5 Different Types of Steemit Users And Different Visions About The Future of Steemit
This is my personal observation after few months of socialising on Steemit.
I have interacted with dozens of different Steemit users, many of whom I met personally during Steem Fest.
I think that my socialising experience during Steem Fest was the most informative and dispelled a lot of my illusions (or delusions?) about certain users, while consolidated my opinion about the others.
Five types of Steemit users
The creators
These are the users who contribute a lot to Steemit community. They work and spend their time on creating quality content. They engage in comments and chat rooms. Many of them create community focused projects, applications, videos, podcasts and articles. They are here for the community and they tend to be against flooding of Steemit with low quality content such as copypasta, plagiarism or "one sentence, one YT video link" posts. They are here to invest their time and creativity rather than money. Some of them are also whales. That was the largest group during Steem Fest who was mixing up and hanging around together. They were open and welcoming towards anyone during Stem Fest. They want Steemit to become blogging community platform where different people are rewared for their creativity. They seem to be also open towards Steemit becoming UBI-based (universal basic income) type of platform.
The investors
These users create little content and are here for the profits/return on their investment. If they create any project or application it is usually revolving around monetary aspects of Steemit such as market, large profits etc. They usually seem to have nothing against, or even support curating low quality content (such as that produced by the type of users called "the vultures"). They would upvote almost anything, as long as they can profit from curating it. Plagiarism, scammers, dangerous pseudoscience. Maybe even child porn, if some part of community favoured such posts and were willing to support it. Their usual response is "let the market decide what content should be curated" which simply means that any post is good if it sells.
They are in favour of idea of transforming Steemit into some sort of paid platform that is a hybrid between Reddit and Twitter. It was a small group during Steem Fest and rather kept a distance from "the creators" - it seemed that many of them approached other users only when they thought that such networking would benefit their investment or profit related development.
The impression is that many in this user group treat Steem just like another shitcoin to make a buck of.
The leeches
These are users who have come here for a quick buck. They can be subdivided into 2 groups:
Those trying to milk the curation with their low quality content, such as plagiarists, copypasters, scammers, "one sentence, one YT video link" posters.
Those who have joined Steemit with whale connections (have acquaintances with some powerful users). They do not necessarily produce low quality content.
Many of their posts are of good quality. In most of cases they show little engagement in Steemit community (unless for promoting their content or taking a part in some bot-rigged competition to reap the prize). They seldom converse in chatrooms or comment on other people's posts (unless responding to comments on their own posts). Most importantly they seldom curate other users posts, especially minnows. They are here for the buck, so even if they produce something to promote Steemit, it is completely profit driven.
The observers
This type of users are the ones who seldom create any content but engage in Steemit community. Through their comments they contribute to discussions and conversations under other's posts. They are often seen conversing in chat rooms. They tend to have lower reputation because of low Steem Power and little content creation. They made up small but significant group during Steem Fest and were socialising with "the creators".
The beginners
New users who have recently joined and are testing and figuring out what Steemit is about. They tend to post poor quality content while learning about the platform etc.
[ These group distinctions are certainly not ultimate pigeonholing in any way. Some users may not fit into any of these categories and some may fit to more than one. ]
My responses to some of the arguments perpetuated by "the investors"
"Too small user base", "It is not mature enough" or "it is still in beta" arguments
I think that the user base is already quite large and it keeps growing. The community seems to be established and strong. We saw that during Steem Fest. This event was the proof that the platform is socially mature enough. I have never heard about and other blogging or social platform that has even organised such an event.
The investors argument: The benefits of rewarding low quality content
"The investors" tend to share an opinion that there is nothing wrong in curating low quality or dubious content such as plagiarism, copypasta or "1 sentence, 1 YT video link" posts.
They explain that curating such posts is good for this platform because people outside of the Steemit will see that users are earning a lot of money by posting super short, effortless content such as copypasting YT links, "cute cat pictures", etc.
Allegedly that kind of curation will make people want to join Steemit to compete for the share of those rewards so this will quickly increase the size of the community. This apparently would "increase the value of STEEM because a huge number of people will have it, know how to use it, and represent a large economic opportunity and audience".
Another part of this argument also claims that potential new users from outside the platform who are without any particular talent or who aren't celebrity will see no reason to join, or if they do join, they will find that they can't meaningfully participate, and quit.
My point of view?
I have absolutely no talent, whatsoever. I can't play an instrument, draw, sing, write fiction, paint, dance etc. But we don't to be talented to be creative.
When I joined Steemit few months ago, I submitted many awful posts. I had no previous experience with blogging (not counting Facebook posts). Then I have progressively learned how to properly edit the content and how to create better and more interesting posts. It is not some sort of talent but simply acquired experience. Anyone can learn how to do that. Even the most talentless person. It just takes the will to make an effort to learn. Certainly, possibility of SBD reward is a good incentive for it.
In my opinion, low quality posts should not be rewarded. I think that new users, talented or not, should earn their way up the platform through their work, so they can start being rewarded for their content. To reward low quality content is very inconsiderate towards all those users who put a lot of time and work into this community ("the creators"). "The creators"are the users who make this community great and strong, and they should be respectfully rewarded for it.
We have to decide if we are here to promote the vision of Steemit as truly social, community-focused blogging platform or to turn it into profit driven entity that adjusts itself according to the "market" rules, not people's creative input.
We have to decide if Steemit will become the platform for creative expression and equality or just means for a quick buck.
Thanks for reading.
Steem on,
-logic
I would consider myself a "creator". I have a comparatively low reputation score and amount of Steem power due to the fact that I have very limited time to spend on Steemit. I work a lot at my job and I have a wife and kids, so I only have about an hour each day to be on here. The Steem I have earned is from writing post after post, curating, and interacting with other users. Some of my posts yielded little reward, while some did well. But I continue working away here because I believe in Steemit and the value of quality, creative content. It seems a lot of new users immediately power up their account by buying Steem Power rather than earning it through repeated quality posts. I don't want to say that is wrong, but I believe there is more honor in working for Steem Power rather than simply buying it.
I agree that it is more rewarding to earn your Steem Power rather than buy it!
1 hour a day is a lot considering your circumstances. Such content creators like you should be appreciated and rewarded for it. I have a lot of appreciation for users like you.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Amen!! Well said. I see your name a lot, I appreciate what you do. BD
Thank you! I believe in Steemit and our awesome group of users like you!
Thanks! I appreciate it!
Very nicely said, congrats!
I too bought around 3k SP but I have worked for the rest (I have 12K now) and feel good knowing I have worked hard, and people did like what I had to say. That alone keeps me at it!
12k -- very nice. I feel like I am falling behind the pack because I cannot make the time commitment to use Steemit more. But then again, I should stop comparing myself to others and make the most of the time I do get. I do get satisfaction from seeing how many upvotes I get on some posts, too! The numbers amaze me.
Yup, you got the right vision. Quality over quantity. Resteemed.
Thank you. That's the vision I support too :-)
Excellent post @logic and great observation, I was wondering while reading and thinking back to our conversations during steemfest about what crazy combination of types of users people may have seen me to be lol. I'm the creator leech investor who likes to observe begginers! ;) again great post and we must meet up again to discuss Steem cough porn haha but really we must meet up again soon!
Yeah, you are very coplex character here for sure :-) And you drank even more that I did during SF (I thought it was impossible). I really enjoyed our conversations and hanging around :-)
Hopefully we will continue at next SF :-)
I thought this was a good post to come back to -- to drop this post into for you to check out regarding this Steemit Community Milestone --
--- https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report#@mindhunter/re-barrydutton-re-mindhunter-re-barrydutton-10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report-20161123t175520803z
Nice one, but there is also one category which you seem to have missed and whom I would call the "sycophants"!
Lately any discussion which point out flaws in the system or just raise an uncomfortable question, has stopped. We had a lot of it earlier and now all debate on controversial topics has died down for fear of offending the whales or being flagged for your opinions.
As we grow, I see opinions getting restricted to what would be non-controversial as because there have been a few who did try, but are quite now as they mostly were flagged to oblivion.
And to top it all, we had a post recently telling us that the company, steemit inc, does not owe us any obligations, so we should shut up and toil on!
Yes I have seen such posts. They are often quite well upvoted by some whales.
I don' think that creating such group as it appears that compulsive sycophancy is a behaviour which can be seen in different groups, specifically of lower caste of steemit users (non whales). Usually it is common for "the beginners". But it can be seen between "the creators", "the observers" and "the leeches".
After all the talk of the block-chain, the new uncensored world and the libertarian outlook we were supposed to have, this compulsive sycophancy is rearing its ugly head faster than I imagined!
👍
One thought in regards to the users who don't post, but are mainly here to interact through consuming content (which is very needed and important imo) while commenting and voting.
@the-ego-is-you is a perfect example of this.
Personally, I'm a big fan of this user type..i usually call them content consumers. I was at best a reddit lurker, can't really remember making any posts or comments, but i still ended up there a lot. This was part of my motivation in a few past posts to note ways for new users to interact and ideally grow (sp a little) outside of purely posting. Participating in contests/challenges/games, commenting (which I'm stoked to see being curated again), and voting themselves are really the main methods available right now. While it may not negatively impact everyone in this group, I do expect a lot of their motivation to be lost if they aren't building sp at all, even slow growth is a plus in my mind. The end goal imo is getting them integrated into the community itself (through above methods) or even just in the various voice chats.
I think we need to find a way to reward these users better. They are a very important part of the community but it seems that they get forgotten a lot of the time. Perhaps some sort of weekly contests or votes with SP prizes/incentives for this type of activity could help.
I thought this was a good post to come back to -- to drop this post into for you to check out regarding this Steemit Community Milestone --
--- https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report#@mindhunter/re-barrydutton-re-mindhunter-re-barrydutton-10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report-20161123t175520803z
Sounds great :-)
Thanks. I think people like @sykochica have been saying this kind of thing for a while but I'm not sure if anyone has noticed. If I had the money I would fund it myself - maybe some day:)
It takes a will of some whales to support them! And someone to find them and refer them :-)
Yes.
Honestly, I don't see why we couldn't pool some Steem together from users who are willing to donate 10-20 steem here and there into a pool for things like this. Much like we see with the crowd funded whale accounts that have gotten build up. It really doesn't take a whole lot for a new person to find it very meaningful (and ideally motivating.)
Little things like suddenly seeing the vote slider bar go a long way for somebody new to the site. (imo)
Sykochica, what's a "vote slider?" (I'm rather new.)
And cryptofiend, I see you are correct in that, "a few Steem is not worth much." - for now.
However, I look at FB < ugh>. Many seemed to have thought < what's his name?> Zuckerberg was such a forward-thinking person to invent FB (or a fool). How long did it take to develop into a company which almost drives Wall Street (with Zuckerberg laughing at the bank)? Several years.
Steemit is truly innovative - forward-thinking - not designed to drive any one person to the prison of Wall Street, but to chauffer many, with the initiative, to true financial freedom (skipping the bank - ha, ha). Whether that design will succeed or fail, time will tell; rarely is a goal a straight-arrow shot, especially one which involves masses of people. The intent and vehicle are present, but it requires the support of the masses.
Sorry, got philosophical; it's one of those nights.
Good point - although I think a lot of people look at the dollar value and right now a few Steem is not worth much. We could try it though.
@sophiamanimen totally no problem...great question.
Once you get to roughly 450 Steem Power, when you go to upvote you will see a slider bar pop up that lets you choose between 1% and 100%. Prior to this, every vote is automatically made at 100%. (We are currently able to make 40 100% votes a day without our vote power percentage falling due to about 1.5% regenerating each hour. This vote power percentage effects how much our upvotes are worth and how much curation reward we can receive on posts. Feel free to ask more on this part if you like.)
The slider bar allows us to break up our 'full votes' into smaller pieces so we can make more of them, for example: I could make 80 50% votes a day without by vote power % falling faster then the regeneration rate. If I cast 80 100% a day, my vote power % would be really low, and I couldn't really add much to the payouts of other authors.
Feel free to ask for any clarification, I didn't want to put to much in there and cause information overload.
I agree on that a lot :-) I met few such users (content consumers/the observers) during Steem Fest. Awesome folk :-)
Amen!! Well said. I hope you read my main reply in this thread, it is dedicated to not only the author, but people like you! I appreciate what you do.
I thought this was a good post to come back to -- to drop this post into for you to check out regarding this Steemit Community Milestone --
--- https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report#@mindhunter/re-barrydutton-re-mindhunter-re-barrydutton-10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report-20161123t175520803z
That's an awesome post!! Thx for letting me know about it!
I hope people don't mind. IDK any other way to communicate with people really but on here. I finally learned how to sign into steemit.chat LOL! And I still received no conf. e/m from steemimg.com either. #RookieProblems - did you see my sloth meme from today? LOL!
Steemit.chat is probably one of the best communication methods. 2nd best I'd say would be via discord. Here is the discord invite link for the one I'm an admin of for Steemit Talk Podcast: https://discord.gg/mcUvE
I can be easily messaged in there too. But feel free to message me in either...typically easier through those two vs the post comments. (which I don't mind in anyway either, no worries there.)
Oh, I'll take a look at the meme :)
I know of one "content consumer" who likes to find what s/he deems the "best of the best," to resteem and curate. S/he has done this with another website and found a lucrative pastime for both him/her AND his/her subjects. S/he drives more traffic to the current subject and boosts funding for the subject through that traffic. S/he not only receives a slice of the pie for him/herself, but gives a larger slice to the subject.
I am not liberty to disclose this person (It is not me). But I agree, some "content consumers" CAN help the community.
Excellent observation..
Mirrors real life society as well doesn't it?
worthy of a resteem
Unfortunately, it it does :-|
This is a great blog and thanks for sharing. Upvoted and shared on Twitter✔ for my followers to read. Now following and looking forward to reading more of your blogs. Cheers. Stephen
https://twitter.com/StephenPKendal/status/801222618821132288
Thanks Stephen!
You are welcome. Stephen
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Hi Stephen
Since you're a #SteemitElder to many of us,
I thought this was a good post to come back to -- to drop this post into for you to check out regarding this Steemit Community Milestone --
--- https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report#@mindhunter/re-barrydutton-re-mindhunter-re-barrydutton-10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report-20161123t175520803z
Regarding the 'rewarding low quality' posts:
First I'll say that overall I am on the same page with you here. A post that has been carefully crafted with a lot of time and effort deserves to be better rewarded than a post that is difficult to read, seemingly lacking a point or is merely a sentence with a link/video. BUT, saying that these deserve nothing (which I don't necessarily think you meant, but was just termed that way) can be quite problematic in my opinion. Having these 'lesser' posts acquire some rewards can be a huge boost to get people to put forth that growth/progress/effort we are looking for, much like you did.
Back when we started, the payouts for introduction posts was through the roof, which at least for me provided that first little boost to want to make my writing, blogging, formatting, etc better. That's really not the case anymore both because of the steem price and because it fell out of vogue to highly reward first/intro posts (for very good reasons imo.) But we have to offset this in some way, so having lesser quality and/or short form posts receive some, albeit smaller rewards, I still find important to help hook, retain and motivate new users to stay and integrate with the Steemit community.
While the investment that many have put in have been an integral piece to building this place (and keeping it sustained for a while,) in the end the community is the product and draw. We connect with these community members through both their posts themselves AND through the social interaction outside of the blog (like the chatrooms, discord channels, etc.)
Personally I want to see those who are seen to be putting forth effort to improve (like both you and me) to at least get a little something to keep them going doing what they are doing. It's tough to not get completely demotivated, leave, and go back to their old social media platform where it "didn't feel like work." A dollar or two payout goes a looooong way in this ramp up process.
There are no "good" or "bad" posts or even "original" or "copied" posts around here. Some people get paid for whatever crap they post, and is a form of nepotism I detest in the world today and was hoping we would create a platform where connections do not matter, and we are judged solely on the quality of our opinions, while respecting all types.
Eh, I can follow to a point. Subjectively there very much are good vs bad posts, we each have our own method of judgement on this.
It's easy to fall into the 'monoculture' trap of always searching to stuff to vote the same way (for those that do still manually vote) and I can't really give too much fault there. Sometimes it's purely a pattern we fell into.
Now this changes a bit when it comes to the whales since that's what really effects the payouts of things. So many of them have joined or allocated voting power to curation guilds. Many of these do a great job at spreading things around WAY better than used to be done.
Marketing (getting your content seen) and networking (building your name recognition) are things rarely mentioned outside of the pure content. The same thing goes on in book sales, blogging, etc. anywhere...there is just too much stuff to catch it all, and people find authors that they like. True it's a little different here since it's voting, but the underlying human nature still applies (imo.)
I really don't thing anyone here truly expects that EVERYTHING that someone votes on in read in full, in particular the longer written or video posts. (Art, photography, etc. can be digested in a much shorter period of time.) It's a double edged sword we just have to deal with on some level. There's some stuff that is actually digested and voted up because it was liked (regardless of others good vs bad judgement) and then there is the rest that goes to pure curation (regardless of quality, but focusing on 'popularity) for the SP rewards.
In the end it's a mix of judging/voting good content (or for whatever reason the vote was cast...sometimes I vote things because I've seen effort and/or progress) and the vote for SP rewards. It's just the game, everything in life to some respect is a similar game.
While I know it's not always liked...my personal take is get better both at my personal skills AND get better at the game.
I think that everyone should at least spend 10 seconds to look at the post they are going to curate so they don't upvote randomly. No need to read whole article but just have general view if it is not some awfully edited copypasta or "1 sentence 1 YT video link post".
If, after that, we still get bamboozled into upvoting some content that appears duebious (plagiarism etc), then we should be willing to remove the vote or flag when steemcleaners point it out.
"Art, photography, etc. can be digested in a much shorter period of time.) "
I agree that it is easy to digest but also this is often high quality content because people invest a lot of their effort to create it good quality art. The amount of effort put to create art can be easily judged. That includes photography - you have to spend a lot of time and trials to take good shot of something.
I absolutely agree that spending at least a little time actually inside the post is the ideal...or at least somebody in the sense of a curator with autovote followers. In some sense that proposed change to reduce the amount of 100% votes (from 40 to 5) could help with with, since we wouldn't feel pressured to 'use all our votes.' We've all only got so many hours in the day to post, chat, comment, promote, etc. on top of actually digesting/voting on posts...oh and life itself outside of steemit. Personally this is somewhat how I took it when @dantheman said the 40-5 vote per day allowance (vs the vote power % regen rate) was needed a better understanding from the userbase. (I could be wrong on this, just my take.) But as it stands, I suspect that even the best of us have a hard time fully digesting long form written posts. This specifically is why I commonly taught newer people on how to make their content easy to scan via headings, bolded words/phrases, etc. so that after the second paragraph or so, when most people just start scrolling down, can still follow and grasp the main points being made. Time constraints and attention scarcity can somewhat (even if imperfect) battled in this way.
On the found plagiarism posts I'm totally on the same page there. I can say that I do this myself (remove upvotes, sometimes flag) when this is the case and I see it. The hard part there is that we don't always go back to a post after the fact to even see the steemcleaner comment. I will say it irks me a bit when I have seen things be upvoted even after the comment was made and it would be nice for the userbase in general to be on the look out for that.
I should say that I have absolutely no issue with art, photography, etc. is easier/quicker to digest. I do not mean that they hold any less value than written posts, just merely referring to the required 'curation' time for these. We just rarely hear complaints about these visually transmitted posts being rewarded while 'poor quality.' Usually the complaints seem to be around the non-visual, written ones...the only reason I made that distinction.
Hey there, do you think since you are kinda techy, you could comment with your ideas here??? Thanks for everything... BD
https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/steemit-needs-please-comment-with-your-ideas-to-improve-steemit-e-1
I just said this above to @thecryptofiend
" I was in threads recently with @donkeypong etc -- and agreed that short form posts have a place and can be great posts. Not everyone can spend time on a long post -- either writing or reading it. They have a purpose for sure. You will see my odd post up stating Short Form Post right in the title so people know it is short. Not meaning it is crappy lol
Clinical issues or time constraints both play a role in people not having the ability to read long posts, even though some are just beauties. You know what I am saying "
Absolutely! :) I'm very much on the same page. Sure there will be things for us to tweak and learn on curating short posts, but def see it as a good addition for Steemit to bring onboard! :)
I remember not too long ago when games weren't being allowed by the community (like steemsports, guess how many challenges, etc...) because they were viewed as vote buying. Not only have they become some of the more popular posts that are out there, they also provide a way to spread steem/SP around to users. A great learning curve for the community with that I see as a great benefit in the end. :)
I thought this was a good post to come back to -- to drop this post into for you to check out regarding this Steemit Community Milestone --
--- https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report#@mindhunter/re-barrydutton-re-mindhunter-re-barrydutton-10-000-posts-by-mindhunter-today-steemit-milestone-community-report-20161123t175520803z
Yes, I agree with you. Maybe we could create win-win situation. Like I mentioned in comment above:
"Maybe we could all agree on reward limit for such posts as 2SBD max per post (4SBD per day), so they will still earn something despite it taking them 30 seconds to create it :-)"
About highly paid introdution posts. This was many times exploited. Sometimes just by scammers stealing someone's identity. On other occasions just by pure leeches who only joined to milk bucks and never came back.
Do you remember tha Mexican playmate who made 200 word post, collected 15k altogether and never came back?
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@brendazambrano/hi-i-am-the-first-playmate-with-more-than-a-million-followers-to-blog-on-steemit
Rewarding introduction posts in good curation is a way to go but maybe we could agree on that the person needs to verify their identity first (checked by some delegated users so they can stay anonymous if need to)?
I agree there's a win-win somewhere available. The tougher part here is that anything we would come up with would at best be used by the curation guilds, versus individual whales/users. (Which personally I'm ok with.) I think many of the guild might be ok with something like this, like the shooting for 2ish dollar rewards for the 'lesser posts.' I don't think we could really ever have a full say for the individual (high SP) voters, since really that's theirs to do what they want with.
I do agree on the old highly paid intro posts...many many many issues that came from that. While I don't want to really have things go back that way, it is important to have some way to hook the 'good' users while minimizing the risk of being 'burned/scammed' or just not helped by the not so good users. (i.e. 1 huge payout post which was then just cashed out.)
In the end though, I do feel there is a middle ground many here could be comfortable with. We just can't be too worried though when a whale (not a part of a curation group/guild/allocated SP) bumps something we may not find high quality. It's bound to happen.
And in the end, quality is always somewhat subjective. If that one sentence and a pic made me smile, laugh, or invoke some powerful emotion, it becomes harder to judge. There will always be some gray area.
Well, one picture can make us smile but it is low quality content if it wasn't drawn by the author :-) I think that by now "the creators" have moreless of an idea what the good quality content is. It is defined by the amount of one's personal original input/work.
I agree that we cannot prevent some whales from curating such content. That's why the site owners could help with it by clearly stating what is welcome and what is not. Like they did with "featured author" content.
Yes I'm just saying that it's a compromise on length. It doesn't have to be long but I still expect a quality post. If it's just a link I don't really find that appealing - I think your idea of giving a low reward to that makes sense - maybe we could all agree to only vote say 10-20% on those posts as community convention.
I was in threads recently with @donkeypong etc -- and agreed that short form posts have a place and can be great posts. Not everyone can spend time on a long post -- either writing or reading it. They have a purpose for sure. You will see my odd post up stating Short Form Post right in the title so people know it is short. Not meaning it is crappy lol
Clinical issues or time constraints both play a role in people not having the ability to read long posts, even though some are just beauties. You know what I am saying brother!
I think it is the personal input that makes the difference. Even if you don't have much to say it doesn't take a huge amount of work to say a few words and personalise things. If you read a good article in a magazine that you want to share I enjoy the post more if there is something personal about it i.e. what you think and feel about the situation.
If you just post a link and a title then I don't see any value in that - how do we even know you read it. I've noticed a lot of people just fire out multiple posts per day which take no time and they sometimes get more attention than real genuine posts made by newcomers. They see that and then they either copy it or they get disheartened and give up. Either way we lose.
I think with the TIL thing we have as a community try to reach a compromise. I don't think there are easy answers though other than my initial point about personalising things I don't know what else to suggest. It is difficult.
"If you just post a link and a title then I don't see any value in that - how do we even know you read it. I've noticed a lot of people just fire out multiple posts per day which take no time and they sometimes get more attention than real genuine posts made by newcomers."
You are very right.
"I think with the TIL thing we have as a community try to reach a compromise. "
Not sure what you mean by "compromise".
IMO, even TIL posts should not be allowed to be of low quality - by law quality I mean plagiarism/copypasta or "1 sentence, 1 YT video link" posts.
If someone wants to post poor quality then it is fine. but we all should agree not to reward if for more than 2sdb (just an idea for the amount). Steemit community has to come to consensus on this. This requires certian whales to agree on that, so they will not incentivize poor content by curating it.
Amen!! Well said. I hope you read my main reply in this thread, it is dedicated to not only the author, but people like you! I appreciate what you do.
I do agree that the TIL posts are an attempted compromise at finding value in shorter posts. Just because a post is short doesn't necessarily translate to poor quality (those they can.) I tend to fall in the same mode of thought with @thecryptofiend that I need to see something personal added in the mix. If I feel that it was simply a copy/pasted paragraph or two, then there isn't that personal touch that is necessary to make it stand out from what that original author had done. Personally that concept of added value (which personalizing accomplishes in my eyes) is how I tend to 'judge' borderline posts.
I can agree with this as well as @thecryptofiend's points. Regardless of how much I may like something, if it is solely a title and a link/video, I just can't get myself to vote for it, even if I like it.
There really is quite a bit to be said for actually framing the "non-original" content in this sense. Simply adding that paragraph or two that explains the link/video, that users personal take on it, and maybe a bit on why we should care goes a long way in my personal book. I'll admit what is required to 'add value' to a post is subjective, but I would expect most people would find some added value when including the above. Even if it's not chosen to be voted for, this would go a long way to prevent receiving flags.
Good post.... I am new and I see my views hitting a few spots in multiple categories. I'm not sure where entrepreneur would fit. I like the idea of getting some extra cash for my input and content. At this point I am a little scared away by some aspects. Like hearing someone say they have 2,000 accounts. I wish they could cut down on bots and other non human accounts. I am one human I'm real and who I am is reflected in my posts. I do strive to become better at making solid content. I do see an issue where I almost did leave steemit thinking that hey I do not know a whale, I've posted some decent content but I feel I was under appreciated for my efforts. I continue to strive forward to see what the future can bring from steemit. I do like that it pushes people to a higher level because simply posting something like cat is sick headed to the vet is not why I use social media. If i'm your friend you call me to tell me how your cats health is. I'm here to share ideas with the masses who might not be exposed otherwise. In the end I worry that some of my decent content and possibly future hard work will by passed over because a whale didnt get a fat $ next to my post.
I sympathize with your experience. I went through the same when started few months ago. My advice would be to not spend too much time and exhaust your creativity/ideas right now. Just write shorter and valuable posts. Most importantly, try to build your network of loyal followers through interacting in chat. Once you build your decent following, then you could start writing longer posts without being afraid of having them go unnoticed. I made a mistake exhausting a lot of ideas and creativity in the beginning. Often writing long posts, sometimes spending 5-6 hours writing and getting few votes only. These ideas are lost for Steemit as it is not welcome to recycle old posts.
Bot creation abuse is a problem.
I appreciate and identify with your statement, "...I worry that some of my decent content and possibly future hard work will by passed over because a whale didn't get a fat $ next to my post."
I understand the theory about those who have been in the system longer having a larger say about payout, but I think the algorithm needs some adjustment. I see many posts by others which agree. I believe NO vote should have NOTHING of value to offer. ALL votes should have SOMETHING of value that would show . For example, at the time of this writing, your comment has four votes, including mine, but no monetary value. I have seen others with many, many more votes and no value. Perhaps every vote should have at least - I'll throw out an arbitrary number - 1/10th of a penny. Personally, I think if less than 10 (or maybe 25) people upvote a post, then maybe it is not worthy of reward. With the huge influx of material, 25 votes is becoming more and more difficult, and likely will be even more so as time goes on. After the first penny, then I can see the monetary value becoming more difficult to attain.
More and more people are coming into Steemit, more and more are posting. As it stands, if one does not get on a patriarch's "following" list or randomly found by a particularly good bot, many great posts gain no monetary value, even though hundreds of people upvote. When Steemit was much newer and fewer people were onboard, 25 votes, including at least one whale vote, were probably easy. However, if a post receives more than 10 (or 25) votes, regardless of whether a whale votes on it, it should be worth SOMETHING! I mean, good grief, so much is now on Steemit, if a post receives 25 votes, it should get AT LEAST A PENNY for the author's effort; and I would imagine, whales already have their favorites chosen for their bots. Therefore, getting the attention of a whale, at this point forward, is likely nonexistent.
I would add a category but I do not know how to name it. These people who are not anarcho-crypto but who are interested in this blog formula, read good content, seriously discuss and receive rewards. I know of groups that want to be trained in science, technology, parenting, group discussions and learn the currency market.
I think that they may apply to the last group. The observers. Or like sykochica calls them, "content consumers".
Anyhow, like I mentioned in one of the comments, my group distinctions are not final pigeonholing :-) Some users may not fit into any category or fit few :-)