Improve Tags - Improve User Ex - Let's Start A Bug Bounty! - 100 Steem Start
I'm sure if you got a chance to look at the list of coding priorities for the Steemit devs, the tags would be fairly low down the pecking order of that list. In fact, it might not even be there in the first place, it might be viewed like there is nothing wrong with the tags, so why should they be fiddled with?
Well I would beg to differ, and whilst I don't want to be seen as whining, I really would love to see an improvement to the tags as it will not only benefit me, it will add to the whole user experience.
A Case For Tags
I, like I'd imagine most people, use the Steemit categories, or tags, to find content. I particularly find them useful when I hold my competitions and challenges. In those circumstances I tell all the people who enter, to use the appropriate tag, for instance #cryptogee-photomash.
However the tags only stay live for seven days, or at least the content within the tag only stays for 7 days. After a week it disappears, never to be seen again.
Clearly this isn't ideal if you're holding a competition that lasts more than a week. However much more importantly, it means that new users of Steemit have content hidden from them, for no other reason than the post has paid out.
I mean, are we saying that any post, regardless of the content, is only valuable for 7 days? I'm pretty sure that we're not in fact saying that.
Sticky Interest
The reason tags were brought into the social media lexicon in the first place, was to make it easier for users to find and group content they're interested in, right?
So imagine a new user comes to Steemit and see's a short-stories tag, they then read the story they come across and like it, so they wonder if there are any other stories they might like, however that week, only 2 people have posted to that tag, so they go away thinking that there are only 2 short stories on the whole of Steemit.
This quick example is crude, however I think perfectly displays how tags are great for sticky traffic.
Ghost In The Shell
As a content series producer, it really saddens me that when somebody clicks on #incredibleyou they see nothing, even though I've created more than 25 articles for the Incredible You! series, at a cost of around 200-250 hours. That's a lot of work to just disappear into the ether.
The only way that work can be found, is by me posting up a Table Of Contents every now and again, and linking to it everytime I make a new post, however this is far from ideal.
Spare One More Thought For The Reader
I am not only a content provider, I am also a consumer and as such the way the Steemit tags work is very frustrating, as it should be a quick way for me to find content I like, or as a way to reference past posts that might be relevant to me.
So I propose a Categories Archive, I understand these things need to be coded and integrated with the blockchain, and I'm sympathetic that that is rarely easy. I myself am learning to code, but do not have the expertise for this, or would happily contribute my services.
I have a feeling the tags are linked to payout time, as I remember we used to have a 7 and 30 day categories archive, however, this seemed to go after the hardfork that changed our payout times.
Bug Bounty
I'm interested to know if we have, or can start some kind of bug bounty, or maybe it would be called an improvement fund; perhaps delivered through Utopian?
The way I see it working, is there are a bunch of bugs and changes/improvements that are suggested, and then we Steemians vote on the ones we feel are the most important to sort out.
After that we can contribute to a reward pool, so the person or persons who sort out the change, get rewarded with Steem/SBD for their hard work and time.
I personally would be prepared to put up 100 Steem towards the tag problem, and would invite others, especially those of you who have a large stake in the platform, to join me and help sort out this glaring oversight.
Lastly, but by no means least, I would like to thank @ned and the whole Steemit dev team for what they have done so far. From the design to the implementation of the blockchain code, you've done an amazing job, for which I shall forever be grateful, without you, I would not be here, so a huge, massive, gargantuan, Cryptogee thank you!
OK GUYS, OVER TO YOU, I'M HOPING THIS DOESN'T GET COMPLETELY IGNORED BY PEOPLE WHO CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN OR WHOM HAVE VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAKE TOWARDS THIS DEBATE. APART FROM THE TAGS/CATEGORIES WHAT OTHER IMPROVEMENTS DO YOU FEEL WE HAVE TO MAKE AS WE MOVE FORWARDS? ALSO WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT A BUG BOUNTY/IMPROVEMENT FUND? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
A small ease of life addition would be the ability to organize all of your old posts into various "shelves" and category's on your profile.
There are a couple poems of mine that I am legitimately proud of and would want to put in a "Worthy"/"Not shit" shelf, or some-such thing.
But as they are, they shall be eventually be deeply buried unless some dedicated reader decides to go on an endless scroll journey.
Something I imagine is far worse for those who've been active for a long period of time, as well as those who curate and resteem a lot of content.
Another one would be the option to search for posts on steemit to the tune of "Last 14 days", "Last 30 days" "last 6 months" ect...
Another great idea would be the ability to filter out peoples posts on your feed, or to be able to create your own feed with specific people you follow instead of that all in one feed that gradually becomes useless beyond a certain point.
The ability to remove "resteemed" posts from appearing in your feed.
100% behind this initiative! I may not have the SBD to support it, but I'll be voting/upvoting for the small bit I'm worth!
Nice suggesation to adopt catogries archives as it is sad that your post disappears after 7 days. It will increase repetation of post due to navailability of previous post. Table of content is another alternative option but it involves a lof of effort.
I know, the effort would be fairly big I'd imagine, and might take a team of people, however like I said I would be prepared to put up 100 Steem minimum to see such an improvement. If others could contribute to the point whereby each coder would get say at least 10-20 Steem per hour for their efforts, I think that would be well worth it.
Cg
It's so nice of you to offer your asset to make this community more amazing. Your idea is great. Collective effort in this regard is very beneficial. I acknowledge your idea. I would love to contribute my share for this cause, but unfortunately i have only little much to offer.
hmmm...i am brand new here and learning that posts have only a 7 day life expectancy took a tiny bit of steem out of my enthusiasm...I hope this gets improved upon as the platform grows.
Me too!
Cg
It would also be nice to have categories... so that the tags list them as such. I like to add different topics like crypto's, health, etc. But health folks sometimes get put off from a blog when they see crypto articles... so if we can have 4 or 5 categories they would slide to that would be cool, all enabled by the tags.
Yes categories is one that I have heard is coming, so perhaps there will be some kind of improvement to the tags as well at that point.
You're right, categories will vastly improve user ex, and with that probably improving google rankings as well.
Cg
Interesting read. I had no idea our blogs disappeared into the ether. I hadn't noticed, probably because there have always been plenty of posts on the tags I have searched. I searched on incredibleyou and was only able to find one outside your contents list.
I have been doing a series of "quotes to live by" with the tag #quotestoliveby and had assumed that they would always be searchable by that tag. Now I will need to rethink this.
I would also like some sort of Categories Archive. And I would like something like the situation of Pinterest boards (assuming nothing has changed there) where people can sign up to see stuff in their feed only related to one category.
I like to write about lots of different stuff and, on FB, had to have separate accounts. I'd really love to have just the one account but for people to be able to choose which parts of it they see.
I also like you idea of a Bounty Fund and for Steemians to be able to vote on the ones we feel are the most important to implement/sort out.
Yes, it's a real shame, tags keep our posts alive and are used by the google crawlbots when people search various subjects, so it is a very disappointing state of affairs.
I have heard that categories are coming, and your suggestion for signing up just for certain subjects would really enhance user experience, I hope this is one of the changes in the making.
I like the bug bounty because even though we have Github at the moment, and to some extent Utopian.io, I think we need something more accessible and less techy, so that people can easily browse suggestions, add there own, and contribute Steem/SBD if they so wish.
Fingers crossed!
Cg
Yes. I agree about the techy bit, being a non-techy myself. I've heard Utopian.io mentioned few times as a good place for newbies to get seen and earn some SP but every time I looked I thought it was just for developers. Today I noticed that there is other stuff there apart from coding.
Having something more accessible is critical if Steemit wants to grow more mainstream. I'm not a technophobe and am willing to try and learn what sometimes seems way beyond me but most of my friends just found it too much and have stuck with FB.
It's nothing new though is it? That back end, front end thing has been going on forever.
I've been thinking lately, that I would be a really good bridge right now, before I know too much. If I could get interviewed by someone who knows their way around crypto and blockchains and upvoting etc. I could ask the "dumb" questions that newbies are thinking but which those in the know have no idea we don't know.
Hope that makes sense!
Also, I think it's very difficult for newbies to know what is important and what's not in the beginning. For a while I fretted that I didn't know how to trade but now realise that it's not important right now as my main goal is to get to 500SP so my votes will be worth something. And that took me about a month to work out.
It's sort of a catch22 because even if I wrote a post about this stuff very few people would see it anyway. I did write about my experience for the first 4 weeks and will do an update when I've been here 2 months but I should maybe make better notes because, once you've learned something, it's hard to remember what you didn't know.
Ah yes, the curse of experts syndrome, we all suffer from it at one time or another, and find it difficult to relay the basics because they are so, well, basic!
Maybe we could do the interview...?
Cg
I'd definitely be up for that @cryptogee. Would you be able to take charge of the technical side of it?
Maybe we could have a chat on Zoom before hand to discuss the best way to go about it.
I'll start by brainstorming some things that I would like answered and looking back through my notes to see the questions I asked at the very beginning then maybe we could come up with an order of play?
I'm happy to just go for it too but I'm not sure that would be as helpful because I'm liable to jump all over the place.
Yeah good idea, I'll have a think as well, I'm just about to do a very exciting interview actually :-), so I'm preparing for that at the mo, but will get on this afterwards.
Do you do Steemit chat or Discord? I don't know Zoom.
Cg
Left you a message on Discord. Couldn't post here for hours cuz of lack of bandwidth. 😢
I am new so still tying to understand all this. I read comments and people are thinking that post go into the ether after 7 days. If I understand correctly the tag association disappears, something I did not know until reading this post. However, the post are still categorized and available based on the first tag used (the category tag).
I searched, "Incredible You"and many interesting articles appeared and the first one I clicked was one of yours from seven months ago. So if I am understanding properly, association with the other four, non category tags are gone in seven days.
Maybe I am reading these comments wrong as I am on the first cup of coffee. Also, the tag association seems to be issue worth addressing. -3D
The post stays around for ever on the blockchain and if you search the title on google it will pop up. However within the categories, posts only hang around for 7 days, you won't notice it in a big category like #photography, because there are hundreds of posts a day to that tag. However if you see a post on there today, it won't be there after 7 days.
Similarly, if you click on #incredibleyou you won't see anything, even though I've written dozens of articles to that category. If you click #cryptogee-musings, you'll see the table of contents, and that is all, however I've done a couple of dozen posts for that as well.
It just means that if you get to an old post and try and find other non-brand new ones, you can't, and that's a great shame I think.
Oh, and the category tag or association tag work just the same, which is why #incredibleyou is empty, if they were as you described (I wish they were), then you'd see all of my articles which have the #incredibleyou tag placed first.
Cg
I wasn't even aware of the fact that posts disappear from tags after seven days, but yes, I understand that it's a significant problem for users who post under specialized tags, such as your #incredibleyou.
I love your bug bounty idea, but since I'm a month old Steemian I wouldn't be able to contribute much for now.
As per other improvements that we need, I've recently shared an idea about user interaction tracker.
Cheers! : )
Ideas are contributions too, not just moolah! :-) Thanks for the link, I'll check out now.
Cg
I think bug bounty is a really good idea. It can make a huge improvement to this platform. But the way how to hunt the bugs should be clear enough to understand so that makes many users can take part including minnows like me.
Yes, maybe bug bounty is misleading, because I don't think the tags are bugged, it's just the way they work. I think anyone can take part, even minnows, because we are all users. So if you see something that you feel doesn't work right, or spoils your experience of Steemit, then you would be able to add it to the suggestions. If enough people suggest the same thing, then the problem would be worked on by devs.
Cg
I have been sad with these post disappearence after 7 days!!.
As you explained a new person can think we only have a few posts on every topic on Steemit.
I wish they would implement an archive as ypu say.I was recently looking for some post on a contest,but had to do thorough google searching and had to remember(guess) the names of the author.....its really tiresome.
Hmmm, I'm still new in the scheme of things but it never occurred to me that things disappear after 7 days, I did wonder why some tags that have great contests associated with them have only the last weeks posts, as though the contest didn't exist prior to then but it's #24 contest... As I said explains a lot.
Also thanks for the links to your Incredible You! series, I have bookmarked it and will work my way through them, I am starting with The The Amazing Power Of Boredom.