Steem Debates #3 : Steemit Engagement Challenge - REVISITED
It is a couple of months since the last Steem Debate looked at the Steemit Engagement Challenge.
There was a general consensus amongst those who commented on that Debate post that change was needed for the Engagement Challenge.
Since then in Season 19 Steemit Inc made some changes with the introduction of the Teaching Teams.
Have Teaching Teams worked? Is that the right direction for the Engagement Challenge? Are more changes needed?
Teaching Teams
Teaching Teams were introduced in Season 19 as an alternative to the usual Challenges run by communities.
There are currently four Teaching Teams providing weekly lessons and assignments in the areas of teaching, cooking, electronics and web development.
They are definitely a welcome change for the Engagement Challenge but unfortunately participation numbers have been considerably lower than in the standard community challenges.
Do these low numbers indicate that the Teaching Team concept is not suitable for the audience on Steem?
Or is it that the teaching topics are not of interest, or the lessons are too difficult, or not presented well enough?
Should the Teaching Teams be continued in Season 20, or should something else be tried?
Other Ideas for the Engagement Challenge
Amongst the comments on the last Debate post there was a common feeling that the Engagement Challenge should be used to generate more worthwhile and better quality content.
Not being so restrictive on the challenges, and giving people more freedom to write would help produce better content.
The Challenge posts, and the required commenting, have all become very forced and of little attractiveness.
The big question is how can the Engagement Challenge be restructured to produce more valuable content that is more interesting for people already on Steem, and also more attractive to the wider world through search engine discovery?
A secondary question is whether the Engagement Challenge might be more useful to the platform if it is freed from the constraints of being tied to specific communities?
In the comments on the last Debate post @rashid001 remembered the Better Life with Steem initiative Steemit Inc introduced during the 1000 Days of Steem program...
A Better Life with Steem
This is not a game or a challenge, but rather an invitation to tell us about the positive things you are doing to improve your own life, your family's, your community and the planet.
We are inviting you to write under these seven themes...
Acts of Kindness [ #actsofkindness ]
This could include volunteering with a charity, cooking for an elderly neighbor, helping a local youth club, giving a home to a stray dog...Planet Positives [ #planetpositives ]
This could include planting trees, recycling bottles, installing a photovoltaic system, cleaning a local river...Grow Your Own [ #growyourown ]
This could include growing your own food in a window box, a backyard, a garden or even a farm. And it might also be about raising chickens, ducks, pigs or any other animals for food...Crafty Content [ #craftycontent ]
This could include any sorts of craft from knitting and crochet, to woodwork and metalwork. Or maybe jewelry making, or pottery...Crypto and Me [ #cryptoandme ]
This could include how you are using cryptocurrencies to help improve your life. Which cryptos you use, and how you use them, for trading, or for transactions or payments. Your favorite exchanges...Mind, Body and Spirit [ #mindbodyspirit ]
This could include what you do to look after the health and wellbeing of you and your family, including natural remedies, fitness training, yoga, meditation...Learn With Steem [ #learnwithsteem ]
This could include any skills you are learning, or courses you are taking. Or it might include teaching or training you are giving to others...
Could a framework like this be recycled and repurposed for a new look Engagement Challenge?
These broad subject areas could be used as writing guides, but still give writers considerable scope for free thinking and variety.
It would also be good to find some way to use the Engagement Challenge to encourage and reward the small band of developers who are working to bring improvements and new opportunities to the platform.
Taking this Better Life approach would though raise the question of how this would fit in with communities?
What Do You Think?
Are the Teaching Teams a good development for the Engagement Challenge?
Should there be further changes as well as the Teaching Teams?
Would writing themes like the Better Life themes be a good way to bring more freedom and variety to the Engagement Challenge?
If so how should they be managed and administered?
The Engagement Challenge is one of the long running 'economic instruments' that Steemit Inc uses to support and stimulate activity on Steem.
It would be good to find ways of using it more optimally as a marketing tool to generate higher quality content that might attract new people to the platform.
Using Steem for teaching and learning through the Teaching Teams is certainly a worthy goal but it might need some refinement.
Steemit Inc seems to be open to suggestions for improvements.
It is up to all of us to put forward our thoughts and ideas.
Thank you
Pennsif
OK, I'll bite!
What do we ultimately want the engagement challenge to accomplish? And while contemplating that what lessons can we pull on from the past?
If you think about it, this is really looking at the gamification of social media which is a large part of the entire core principle of Steemit.
What makes for actual participation? People love seeing their name in print on ”leaderboards” and ”rankings.” Perhaps this angle most success
@pennsif, I think you might remember what was perhaps the single most successful engagement initiative Steemit has seen, which was active some years back when @abh12345 ran the weekly ”Steemit Curation and Engagement Leagues.” It started as almost nothing but soon there were hundreds of participants every week and everybody’s efforts were ranked according a fairly complex algorithm that took into consideration original posts, comments, length of comments, ”conversations”, votes given, penalties for self-voting and more.
I vaguely recall some analysis run on the weekly total engagement, and sometimes the League participants would generate as much as 6-8% of all activity in the ecosystem. We’re talking may hundreds of posts and thousands of genuine comment. And people were mostly doing this mostly just to ”see their name in lights” because the prizes were actually pretty modest, all told, including SBI shares, modest liquid Steem and some modest week-long delegations.
We have a different structure now, and (perhaps) the benefit of having one of the top SC accounts sponsor such a thing with the value of 2-3 100% upvotes weekly, divided into smaller percentage prizes after some equitable formula.
The point here is that people used it, and they participated, and the initiative wasn’t overcomplicated by some huge number of required rules and what have you to follow. Even getting into the weekly list of the top-100 often required leaving upwards of 80-100 real comments and perhaps 3-4 top level posts.
I have watched some of the initiatives run in more recent times, and two things strike me:
Too many rules and regulations to follow, limiting original creativity. That tends to make things a bit formulaic, and dull, after a while.
Not really that oriented to actual interaction between users. That lowers the sense of ”being part of” something… and that also becomes boring.
If part of the objective is to present a thriving community to the greater world, formulaic is not the answer.
Those are just some initial thoughts…
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La gran cantidad de reglas lleva a matar la creatividad, pues te atan las manos para escribir libremente.
Bendiciones.
Hola pennsif, un gusto saludarte y dejar mi opinión por acá, lo hago con todo el respeto del mundo y con mi punto de vista, es mi opinión al 100 %.
Para mi los Steemit Engagement Challenge no son agradables, ya el tiempo de esta dinámica paso y murió para mí, es aburrido, es repetitivo, prefiero no publicar a participar en estas dinámicas.
Cada temporada los números de participaciones son menores y los que participan se puede ver su desánimo, ya ni provoca leer una publicación que tenga que ver con los retos.
Los equipos de enseñanza son un total fracaso, he podido ver que estas tareas son demasiado exigentes y que participan muy pocos, se requiere mucho tiempo para participar y como sabemos los votos no están garantizados, eso lleva a preferir no participar y mejor uno dedica su tiempo valioso a otra cosa.
Si es cierto que las restricciones, reglas y tantas cosas de los retos es fastidioso y nos encierra, reciclar Better Life con steem es muy buena idea, nos liberaría, nos daría libertad para escribir sobre nosotros mismos.
Con las etiquetas es suficiente para que estas publicaciones sean apoyadas, no importa en que comunidad se publiquen, siempre digo que lo que más debe mejorar es la curación, se deben diversificar los votos de Sc01 y Sc02, seria genial que existan dos cuentas con el poder de Sc02 para apoyar a más usuarios.
Los debates son la mejor manera de ver que esta funcionando y que no, los retos funcionaron en su momento pero ya caduco, los equipos de enseñanza no funcionaron, son un total fracaso.
Bendiciones para todos.
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For a writer, the most important thing is the freedom to write. And on a decentralized platform, this aspect is like a question mark, where you are forced to write within a limited circle. As far as engagement is concerned, it's not possible without comments.
But comments should be such that one wants to respond to them and have further discussions (2-layer or 3-layer comments). The current engagement challenge and the teaching team's experience are proof that people are forced to comment (just to get support) even when they don't want to. And the post they are commenting on is not according to their psychology.
Now, as far as the engagement challenge is concerned, should it continue or not, and is the teaching team's initiative effective or not? In my opinion, the engagement challenge should be stopped now because it only benefits a few communities and writers. And to participate in the challenge, one has to follow the community rules and the tags generated by them, which is mandatory.
In my opinion, along with thediarygame and 'Better Life with Steem' topics, Steemit Inc. should start a new initiative with more topics (like CreativeCorner, FunFacts, BehindTheScenes, Q and A, HowTo ,DidYouKnow, VisualQuest ) that have their own specific tags. For example, A post can be shared with 4 main tags, such as #learnwithsteem, #steemexclusive, #countrytag, and #club5050,75,100. In which user can change the first tag, according to topics from the announced tags.
This way, users will have the freedom to post in any community they want, and by this all communities will be involved.
In every community, there are moderators who will moderate posts. As Steemitblog will announce specific Tags, community moderators will not face much difficulties in moderating those posts.
As for support, it can be made very easy. To highlight high-ranked posts, the services of Respected Steem Representatives can be utilized. They can recommend better posts for SC01 and SC02 votes. Many communities also have booming support, Communities can recommend good posts for booming votes. And for the curation of other posts, Respected Community Curators are also available.
And there's another idea. If the voting percentage of SC01 and SC02 can be reduced, like currently 30 to 66% vote is cast on a post. By reducing it to 20-45%, More Posts can support daily. This way, users will be happy, and no need for more big accounts.
You may disagree with my views, but I have shared these ideas keeping in mind the psychology of writers. However, if my comments have hurt anyone's feelings, I apologize.
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Saludos, todos tus puntos son los que realmente han llevado a los retos a ser fastidiosos, tediosos y a tener pocas participaciones.
Un ganador de un reto recibe un voto de 30%, no estoy de acuerdo que ese porcentaje sea menor, ahora el porcentaje a una comunidad que organiza es del 66 % ese si puede bajar para así apoyar a mas usuarios.
Bendiciones.
Saludos cordiales les voy a compartir mis pensamientos como una usuaria que solo crea contenido, se puede decir que veo los toros desde lejos.
Aunque yo participo en los equipos de enseñanza sobre todo el de gastronomía he notado poca participación, posiblemente porque necesitas mucho tiempo para preparar tu publicación, si tienes otras actividades se hace difícil a menos que tu tiempo sea exclusivo de steemit , creo que esa puede ser una razón porque los usuarios prefieren concurso que no requiere tanto tiempo. ( ojo es mi pensamiento)
Los desafíos es como todo llega un momento que se vuelve más de lo mismo y puede llegar al aburrimiento incluso hay algunos que son prácticamente lo mismo con otro nombre, la regla de los 5 comentarios para ganar es una desventaja para los nuevos usuarios, que se sentiran motivados si seleccionan su publicación.
Creo que con tantos problemas de salud mental enfocarse en el bienestar puede ser una buena opción, a los desafíos hay que darle otro enfoque que sea atractivo para todos
Es mi humilde opinión,
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So far we have been very happy with the Steemit Engagement Challenge. we had fun there and we could get support and get to know more people there, interesting topics and also we could be creative without limits there. SEC with a combined teaching team makes SEC even more interesting to follow, I really like all the themes, but when I want to participate, there are several obstacles;
To be honest, sir, the challenge this time for me, who only comes from the village (ordinary people), is a little difficult, we like learning and we are happy with every challenge we take part in. This is a new innovation and it may take time to adjust to it. Thank you steemit team for thinking about us all this time.
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Hi,
I was waiting for this debate as I also saw that the number of participants in the Steemit engagement challenge reduced, especially in teaching teams.
I think that was a good initiative, but the topic selections weren't good & and not all users knew about it. Most users don't even know about CSS, spreadsheets or electronics. I can't participate in teaching teams tasks because I don't have much knowledge as I belonged to medical field. As a doctor we don't study about spreadsheets, CSS or electronics. So, I must say idea was good but topic selection weren't according to users choice.
Maybe Steemit Team also made some changes as we have seen less participation of users in teaching team tasks.
I would support this idea as there are variety of topics for users to share their participation. Even this will also increase users engagement & maximum users share posts according to their topic of interest. Because there are some common topic that are related to our daily life & in which we are expert.
I think if a better life with steem initiative would be like users can share their content in any community but there should be a specific tags to find their posts, they don't have to follow any community rules because these topics can be shared on their blogs. This was my opinion. I hope we should see more positive changes in the coming days.
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I agree with that special tag plus post in a community that makes sense (topic content or writing style)
Creo que hay un consenso general en que los desafíos ya se agotaron en el formato actual.
Los equipos de enseñanza están bien, creo que son personas bien capacitadas, sin embargo, las tareas son muy exigentes y requieren tiempo. Creo que debe aligerarse la enseñanza a algo más básico.
Debe abrirse un abanico de posibilidades para los escritores libres, abrir debates o discusiones en torno a un tema, dinámicas menos tediosas y mas eficaces.
Las curaciones deben concentrarse en post de calidad, la comparaciones son inevitables, por lo que todos reconocemos cuando un post es de mayor calidad que otro pero no se refleja en el apoyo, debe haber un equilibrio.
Saludos y feliz día.
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Hi @pennsif,
my name is @ilnegro and I voted your post using steem-fanbase.com.
Come and visit Italy Community