Amidst the Bid-bot Crisis--Community Curation & a lack thereof--The Future of Steem(it)
The future of this platform depends on -- Community Curation -- so where has it been?
There has been a lot of talk here on steemit as of late in regards to the use of bid-based voting bots to promote posts. There are obvious downfalls from using this tactic, especially for the long-term potential of the platform itself.
Let's be real though -- this platform is not structured in such a manner to make it possible for content to be seen. Steemit content is displayed so poorly and it has proven to be one of the worst discoverability experiences for its users, and the users here is what gives STEEM much of its value, so this just creates a never-ending loop, which feeds itself right back to the beginning of this vicious cycle.
The fact that there are over 1 million steemit accounts but only 70,000 active users or so should illustrate exactly my point here.
Ideally, community curation is what this place should be about, but it has proven time and time again to fail for the simple reason I just stated. Quality content, number of followers, yadda, yadda, yadda; all of this becomes irrelevant if nothing is even visible, to begin with.
Many of the existing steem apps display steem content in the very same manner, which has proven over and over again to be one of the worst exposure experiences for steemians.
It really isn't too surprising though when you sit down and think about it from a realistic viewpoint. Most of the steemit witnesses or developers are new to the SM application space. It's not that easy to develop something like steemit, so the fundamentals of social media and user interests are not relatively known and, thus, we have a mediocre place for content to be published, and most importantly-- noticed.
It's not just one side of the spectrum, though, either. The users here on steemit are not your average facebook and twitter users, so really both sides of the totem pole end up skewing the metrics a little bit. Accounting for one end of the spectrum and not the other would be like only watering the grass when it rains.
Now, don't get me wrong, will all of this said, I love steemit and all of the people I have connected with. I am very fortunate to have found this platform because it has allowed me to uncover a deep passion of mine and also to create a passive stream of income for my future.
But what I am really trying to say is that without the use of bid-bots my posts would be making mere cents, and I believe my time, efforts and hard work are far more deserving than this.
Those that award me with an upvote usually have little to no SP. Occasionally I will receive a quality upvote from a whale like @newhope @redes or @mangos, but this happens quite randomly and out of the blue.
My question is:
What does it take to get these whale votes that we all so desire to receive on a consistent basis?
Whale votes would all give us this sense of accomplishment from putting in the time and effort here to share our ideas and knowledge with the rest of the steemit community. I believe it to be the topic which I previously mentioned regarding how steemit is currently structured.
Too much content goes unnoticed and this leads to many people (nearly 9/10) just giving up. I'm afraid this could be the downfall of steemit, although I hope I am wrong.
A post notification tool would be something that could alert your followers that @stevejhuggett posted 3 minutes ago. This would then allow your followers to go to your blog and view your recent post. This easy tool could be the difference between 7 upvotes and 27 upvotes, which would you rather have?
I understand this thing is still in the beginning beta stages of development, but until user discoverability features become more pertinent here, then I just don't see any other way of moving forward than without the use of bid-bots to promote posts, at least for me.
One very simple solution to visibility would be to make it easy to follow a feed, rather than just users. Especially for curators, following their feed is likely more interesting than just their curated posts.
For example, all active MAP members (plus a few other of interest) can be found here: https://steemit.com/@accelerator/feed
Users can do this manually by just adding "/feed" to their favourite profile URLs and then bookmarking those feeds. However, would be good to have that feature on the dashboard.
Yes I like this idea a lot. This would make it much easier, following a feed rather than particular user(s) feeds, which comes with quirks and other peculiarities.
I often times miss users' posts that I look forward to seeing, but I think this solution could change this. Hopefully this implementation does, in fact, make it to the Dashboard in the future.
Regards
@conradsuperb, well said! I have seen a lot of hype in this community about steemit replacing Facebook or steemit replacing Twitter. This will not happen with the current governance. Steemit is far too difficult to master for this to happen. Perhaps if there is more awareness of the value proposition, compared to the massive effort required to learn the platform and its numerous unstated rules, this could motivate switching, but right now that's unfortunately just a pipe dream.
Like you, I am speaking from a place of love for the platform. The current curation rules are skewed toward the whales. Paying the bots to play is an unfortunate fact of life here. I don't have the answer, but I have faith in the community that we will find a way to make the rewards commensurate with the quality of the content, as voted by the community in a fair manner.
I agree, at first I thought it most definitely could (especially with FB's recent privacy scare), but then once I figured out more of the inner-workings of steemit, I realized it was far more difficult for the average user to maneuver.
Maybe one day, but I don't see it happening for some time.... at least until the fundamentals of steemit are warranted in such a manner that suits fathomable for every day users (mostly the little minnows and perhaps dolphins).
I have faith too, and I hope one day this will all be like a sweet dream, but we still have a lonnnnng ways to go for that to happen.
Appreciate you stopping by @irakrakow
Respect
In terms of whales the reason loads of the m have bots in because manual curation takes alot of time - and time = money. Why spend hours doing something you can programe the computer to do for you?
I dont really think that the bots are the issue its the way they get abused by people creating junk content and then spending loads to get it noticed, and this pushes the un noticed content further into the abbyss.
I dont really use bots to often now - every now and again to get a bit more exposure to competitions and thats about it
I have noticed that the networking and reaching out to other users alike has not really generated as much of a difference as I thought it would, which is actually pretty surprising.
The fact that I almost have to go out of my way to see a post of someone who I follow closely like @daltono or @nikolina says something and speaks volume. daltono posts like 5 times a day and still, I hardly ever even see one of his posts appear on my feed. It's really a struggle to see content here.
I agree with you in terms of the time = money. And the fact that abusing the bot system with huge bids is the actual problem because like you said, this just pushes the other high-quality, non-promoted content straight under the rug.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts @conradt
-Respect
Interesting - try following fewer people - Im pretty harsh with this and often go through and unfollow people for various reasons - I only follow about 150ish people. It does make a big difference and my feed is better and im more likely to see what I enjoy.
Cool name by the way! :P
yeah, that's actually a good idea and I bet this will help the cause!!
thanks, back at ya!!
Very analytical thinking.
You can write the post as "War and Peace" of Tolstoy,
And probably on to Steemit it would not be visible.
hey @crypto-mammoth thanks a lot.
it's weird how some posts get noticed, but others are like phantoms.
Checked out your blog: looks interesting and intriguing. Looking forward to following more closely.
Cheers !!
Please upvote: https://steemit.com/free/@bible.com/4qcr2i
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