How To Improve Steemit - The Community ?
Ok, I may have talked about this earlier elsewhere too, but I've decided to put my concerns into a complete post, apologies if this turns into a semi rant - because I haven't prepared at all, I'm writing as I think, without any structure.
While the Steemit ecosystem - the economic model and the incentivization seem sustainable (apart from the glaring self-vote problem, which I'm not gonna go into since many others have already addressed it) , the community itself is its enemy, IMHO.
Why do I feel that?
Well, the community has a "bad" rep to outsiders as an "insiders whale circlejerk" - which is partially true from my own experience - and even if you think that's not true, it's upto us to rectify that image!
Such an image of steemit is present in somewhat prominent communities - bitcointalk forums, reddit and some facebook groups. These are the go to sources for most crypto investors - they won't read blogs on steemit to make a decision on whether to invest in steem.
Bad signs - The overly self-congratulatory aspect of some top posts, and the many sycophants in the comments.
Horrible signs - Posts expressing valid criticisms of steemit getting flagged to depths turning them effectively invisible, and if by accident, some prospective investor finds them, that's a major red flag. These things go against the core tenets of social media and content creation on the blockchain - censorship resistance.
Take a look at the scores for each coin on CoinGecko
The overall score is based on these metrics : Liquidity, Developer, Community
Here's what bitcoin's separate scores look like :
Ethereum & Litecoin :
Alright these are the top coins, it wouldn't be fair to compare steem with them, but wait !
Steem has a great developer score , which is deserving and totally understandable, liquidity score will most definitely rise with popularity - which is only a matter of time , but a community score of 9.2 ?? That's fucking miserable, any way you look at it.
inb4 some newbs who couldn't make money here spammed the ratings!!
No, that alone cannot explain away the terrible rep we suffer on these forums. But let's just say these people are butthurt steemit noobs too - what does that fix? does it help when potential authors feel unwelcome here, do we just judge and call them "butthurt" because we are too caught up in our own little circlejerk , instead of curating better - with lesser circlejerk votes and more community-building voting?
Don't get me wrong - there are some great authors and contributors here, but it's clearly not proving to be enough amidst the whales (and dolphin members) who view the platform as a pump and dump opportunity. As of now, I view the state of steemit as a tussle between these two type of members - people actually invested in steemit for the long term, and people using steem like some other shitcoin to milk until it fades away ; these are the type of people who are itching for a pump to sell as steem hits $2.5 - $3.
I honestly have no "solution" come to mind right now , other than platitudes like "We must believe in the platform and keep creating great content! the market will notice soon!"
Any ideas or discussions in the comments is more than appreciated
Cheers!
I don't think there will ever be a perfect platform, but steemit is getting there.I have faith in blockchain technology, but I often wonder about the circle jerking that occurs here. great post, have upvoted and resteemed :) peace!
Great post. But tbh I feel as helpless as u are. The only thing we can hope for that the system starts to filter out the crap and supports the valueable content creators.
Yup. At the very least I can hope for the right person or people to see this lol.
Nice post and much I agree with. I think giving it time will also work in the platforms favor. Its still so new that lots of things will change. I think the long term hope of mine is more and more people who produce good content and aren't whales or minnows will see the potential, but again that takes time. Heck people still see bitcoin as a ponzi scheme lol
Steem will grow and I do hope jealousy towards the whales dies down.
No jealousy here. And time won't fix these things, we need to make some conscious effort, as a community
I guess Im a bit more skeptical. I don't think the problem can be fixed because we as people are greedy but I'm hoping that changes with time.
Yep, and it really doesn't matter - they can be a bit greedy but also be smart and realize that their ROI will be much higher if the steemit platform succeeds. When a user is investing real money in steem, it's obvious that they'd want a solid profit, and in the crypto realm, the gains can be several fold - 10, 20 or even 50 times a year ! .. Not just a 2-3 fold growth, and for such strong upward thrusts to occur , a great reputation is a must, it's simply not attainable "just with time" or "just because the crypto markets are very bullish right now" . My point is , it's in the investor's best interest to create/ curate content honestly, make new authors feel welcome etc. These things don't show immediate results (or immediate profits), but will be the cornerstone if we are to succeed, and see prices of $10 or $20 per steem.
For myopic greedy pump and dump investors, there are actually several other options objectively better than steem - numerous ICOs, scamcoins being pumped on a regular basis, you can make more profits there than steem if you keep up with the news and updates
I think you make a good point. Even though I am relatively new here, it's obvious that, for some people, this is just an opportunity to make money and chase numbers, rather than contribute great content that provides helpful information. I guess the idea is that the community will upvote worthy content, but what if most active users in the community are here because of the money? Then, all we see will be self-congratulatory posts and schemes for people to follow each other just for the sake of it.
One idea is to find / organize people who are not just looking to use this platform as a money making machine, but as a way to connect, inspire, and learn from each other. I think that if we are able to organize micro-communities based on that simple premise, we will have a much better time on this platform. Content is indeed king and I am very curious as to how people who dedicate time and energy to create something worth reading can organize and support each other's work. This is also a question of breadth vs depth -- there's a lot of breadth on here, since everything is kind of "all together," and I am sure there's a lot of depth, but right now it takes some time to find the hidden gems.
I am currently working on creating a community of writers and will definitely try to incorporate SteemIt as a way for those writers to promote their work and encourage discussions, which is what I find most satisfying. In the meantime, I wonder what place do topics like music reviews, political commentary, philosophical musings, etc, have on this site. I guess I will find out as I use the platform more.
I think they're working on building "groups" for people with common interests, like subreddits.. Not sure how much progress has happened, but iirc, it was definitely on the roadmap
Agree with everything you say, should be interesting to see how "micro-communities" affect this place. I've seen a musician on here say that their content gets way less exposure than on youtube or soundcloud, to which another user suggested this -
That's very true, steemit has a lot of posts about cryptocurrency currently since most of the regulars are early adopters and heavily involved in crypto. While YouTube is about music and video. It makes sense that the musician would do well over there..
Micro communities could fix that, and connect bloggers and readers better ..
While all of these things would improve one's experience (and most definitely increase the market value of steem) , we must still be trying attract more passionate bloggers and curators and less people from crypto circles buying loads of steem power and abusing the platform, bullying other content creators etc. And even less noobs who stumble on steemit and view it as some kind of a "get rich quick" scheme, they get disappointed inevitably and bad-mouth the platform