The Trending List - Conclusion
I read a book by Buckminster Fuller once. Aside from being a total head trip, one statement really stuck with me. It was that any prediction requires 4 observations. The first one makes you go "oh, that was interesting!" The second observation makes you say "there it is again! I wonder if it will happen a 3rd time?" And then the third time confirms that it is a pattern, and you can formulate a hypothesis. The fourth observation will the confirm or deny your hypothesis.
In the case of the "organic" posts on the trending list, we had already had observation #1 done because we've all seen the mess that is the trending list. These last 3 posts are observations 2, 3, and 4.
So this is the last post in this series because my hypothesis has been confirmed.
Let's go to the data.
Here are the voters who appeared multiple times on the top 10 "organic" results:
And there are the top votes from the same list ranked by STU rewards:
And today I did a little something different.
Here are the same two tables, but for all 3 days that were tracked cumulatively:
The list continued, but that's all I could get on one screen. And I'm not too interested in those voters who appeared only twice.
So my hypothesis that the top 10 "organic" posts on the trending list are anything but is confirmed. Instead of using bots, they use voting rings. It's the same thing by another mechanism.
And I'll say it again, this will continue as long as the STEEM Power is controlled by the top 6000 accounts. That's 0.6% of the accounts on the blockchain. If the minnows don't step up and decide to put their money where their mouth is, things will just continue this way.
O I need about 1,000 steem power to make a difference? Hopefully I can get to 10,000. lol
1000 steem power will get you about 0.23 STU for an upvote
Hi, I created app to avoid tranding page. Instead it notifies you when an author that is active in his comment section writes new post.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@petermail/notification-steemit-app
I like the concept. But there is a 0% chance of my running a random .exe file.
You could build your own steemit.com competitor like busy.org or some of the other ones.
It's a catch 22, minnows are minnows because they don't have outside capitol to bring in. If they had, they would.
In fact if a minnow brings in large sum of cash to become a dolphin, they would try their best to find ways to get into the ring.
That’s true. But at least in that case it’s a virtuous cycle. More people buying steem and powering up means more demand, less supply, so higher prices.
That attracts more people with more money.
On top of that since content has to be created to make the whole thing work we at least get a larger pool of (at least decent) content.
The flag war with haejin has shown the community won’t stand for bad content after a certain point.
I've always wondered what the alternate case would be. Suppose investors bring outside money, but the content doesn't improve. What then? You're right that there's just gonna be more shitty content. But people are going to either bounce or the steem blockchain is going to move on to bigger better things.
It's so easy to make a half ass account on steemit and spread positive vibes and spout advice (that's what people all seem to do here) that it's always going to attract mediocracy when it comes to content. There needs to be a point where a group pools together a large amount of funding together and properly upvotes things. Or an aggregate website exists.
I brought in a lot of my own money but not because of steemit. I like the concept of the blockchain more than this social media website.
I get where you’re coming from, but mediocrity is always going to rule the day. Because the majority is mediocre - by definition. Look at the content on Facebook and twitter. Mediocre at best.
There are efforts like @curie to find the best content and put some weight behind it, so there are definitely people out there who agree with you. It’s just never going to be a majority.
The great thing about the blockchain is that you could build your own interface and create the curated environment you are looking for. Just off the top of my head it seems like you could build your own weighting mechanism to replace /trending or /hot with a list that weights votes by a voter’s follower count or some other quality score.
that is what i think the end result will be, the only difference is, why cant it just happen here on steemit? or should steemit be the totality of all steem blockchain content that is ever published? If thats the case, then steemit shouldn't focus on the communities aspect. Instead they should let communities build themselves.
Thats something ive been interested in doing for a while, but the problem is, there arent any good writers here...yet. perhaps its a motto of "if you build, they will come".
Good article