.
Creo que con tantos problemas de salud mental enfocarse en el bienestar puede ser una buena opción, a los desafíos hay que darle otro enfoque que sea atractivo para todos
Es mi humilde opinión,
Saludos yahnel, tu al ser parte de un equipo de enseñanza has podido ver en primera fila que el número de participantes en esta dinámica es muy baja, esto se debe a que las tareas son muy exigentes, requieren demasiado tiempo y al final eso no es rentable para nadie, incluso hay tareas como la del equipo eléctrico que requiere inversión y eso jamás va a dar resultados, creo que esta dinámica nació muerta.
Bendiciones amiga.
Saludos amigo yancar si es muy poca la participación si requiere mucho tiempo y como dices invertir, y hay momentos que la economía no da como para hacer gastos
extras, gastronomía lo ví factible de hecho si he aprendido bastante, hago el esfuerzo porque me gusta y quiero aprender
Saludos amigo yancar bendiciones 💛💙❤️
I wonder if higher rewards should be given for the Teaching Team assignments?
Puede ser una buena idea ya que las asignacion de actividades de los equipos docentes requiere inversión... También se me está ocurriendo quitar por una semana el 25% null dejar solo los club para ver cómo es el comportamiento de los usuarios...
So far we have been very happy with the Steemit Engagement Challenge. we had fun there and we could get support and get to know more people there, interesting topics and also we could be creative without limits there. SEC with a combined teaching team makes SEC even more interesting to follow, I really like all the themes, but when I want to participate, there are several obstacles;
To be honest, sir, the challenge this time for me, who only comes from the village (ordinary people), is a little difficult, we like learning and we are happy with every challenge we take part in. This is a new innovation and it may take time to adjust to it. Thank you steemit team for thinking about us all this time.
I guess people will have to select which of the Teaching Team courses they can participate in.
Of course sir, this will provide more experience and knowledge...