Proposed new section/method for seggregating posts starting with the trending page
With this post I want to take part in the contest to fix the trending page
announced in this post by @utopian-io.
The problem
The trending page is constantly made up of the same few hundred accounts with very few exceptions.
This hurts the Steemit/Steem community because:
- a lot of new valuable members cannot be noticed and a lot of them leave the platform because of it
- a social network with most accounts inactive will have big difficulties to continue to thrive
- it tends to be less variety of fresh users/posts/perspectives on average
The good news
Even though we have this problem, it is refreshing to see that there is genuine interest in fixing it by a lot of big names in the Steem community. Hence this contest.
The solution I propose
I think it has to be dead-simple to seggregate posts based on reputation.
Below I will make my case for this proposed solution, I will show how this could look on the existing Steemit site, why it will bring more value for everyone in the long run and also possible solutions on how this can be implemented.
How
I propose that there should be a way to split all posts on the trending page and also on hot and new.
The actual numbers may vary, but here are the sections I am thinking the posts should be split by reputation:
- 0-45
- 45-55
- 55-65
- 65+
- All
The All section will be what we have now on the site, all posts together, no matter the reputation.
The rest of the sections are self explanatory I suppose. For example if 0-45 is selected on the trending page then we will see only posts made by authors with their reputation between 0 and 45 that are "trending".
I know, at first we could have a lot of posts in the trending(0-45) with just a few cents or dollars, but with this new seggregation, a lot of new users will get the visibility they need to get more. And of course that the low quality posts will eventually get buried.
This way we could ensure that new accounts will always have a fair chance of getting discovered early. Doing this will also encourage them to stay on the platform and grow.
What it would look/feel like
I think that this new seggregation I propose should be at the top of the listing on the trending, hot and new pages.
Below I will show how this could look. I will show 2 options, one with buttons, and one with a slider. And for each of those options I will show how it could look on 4 different screen sizes.
Here we go, starting with the buttons version, from big to small screen sizes:
large:
medium:
small:
very small:
And here is the slider versions, the reputation interval selected is between 45 and 65:
large:
medium:
small:
very small:
With the slider version, there is even more flexibility because we can choose smaller intervals like the buttons or bigger intervals like 0-55 or 45-65. And of course to see the trending page as it is now you could choose 0-100.
Note:
The selected seggregation could be saved in the browser's locale vars, so that you could navigate to other sections and still have the posts split by the reputation you selected.
This feature will help discover new users for example in the 0-45, 45-55 sections, this will also help curators discover them.
But if that is not your thing, you could set 55-65, or 65+ and only look at what the high rep accounts are blogging about and not be bothered by low rep posts.
Of course this seggregation will help the hot and new sections also.
Some examples could be:
- tag: life, new, 65+ or life/hot/0-45
- bitcoin/trending/45-55
- nature/new/55-65
- etc
There will be 100s more ways to discover posts and people.
Why is it better for everyone
Steemit is a social network, and for a social network to continue to thrive it needs growth and active users.
With this seggregation of the posts we could ensure that there will always be a place where the new users will get noticed. Doing this will help the platform and sustain it's health.
A healthy platform with active users will drive engagement and ultimatelly the Steem price will grow. That is beneficial for everyone.
Why reputation
I think it is the best indicator of good quality involvement. Steem, Steem Power or SBD are not so relevant in my opinion, as they can remain the same or change drastically depending on the actions of the users. For example maybe a writer got 2000SBD in a few months and now wants to use them to pay the rent.
Therefore he will then have 0 and be considered a "new"/"low" account even though he might have written quite a lot. The same is true with Steem and Steem power.
Reputation however will drastically change only in very few occasions and not at the actions of the user, rather at the actions of the community.
The age (time since it was created) of an account, or number of followers could be better indicators than Steem/SP or SBD and be used to seggregate posts. But I do not think that it is better or simpler to understand than reputation.
How could this be implemented
I have played with steemJs and made a very-alpha prototype (app.steemhelper.com) with pure nodeJs, that I am planning to build a website on top of eventually.
I did not plan to share this so early, but maybe if it could help my case in this contest then it is worth it and ultimatelly it could help the bigger Steemit community.
The way I buildt the prototype is to call one of the posts functions (getDiscussionsByTrending
, getDiscussionsByHot
, getDiscussionsByCreated
) with the appropriate tag and with limit 100.
And once I get the results I ignore all posts that do not fit the reputation selected. It works but I know that it is not the best way by far to get the results seggregated by reputation.
I am sure though a better idea will come from one of the existing devs as to how this can be most efficiently implemented.
It also depends how much interest there is to actually fix the trending page. Because maybe a new set of functions(or modify the current ones) could be developed by a Steem core dev(s) that could take 2 additional optional parameters.
One such function could be called like this:
steem.api.getDiscussionsByTrending({tag: 'life', limit: 10, min_rep: 45, max_rep: 65}, function(err, result) {});
This would be the ideal solution that I can think of right now implementation-wise.
Do you have other suggestions or questions regarding this proposed solution.
Do you think it is worth pursuing? Is it a great or a bad idea? Or maybe you can tell why exactly this cannot work?
I really think that this could help the platform immensely but I could be wrong, that's why I am asking. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
Wow, this is really interesting idea :)
I am not sure whether this should have interface exactly like that, but filtration by reputation - that can be really interesting and effective :)
Basically, everything from lower reputation tab should be more profitable to curate. Resteeming for visibility :)
really good subject in a couple days think about same version how we can modify but @sirrius realy successfully interpreted for this matter . thanks alot dude.
Thanks a lot @noisy I am really glad you like it and thanks for the resteem :) I am flexible about the UI, that was the best idea I had at the moment about how it should look. But if there are other suggestions, I can lay them out with Photoshop and post them. Yes, filtration by reputation could be a very effective tool for better visibility. Other mentions to filter by could be , by the number of followers and by the age of the accounts. Or who knows maybe all together. Cheers!
I really would like to see more difference and approaches to build Steem interfaces. IMO alternative Steem Interfaces like Busy, Steemiz, eSteem... are not brave enough to risk completely different approach to filter/sort content.
But at some point I hope that those devs will recognize that having a good Steem interface is not good enough for 2018 - you also need to provide unique user experience to attract more people :)
Exactly that is what I am also hoping for. It might not be easy to build in the short term because the APIs have a set series of functions. But I get the feeling that this will change soon. Mainly because the is an increasing need for it. This contest is just another proof of this.
during SteemFest @sneak said that it is a matter of implementation additional endpoints in: https://github.com/steemit/sbds
I did not knew about that. Starred the repo. This would enable so much more features than the current API. Very nice. Do you know of a time frame for this to come into production?
i think this one is a good idea, then we can view a contribution or user by their reputation right..?
If this will be implemented, then we could filter the trending page by user reputation. So there will be sections on the trending page based on reputation like: 0-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65+ and All.
So when you are for example on the trending page on the 55-65 section, you will see the trending posts made by users with the reputation between 55-65.
with "recent" and "older" feature too right..?
Great efforts @sirrius, really enjoyed reading your ideas & lets hope the community implements them.
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[utopian-moderator]
Thanks a lot @cnts. I am really glad that you enjoyed reading my post and that you see value in it. I am curious also about what the community has to say :)
Wow this is so impressive, the ideas are bomb, classified solution i think thia can help other developers as much as we all thinks,,, and the site you are building steemhelper, pls can u kindly tell me what its all about, its benefits
Hey I am glad you like my proposed solution. I really hope that it will get buildt. I will help as much as I can. Steemhelper is still under construction but in a nutshell it will consist of valuable data about the activity on the steem blockchain, a way to show undervalued posts, guides and maybe a new bot to help new users. Stay tuned :)
Wow helping to make the community stronger and building it up,, thats definitely steemit MAJOR KEY. i. Endorsed this #marshallLife
This is something I'd like to see implemented to Steemit but I feel like the default trending list needs some changing as well, the view that get's presented to user without any of rep filters. Currently new authors and content aren't being found really. This would help, but is it enough?
Hey, thanks for also thinking about it too. I think it will be enough because there will always be a section for all new users(rep 0-45 and 45-55), as well as for the rest(55-65, 65+ and All). But ultimately we would have to test it on a live site to see the effects. How do you envision a new trending algorithm would select which posts are at the top?
It might just work and I'd like to see this tested out for sure before making further changes.
This is a feature that should be in anyways.
As in for new algorithm, if necessary, I'd probably start decreasing curation rewards for voting same authors in a row for longer periods of time, this is just from the top of my mind and might not be feasible at all.
Okay, I get it: Instead of having something become trending merely byt number of $SBD it can be worth, it can be by reputation coming into account and study teh number of upvotes.
I sometimes get a lot of upvotes but little SBD, because a lot of people who follow me are new users, or less active users than me. I'm fairly new, but I'm so active, my reputation is up to 58 now, but I post every day, several times a day, and still make very little and do not make it to the trending page. Some of my posts see 30 to 60 upvotes and make under $5. If those appear on the Trending page based on my reputation and upvote count, then more people will see it, more upvotes will come, more Steem will come as a result and the platform can thrive.
Right now, Trending sees SBD and upvotes, but upvotes above 100 upvotes. There should be a way for people who receive under 100 upvotes to still make it to Trending, and reputation can indicate the quality of the content.
Well, the trending algo will be the same, it's just that it will be filtered by the reputation of the authors. In order to avoid having mostly the same users on the trending page. They will still get A LOT of visibility, just not all of it :) The problem with the number of votes is also with people buying votes from steemfollower.
Ah, yeah I understand. And then there are bots who upvote random people without really following them or reading their posts. Sometimes a post I put out gets an upvote and a comment a fraction of a second later. That's insane! I don't use bots. I try to do everything organically.
Hum that sounds interesting. But honestly don't think it would make a big difference. Because people would keep going for the higher reputation people.
I do not think so. Have you read the contest and the comments? A lot of people are bored with the current trending page. I personally do not use it. That is why we are looking for solutions to fix it :)
I'm always mildly amused by suggestions to fix certain aspects like this. Let me clarify that. I'm not amused in any way about the suggestions themselves (they are all great ideas), I'm amused that so many of the suggestions I keep seeing for the months that I've been here are things I created in about 1 week in my new steem aggregator (steemfeed.social)*. It's still in a pretty beta state, but it highlights that these requests aren't technically hard to implement. It's just a matter of steemit finding the hours to do it. When I first got here I assumed that steemit would be imminently introducing all these sorts of things (including notifications; which, by the way, I've created browser plugins for ;) ), so my steemfeed project has only ever been a half-hearted effort, if that. But if I had of known that after many months this sort of stuff would still be missing, I would have focussed on steemfeed more and put out a more polished full on front end (with voting/commenting etc). As it is, because I only have limited hours myself, I am devoting most of my time this week to porting my notification plugins to iPhone and Android, and then moving on to another project that will hopefully earn me some money so I can continue funding these projects. All still with the (mistaken?) assumption that steemit will finally implement some of these requests.
*(although with my reputation filters they successively weed out the lower reps; but they could be easily modified to do the reverse and successively weed out the higher reps)
Hey, thanks for your comment. As you may know, there is a difference between a proof-of-concept site and a live site that supports a full range of features and more than a few users such as steemit. Anyway, you could help build these features and win a bounty, and during the process you will get noticed and have other good things coming your way. Just curious, how would you better filter the trending/hot/new posts by reputation? Also if you have other good ideas to fix the trending page, you could make a post about them on Utopian to participate. Cheers :)
To be honest, I haven't thought about those pages specifically, only an overall approach. When I made the filters I didn't really anticipate your point that higher reputation doesn't often equal better quality on those pages. I was operating under a general principle that higher rep content is on average likely to be better than lower rep content. I'd have to think about it some more, and I'd need to find out exactly how reputation is calculated (apologies if you already mentioned it in your post; I'm so busy coding I have to skim read long posts). Do the extra votes that these common accounts get by constantly being on the trending page contribute to their higher rep? If so, without any qualifiers, the rep system might need reworking (or an alternative concurrent system implemented). This will have to be a project for another day for me. My head is esploding with other projects at the moment ;). I wish you luck, though, in getting Steemit to implement some change. Hopefully an upgraded UI is coming in the not too distant future.
Yeah..there are a lot of ideas but for the moment we have to work with the current API. @noisy mentioned of an upcoming update on that but I don't have a timeframe. About reputation, yes, in general, for every upvote you get your reputation grows. And the problem we are faced is that on the trending page are mostly the same few hundred people, which stagnates growth overall. Thanks for the support, take care.
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This is something I would use on daily basis. The spam/low quality content is the only thing which I don't like here on Steem
My proposed solution is for better visibility for a broader part of accounts. It is not directly related to spam. @scipio had some ideas in that direction.
Thanks, I'll get into that!