💬 Expanding the boundaries of community coordination and online discussion
Make great communities with financial inclusion
👆 Does anybody recognise these words?
👇 Or these?
Our vision is ... a vibrant communities web app, expanding the boundaries of community coordination and online discussion by incorporating cryptocurrency as incentives.
If you didn't know, the top one is Steemit.com's Mission Statement. The bottom one is the 1st half of their vision.
👇 How about this one?
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
This one is the definition of Social Media.
So let's break these things down a bit...
A vibrant communities web app
In @papi.mati's latest list of active communities, he listed 124 communities. All with hundreds, if not thousands of active users. World of Xpilar currently lists 635 active posters.
That's a vibrant set of communities so a tick in that box ✅
Expanding the boundaries of community coordination and online discussion
So we've got active users and plenty of content being created so let's see what we have in the way of "online discussion".
How can we measure online discussion?
The best metric I can think of, is comments. So with World of Xpilar being as active as it is, I decided to look at 2 days worth of posts, all older than 2 days (to allow time for them to be seen and receive comments) and see what we have in the way of "online discussion".
My sample included 146 posts - I looked at sequential posts so that there wasn't a bias towards rewards or comments that I could see. The posts were from 2 weekdays as I believe that weekends are generally quieter.
Can you guess how many non-author comments there were?
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Source
👆 There's only an image here because if you just put a number, it starts a numbered list. Which is pretty annoying.
Is that good? That's less than 1 comment per post which doesn't strike me as great - So I decided to dig deeper.
If I removed all of the comments from bidvotes, bots and moderators, what do you think this number drops to?
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That's roughly 1 comment for every 3 posts and over 2/3rds of the comments are by bidbots and moderators. In my opinion, these aren't bad posts. They're not lazy or hurried, many are long and have received a great deal of effort from their author.
Not really expanding boundaries of community coordination and online discussion ❎
Digging Even Deeper
I'm not done yet though....
I categorised these comments into;
- low value (fewer than 10 words)
- medium-low value (10 - 50 words)
- medium-high value (50-100 words)
- high value (100+ words).
I like my hidden contests so I'm giving away 5 Steem to the person who can guess closest to how these 55 comments are distributed within the above 4 categories. Answers will be shared at some point - probably hidden within another one of my posts.
Here's a template that you can copy and paste with your guess:
Low Value -
Medium-Low Value -
Medium-High Value -
High Value -
One entry per user - multiple accounts entering by a single user will probably get a label of some sort which will include one of these 👉 🚩
So What?
I believe this is where we need to rethink how we engage with our communities. The moderators of this community have supported users for a long time, far longer than I've been around for but it looks like a rather one-sided relationship to me. In the past 2 weeks @worldofxpilar has supported 180 authors (many multiple times) and according to the above calculations, fewer than 60 of them have contributed anything beyond their own posts.
Does something need to change? Is @worldofxpilar and its moderators being too generous to those who take but give little back? Should we focus our support on those users who interact with the World of Xpilar community beyond their own posts? Or am I expecting too much from a Social Media Platform that doesn't seem to be very sociable?
All views expressed are my own and not necessarily shared by other moderators
Please Share Your Thoughts
As always, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts so please comment below.
Statistically speaking, I have a 1 in 3 chance of somebody commenting 🤔
I agree that the social component of our platform (and, sadly, our community) is quite low.
Many users come here not for communication, but for the opportunity to replenish their modest budget. The platform rules allow this and I would not condemn their actions. Many participants live near the poverty line (on one side or the other). For this category of users, there is only one opportunity to increase the activity in the comments - it should be economically profitable to comment.
There are some users for whom social status is important, signs of recognition of their personality. There are also quite a few such users, and even those who came to earn money are sensitive to social status. The rating system partially solves this problem, but it is almost impossible for a beginner to earn a high rating. If for his activity in the comments he will receive a certain sign (signs of varying degrees of status are possible), then this can become a good incentive for the socialization of the community.
The increased activity in the comments will keep those users in the community who care about real feedback. There are people who do not receive not only upvotes for their posts, but even simple comments. I'm not talking about the discussions under the posts. This feedback is especially important for creative people who post the results of their creativity.
It is very correct that you raise this topic. Nobody knows ready-made solutions. But if a movement begins around comments in the form of rewards, status icons, contests ... if comments come alive and multiply ... users will gradually get used to this new activity. Who knows, maybe this will be a new growth point for the community and the platform as a whole.
That's absolutely true and the behaviour I'm hoping to highlight won't be seen by the people who needs to see it. As can be seen by this comment - https://steemit.com/hive-185836/@azianthony/r14ja0 - I await his response as to whether he's taking the piss or not but having read all of his other comments, it looks like that's just what he does. And this is a user that's recently received @worldofxpilar support. Is it ironic that a post about no comments / crap comments receives a crap comment?
I think a solution that will work is the one we've discussed on Discord. It doesn't penalise those that choose to ignore the activities of others, but we can use it to increase the rewards to those who take the time and effort in making this community a social affair. It also covers your point regarding "social status". It should be a big win for everybody - increased post engagement, increased status and increased sense of recognition.
💬
I think this azianthony ... doesn't take the trouble of thinking. Do not pay any attention to him. Strange behavior for a beginner, unless it is intentional.
You're right, punishing your lack of social activity will not be successful. This will most likely cause a negative reaction. Ignoring such users against the background of supporting active users will have a greater positive result. Those who are active in posts and comments deserve more attention and rightfully so. If they also see an increase in their social status, their motivation can only increase.
The social component of the platform and the community is very important for development. This will be more attractive to serious investors.
This is a good point and I think it's often forgotten. As users, we're so focussed on the rewards that we can achieve today, that we forget that we have the power to make the entire platform better, worth more and make tomorrow's rewards far more significant.
I agree, this is an important point. It refers to a development strategy.
👍
In general we all have to think why we and other users are here. I agree with @bambuka many are hear for financial reasons. Just seeing how people advertise it outside, many say: Do a post and you will be rewarded, get Steem that will turned into cash. Having many communities from developing countries it is understandable that they are here for earning for living and that is a reason why many new communities created to get into Support Program and earn.
Commenting is a communication, sharing our thoughts, ideas and maybe supporting someone's blog because it is great.
I still think that there are many interesting people who perhaps not commenting much but still deserved to be supported.
I know it from me, there are some days I just have no time for commenting because of the nature of my work. Luckily me and my hubby we are two of us managing our accounts and even then he also often has no time too. But that does not mean that we are not interested we just have no time.
Some people if they decided to dedicate themselves to Steemit and blogging they will invest their time for both posting and commenting. But otherwise the rest, I do not know and I have really no clue how to help.
Many of our Visual Art community are professional Artists and they are busy and often do not comment much but without them our platform will lose a lot, as those people have their reputation well known to real Art communities and we should make sure that they are here and keep being around.
You post is nominated for „Wold of xpilar“ Community Support Program, @booming account upvote. Only the posts that are not cross posted, original and posted from community page are eligible. If your post gets approval, then you get upvote within few days. Good luck!
I understand and agree with everything you say - there's certainly a balance to be had between keeping valuable contributors and promoting valuable engagement. (I also think that you could go for a day, week, month or more without commenting and your contribution and desire for Steemit to succeed would not be questioned (in a good way 🙂))
My fear as things currently stand though is that...
If Steemit is an art gallery and community moderators are volunteers working at the gallery...
We have a lot of artists coming in, hanging up their work and then leaving without so much as looking at (or noticing) the other art in the gallery...
Volunteers leave a note to compliment the artist (which may or may not be acknowledged). There might be an occasional visitor who comes in to look at and discuss the art but they don't stay for long because there's nobody to discuss it with. They might return at a later date and hang their own art up alongside everybody else's.
I appreciate this isn't an ideal analogy and paints a pretty bleak picture (pun intended).
As somebody who values the engagement, when I take the time to comment on somebody's post, and even go to effort of promoting one of their posts within one of my own and receive nothing in response (and I see that they've had the time to write 3 more long posts in the mean time), a lack of time certainly isn't a reason I accept. But I digress...
There's room for every type of user who comes to Steemit - my belief is that it's those who take the time to look at other artists work and then take the time to stay and discuss it that should be served the champagne and canopes.
Thank you for the nomination 👍
My forecast:
Low Value -
Medium-Low Value - 55
Medium-High Value - 0
High Value - 0
In the previous discussion, I was almost convinced that the absence of comments is normal, because comments are not profitable. However, the simple creation of dozens of posts is like working on a conveyor belt. Lively discussion, sharing of opinions is needed. Without this, I would not have understood the principles of this platform. When I found out about Steemit I was told it was the same as Reddit. Reddit is a cesspool where everyone distributes someone else's content. So I started my journey by spreading other people's posts. Fortunately, I was immediately explained what Steemit is. After that I had to think for a while about what to write. All the way here I was told how to do this or that more effectively. I always listen to useful advice. Therefore, I am convinced that only in the discussion can the goal be achieved.
Yes, it takes time to get in contact with all the important information to know about this platform, which is also a different kind of technology and part of a diverse economy.
I have been through different periods, groups, curators, hard forks, the only thing I have for sure is I need to enjoy what I share in content and comments, take good care of the investment in time and wallet value, and the rest is not in my hands!
This is exactly what I do. I love hiking, I love to travel. I also like to write stories, although I manage to do it in my native language, I do not have enough knowledge of English to write a good story. But I try.
I write posts about what I love. Sometimes these posts find their reader, sometimes not. This is normal. I love what I do.
👍 And it's great to see you getting stuck in and enjoying what you're writing about. I remember you asking in your fairly early days what you should write about and were experimenting a lot in the hope of "hitting the spot" - I always think that if you're enjoying yourself and what you're writing about, you'll find your home here.
I used to have my own blog. But later the cost of maintaining it became greater than the income from it and I closed it. But I loved writing something. So at Steemit, I went back to my favorite thing. It's a hobby, and if that hobby ever brings in extra income, it will be even better.
Then he'll miss out on all of the great support from WoX 😉
True, it was rude. I didn't think that WoX accepts that kind of content. I don't know why but in my head it's still photo/artistic community only.
A great approach and one that should never leave you disappointed.
We are at the same spot about English, but this has been a challenge for me, to make me understand without constantly recurring to the translator! :)
I think we are creating our chest of experiences, those we enjoy and make the effort to express. In my opinion this is a good place!!
I agree, this is a very good place. Even the fact that after a long break you still came back here shows that this is a great place.
I'm also tempted to come here and make a post. It is a pity that I am not an artist, but everyone can find their place here.
I am a beginner and do not earn any money yet. However, I still get a lot of pleasure from writing, reading and commenting on this platform. I am very glad that the main purpose of my activity here is not money.
That's all is needed! With time, your pleasure for writing and the possibility to connect with people around the world will bring all the rest!!
Glad to meet you here on this sea, @O1eh! All the best for the journey!!
Thank you, @leveuf.
It often takes a long time to reach this point and I think a lot of people give up before then. They're also the things we're in control of - it's the things that we're not in control of (the lack of engagement with good quality posts for example) that can frustrate and often disappoint.
Yes, it's a long process!! There's so many things to learn about the process of posting and managing your account/wallet. There are the other applications, such as discord or the exchanges.
Like you, I think our communication skills can bring us to the right connections, places and opportunities. Developing the habit to comment and read comments create the space for those interactions.
Many great posts were and will be undervalued (the seven-day window in my opinion pressure the continuous flow of posts), there's where the user need to consider the balance of time, work and strategies to create content and the overall progress of the account over the time (sometimes good posts are rewarded in other more recent posts, also the authors can reference the work in any time).
I trust we can improve the engagement in WOX with the ideas you are promoting!!
Fingers crossed 🤞
Yes, I sometimes do this - It's more profitable for a user to have their post upvoted than a comment (referencing your point in your other reply) so if I decide that I like somebody, I might upvote a few of their post 🙂
I know with your skills and all the creativity, talent and good people in the WOX, we'll figure out ways to incentivize those spicy discussions! For sure gamification of the engagement is a good way to create interest, relationships, development and economic value. It has always been a difficult task here on Steem, but where there are efforts there will be fruits.
I'll do my best, that's all you can ask 😆
And I think it always will be because of the financial motivation and the way rewards work. I've read a lot of good suggestions since I joined about how the reward algorithm should change but it's clear that there's little appetite from the powers that be for this to happen. So we have to work with what we've got.
Unlike other communities, World of Xpilar has the voting power to support itself and as I've written above, has perhaps been too generous providing votes to people who post their content and then leave. The risk of course is that great authors / photographers / artists move to another community or leave the platform altogether so we need to decide if that's a risk worth accepting. But to do that, we need to decide what we want our community to be.
Is it a stage for people to stand upon and tell you what they want you to hear?
Or is it a round table where everybody shares and interacts?
I currently feel it's more of the former when (in my opinion) it should be the latter.
This could be said also about the diverse community in WOX. I think the question is how we improve the engagement in the community. We need to find ways to invite more than to impose. Find the good commenters first, recognize them/value their work. This group surely will provide confidence to others to join. Recognize the work of great authors, whom provide exemplary skills/treatment of their content, provide them with good commenters to catch their attention on the interactions in the community (those supported by Art-Venture for example).
Promote voting in comments (the most difficult part). Here the blockchain rules don't help as comments produce less curation rewards (as they regularly don't reach high value $) and cannot be voted by curation trails. Many collective strategies could be implemented but need SP support. (I would study the promotion of the use of the @dustsweeper service in the community, so the users can help with those author and curation rewards in the comments).
I find some people tend to gather around nationalities and comment accordingly, maybe we can play a little with that, promoting those interactions and extending the visits to other countries. "The week of Russia", "The week of Nigeria", "The week of Venezuela", and so on... Just an idea.
Of course, we will find those users that just want to abuse, to take and don't to improve their journeys on the community or in the platform.
I think setting steps of a process will help us find the answer for the questions you've asked!
I hope that with the approach that I've proposed that this won't be possible as it will be too much effort - people always find a way though!
I'm sure we'll learn, adapt and experiment with this a lot - we'll be very lucky if this works and we're successful with it straight away.
Yes!! It's trial and error until we know the best ways!
Best vibes for this and all the projects, @The-Gorilla!!
Hello @the-gorilla and the rest of chatters.
I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of the post and the response of all the participants. I am of the opinion that sharing knowledge is practically the only way for us as a human species to evolve, and this conversation corroborates that.
I have seen diverse opinions, and all of them have contributed something new and different to the proposed topic, so I will try to give my own.
In one way or another, all participants are investors, some on a small scale, some on a medium scale, and the fewest on a large scale. This means that we all expect to receive some reward for our time on the platform, which in turn is a reflection of how our society works. On the one hand there are hordes of mostly young people, armed with their mobile phones trying to scrape a few cents in the shortest possible time. On the other hand we have groups of quieter 'investors' who go from one contest to another, participating more or less in some activity, but who practically never stop to answer except to say thank you and little else. Finally, I note that there is a small group that tends to be loyal to its community, that occasionally goes out to see other groups, but that spends most of its time in a fixed community. It would be childish to lump everyone into these three categories, but in my opinion the vast majority of users fit more or less into them.
From simple observation and a bit of intuition, I deduce that the first group, those who want a quick buck, have no future, especially if, as some of them do, they cheat to get it.
The second group are gradually doing things. Most of them, in a lively way, get some satisfactory reward and enjoy publishing their daily life or, in the case of creative people, some good photos, verses or drawings. Generally speaking, they don't have many collective concerns.
And then there is the third group, those who have an affinity to a community, commit themselves to the functioning of the community and make others feel 'protected'. I consider this way of functioning in Steemit to be the best long-term investment.
But as in almost everything there is a 'but', and that 'but' is in the time that everyone has available. In my particular case, and I extend this to my partner who also participates, I would love to be able to dedicate much more time to the community than I do, but it is impossible, and I certainly have tried. Both are forms of participation and both are necessary, but as has been said before, the vast majority prefer to post rather than comment. As investors it is more profitable. The solution? I imagine it is technically complicated, but comments should be encouraged with more rewards.
With regard to other aspects that can be improved, and without forgetting that we are investors, there are more or less ethical ways of being rewarded. We have seen cases of moderators and country representatives buying votes in nutbox and posting in another community because it is more numerous and will have more prizes, and also with very low quality entries. I think that as a moderator you should maintain a minimum of composure and ethics. A moderator with an account worth many dollars, it is unethical to participate in tiny contests where the maximum prize is 3 steems. Of course it's not illegal, but it sure isn't ethical. But... we are all investors, and therein lies part of the problem.
Well, I've had enough of this. A thousand thanks to the creator of the debate and to all the participants @bambuka, @stef1, @papi-mati, and the rest. Everything that has been said has been a great contribution, so let's keep the debate going!
I love to participate! But I need time...
Thanks for the considered response - Despite its simplicity, I think your categorisation works and I'd certainly like to tap into and increase the third group.
I've often thought that the main problem with Steemit lies within the main reason that many are here - money. No matter the situation, where there is money, the corruption finds a way of getting involved. And perhaps for this reason, a social media platform the monetises its users in this way will never truly be a social media platform. It will always be primarily a tradeable cryptocurrency that will attract users wanting to mine more coins - but instead of algorithms or processing power mining the coins, it's done through content creation and curation.
In previous weeks or months I committed myself to making a lot of comments on posts around different communities responding to comments to make it as interactive for me as possible. Firstly I used to enjoy it a lot cause I knew those who will reply me to make the conversation interesting.
You were one of them and I generally like responding to your posts cause you will by all means come back and reply and then I reply so that it becomes interesting. But part from you and then a few people I know personally, it seems then whole steemit community is scared of replying to comments; I don’t know if they don’t want their posts to be filled with a lot of comments or not. Because I sometimes make close to 15 or 20 comments on posts per day but I can only get 5 or 7 replies on those comments I make and I can promise you that 50% of these replies will be thank you.
Sometimes you can even ask a question in your comment but the users would generally ignore it or will not answer it. This days I’ve lost interest on even commenting in my friends posts because even though I know them personally off of steemit they still make it boring cause they also reply you by saying thank you.
For me the reason why most people loose interest in commenting and going through people posts is that they do not get the same energy that they give back and it’s sometimes really hurtful and annoying. Some don’t reply to your posts but they still tag you in there posts. The annoying past about all this is that they tag you to come and comment and vote and then when you comment and vote they inturn reply you by saying thank you and they do not even show the same energy on your posts.
I remember so communities saying they will pay more attention to users who make comments and take time to read others posts but trust me that doesn’t work, I have even realised that is those that do not participate in these things that get the most support on the platform or in those communities.
I'll always do my best to reply - I know how frustrating it can be when you take the time to read a post, comment on it and then get completely ignored.
We're going to launch a new initiative in WOX starting tomorrow which will hopefully encourage more engagement - I hope it does work (the moderators have about 350,000 combined voting power so it should get some attention) as we'll be increasing the visibility of users to comment on others posts in the hope that they'll get read and upvoted more. We'll wait and see - a lot of thought's gone into it so I really hope it works!
I think this initiative will go a long way and help users on the platform. Then this initiative will even make me visit the WOX community more to participate in this initiative.
🤞 Fingers crossed.
I think generally I don't comment on posts as well. When I started steemit I used to give comments quite a lot especially in worldoffootball but a lot of users didn't reply and it kind of pushed me to stop. The engagement here as rightly pointed out is very low but we have to remeber that most of us do not even read the posts we upvote. I have a friend on this platform that always shares 1 comment and that is "Good post bro. Your presentation is very good" but always wants you to upvote his posts.
I don't blame some of the users because what drove them here is the rewards which is something a lot of promoters hammer on when trying to recruit so when they do end up signing up, they're only focussed on making posts which isn't bad at all but they are those that do not even reply to comments given on their posts.
It won't be easy to get the community interaction we expect and want but I it gets better.
I think that's happened to a lot of people when they join. They try to interact with people but so many are only interested in their own little world and end up just giving up. I think that the few people who do continue to comment and reply tend to do better in the long term - if they hang around long enough. Fingers crossed we can get something going here - the moderators in this community have roughly 350,000 combined Power so there's certainly potential for us to reward people (for what they should be doing anyway).