RE: It's time to start paying attention to Steem by @timcliff

Tim Cliff @timcliff recently published a very detailed article on why more people need to start paying attention to Steem. And not only was it detailed, but it was also well-written and had some serious effort put into it. It's one of the first pro-Steem posts that I've seen since I have been here that wasn't a fluff piece to justify buying onto the trending page.

I was going to write this as a comment, but much like everything I write, it's a damn thesis and I thought a post was more fitting.

I am a huge believer in Steem long-term, but Steemit Inc seriously needs to sort their shit out in a couple of areas or risk holding back the adoption of Steem even further.

I hate to take a positive article and then make it all negative (that is not my intention), I am merely airing my opinion on what I believe are areas where STINC needs to improve if it wants to break into the top #20 or lower.

I believe eventually Steem will be a top #20 cryptocurrency, possibly top 10 because it's a solid project I believe in. These seemingly negative points are not coming from a place of hate, they're coming from a place of love.

Trending is a failed experiment.

Either STINC needs to make the trending page smarter and work similarly to how Reddit does (weight over time) or just give up on there being a trending page entirely. Because many of the people on the trending page bought their way there, it's embarrassing the first thing potential new users see is shit.

The current trending page is a joke and I can name (but I won't) at least four serial offenders who keep on pushing their crappy dumpster fire content onto the trending page to mask the fact they're just trying to make money.

It is time to admit trending has failed, collaborate and create something better.

Devalue Self-voting.

Unlike a traditional democratic voting system where everyone's vote is worth the same, and the candidate with the most votes wins, Steem weighs votes based on your account value (your Steem wealth). The higher your Steem power, the more your vote is worth.

The problem with voting is that it means users can self-vote their own content. If you're willing to invest a few thousand dollars into powering up your Steem account, you can make a small living and further grow your wealth over time just upvoting your own comments and posts, and nobody else's.

The issue here is that while Steem has curation rewards for curating content, it's unnecessarily complicated and doesn't pay as well as upvoting your own lazy content. The solution to this is simple, devalue self-votes. Make a self-vote worth 50% or even 33%, disallow the ability to 100% vote your own content.

Or another solution could be to incentivise upvoting other content at or near 100%. Reward whales and heavyweight users for giving out large upvotes to other people and they'll do it more, giving to give.

Hire more developers.

From what I can see, Steemit Inc has a very tiny development team (just a small handful). I've worked at small design/web agencies that have had 30+ developers, companies valued at less than STINC is. It's obvious that more developers = getting more stuff done, SMT's have been delayed and it's clear the technical challenges require more hands.

It's worth noting that @utopian-io is doing a great job promoting open source contributions, but not necessarily specific to Steem. What Steem needs to do is partner with Utopian to reward participation on the Steem blockchain, Condenser and other projects. Give people Steem for contributing code to Steem.

As someone who leads a team of 12 developers myself working on projects that are smaller than Steem in scope, but still has challenges, I think there really is no excuse for STINC lacking focus and resources on its development team (which should be its primary focus).

Tim linked to their job listings here, but it's noticeably lacking a tonne of developer positions. They should be hiring at least another 5-10 developers and we all know they have enough Steem (even at these prices) to cash out to fiat and pay them. When SMT's launch, the value is going to balloon.