SteemTrail Daily - @instructor2121 Interview Wednesday, February 8th, 2017
Wednesday Inquiry
FAQ #1
- How to start a new trail :
Several people have approached me asking about new Steem Trails. Here is the short answer:
First, see if the Trail or a similar Trail already exists. Most of the popular tags already have their own Trails (but may not be in active use). If so, simply start posting links to relevant Steemit articles and talk to us about formally curating the Trail. If your Trail doesn't exist, start making your tag more noticeable, by posting on it frequently and letting people know about it. Then simply ask at SteemTrail for the trail to be created. Then start searching your tag and posting links. Easy as pie.
- New Curators:
A nice bump in the number of trails and curators. I will just have to list them here and maybe get a short intro from them individually, as the days roll on.
@uwelang will be curating beer-trail and german-trail
@bitcoinparadise crypto-trail
@duhiki homesteading-trail
@kooshikoo basicincome-trail
@chrisasiki basicincome-trail
@claudiop63 technology-trail.
- A Trail for which VOUS may be the curator we need :French trail is mostly deserted. My two years of Middle School French from 50 years ago is not enough to let me help you out here.
- Trail Coin
- What to do next.
Have fun! Steemit is a great community. And your participation in the SteemTrail initiative will help to make it better and propel it to the next level.
Thank you for helping to make SteemTrail successful. Together, we’ll continue promoting participants and the Steemit community as a whole.Happy TRAILs!
(All Images via Pixabay unless otherwise noted)
Published by @steemtrail, 02/07/2017
Managers @instructor2121, @anotherjoe
Editor @baerdric
Interview with @Instructor2121 (Rick)
Rick is the ever-present voice of the SteemTrail community. Whether answering questions on several Trails at once (I envision eight or ten hands typing on banks of keyboards surrounding his Pilot nest) or keeping the conversation going on the nightly voice chats, every trail member eventually runs into Rick. I imposed on his good nature in the middle of his busy day with a raft of questions which he was kind enough to answer.
(@baerdric) How did you first hear about Steemit?
(@instructor2121) I first read about Steemit in April 2016 and decided to check it out. At the time, I was busy with a project and really didn't have the time to explore. I found the time in May 2016 and registered, and have been actively involved since.
(b) What was your previous experience with cryptocurrency?
(i) I was introduced to bitcoin in 2011 and had zero idea what it was. Began to watch videos and read a lot so I could get up to speed on the tech and now I'm all in. My portfolio includes bitcoin, ether, bitshares,steem, golos, and dawn.
(b) What kind of blogger or social media user were you before Steemit?
(i) I was a casual social media user. Messaging and keeping up with friends and family were my primary uses for the few platforms I put to use.
(b) I know you were involved in other voting guilds, but what made you decide to create SteemTrail?
(i) Communities. I saw the need for communities back in August 2016 and decided to write a paper for SteemTrail. Communities will help drive the expansion and adoption of steem. This I'm certain of. Steemit has decided to add communities to the platform, so I'm excited to see what this will look like.
(b) Has SteemTrail developed in the direction and at the rate you envisioned?
(i) SteemTrail has evolved with steemit, and I'm very pleased with the levels of participation we are currently experiencing. We have grown beyond what was envisioned in such a short period. Facilitating the formation of communities and helping them grow in membership is not an easy task. There is a lot involved.
(b) How has your level of engagement with Steemit changed through the curation efforts of SteemTrail?
(i) Quite a bit. I have went from just spending my time curating post to actively engaging the community. We have daily discussions on our SteemTrail chat and several voice chats taking place. I am fully immersed in our platform because of SteemTrail.
(b) What kind of things are you blogging about lately and what kind of things are you reading personally in Steemit?
(i) My blogging experience was zero upon arriving to steemit. I really want to write more about e-commerce and technology in the near future. Of course, I read quite a bit, so anything that increases my knowledge about a particular topic I usually will enjoy reading.
(b) What level of time and effort is the curation of Trail Approved posts taking these days, since the recent increase in traffic?
(i) The increase in traffic has been fantastic. As far as time and effort are concerned, I really don't see any change in that. The curators we have in the trails do a wonderful job of checking each posts for attribs and plagiarism which is a tremendous help. This is very time consuming, but necessary in protecting our platform.
(b) What new directions do you see ahead for the community and the interaction with Steemit Authors?
(i) SteemTrail introduced the TRAIL token December 21st, 2016. TRAIL is used as a participation reward for users actively participating in SteemTrail, so we hope to see new communities(trails) forming and an increase of curators for our existing communities. Also, Community websites will be exciting to watch evolve. Stay tuned.
Hi @steemtrail, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads yesterday and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
This post has been ranked within the top 10 most undervalued posts in the second half of Feb 08. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $37.00 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Feb 08 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Thanks for highlighting, I am excited curating beer-trail and german-trail - not to forget history-trail - hope I can manage all of this and am looking forward to identify great content by awesome authors, new and old and curate, help and push the community. You will also see me helping in the sports-trail probably - announcement will come soon. Thanks @steemtrail for the opportunity!
A multi-faceted group, with multi-nationalities and languages, different personalities, and perspectives about reality, different skills, and interests, very autonomous and pro-active people, that make streemtrail so rich with their diversity.
Of course, we can't forget the glue of it all: Rick and Joe thanks for your daily work and involvement.
And thanks everybody for the good moments I feel and discussions every day for being in the Hangouts- one of the best places to hang out on the Internet and Steemit.
I'm really looking forward to the community websites, too. That's going to be great!
what are the "community websites" @haphazard-hstead you refer to?
I'm sure others can answer this in more detail, and maybe more correctly. But my understanding is that each trail will be able to collect the curated posts into a something like a newspaper layout style blog, rather than just the long list of posts that we have now, like on the @foraging-trail or @gardening-trail. There were some examples posted awhile ago, filled with news and technology posts, I think. It's a really attractive way to highlight posts focused around the community's topics. It's patterned something like http://blog.paper.li/ but I don't think it's exactly that. I haven't seen any updates about it recently, so it was nice to see it mentioned again in this interview. Anyway, I hope that helps a little bit.