Where Do We Head From Here?
When a train crashes we don't tear up the tracks. Especially not when there are still resources. As a collective we treat the wounded, move the broken trains, check the tracks for damage and begin the process of rebuilding.
From the beginning of Steem it's often seemed like a Train Wreck waiting to happen. And it did.
However, we still have users, engagement, resources and most importantly a market need to take the next steps and clean up.
So, in a way it's a chance for a fresh start. We often had constant conflict between content creators and other projects and we got focused on "Quality Content again and again. Due to that focus at times we let projects get defunded or attacked for the sake of trying to vote up the best articles. Yet, it never seemed like we achieved it, because stakeholders all have different opinion of what hold value.
What should we focus on now while we are rebuilding?
It's time to consider what do we WANT and seeing if we are able to influence. Currently both chains feel threatened by the other side, but maybe that isn't the long-term view. We've seen some delegations coming back. We know there will be community curators.
What else should we focus on?
- New Dapps?
- Content?
- Rewarding casual content that is more consistent to most social media?
- Your ideas?
I think there is too much focus on rewarding casual content. It didn't attract as much attention as we assume. Quite a few people just don't think they need to get paid for causal social media and for those who think it is a must, there seems to be a weird competitive atmosphere created.
Interesting, my perspective is we were continuously growing until there was a push away from rewarding end-users.
How would you create competition?
My idea requires SMT. Basically I would remove inflation rewards on Steem (dao, witness and SP inflation remain), and have a vote to divert it to particular SMTs to add value to those.
The vote would be based on the dao, but instead of just yes, it would be a list of SMT who meet the threshold (beat the return proposal or some set amount say 5mil SP) trying to compete for rewards based on a % of the overall vote.
Obviously I wouldn't suggest to make the change 100% of rewards immediately, but if you reserve 10% of rewards for that system to kick start it, this could be interesting. To have it accountable, someone could create a NO vote and if it is ahead of the yes vote, they are removed even if it beats the return amount.
After this is set up internal community inflation distribution is up to the community. It could be limited to SMTs that meet certain conditions (ie. they need to choose variables that qualify), but it would create value for those SMTs.
Hey, @whatsup.
More apps that bring different experiences would be good. I guess I'm saying we don't need many more blogging platforms or clones of existing social media platforms, even. Unique experiences, beyond the ability to earn, hold and trade crypto.
Apps that expand on what's here, take the utility or use cases to a different stage.
I think the focus, at least in word, has been on content. I'm not so sure about in deed, though, since everything done so far (with the exception, I would say, of Communities) has been to put the emphasis on curation, which isn't the same. Making the most on rewards is not the same as promoting value in content.
What probably could be looked at are ways to get posts on trending that come from different communities but not necessarily via upvotes. I think the resteem is the most underused mechanism we have, but to mention it as a tool for trending instead of upvoting brings on discussions of multiple alt accounts, and not any real talk about what could be done instead.
I agree that value is in the eye of the beholder. I also believe we shouldn't be chasing exclusively that elusive quality content. The problem we run into with casual content—a single picture post, a meme, sharing a post, etc.—is the value ratio. We already have casual posting—Actifit has to fall into that category, along with most Dlike posts, and we both remember dmania.
Even if there was more casual content, I'd rather doubt you'd see it making what blog posts do simply because of that value ratio to effort and originality. It would probably need to have it's own reward pool, or barring that, simply not dump into the STEEM new and trending pages.
I'm really not sure what the answer to that one is going to be. We don't really get rewards on comments as much as we could, especially the more thoughtful ones, and if there is anything resembling casual content on a regular basis here, it's the commentary that actually does ensue on posts.
As it is, I think we all need to know where we stand with the current iteration of STEEM, and where it stands with us. We the community might have ideas, but it's obvious that Steemit, Inc. does too, and they're carrying on, from what I can tell, on their own. I don't think there's anything inherently bad about that, but it's not what we're used to seeing. The initiatives and blog challenges have always been community based.
So, good questions. Maybe I offered some answers? :)
I'm just glad to start considering.
My view has always been casual posting, rewarding endusers and actually being nice to them.
re: considering
Oh, certainly not trying to dissuade here. I definitely think it's a good thing. Better than sitting around bickering, or reading others doing it. So counter productive.
re: casual posting
Post don't need to be essays to hold value. If people want to comment on a topic, it's probably best not to hit them with 1,000 words. Start the discussion, let others participate.
My intent here is to just say that the value ratio, or whatever we should call it, is going to be an ongoing issue, and a moving target. Realizing that, though, might help.
In your case, you've always come up with interesting topics (to me, anyway), and so whether you call it casual posting or not, I'd say if it's getting eyeballs and causing others to engage on it, it's working, because people are finding value in it.
Simply sharing memes all day, or links or a photo without anything else at all. I don't know. Over time, value is going to drop. Which is what you would think it would do in an open market, anyway.
I totally agree with this. I've asked why aren't we rewarded for pushing other content users content out.
Hey, @steemitqa.
re: rewarded
In all honesty, I'm surprised it wasn't given some kind of ability to reward. I'd like to think that someone thought it would be best not to, though, since everything else we do here is based on upvotes or stake weight.
I know the reputation ranking is considered to be broken by most, but having resteems a part of that would make sense to me, if we were to ever find value in reps. Having the resteems dictate what's on trending makes more sense to me, too. We'd just have to have an answer for the alt account issue.
That is, if we're concerned with the 'purity' of the system, which is what I think we've been saying all along with people self-upvoting, bid botting or circle voting their way up there. Or even getting there the way most people curate (getting the most they can out of curation rather than whether the post should be on trending).
Since they fixed the way resteems show up in a feed (just once even if multiple people do it), resteems could be used so much more than they are. And if they were tied to reputation (be it curator, creator or both), maybe the curation rewards could be higher for the first person to resteem.
I don't know all the ramifications of any of that. I'm sure someone could point them out. I'd rather, though, if any of it is a good idea, or could work, how do we get there? :)
I was told this early on as the reason as to why it was never implemented.
Yes, to bad the rep. system was never better utilized. I agree RS is a signal the user finds the content valuable even if they don't want to reward it with money they at least could make it a signal it has virality to it and treat it as such.
Well, maybe we can convince the power's that be to help us develop something around this 😄 . Good discussion and thanks for replying!
Elitism is not the answer and never was. It’s a niche behavior and “best content” is a niche product. Those who favor the subjective “best content” product are free to increase their stake and reward but the best content in their eyes.
Freedom, live and let live, is an important pillar of this chain and life. Everyone has the freedom to buy more stake and focus on what they want.
Just as everyone has the freedom to post what they want. Irrelevantly of whether that pleases or is tailored to few.
I don’t know what is “more consistent to most social media”. Reddit was initially a link drop and outgoing traffic generator, then once
.selfand AMAs started it became a super long thread platform. But the rest also continued.I guess good old-fashioned forums are one of the earliest “social media” platforms. Very often in vibrant communities the “what’s playing now” threads are the most popular ones. Often a simple link drop can also lead to pages long threads.
The smartest and most detailed answer on quora is often the one which goes viral but at the same time quora did receive millions and millions of pageviews from google to “dumb questions” like “best pizza in [city] X”.
IMHO we should focus on dapps. Dapps which provide users a reason to use them, an incentive to contribute. And at the same time remove the complexity of knowing how everything works and what are the best ways to maximize rewards. Platforms, services which provide an experience and have actual potential to increase the userbase growth beyond the main MVP that is Steemit.
But none of the ideas suggested above are mutually exclusive. Live and let live.
Agree.
Easier sign up would also help.
Signup flow definitely needs to be improved. It should be a priority but at the same time signups are a distributed task for all dapps. Some dapps have made great improvements when it comes to signup flow. While I would love to see improved “central” signup flow, dapps will become more and more influential in the signup funnel as the ecosystem grows. Every dapp is a new signup funnel.
Keep in mind we just need one good sign up flow as one user signing up can apply to all dapps. This is the undervalued aspect of Steem/Hive.
It’s one of the main arguments for dapps, a “central” userbase.
This👆
Love this. I want to reward casual posts, you want to reward... Quality.
Whoot we both can!
I also love the idea of shifting the focus back to dapps and delegations again. We need a full social economic society.
I certainly appreciate your insights, and I like the positive response you are receiving to this post. I would ask that you reconsider your thought that both chains are threatened by each other. It is HIVE that feels threatened by Steem, otherwise they would not have made such a desperate, and ill planned decision to break off. Most of the people from HIVE are still here, and feeling uncertain about HIVE's future, hence keeping their feet firmly rooted on the Steem blockchain. But as you rightly say, it is time to move forward and look at what can be done to positively reconstruct a better future for Steem, even for those who will be returning when the HIVE project collapses.
Of the things you mentioned, I believe the most important is "rewarding casual content that is more consistent to most social media" because we are not a professional, journalistic blog that pumps out superior quality articles. We have talented people, but in essence, we are simply an alternative social network, and should use the examples of other successful social platforms to make this a more welcoming place for people who already have an idea of what a social network looks and feels like.
But before that, we really must seriously address the question of how to clean up the abusive behavior that has always been a part of Steem; for which I have written:
Troll Hunters: A Community Curator Proposal
Decentralized Censorship of Social Media: A Democratic Approach
Well since steem witnesses and apps are freezing and blacklisting the Hive super users I guess we have to assume they feel threatened.
Otherwise I would agree. If you act scared, you look threatened.
Messing with people's stake is bullshit. I will not condone eitherside.
I would be ready to actually invest, instead of powerdown, but how do I know I will not end up with my stake frozen?
I see the freezing of those HIVE user accounts more a question of a kind of retaliation, as well as a countermove to stop certain accounts, like BlockTrades, from amassing STEEM and HIVE from people who are really clueless as to what is going on.
Messing with people's stake is definitely bullshit, and I will forever remain disappointed in the HIVE High Council, and their goons who knew that this could be done, long before Justin Sun appeared, and did nothing about it. They have forever disgraced Delegated Proof of Stake.
You're wise to Power Down, and maybe park your funds in LTC until we get some real clarity on this issue. You should Power Down your HIVE as well, and do the same.
I absolutely am powering down my Hive also. The DPOS system was compromised first by that team.
Absolutely! And I removed all of my votes from that system! Hopefully, this scandal will teach us how to make DPoS more secure; if that is possible! Because so far, we have proof that all you need is really deep pockets, and you can take over the system. I wonder if EOS is taking this situation seriously?!
They have discussed it. Block.one holds 10 percent instead of 20 % So, it seems like "controlling stake" is a strange justification.
I agree with @doitvoluntarily, "all of the above", and I'd elaborate on this one:
I don't think that all casual content **needs** to receive rewards, but I agree that it should at least be permitted to earn rewards. Punishing people for behaving the same way they do everywhere else has always been a really bad idea. In addition to being elitist, as another commenter observed, It also amounts to imposing a near-prohibition on viral content.
Other points: back in the days before the SPS was deployed, I think you had suggested that it could be used to fund marketing efforts. I agreed at the time, and I still agree now. I think that marketing would be a really good use of SPS funds, as long as it doesn't outpace the account creation process and it's transparent so the community can be sure that the funds are not being misused.
Ensuring good use of SPS funds is a problem for all uses, not just marketing. I don't know how you fix it, but I think it has a little to much of a "Just trust me" feeling to it at the moment.
One thought that crossed my mind a while back was to see the SPS (and voters) as a corporate board of directors, and have it hire itself a CEO/CFO who could oversee the use of the funds, recommend strategic proposals to voters, and publish quarterly reports to account for expenditures. No idea what (if any) regulatory implications that might have, though.
Yeah, we could do a better job of SPS funds, but also... maybe we should actually just trust some people for a first round... The 2nd round gets funded if the 1st one goes well!
I'd really like to see both chains do well, and develop their own "personalities." If they do, it would help establish the ("somewhat") decentralized blockchain model of online content... of many different kinds.
For starters, the signup process has to be made easier. We live in a world where 99% of people expect "Login with Google or Facebook," and anything beyond that is too difficult. That, right there, was always the main thing that held me back from broadly promoting Steem. That, and the lack of a viable internal messaging system.
I'd still like to see a peer-to-peer marketplace here... along the lines of a Craigslist-meets-eBay type thing. The SteemLeo "LeoShop" is a great initiative for digital goods, but let's expand into physical goods, too.
This would be the best outcoming, and probably what will happen.
I have never seen what the problem with that is. I am a casual user, I was never focused on the quality content issue, I did not understand the need nor the desire for so many to have that. If I liked or enjoyed a post, it got a vote from me, I never cared if someone else thought what I voted on was not a Quality post, it was some thing I enjoyed. I did care, and have removed my votes on content that was shown to be plagiarized, and I tried to not ever vote on that persons content or to even look at that persons content again. I would unfollow them, and if some of the people I followed resteemed them a bit I would end up muting them.
There are a lot more than the perception of quality that needs to be fixed.
all of the above?
I think one of the issues is that it's hard for new or otherwise not-popular users to get much in the way of rewards, so the "selling point" of the platform often gets undermined by the actual experience of it. I think that more ways for people to get "guaranteed minimum engagement" rather than exclusively having to face an unforgiving popularity curve would be good -- Actifit is one thing that already does this: if you get your steps in you get an upvote, and are therefore less likely to end up frustrated by trying (and failing) to get noticed for your content on those posts. I think more Dapps or structures that work like that could improve the platform. It's probably hard to make that work though, especially with the "convergent linear" aspect of the current reward curve that squeezes rewards at the low end. (The big challenge with structures like this would likely be how to keep them from being exploited by spammers and scammers).
I also like the model of apps giving out votes, and bypassing the brand and popularity issues, creating a healthier distribution.
The issue is that apps that receive delegation should also motivated to curate for spammers.