RE: Lets Make A Steemit Function For Image-Based Content
So far I’ve written many articles and I barely saw any objective analysis in the comments. I observe the same thing when I am curating. You can tell that people are lazy and just brush through content in order to leave a barely relevant comment. If the Steemview clone is added people won’t have to be forced into reading content.
The only way people feel forced to read anything, is because they are either
-curating (and this has monetary incentives, so it's not exactly "forced labor"),
-farming for comment upvotes to elevate reputation and wallet value (trying to leave a barely relevant comment),
-using the platform in a wrong way: Just because someone wrote something, doesn't mean I have to read it.
Let's say there is a large forum with 10.000 topics open. At any given time I may participate in 2-3-5 of them. I don't go on all 10.000 of them. This is what we are trying to do here, by having the wrong "use" model. But that's not the platform's fault, it's our fault.
The model will eventually change to something like that: someone will be looking for X or Y content on google, finding a page here on steemit and reading what they are interested at. Or getting a link from a friend, or a forum, about something that is written on steemit, and then reading that article. It will be more about consuming 1 article rather than 100 (for the majority of viewers).
I am actually baffled why Steemit didn’t initially start with the image based model rather than the article based model.
It would require a very large blockchain that probably has very bad scaling attributes. Blockchains right now are better suited for text content. Eventually they'll be able to handle image content and in a few decades, who knows, we might be able to even host videos in a decentralized and redundant way.
I'm not saying blockchained images is a no-no right now, but it will probably require very different tuning in terms of how it operates, compared to how our text-based blockchain currently operates.
@alexgr
Thank you for your input. I think there are enough images on Steemit, in almost every post to make it blockchain relevant. I don't know much about the technical issues but perhaps the images could be decoded and compressed in a different way.
Right now Steemit needs audience. Writing things or curating is still not a great way to go by social media. Many other succesful platforms demonstrate this. Twitter has short texts and images, facebook focuses on viewing material, instagram and imgur are also massive.
People want to consume more and more. Images are a great way to do this. All it takes is a photograph and some text and you are in the game. Writing something though requires skills. Most people simply don't have the skills or are too embarrased to compose something beyong 3-4 lines.
Steemit needs natural virality. Images are an excellent way to do this.
I don't doubt the relevance - I just think we may be ahead of our time, in terms of bandwidth and storage. It takes money to host high-bandwidth applications and the blockchain multiplies these costs. And then you have to face the issue of not having revenues to pay for these costs.
The blockchain must have multiple copies of the same data in every node (=inefficient), while a popular image host may need just one data center. (centralized = much more efficient).
Then you have issues like malicious spam, where uploading large photos may be done on purpose to fill the blockchain and make it unusable in terms of size. And these images can be crafted in such a way where they may not even take 5% compression. Now at that point you'll have to ...charge fees to even host one image in order to prevent abuse, and when you do that, you may have lost the game entirely to the centralized & free competition.
Now all these will be solved as technology evolves and the sizes of images become trivial compared to technological capabilities.
I can envision a hybrid model working right now, with a small parallel blockchain for images, but only on a somewhat expensive fee-basis (which is unattractive), otherwise I don't think it would work.
it can still happen under Steemit. it makes no difference
It will multiply blockchain size in no time, making life hard for nodes. There may be other technical obstacles as well (because the system is tuned right now to synchronize small texts between nodes, instead of large images). The change may not be trivial and it may adversely affect scaling as well.
I'd like to disagree here. You see, the websites/apps/etc are designed (or not) with some kind of User Experience in mind. If it is part of the well designed UX it comes naturally with using the thing. Steemit has a huge gap in the place where UX design was supposed to be done. It has incentives to encourage behaviour that are contrary, to what is stated, and I relly hope that the Steemit Inc will at some point realize this, and address it. There is a lack not only in PR liaison department, but also in the design department as well.
There is probably a lot of data about how people are using the platform. It should be analyzed, and compared to what was intended, and then changed accordingly. Hope this happens sooner, rather than later.
I'm all for UI improvements. And while I've lost my ability to provide newbie feedback (I've got used to the platform), it is the newbie feedback that will be the most valuable for improving usability and making the user feel at home, with a platform that is easy to use.
Still, even if the UI is improved, due to the scarcity of time and limited human attention, I maintain that one will only read what they consider relevant to their interest and participate in discussions even less. It is normal and to be expected - although there will be a minority that uses the site as we use it right now (reading, commenting, voting on a variety of posts - due to curation incentives, reputation building, etc).
You're still good at offering newbie feedback @alexgr, but hopefully semi-noob minnows like myself will increasingly translate informtaion happening at your level down to the brand-newbies. I've personally found your perspective and clarity invaluable. While I totally agree with @xanoxt that UX will and should take the place of a welcome crew, it's early days. :)
Yes, there's definitely room and time for improvement.
Well, I am used to the system, because I am adaptable like that, as well as being here for 1 month. Still, as someone who worked in UI/UX, I can see where the system falls short of what it declares to want as desired behaviour to what it encourages instead. A lot of stuff that could be useful from the application side, are instead outsourced to the user culture.
Some are there, but most people don't know/care about them. For example: other than voting for a cool post, that you feel deserves going "to the moon", the next best free thing is leaving a comment. Because it bumps post up into 'active'. So both for the post writer, and the commenter the best free promotional work is to make sure, that people actually stop to leave their comments.
Paid thing, is that promotion button, but it is hard to beat free in cost/effect area!
Indeed... I guess we are doing a good work here for @kyriacos ahahaha...
Well the images don't have to be on the blockchain, they can be treated as they are right now, just text links to images.
That would be doable, although the content would be unreliable over the long-run based on what the host providers do. If they change the link structure, all the links will be broken. If they go bust, you lose all the images. If they decide to block your site from using their images => they can... etc etc...
there are projects in steemit that deal with image hosting. maybe a standarised hosting platform can help.
The problem is that the moment you opt for the centralized way to host image content, you gain efficiency in serving content but lose massively in censorship-resistance. And then you don't have anything to compete against a imgur...
While the blogging right now is text-based, the same could be said about all the links in them. Eventually steem could maybe make use of a decentralized file storage system for images and video.
I think eventually, years down the road, it can happen.
the only point i disagree with here is if the model of the platform is inefficient for example :
then if me as a user is browsing 'NEW' i can sort the content to what i want to see based on a simple category.
if people continually post in the wrong category i can 'mute' them
i mean it's not rocket science is it?
here is an outline of some changes and suggestions :
https://steemit.com/steemit/@kolin.evans/create-rouge-a-free-steem-project-that-still-supports-sdusd-and-sp-share-with-the-relevant-people-dan-ned-etc