The Changing Face Of The Trending Page
We all know the Trending Page gets a lot of attention on here in terms of discussion. Many are frustrated that it is nothing more than a platform for people to buy votes to send crappy articles to the front page. The original intention, from what I can gather, was to highlight "quality" content as determined by the community's upvotes.
Obviously, this has not happened.
Like so many other things, I think people are making a big deal about something that is slowly resolving itself. Is the Trending Page still filled with content that was paid for via voting bots? Yes it is. Is much on there what people would consider poor quality? Most certainly.
So how can I say that it is changing?
For much of my tenure on STEEM, I ignored the Trending Page. Personally, I did not care what votes people were buying and what was up there. Most of it was not of interest for me to read so I simply bypassed it. There are lots of pages on STEEM that I choose not to read out of a lack of interest, that was just one more.
In the last month, I started going through the Trending Page on a regular basis. My blog here focuses a great deal on what is taking place on the STEEM blockchain. I pride myself on trying to bring forth information that helps people to see what is happening and to get excited about STEEM. This requires research into many different places to try and find new information.
The Trending Page became a treasure trove for this. There is a shift that took place which really helped me and shows some of the evolution.
When I go through the Trending Page now, I find that roughly 25% of the content up there is about applications. In fact, many of the apps use the voting bots to upvote their content about major announcements. This is a technique used to help get their message out there.
To me, this is a great transformation. Some might say this belongs on the Promotion Page and that could be correct. Yet that is a different discussion. The fact is that valuable information is appearing on the front page now shows the difference. Is this the same as the original intent? Not exactly but there is a lot on the STEEM blockchain that is different from how it was envisioned. In fact, that is common for technologies. They rarely unfold how the innovators saw it.
I know there are a lot of STEEM "purists" who hold tightly to the idea of "quality content" and that this is a blogging platform. The challenge with this is two-fold.
First, quality content is subjective. Some believe something is of quality while others do not. Is a picture worth a high amount of upvotes? Most would think not but an expert photographer who realized how hard it is to capture a particular moment does. So when the masses say that picture is not worth $500 because it is only a pic, that is a debate in quality. What determines it? What if the photographer had to hang upside down on the bottom of an airplane? What if it caught the ghost of the headless horseman in the background?
The point is that we can debate for eternity what is quality content. Those who cannot stand poetry will never feel it is front page material. Depending upon your view, the same goes for opera, a story about the Red Sox, and erotic fiction.
Another challenge with this view is it creates conflict within oneself while also showing an unwillingness to accept change. Quality might be a goal when dealing with a blogging site. This all changes when you start to have applications that appeal to the masses.
The conflict comes in when we realize that everyone on here wants STEEM to grow. That will not happen to the extent we discuss if STEEM is only for bloggers. To have mass adoption, applications have to appeal to the populous. When it comes to the Internet, much of it is not quality. Instead, it is goofy, childish, and full of stuff that the world would be no worse if it never was posted. Yet it is people expressing themselves how they want.
This is what is happening to STEEM. With applications coming online that focus upon things other than blogging, we are seeing a shift. This is going to alter the idea of quality. Instead, we are going to have a blockchain full of content that fits in all different kinds of categories.
We need to remember, much of what goes viral is far from quality. YouTube made its name based upon cat videos. Ethereum hit great success with CryptoKitties. Even Nintendo had a smash with the Pokemon AR game. Few would say these are anything close to works of art or even quality.
Personally, I am glad to see the Trending Page start to provide some valuable information. Even though the vast percentage is people buying exposure, the fact that it is now a resource is an improvement. Will we ever see it as a mecca for the "best quality" on STEEM? I doubt it.
Yet it is evolving.
And like all of STEEM, in another year, things will be a lot different than they are today. Sometimes the best solution is to sit back and wait. STEEM is a growing, changing ecosystem. In a couple years, we will not be having the same discussion about the Trending Page.
If you found this article to be informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
Comes to show the flexibility of the blockchain and the fact that users can make want they want of it and the community can decide whether its worth it or not. I actually don’t mind the bots as they provide and instrument of use for the currency internally and promoting within the platform is a good use of it. If currencies are not used then they could lose their value so best to use it.
I've noticed the same thing...
I think it's something like...
25% dapps
25% steemmonsters
25% self pumped posts by chbartist (spelling may be off there)
25% other.
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Hi
25% self pumped posts by chbartist
He has a higher rep than me :D I wonder what it would be without pumping himself in the corner while the world watches?
I got that from reading yr posts. I get the impression that he/ she/ it (you? for all I know!) annoys you.
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lol. I just find it funny how easily gamed the reputation system is. It was poorly designed from the start and should have been scrapped. I don't put much stock it with other people but for me, it is an indicator in some ways of my journey because I know what it took to get it. In comparison though, a completely irrelevant indicator. :)
Come to think of it the concept of a universal quantitative indicator of quality is fundamentally flawed.
As a qualitative sociologist that's why steemit makes me uncomfortable.
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Yes, no code is ever going to cover it all. At least, what any of us can come up with. Perhaps one day, an AI will provide one that for all intents and purposes, does what is required. Then we are all screwed :D
That is why the new rep program might take off......
It looks promising so far.
It does look promising. I hope it gets some decent support fast so it can be tested strongly, quickly so it can evolve and service more.
This is an exact snapshot of trending in this point in time
It's bad isn't it!
The only upside is that none of it as annoying as Joe Parys self pumping. And he now only does that occassionally.
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So true.
I keep talking about this but I'm much closer to making it happen:
Custom Trending Tabs for everyone.
Imagine if most people were using an alternative trending tab algorithm. One that was customizable. It is my hope to build such a filter.
Imagine if you could sacrifice your rewards to get higher on the trending tab. Posts that denied payout could add a multiplier to their visibility. Say your post is only paying out $10, but you are denying payout, and many users are now using a custom filter that values this action higher.
A filter like this could value a post 2-10 times higher if they reject their reward. The same can be said about spending SBD on promotions. We could also create our own custom whitelists and blacklists where the votes of certain accounts are worth more or less in the eyes of individual users. With this kind of filter, we'd even be able to stop people from, "upvoting for visibility" and other annoying tricks.
These are just a few of the many features I'd like to implement for custom filtration of the blockchain.
😈😈😈 Upvoted for visibility. 😈😈😈
Thanks for sharing this important observation. I don't look at trending a lot; but on reflection, its usefulness to me has been improving.
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What you describe what you demonstrate is one thing, the communities are not big or good thanks to their rules, but to the people.
Steemit and its rules have not changed, however, the trends section itself, with the passage of time the Steemit community will continue to change, and consequently the way in which the Tranding Page is used.
I've long held the opinion that bid bots are one of, if not the most, valuable aspects to showing STEEM's value. That's because STEEM's value is shown on what people are willing to pay to get their message to the wider community and that's exactly what bid bots do. If you see bid bot usage going down then that likely means that usage is going down as advertisers are less inclined to seek eyeballs from the wider community and thus our community token has a lower value.
The trending page is a subset of this discussion and honestly the perfect free market. If Steem becomes successful as a project then I firmly believe that the traditional trending page will work 100% as intended only showing articles that are considered of value. That's because buying bids will continue to increase in competitiveness forcing users to really want to get their message across often paying bid bots at a loss to do so. This will mean that a lot of stuff listed will be promotional messages but even blogs will want to do so because they will need the exposure of trending to gain readership. I think we are beginning to see the early showings of that now and only expect to see that increase as Steem usage increases.
Completely agreed. Remember flappy bird? When there was so much craze about this game I was like dafuq? Masses like weird things.
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thank you for these words @taskmaster4450 "The conflict comes in when we realize that everyone on here wants STEEM to grow. That will not happen to the extent we discuss if STEEM is only for bloggers. To have mass adoption, applications have to appeal to the populous. When it comes to the Internet, much of it is not quality. Instead, it is goofy, childish, and full of stuff that the world would be no worse if it never was posted. Yet it is people expressing themselves how they want." resteemed!!!