The Steemit Guide to Homesteading : a Global Adventure in Collaborative Curation
One of the aspects of steemit that makes me sad is the ephemeral nature of the platform.
Everything is so shortlived. It is like Twitter with a thousand characters.
This to me is at odds with the goal of steemit to promote, encourage and reward quality content.
The homesteading community on steemit is a perfect example of this issue.
Homesteaders have spent many thousands of hours researching, writing, formatting and photographing excellent posts that in the majority of cases are read and voted on by only a couple of dozen people at most.
The majority of those views will happen in the first 24 - 48 hours, then quite rapidly those posts drift into obscurity never to be seen again.
Of course they will exist on the blockchain and can be discovered at any time by search engines. But in the most part that won't happen.
This is such a shameful waste.
Quite often I remember an article I want to look at again but even with AskSteem.com it is usually very difficult to find a specific post.
Although steemit is built around the posting of quality content, it certainly is not designed around the finding of content.
At the moment I just store the links to my favourite articles in a spreadsheet. But that is just for me.
Therefore I want to try an experiment in meta-curation.
I want to compile The Steemit Guide to Homesteading as an ever evolving reference to all the best, most informative and well produced posts on all aspects of homesteading.
The limitations of steemit - particularly the 7 day edit rule - will make this quite challenging. But with a bit of nifty footwork I think we can make it work.
My plan is to produce a Master Index Post linking to individual posts for each of the main homesteading subject areas.
Those Subject Posts would contain a brief introduction to the subject and then links to the best posts on the subject. The Subject Posts might also contain links to the key organisations and relevant books.
By their very nature these Subject Posts will need to be updated regularly, and reposted, as new posts appear that are worthy of inclusion. The Master Index Post would have to be regularly reposted to keep up with the changes to the Subject Posts.
This might seem a bit cumbersome but I do want to keep the Guide within the steemit platform rather than taking it to a more manageable third party site.
Initially I would edit the Master Index Post and the Subject Posts. But I am hoping that as the project evolves 'subject specialists' might be found who could take on the updating of their particular Subject Post.
While I read a significant number of homesteading posts, I am sure there are many I miss. So I will be looking for members of the homesteading community to track down and put forward posts in the comments of each Subject Post that they think should be included.
To encourage this curation effort I will be upvoting as much as I can people who submit suitable posts for consideration.
There will of course need to be selectivity about which posts are included. There would be some basic criteria a post must meet for inclusion. For example it must be original, it must have images sourced, it must contain a certain amount of text and not just a YouTube link etc.
I am wondering if it should be that people can only submit other people's posts for inclusion as a first line of filtering. But I am undecided on this - what do you think?
The age of the posts would not matter. If they are more than 7 days old they could not benefit from any more upvotes arising from inclusion in the Guide. The authors could gain however from the general exposure to their blogs.
The Steemit Guide to Homesteading : Subject Headings
As a starting point these are the main Subject headings for the Guide. It is likely that many of these will need to be split into second level Subject Pages quite quickly as more posts are found.
Please let me know in the comments if I have missed anything obvious.
General
Finance
Land
Building & Shelter – Construction
Energy
Water
Food Production – Growing
Food Production – Livestock / Beekeeping
Food Production – Preservation / Canning
Food Production – Bread / Dairy / Fermented Foods
Health & Medical
Crafts - Spinning, Weaving, Knitting, Soapmaking
What do you think of this idea?
Is it workable? Is it worthwhile? Any ideas for improvement?
You might also be interested in some of my other posts :
Two hundred cabbage plants and a couple of beautiful alpacas
Living in my own little Steemtopia : why I don't Self UpVote
Homesteaders & Preppers on steemit - 230 members and rising - v9 [08 Oct '17]
SteemTowns - connecting the virtual with the reality - would it be possible?
[graphic by @pennsif]
What a great idea! Organizational projects like this can really give the homestead community a boost! Im in for upvotes and maybe more ;p
I think conceptually its a great idea. Im a newbie here for the most part and as such have no clue how it works or if it will work. I read the post but admittedly dont understand most of it. I am a homesteader (Renovating a homestead currently to retire on), but my blog is mainly creative writing, so Im not sure I would even be a natural part of it. Again though, I think its a great idea and look forward to watching it develop. If there is anything I can do to help promote it or move it forward please let me know. I follow your page and love what you do content wise. thanks
Glad you like the idea. It will likely evolve in structure as we begin to set it up. It should then become more apparent how it works.
This is a great idea! It would help to keep quality content from falling to the bottom of the many, many articles. I think that people nominating an article/post is a good idea and seeing if others agree. I have been trying to think of some ideas about searching content from users on steemit, but I am not sure who to make the suggestions to or if they are even feasible options.
Thank you for your support with the idea - glad you like it.
Maybe start a tag for it? How do we even send each other things around here?
I am super into this and will lend a hand sourcing great articles! I dunno if I can do much organizing, its not really my strong suit.
That could be a good idea to use a tag - maybe #homesteadguide ?
If you need to send me anything you can either post a comment on one of my posts, or you can find me in Discord or in the Homesteaders Slack group :
hello @pennsif
this is an amazing idea but you do not need to go that far
that is basically the reason I created the homesteading forum on chainbb: https://chainbb.com/f/homesteading
now the nifty thing about chainbb is that the most basically the posts at the top of the forum is the one that has been commented on the last... and this has nothing to do with the age of the post. So basically if we keep a few posts alive with comments they would stay at the top of the forum
and I guess we will be getting a sticky option in the future and there we can make one master post as well
and as a subject/subcategory you might add urban homesteading for those of us without land but with the mentality, lol
I really really like this idea! I have a few article that may be worthy of such a reference.
My current one is on my composting outhouse. https://steemit.com/offgrid/@themerrylotus/my-composting-outhouse-toilet It's a series of Q & A's about the system I use.
This is another composting toilet article that is chalk full of excellent references. The system is different than mine and gives other options. It's a must read for anyone considering a composting toilet. https://steemit.com/homesteading/@mericanhomestead/humanure-and-composting-toilet-safety-facts-save-major-money-avoiding-septic-systems
Another is an explanation of the terms cordwood or a rick of wood and how to ensure you're not getting ripped off. https://steemit.com/homesteading/@themerrylotus/so-what-exactly-is-a-cord-or-rick-of-wood
Another would be 5 things to consider before buying land. These are lessons I learned the hard way. Of course those are the ones we remember, haha. https://steemit.com/homesteading/@themerrylotus/5-things-to-do-or-consider-when-buying-land
With all the great articles out there, I realize mine might not make the cut. :)
I am also amazed at the number of like minds and quality of information that gets posted in the homesteading section. I am sure there is tons of stuff I won't ever see because I don't happen to be on Steemit when it gets posted.
A master list occasionally re-posted isn't that bad of an option.
Hosting the list elsewhere and linking to it is another option. Maybe Quarterly update posts could be made on Steemit to remind people of the list and let them know what has changed?
Agreed on the need for a searchable reference library! I would love to see something like this developed internally on Steemit, but I'm not a developer, so I have no idea if it's feasible.
From my experience to date, collaborative efforts like this have had to use off site programs like GoogleDocs, companion apps like steemd, or chat/message programs like Discord or Basecamp. I would be thrilled if Steemit could remedy the person-to-person communication lack, too. Maybe the promised 'community' feature will solve these issues and allow members to actually organize and launch efforts like yours.
Good thinking and thanks for identifying these resources as valuable!
I think this is a great idea. I wanted to do something similar for my own posts - create an index page for specific projects I have going on so I can then update them. BUT...I lost favour in that idea when I remembered we can only edit for 7 days.
I definitely think this is something that you be started. It's just a shame there's no way to build a constant, index page because I'm assuming it'll have to be reposted every week to prevent it moving out of the editing timeline.
If we had a Wiki page it could be an ever evolving page with subsections we could add/edit as we wanted.