Dinner with @timcliff and @sneak at SteemFest - Discussion about Communities
SteemFest was an amazing time! There was a lot of useful information and fun activities. My favorite part of the whole conference though was getting to actually meet so many of the cool Steemians that I have spent the last year+ getting to know online - in person. So fun to see so many of you face-to-face!
On day three of the conference, I walked into the room where everyone was sitting down for dinner. A lot of the tables had started to fill up, and I was looking for a good place to sit. I saw that nearby there was an open spot next to @sneak. @sneak and I have gotten to know each other quite well over the past year through our interactions in GitHub, and he was someone I really wanted to spend some time with. When he invited me to sit down next to him, I was thrilled - @timcliff and @sneak together at SteemFest - how perfect! :)
Most of our conversation was actually about non-Steemit related things. @sneak is an amazing person and leads a very interesting life. One of the things that I found most interesting about him was how he applied the principle of cost/benefit analysis to various areas of his life. He seems very able to take a step back from whatever the situation is, and make a calculated decision about what is best for his life.
After spending most of the dinner talking about life, we eventually segued into Steemit related topics. It started out with @sneak sharing his views on several of the mainstream social media platforms out there - Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and many more. One other thing I learned about @sneak, is that the guy loves his social media! He seems to use and know tons about pretty much every platform out there. What works, what doesn't, why people use them, and what can be improved. I have a lot of confidence in @sneak's ability to bring the Steemit website, Steemit mobile app, and the Steem blockchain into the leading edge of Social media.
We eventually transitioned into a deep-dive of how communities will work. Everything that follows is my understanding of a fairly complex technical conversation that we had a few days ago. It should be fairly accurate, but I just want to throw a disclaimer that some of this may be slightly off from what Steemit actually plans to implement. Also, I'm sure Steemit reserves the right to change any/all of this during their implementation.
Communities are going to drastically change the platform.
Right now, all Steemit content is presented to users through a 'fire-hose'. Everything all at once, either through the trending page, new/created page, or a user's feed. Users are all competing for a brief glimpse of attention before their post is shoved off by the thousands of other posts shooting through the hose. Communities are going to change all of that.
The Steemit homepage is going to consist of a handful (probably around 20) pre-selected communities, which are the defaults. These communities will be broad topics that appeal to wide audiences, such as news, gaming, music, funny, etc. Users will have the ability to keep the defaults selected, or chose different communities that are more tailored to their personal preferences. Users will be able to drill down into any of the communities to browse the content within them. Users also may be given the option to follow a community.
At a technical level, a community will start out as a 'regular user' account and will be converted into a community. The reason for this is so that communities can eventually share in the revenue from the posts that are created within them (more on this later). When a user creates a post within a community, it will still be posted under their own account on the blockchain, but it will have JSON that designates it as part of a community. Hivemind (a new back-end application layer that is being built by Steemit) will interpret all of the data to determine how the post is handled for the communities.
Communities will either be public (anyone can post) or restricted (only moderators and approved users can post). When a user creates a post, they will either post it as an individual (within their own blog) or in a community. Posts that are created within a community will not be shown on the user's personal blog. If a user tries to post in a community that they are not authorized to post in, Hivemind will just ignore the post for the community, and it will be just be shown in their personal blog.
Communities will have moderators. Moderators will have the ability to hide any content that appears in the community which is not in line with the community's rules/standards. This includes both posts and comments. Users who are interacting with the community may be given the option to turn off the moderation - so they can see everything (even if the moderators hide it).
For content that is not posted within a community, the user who posted the content will have moderator control over their post. Users will have the ability to hide any comments that they do not want on their blog. Hidden content will still be available on the blockchain and possibly other UIs, but they will be filtered out by Hivemind for the data that is presented on Steemit.com.
Communities will eventually support payment splitting, where a portion of the posts reward is shared with the community account. Community admins will be able to set this amount as a percentage (from 0-100). When enforced, a post will only be allowed within the community if the author shares the required percentage of the rewards with the community account.
Eventually moderation may even be expanded to allow anyone to moderate a community, with users being able to choose which moderator(s) they want to have filtering their content. This is a revolutionary idea that may change the way that we consume content!
Personally I am very excited for communities, and the changes to the landscape that will come along with them. I am also very excited for the long list of additional changes that Steemit has in the works!
Thanks @sneak for the fabulous dinner conversation! It was one of my biggest highlights from SteemFest, and a night that I will always cherish :)
So if we are interested in starting a community as soon as it's possible, would you suggest creating that separate account now?
I have been moderating the @foraging-trail for the SteemTrail initiative (although I have slowed down a lot since they swept all the Steem Power away without notice or explanation). Consistent outreach and engagement showed that Steemit has some stellar foragers -- and there is an overall interest in the subject, too. There really is a sense of community based on the values of foraging, learning skills, and sharing experience and questions.
I would seriously like to moderate a Foraging community, which requires a certain level of expertise and oversight, because wrong information can be dangerous. I think I can even see how SMTs would be useful -- for people to be rewarded for developing their skills, and to use their SMTs to buy badges, worksheets, training, and even participation in events, to further their skills.
I could use a separate Foraging account right now, to get started. Do you have a sense about whether an account like that could then be rolled over into a Steemit community? Thanks.
I would suggest creating the account now, as it will be able to transfer over. As far as using the account, I'm not sure. I don't know enough about how a community will work to know if an account that has blog posts, comments, etc. will be able to be used as a community. To be safe, I'd recommend just holding it unless some more info is posted that indicates it is OK.
one question: will users be able to create their own communities? or will only be confined to predefined communities?
In ChainBB any user can create its own forum and I'd like to see something like that for Communities too even if there was a cost involved (e.g. ChainBB requires 10 Steem for a new forum)
Yes, any user will be able to create communities.
Glad to have you back @timcliff, safe and sound. That communities feature will be a great addition. Right now the current sections (trending, new, hot) are a bit chaotic in my view. I rarely even look at the trending page anymore, it's mostly the same whales featured every day on it. From what I understood, communities will bring structure, balance and order to major topics. It will be interesting for sure, looking forward to it.
The communities Idea sounds really great. An area for new members posts would be great as well. Thanks for sharing your dinner discussion with us @Timcliff!
From what I'm reading... Hivemind is specific to Steemit.com and will be licensed out to other providers if a suitable financial agreement is reached.
...it sounds like Steemit isn't going to make communities available on the blockchain itself, and will own the rights to Hivemind.
I understand that Steemit wants to bring extra value to its own website, but what is ironic about this, if you implement "communties" that only exist on one particular website, you end up disrupting the community who uses steem on a whole across multiple platforms.
Obviously each website can implement their own "hivemind" compatible system as well, but that would involve them having to develop it themselves just to compete with Steemit.
Do you know about this privatization of Steemit's Hivemind? Or am I the first person to make you aware that it sounds like it will be a steemit.com only feature?
The reason why I think this is based on the quote I've taken from what you've written above.
If communities were open source, and not specific to steemit, all it would require is a hardfork of the steem chain.
They are going to be implemented using JSON/hivemind, and will not be implemented directly in the blockchain. I am 99.9% sure that hivemind will be open source though. I will try to confirm.
Confirmed: https://github.com/steemit/hivemind/blob/master/LICENSE
OMG... Why nobody told me that Tim cliff was at Steemfest ? :D I would have loved to thank you in person for all the amazing articles you write and allowed me to translated in french to help the french community grow (and it's finally happening after 5 months of working on it as a full time job ;-)) (and also and for sure about the really good job you do as a witness).
Thank you for everything @timcliff ! And ... See you probably at Steemfest3 !
With, I hope, the Community feature implemented ! I can't wait for it... :-)
Roxane
Thanks 🙂
Sorry I missed you there. Hopefully we will meet at SF3!
sounds wonderful but much like the SteemCity concept that @dragosroua was working on. I think he had it in alpha before he put it on hold. Too bad he and @sneak couldn't compare note.
I'm READY for something like this. Drinking from the firehose get's my beard all wet.
That's awesome you were able to have that conversation with him. Between you and lukestokes being there, I definitely regret not making it.
The communities idea is interesting, curious to see how it plays out.
This sounds great, i'm sure the quality of content will rocket and spammy users will be reduced.
Looks like a censorship tool.
Hidden comments should be like downvoted posts: hidden yet still expandable/visible to whoever may wanna look into what the OP tried to hide. Having all traces of a comment deleted means we won't even know if a comment has been removed. There must be at least a notice on Steemit saying "comment removed" so we then know when to look on the blockchain for a hidden comment.
I believe that will be an option. Worst case scenario, someone can build a UI that shows all the censored content.
Nothing that happens on steemit.com constitutes censorship. The blockchain is immutable. The contents of this website are a private affair, and it would be censorship to restrict the editorial control that is the right of the owner of the steemit.com DNS domain name.
See relevant XKCD #1357: https://xkcd.com/1357/
Nothing obligates Steemit Inc to host anything it doesn't want to on the steemit.com website.
The blockchain does not support this functionality, and won't be updated to do so. Removal of content will be strictly UI. There will be no way to delete "all traces of a comment".
Note that every other blogging platform in the world allows the author of a post to choose what other UGC is displayed below/alongside their own writing, to their audience.
Not having feature parity here is both a disincentive to those with large audiences, as well as unfair to them - it says that "to blog on steemit, you must give equal time to every shithead who wants to place their words below yours". That's super uncompetitive as they will simply blog elsewhere that gives them that control; but also it's just unfair. If you spend years or decades building an audience, you do not owe access to that audience to any second or third party who has an opinion about you.
It's not censorship, as you can always write your response/attack post on your own blog, where your own audience (likely much smaller) can read it if they choose. Nobody is entitled to access to someone else's audience, despite what Drunk Kanye thinks.
Presently, my Serious Blogging is reserved for my own website, which I control, due to the fact that the traffic going to the permalink sees only what I choose for them to see. If they want opinions of others about my writing, they can go to those other peoples' websites. There are too many loudmouthed whiners on the internet for me to direct my readers' eyeballs to a page I do not totally control.