Are we in an echo chamber?
I've been growing more frustrated with Steemit of late. This isn't a post whining about the lack of upvotes or how whales get all the attention. This post is about how Steemit's Medium-like format optimizes for creation and not discussion.
Image from http://www.publicdomainpictures.net
Value from Non-Creators
We may have a first world problem in the sense that the content tries to encourage original blog posts. However, the ugly truth is that most of us suck at it. There are those that can hammer out quality posts, day in and day out and they clearly deserve to have whale-sized followings and up votes. However, there is much value to be gained for the 90% (guessing here) of us that are less good at generating original content.
On sites with active message boards with comments in the 10's and 100's, the value-ratio of original post versus comment is way, way lower. A creator could very well post an asinine message, intended to troll the community, but as a result, set of a deep and insightful discussion that the community as a whole gains from. This phenomenon is not common on Steemit.
Perhaps, I just haven't looked inside the right posts, but many of the posts here fall under very cookie cutter categories like prices of crypto currencies, memes, news summaries, or photographs including sunsets, beaches, flowers, travel, food porn or real porn.
Questions?
- What do we need to do to create more discussion?
- Is this an economics issue or a UI/UX issue?
- Does the economics of Steemit (or the misunderstanding of the economics) put pressure to create content over discussing content?
- Does the power dynamic of Steemit (whales vs minnows) also affect the discussion quality of Steemit?
What questions or insights would you have about generating more value from content discussions?
EDIT: Thank you so much for all the lengthy and thoughtful comments! I'm totally psyched to see that this can happen on Steemit! Keep posting and I'll upvote as many as I can.
I've been noticing this myself. I sometimes feel hesitant to speak my mind here (I rarely heed that hesitation) because there seems to be a culture of non-confrontation. I suspect it's due, in part, to the financial incentive to give platitudes. Be nice to the author maybe they'll upvote your comment. Foreseeably the whale/minnow power balance would magnify this, but I haven't felt any such impact thus far.
From a UX standpoint I think Steem is fine. It follows familiar standards that have been taught to people for a decade now. Content on top-comments at the bottom with a clearly marked comment box.
I think the biggest thing though is the community is at an awkward middle ground of users. There's too many users to comment on like it was at one point, yet not enough users yet to make sure everything gets seen. I feel that's partly due to steemit's particular attraction to content creators (most which I've found are pretty good, albeit often cookie cutter. There's an imbalance for now.
What can be done? Invite more users. The more people use the program the more the consumer to creator ratio will lean towards the consumer.
Wow thanks for the long and thoughtful response. I do think the financial implications pressures people to be nicer. Whether this is a helpful force (making people civil) or harmful force (hindering positive discussion) or both makes for a really comparative research project.
Btw, I looked through your posts and https://steemit.com/writing/@johnyliltoe/day-8-found-first-payout-100-followers was possitively awesome. I upvoted and resteemed.
I think it's an echo chamber mainly because the community is still small. 250,000 people really isn't that many. There are a lot of old school phpbb forums with more people than that. It seems to me that the way this site was designed was to encourage primarily the content, but as time progresses and more and more people come into the community. Those people will want good content, and they'll upvote that good content. A see a pretty hefty mix of both good content and poor content here. But that happens with every social media that first starts out. As more people come on board the good content creators will rise to the top, and those who curate them and build a following will rise right along with them. I like how this site pays the curators and the people who comment. I know the split isn't as much. But writing content takes a considerable amount of effort even for people who are really good, so I think they deserve the bigger split. But some people are great at creating good content, others are great at finding good content, others are great at building a large following of people, and still others just have a whole bunch of money and can pay their way around. Everyone has a place here, and those who stick with it for the long haul will prevail.
One nice thing too is that your comment is accurately considered your content. Upvotes on your comment I believe get the same split, so if you just want to join discussions you can still be rewarded for your input. That's what the reward system is about I think, just being involved.
Thank you, really appreciate it!
I suspect it's a net negative for now, but I hope to spread healthy criticism to the community. I think the financial incentive will maintain civility even if we encourage criticism on this platform.
People are so used to trolls and vile arguments on sites like Facebook, that they are probably a little timid to actively comment knowing that with the reputation score you can't get away with things here like you could on Facebook. I actually think that is a good thing. I don't think spammers, trolls, and plagerizers will have a very long lifespan here. This is the free market at work. Yeah, you can be mean here, but the market will eventually shun you with the downvotes. I think over time, as users learn how this system works and begin to get comfortable with commenting that they'll be commenting and upvoting more and more. I think it does force people to be nice in a way, but as people get comfortable they'll start to push the envelope a little more but rather than really trash others the focus will be more on that healthy constructive criticism than simply bashing people like what happens on facebook. One thing I've noticed so far on Steemit is I haven't seen any vile language or hateful attacks toward others.
Personally as an artist I've had same nice responses and communication regardless of the platform, but that might be because artists are not anonymous and we grow our brand.
On the other hand, when I first joined I got the wrong impression of how Steemit works. I guess whales are more generous to the 1st week newcomers. Also I wasn't warned about the 50% drop in payout by the end of the week. Now I'm used to guessing payout but it would help if there was a non official more accurate final payout prediction.
I am still reluctant to recommend Steemit to other artists simply because it's so unpredictable. So I don't want to waste their time unnecessarily. I just wonder how many months it takes to achieve a more stable Steemit account.
One big difference I noticed is: art contests/challenges are run by money. If there is no money incentive- there will be way less entries, unlike other art places.
Overall, I'm still trying hard to make quality content, but I have less and less time to do so.
I'm still completely new to Steemit, but from my limited experience so far I think you're on to something. Don't have any answers for you yet, but hoping you get some visibility going and some broader community discussion.
Thanks for the encouragement! I'm up voting your comment both in appreciation of your support and to support commenting in general!
I am saddened by the amount of plagiarism and content theft that needs to be waded through to find good original nuggets. I'm still looking for 'my people' on here but it's been tough.
I wish that there could be a separate discussion area of sorts, and that the cash-in-by-ripping-off-content posts could be quarantined to or deported to that area, and that it had rep-only gains.
Totally agree. I've been reporting plagiarized content via steemit.chat whenever I come across it. The channel is #steemcleaners-linkdrop if you want to help out.
I feel that the topic tagging system is a bit clunky and chaotic. I wonder if it might be worth it to develop a machine-learning based community aggregator to cluster both posts and peoples so it's easier to find "your peoples". Thoughts?
I found some of my people, this post motivated me to 'take another look'! I am such a noob, I didn't realize how incomplete the page with the trending tags was. So yeah, your idea of some sort of smart-clustering system that incorporated a complete list of tags would be awesome. I don't know much about what would be involved in creating such a system though. Cheers to you :)
I am sorry to bother you but I am such a noob that I am not really sure how to even do the drag and drop onto the channel chat that post talks about? It's probably obvious but I'm not sure what it's referring to.
Coincidentally, while we were talking someone plagiarized a post I spent considerable time researching and writing :(
https://steemit.com/freedom/@fairgirl/is-the-american-law-institute-the-hidden-head-of-the-hydra-or-could-it-be-the-heart-of-the-beast
If you could offer any assistance or clarity it would be much appreciated!
Just copy and paste both links - yours and theirs into chat. Then I usually type out a brief reason why.
Ah I see lol, thank you for this clarification.
I would say such posts should simply be removed. There should be no place here for blatantly plagiarized work.
Does seem difficult to find a sense of "your people". I post content and see who responds, but that becomes much more difficult for content consumers. One solution is for someone to develop a wrapper for the blockchain that uses a "Suggested for you" section based on what you already upvote.
I definitely agree for all the same reasons. Have you tried viewing Steemit at beta.chainbb.com? It's all the Steemit content but organized as a system of forums. It's much easier to see what's going on there and I think the structure of it foments discussion in a way that the UX here does not.
I also agree with johnyliltoe below that there is a culture of non-confrontation. If I see a headline I strongly disagree with I either won't click on it at all, or I'll go and skim but not reply. Because I feel self-conscious about going on someone's post just to disagree with it. That is completely the opposite of how I have used messageboards in the past, so I definitely feel like there is a powerful disincentive to be disagreeable here. I don't know what would happen if I were, but I just keep thinking it's easier to move on and reply to something I like.
I was just thinking how much I miss the messageboards on IMDB that they got rid of recently. I love to debate the value of various films, actors, directors, etc. with well-informed people. It's a shame they decided that wasn't part of their mission anymore. I've been browsing around the Entertainment channel on beta.chainbb and it's fun.
Fascinating. I'll be using it for a few days to see if that makes a difference! This is a researchers dream scenario.
I'm so glad it is of help. What are you researching?
Haha, I just meant hypothetically. I do think I will pen this down as a possible data project to work on when I have some more of this mysterious thing called "free time." Gotta hustle if you want to retire early, right? ;)
Yep, hustling is what I'm all about!
I think after watching you tube videos or earning of what you call big whales drive more people to join , just for earning (I am one of them ) so they keep blogging less value contents just for upvoted
Helloooo.... helloooo.... helloooo what's that echo. Speaking from the limited experience i have had on this site i think it's just a matter of finding blog creators that attract high steem power holders.
You know, I think you are on to an idea. Most whales are people who put a lot of money in this but may or may not know how to create good content. They may also not have much time to actively seek good content to curate. Someone could probably get in real good with a whale if they had a proven skill at finding good blog creators and connecting those blog creators with the whales. A person could become like a "content" broker by connecting great bloggers with Whales. That content broker would end up making a lot of Whale friends and build up a great following themselves. If that content is found and curated, then all of the upvoters and commentors will pile on and it will benefit everyone.
There is actually someone who is doing that right now @curie and a new one will be started by @jerrybanfield . I think it's a great idea.
I spent about two weeks on Steemit before making my first post (earlier today). I was very active making comments, upvoting posts and comments and resteeming posts I thought were good.
So, from my experience so far I have had some good connections with people just by making comments on posts.
Interesting point. I've done a lot of both myself. I suggest I've gotten more followers from posting content, but the actual connections I've made are usually from comments I make on other posts.
good read
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pls do check my last 1 blogs if like upvote resteem