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.