RE: Why You REALLY Need To Shut Your Whining About The New Promoted Tab
As with many of these advisory posts, I absolutely agree with every word but I can't find any way that I can implement them. Partly because of the nature of the content, partly because of the nature of moi. The only solution I can think of is to have a system whereby someone like myself drafts a piece and someone else rewrites it into a form that's intelligible and desirable by others.
Because, frankly, nobody is going to change for my benefit and I'm very unlikely to change for theirs, yet I honestly feel that there's actual information content in my posts that others would want if it was in a form they would want it in, in an article they could tolerate reading.
It's frustrating, yes. Because decent copy editors and collaborators are expensive, anyone who followed this approach immediately rules themselves out of the capitalism market. That puts it in about the same league as a science journal, where you pay to play.
One might argue that that's not what Steem is about, that it's where you benefit by writing good stuff. Well, no, you benefit by writing popular stuff, and since I have never been in that category, I don't expect to benefit. That's just the reality. If I could find a collaborator who could take my basic papers and create a popular piece from it, they would earn every Steem point that piece earned because it's that popularity that is doing the earning.
Is this fair? Probably not, but I can think of exactly one science text that reached #1 on the best-sellers list and it wasn't on the feeding habits of an obscure marsupial on Fridays after 3pm. Curiously, there's a reason for this. Those who are good at finding these sorts of things out are often terrible writers and usually worse communicators of why anyone else should care. That's life.
For the perfectly capable but "stylistically challenged", guides like this should have a revolutionary effect. I expect many to benefit dramatically.
For those of us who are more lexically challenged and whose style was surgically removed by Martians in the 70s, it's going to take something very different and I don't know if Steem has the ability yet. If the necessary features are to be added, it'll have to be people like the original author who proposes them because if I knew what it took to pair people up I'd have already done it. Therefore I don't, which should be obvious from my reply anyway.
I understand and appreciate what you're saying 100% @alfar, online content consumption definitely favors the short and flashy. However, the good news, which I only know through personal experience, is that online writing is definitely a skill you develop, not inherit.
A few years ago my writing was probably much closer to your style than my own, (minus all the science and math lol), and even still I often struggle with trying to turn what I think should be a 10 page essay into a 600-1500 word blog-post with flashy images. But I've struggled through the process enough times now that the struggle is more mental than anything else ("but I wanna write how I wanna write!", he with a nasally whine and a childish stomp of the feet"). So my humble advice is to just keep grinding away and try to make each post slightly more easily-digestible than the last. You'll be surprised how quickly your writing will transform itself if you just take continue to take baby steps. Good luck my man!
All I can say is that I'll definitely give it a try and that I definitely appreciate the advice. On my steemit-ideas post, I've expanded a little on the idea of people buying papers smd making them stories, which I still think holds promise. It would also be easier than making The Change. It took me three years to write a four page story, and that took a lot of help.
Whatever happens, though, I truly appreciate your response, kind words, advice and all. Still think mastering ancient Sumerian will be easier, but ancient Sumerian is also less useful. So thanks and we'll see what happens.