RE: The importance of community building on Steem
Hello, @dber,
I totally agree with you about this sentence
For now, things like steemstem - or the other growing niches given support by curie - are the seeds of the future niche-a-fication of steemit. Until then, I'll do my part in niche creation by resolutely refusing to write about anything other than mushrooms for the foreseeable future.
Can you imagine that at a point all the french minnows starting to write about science (and not the stuff they really enjoyed) because someone from Steemstem told them that this is the content he upvotes (high). I was really sad.
This same person told me that the whole on boarding process in french was totally useless and nobody will support me doing that. So, that's true. I never got any support from theses Community Builders.
Seeing a whole (small) community talking about science only and seeing that I would not be supported was really painful. Hopefully, people stopped to write about something they didn't care, and I received everyday severals thank you / comments where people says that without all this on boarding stuff they would never stay here.
So... Just do what makes you happy or you truly believe it worth the effort.
Fundamentally, I agree with this final point. That's been the whole purpose of this platform for me - it's just a place that encourages me to learn and then write about what I learned.
Now, I should say, in full disclosure, I receive a ton of support from steemstem and curie - and I am a major supporter of the creation and maintenance of that and other communities. It just so happens that the thing I enjoy learning and writing about falls within the confines of biology - and so it fits in the steemstem niche.
But, at the end of the day, I still agree with you - on a mature platform, in theory anyway, everyone would create the content they enjoy creating and find a niche to share it with, rather than creating content they don't enjoy in an effort to win over a niche they have little interest in.
Theoretically, if steemit continues to grow, I may find myself sort of sub-niched out of steemstem, for instance. That's happened at reddit quite a long time ago - and r/mycology now has a devoted, but much smaller presence on the platform than the broader r/science.
You know, Communities are coming on Steem and this should solve the problem of niches :-) (We hope, if I have understood it well :D)