RE: My thoughts on HF20, RCs, SMTs, and the future of Steem <contest enclosed>
I'm going to talk about @needleworkmonday, a community that has been running on here since early in 2018 and maybe a little before (I wasn't aware of it in the early days).
It's an interesting community because, for a long time, it remained very informal, but with a significant amount of interaction between posters. It has been supported, unfailingly, by @crosheille, helped by @crystalize and posters regularly, maybe once a month or so, win @curie votes for exceptional content.
I did a small piece of research about growth across 22 accounts posting under the #needleworkmonday tag as part of #minnowuprising, partly because of the high number of very high quality posts that are made each week and the very low levels of rewards many of them receive, and partly because I was interested in the inequalities between men and women on steemit (generally, women are fewer and poorer).
A month or two ago, the community gained its own account; I have delegated 250 SP to help it get going, along with sponsoring 31 sbi shares. Other members of the community @crosheille, @muscara, @neumannsalva and @girlbeforemirror have also delegated SP, sponsored sbi shares or donated steem prizes.
Will it keep going after this hiatus? I believe so. Members have been in touch with each other through comments and votes, checking what's happening, and anyway, the relationships that have been built and the interest in the theme extend beyond the limitations of software upgrades. Fortunately, the timing of the hardfork means that things should have settled by next Monday in time for the weekly posts :)
It's early days for the account, but any additional support that you are able to give would be a fantastic boost and a lovely recognition of the work of the community-builders and the posters.
I hope my mana will summon some of the other participants 😎 to leave comments (and forgiveness from anyone I have failed to mention).
Hello here is one more needleworker originally from Japan and now living in Germany :) It's one of my favorite communities on Steemit.
I looked back my posts and found the first post I made with the tag. It was last year around this time.
https://steemit.com/needleworkmonday/@akipponn/leafy-baby-blanket
I started Steemit more than two years ago but I couldn't find community fits to me back then and had more than one year of absence on the platform. Last year I started finding Japanese and other than community based on language, I was happy to find people with same interest: needlework! It's not too broad like food but still not too niche.
By being part of the community for a year, I get to know who is who and who does what. I also like the encouraging and supportive community.
Thank you @akipponn! 😊
Thank you for sharing a little more about your community! I have seen posts with the tag and featured some in @thedailysneak, but otherwise do not know much about it. I think these niche interests forming communities to support each other are the lifeblood of Steem.
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Yes that's right ... I checked today on the original 22 accounts I surveyed in the summer. Twelve of them are below 80SP which seems to be a threshold for having enough RCs to interact. We'll keep an eye on these accounts and see whether they need extra support.
I see, newbies with less SP/RCs have struggle (after HF20?). I've never done delegation and don't know how to do it but I'm happy to help the community. Please let me know something I can do. Regularly I upvote most of the posts with #needleworkmonday tag ... it's a small 0.01-0.02 upvote though ;)
I'm one of @shanibeer's needleworkers. Interestingly my first post 100 days ago was a #needleworkmonday post :) I came to Steemit and, like probably most of us, tried the tags in my fields of interest. Finding several posts about knitting and crochet etc. made me take a closer look and when I saw that they were not lonely messages in an ocean of posts but connected to each other - I was hooked. So I made my first post and in a way it tells more about me than my #introduceyourself post :)
With that experience I tell new Steemians to find their niche and communicate with the people there. A single light house is better than none but a system of light houses multiply their impact and make life easier ;)
My thoughts on the new RC-system: I appreciate it curtailing comment spam. But on the other hand it's hard for newbies. An account with 3 or 5 SP is dead in the water. Users can't post and comment to get known in their field of interest and without that their growth potential is low. Perhaps we should transfer the idea of microcredits to Steemit. If we see a promising new Steemian we could delegate a small amount of SP. If I have 100 SP I can delegate 5 SP to a newbie without loosing much of my voting power, but to the other having 5 or 10 SP is a big difference.
Thank you @muscara! You bring up some valid points we need to visit.
The idea of delegating small amounts of SP to promising Steemians is a really good one. I have seen a few people do this since HF20 and it definitely makes an immediate short-term impact.
First thank you for this profound post and second for the possibility to tell others a bit about or community. I am another fellow of @shanibeer's #needleworkmonday crafters. They already described many valid points about gender and thematic inclusiveness, about the problems the limited RC brings with it for smaller accounts which are mostly occupied by women (or female described people). I would love steemit to be a place which does not duplicate the same lines of discrimination as the analog world, but right now it is.
The introduction of RC may have reduced the spam, but it also reduced in my eyes the possibility to grow our @needleworkmonday community by inviting newbies to steemit. I have many fiberfriends on Instagram who already write beautiful and helpful post about all kinds of needlework, about upcycling, about a sustainable wardrobe, who make art with fibers or simply love to sew, knit and crochet. Right now, I have no idea how I could ‘lure’ them to steemit? Not alone is the platform much more complicated at the beginning than others (which is ok, when there is an incentive), now there is also a super strict limitation of interaction at the beginning stages. And communication, sharing and interaction are the reasons I would want these friends on steemit. Why should they come?
The introduction of RC seems to shift communication away from steemit to discord. In my view posts on steemit live and prosper through comments. I do not think a platform which only produces (posts) but has no recipients/readers is interesting.
Ok sorry for my not super structured ideas/whining about the new RC system. I simply want the world domination for @needleworkmonday 😄😄😄
These are some very good points. We can try to uplift and build Steem into a better world, but at the end of the day it will always be a mirror of the world we actually live in.
Thanks so much @shanibeer! The @needleworkmonday account wouldn’t be where it’s at today if is wasn’t for you. 😉❤️
Hi @crosheille, do you have an idea of how many accounts have posted under this tag in the last few months? I think we need to look at the very small accounts, and we have a lot of them, that have made quality posts and check what's happening to them. As @muscara is saying above, small delegations might be more useful to them, perhaps organised through the @needleworkmonday account.
Hey @shanibeer I agree! I think that is a great idea and it’s a very good point @muscara brings up. However unfortunately I cannot give a number on how many small accounts there are or those that have posted in the last few months. Unless there is a way to look up all of the needleworkmonday posts from overtime. Once a week is up it clears them out of the search cue. However I have tried to keep up with following all of the needleworkers that have posted at least once with the @needleworkmonday account. We can start there ;)
This is also something we can look at and talk about next week during our meeting.
I directly thought of @wondermaey ... I haven't heard of her for some weeks. She had a personal tragic event in her family, but her account was also very very low in SP. So I am not sure which of both may be the reason she is no longer posting.