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RE: Building Long Term Value from your Blog
This is why it's important for people to understand that the quality of posts matters on the platform for it's current and future success, as well as what content is posted to generate future value or utility in people's lives. Think about valuing timeless content that serves people now and in the future.
I can appreciate that, and I'm not trying to start an argument, even though I'm in the "content quality is completely subjective" camp.
But how would you measure the quality of content? If not for their popularity. The way I see it, quality is subjective, popularity is objective. I'm sure everyone can agree that Steemit needs content that works as a "draw" for people to join Steemit.
But is a post on the latest phases of microbiology objectively high quality content as opposed to something else?
Top 5 Best Selling Books of All Time:
#1 – Don Quixote (500 million copies sold)
#2 – A Tale of Two Cities (200 million copies sold)
#3 – The Lord of the Rings (150 million copies sold)
#4 – The Little Prince (142 million copies sold)
#5 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (107 million copies sold)
My point being that it's all fiction. Entertainment.
Also, on Facebook light and fun content seems to get more likes than posts on microbiology. The big masses don't seem to join Facebook to discuss microbiology.
What say you?
Don't take this antagonistic, it's a sincere conversation opener.
Approximately 5 Billion bibles have been sold and that makes it far and away the biggest selling book in history - http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction/
Be careful which blogs you read - the author of that blog used Wikipedia as his source and we should never trust Wikipedia. The blogger pulled his data from a fiction only book sales page so the only result one could expect to receive are fictional - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#More_than_100_million_copies
Always check your sources and trust no-one - truth!
I would estimate that over 30 billion bibles (or versions of it) have been produced since its creation.
Wikipedia is trust-able if and only if the fact has its references to good sources.
Any person can edit any article, and it could be the case that when someone reads the article, it has just been modified with any false statement. Very often people revert those changes. But it could be the case when someone is reading when anybody had reverted them.
Content does have mostly subjective qualitative assessment, yet there is also content that has objective quality to it. Utility of content is one such measure. Knowledge about certain things has utility, and has more objective value than something that doesn't. Quality is measured in people work in many areas, even in creative, writing, and other areas you might apply as subjective. There are many degrees of quality measures to apply to different contexts. It's not about an absolute measure.
You're also conflating the issue of being able to objectively determine a valuation of something, with whether that's possible at all, by your argument with Facebook and other popular content. Popularity doesn't determine objective quality. Popularity doesn't determine truth. It's just a perception of what is trending and plays on emotional preferences of the most part.
Popularity is subjectively determined by peoples whims, wants and desires, not necessarily measured on actual meaningful quality motivations to improve their lives or the lives of others. Being led by basic emotional feel-good motivations is a non-reflective process, not a reflective, contemplative, thoughtful understanding of what to do and why to do. Populism, jumping on the bandwagon, is more in the herd group mind that individualist authentic thinking.
Anything happening is objectively happening, so yes "popularity is objective" but your conflating the issue here with what is meant. As I said, quality has subjective measure, and objective, depending on what your talking about.
Microbiology might have some utility for certain things, but there is other knowledge that is more useful in people lives if they could understand why. What is the utility of microbiology in someone's life? Will it help them improve the quality and condition of their lives on their own? Because the quality of important truths, principles and values for living, will help improve the quality and condition of our lives.
I would have thought popularity is subjective since it is subject to what people collectively think - similar to value
What people determine to be popular, is usually subjectively determind, but objective vauations can be used to favor something and everyone recognizeds that which makes it popular.
The objective part of popularity, or anything that is currently expressed in reality, is that it is currently in reality, as a certain quantity of whatever it is, hence it has an objective aspect to it due to it existing as a reference in reality.
People like apples but no oranges is subjective for the most part, but those people, and their liking something, is objectively true that they do or don't like something. So then, you could add up all the people who don't like something, and represent a certain popularity level against something. This is not looking at the subjective judgment of why people like something, but merely at the objective action that is part of reality: the choice to not eat the food they don't like.
I hope that clears it up. I was not saying popularity itself, is objective.
The greatest concern with respect to this argument and long term value is objective quality. Whilst I have faith in Steem and Steemit as a revolutionary use of blockchain technology and platform for communal value - there seems to be a large percentage of what one might call "hyperventilating" in terms of content - that is, one has to scan to find carefully considered and well constructed posts - and to that end, regardless of subject, quality is not subjective imho ;)
"quality of posts matters"
shall be written
in sharpie
across the bow
of the laptop vessel
I am still part of the "we need to produce quality content" camp, but I do agree with @schattenjaeger that quality is highly subjective. News items, funny content, and other "easy to produce" posts can still add a lot of value to the platform. I think looking at it from the perspective of what is going to attract users to the site and keep them actively engaged should really be the goal. Whatever it is that makes that happen is good.
Your perception of quality is subjective. Not quality. Either realistically assessed quality will bring value to the steem ecosystem, or if a subjective perception of quality deters users who disagree with the assessment then we devalue the system from the loss.
That's fair.