RE: Something Useful For Blockchain
ok, I finally had a few minutes to read through this portion of the thread. I see two general sub-topic areas: a regular "suggestion box" type of summary post where we can draw Steemit's attention to ideas that bubble up from the Steem user base - let's call that a Steem Improvement Proposal, and a way to implement proposals for change. I also see that we all face a common struggle to find time for "Steem improvement" against the time demands from real life.
Another big challenge that I see here is how we avoid it being just another way to call for Steemit to do more stuff or give more upvotes.
I'm not familiar with Dropbox Paper, but I guess it's something like Google Docs? (Related: @skycorridors once suggested Skiff or Cryptpad).
In addition to the people here, I'd also add that @pennsif is really good at keeping his ear to the ground and assimilating the thoughts of the Steem user community, and his Steem News posts already do some of this.
One other thing that I've been really thinking about a lot is the idea of a "virtual assistant", which I learned about from @answerswithjoe, here and wrote about here. It occurs to me that if a task can be clearly described, Steem is a really good platform for making use of the "virtual assistant" model. So, I'll incorporate that concept into my answer:
I'd like to see a heavily moderated Steem community established for this purpose and a single "pinned post" as an index to track strategic areas of focus and the related "Steem improvement proposals" (with no other "pinned posts"). Here's a possible flow from idea into "Steem improvement proposal":
- Team members gather ideas from the community and synthesize them into Steem Improvement Proposals (SIP) in Dropbox Paper or something similar.
- Once an SIP is drafted, it gets posted in the community and added to the "pinned post" that's indexing them all, and one or two or three team members are designated to be its advocate(s).
- The designated advocate(s) breaks the proposal down into a clearly described bite-sized tasks that can be fulfilled by a "Steem virtual assistant" and posts articles that ask people to fulfill the task.
- The "Steem virtual assistant" completes the task and posts supporting documentation.
Steps 2-4 are rewarded with upvotes (presumably from Steemit, but witnesses and other stakeholders could also participate).
Open questions: (i) What to do about tasks that are too large/complex to be described in a post and supported by upvotes; (ii) How/When/if ever to link up to the SPS?
Out of time, so I'm not proofreading as well as I'd like - sorry for any errors. Obviously not a complete idea, but it's all I have time for. Hopefully it will stimulate some thought.
Thanks for the mention @remlaps.
Just catching up with all the comments here. Some very interesting ideas and suggestions. Hopefully a route can be found to take these through to fruition.
I have begun recently trying to crystallise some thoughts of my own into a series of (Steem Up) posts.
Getting a clear and thorough understanding of what the current issues on the platform are is more challenging than I first thought. Moving from identifying and documenting what the issues are to developing and implementing appropriate solutions is an even bigger task.
But most problems can be solved if enough people with enough ideas and enough willpower come together with a common goal.
It's very nice that you took the time. And I think the waiting time was well invested, because your suggestions are very good.
Using a new community to collect and "manage" the proposals is perfect from my point of view. However, "heavily moderated" will probably be very important, as I fear that there are some users who will seek attention there. I don't currently know if it's possible to restrict user rights so that root posts can only be created by certain users. Otherwise, it has to be muted.
Setting up a central (pinned) post is equally brilliant!
However, the role of the virtual assistant is not yet clear to me. But maybe I will realise that later in the process...
I also think we should just start.
I could offer to create a cloud folder for joint editing with OneDrive. We can create Word documents there and edit them together.
However, cryptpad's description also sounds good and could also be helpful for our purposes (joint editing of documents). If this is more desired, I would take over this set-up.
For the community creation we should arrange together (name, admin, mods etc.). We could make the arrangements via Steemit, Discord (or possibly OneDrive/Cryptpad itself).
@o1eh @chriddi @pennsif
I don't really have a clear picture, yet, either. It occurs to me now that Steemit already beat me to this idea with SC03-SC09, steem greeters, cryptoacademy professors, and country representatives, though. They've been making use of virtual assistants for a couple of years, already. I just didn't have a name for it. ;-) An example of what I had in mind is like this:
Say that the team agrees on a project to update the documentation for the Steemit API. That's too big of a job for anyone to undertake with hopes of relying on upvotes (we saw how that went with @the-gorilla and his front end effort). On the other hand, though, we could try to break things down into small self-contained, manageable tasks. i.e. ask "virtual assistants" to submit pull requests and post their progress, one API call at a time, and support that with upvotes. If someone abandons the effort, the upvote is not wasted, because the task was identified as a strategic need and it stood, independently, on its own.
Two other discussion points, for longer term consideration:
Some sort of community account could be good.
Then either the posting key could be shared for contributors, or contributors could set 100% beneficiaries to it.
Then anyone who wants to vote on the contributions (including the sc0 accounts) would be adding to the community war-chest fund.
Now we need someone to take the initiative and create a new community, discord server or dropbox paper. I could create a community, but I've been on the platform for a little over a year. I think I am not the one who should be an administrator in such a community. There are many much more respectable users.
I think that if we work out - preferably together with the Steemit team - a few criteria that are quasi indisputable, this problem can be avoided. There are actually some (few) users on the Steem who are willing to think about a positive future of the Steem even without a guaranteed sc01 vote.
This is not pure altruism: if the Steem goes a little more in an attractive direction, I personally have something from it too, because in the long run I would feel much more comfortable here. Will be a long process, of course...
Yes, that's about the same.
Great. I would welcome his input. In teamwork... ;-)
And I think this teamwork is something we should just start, then we might see more clearly. It simply brings nothing, if now every "understanding thinker" knocks out a post and you have to pick up the important aspects again laboriously. A "central place" (as you address it later), to which one can refer " straying" users, is important.
Fantastic! And probably the only way to clearly structure our work with the possibilities of the Steemit frontend!
Hm. Shouldn't we just get started on the work before worrying about "compensation"? If the teamwork is effective, the ideas will come naturally. If it is without the desired effect, we will have to think about something else under the aspect of "trial and error" anyway.
Haha, that's how the Steem works.... ;-)
Agreed, I think we need to have a vision of how things might develop, but we definitely don't need to know all the answers in order to get started.
Great point about starting a new community. I thought about it too.
In my opinion, we should work without any sc01 voting at all. Unless sc01 support will be needed at the stage of implementation of a certain proposal (probably this is what you meant).
Yeah, I agree. For the immediate topic of setting up a "suggestion box", we don't need to depend on SC01 votes. It's mainly about establishing communication pathways. The voting becomes more relevant when we attempt to implement proposals.