What if we took the visualization of money out of Steem?
I was as having a conversation over in SteemChat go visit it here. I know this has been brought up before in many conversations in the 3 years I've been here, in many different forms. I thought I'd bring up my thoughts on it and maybe a new angle.
We all like MONEY, I get it as it's ingrained in our DNA to seek it and want it. It is why we are here (for most of us) , right? My questions are why do we have to show it off? I know early on this was one of SteemIt,Inc. marketing apparatus to woo the masses here. This is #NewSteem. Why not move the values into our wallets - have a listing of what the current value of your post in a tab or something. Why does everyone have to see what your post is earning? The dollar sign could be replaced by a "hot" meter graphic. Meaning the post is starting to trend. I don't know. Just throwing ideas out there.
The reason I bring it up is most people make their decision not so much on the content being provided, but how much the post is currently worth. I'll ride the rewards to earn more rewards. If they don't know how the post is doing they will have to adjust their thinking and behavior to actually thinking, I like this content, therefore, I'll support it (they actually might read it?).
Now I don't purport to be a math expert, on whether this affects investors willing to get into Steem if they don't know what they are getting in terms of ROI on curation ( Not like Whales are curating ), so my thinking might be totally in left-field. It just occurred to me true "contest discovery" , or even "quality content" is all subjective because, as in reality, those two are really just about what you like to see, instead of trying to accommodate everyone and their wants in the content they are seeking. I believe it should be ONLY about what you like to see and have this content served up as such. Our mindset is on the MONEY, not what we like to read , or do (dapps). I'd like to have #newsteem be more about the community and all the tools we provide and not so much about the money.
I'm just saying remove the dollar signs, tuck them away and you'll get a different type of discovery and different type of user I think. I'll go by why I'm here and what I want to do.
I know what I want to do. I want to read the content I like, I want to upvote /downvote the content I read and I want to know my investment is working for me. All three of these things can still remain intact if you throw away the $ dollar sign visuals on the UI for Steemit.com. I'm also realistic as I know that will never happen. We sort of see it in tribes as they have the tokens amount as the visualization instead of the $ amount.
NOW with that said UPVOTE this, or downvote it so I can get my Money! :)
Thanks for reading.
QA
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I think that at the very least swapping out $ with STEEM would be one step towards the solution: abstracting away from the money.
In a way, Steem is almost TOO transparent. Displaying the $ amount means that the dollars will get measured and what gets measured gets focused on.
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Great points. Probably good to go towards some other representation of views rather than dollar signs..
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I know people have behavioral changes based on visuals. The money sign I'm pretty sure creates a different reaction. If you think about it people on F.B are just "liking" things based on no monetary value so they are sort of forced into reading it.
I think a good compromise would be to have an option to display rewards with the default option being to NOT show them, then you can go into your settings and turn them on. Just small little UX changes like that make a huge difference.
Posted using Partiko iOS
I agree even an option have it displayed or not would be nice. I'm mostly going what I used to do in #oldsteem was upvote a piece of content because it was carrying a high post value with the hope of capturing some vs. what the hell was in it. I confess, I'm guilty. Even if it's just for a human experiment it would be cool to do.
$rewarding 100
The reward of this comment goes 100 % to the author steemitqa. This is done by setting the beneficiaries of this comment to 100 %.
I’d like to see the downvote childishness eliminated, that’s my personal hiccup with Steemit, always has been it makes for a very unfriendly place, more so, when it’s done with frivolous intentions. I’m okay with downvotes, because of plagiarism, but because someone is bitter, the post is making too much or because of some personal vendetta as I have seen some do on other’s projects is one of the hiccups that makes Steemit unfriendly. So I can’t say the money factor is a huge influence for me to stay.
I do think @coquinlimited downvotes has a place in all this. I never did much of it till the free downvotes have come about. It might seem like its "ill will" toward the individual your downvoting, but if you have true intention to prevent bid bot abuse, plagiarism like you mentioned it should remain. I believe WLS ditched downvotes and its a clusterfuck. I think money was def. an influence when it was higher, but even today ( w/ a super low price ) that is what we are all after a rewards pool.