FINALLY! An Update About Steem Community Feature (Hivemind)
Introduction
FINALLY, @steemitblog gave us an update on the progress of the much anticipated hivemind protocol. I have been expecting it's release since July 2017. I have grown impatient but this come as a breath of fresh air to be honest.
Today, I'll share my thoughts on that latest update.
What is Hivemind?
As described in the Steemit 2017 Roadmap:
We believe that high-quality content and communities of content producers and their audiences are the primary driver of growth of the steemit.com site, and in turn the wider adoption of the platform and STEEM. To this end, we wish to enable many users to build communities in parallel around curating specific types of content valuable to their audiences.
To enable this, we intend to augment our current tag-based organizational structure for posts with a new system called “communities”, a special group into which others can post articles. Two types of communities will exist: communities into which anyone in the world can post (where community founders (or their delegated moderators) can decide, post-hoc, which posts to hide from view) or communities in which only community founders’ (or their delegated authors’) posts will appear.
This system of moderation will function identically to the aforementioned comment moderation system, with all content (including hidden or moderated content) published permanently in the blockchain to prevent censorship. The steemit.com web site will respect the display preferences of the specific community maintainers (within their own community namespace only) while simultaneously propagating every participant’s voice throughout the blockchain to the entire world (regardless of moderator opinions).
We believe this unique approach finally solves one of the largest problems currently presented to social media services: the dichotomy between maintaining a high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for a quality content experience free of spam and low-value comments, whilst simultaneously preventing any type of censorship.
That was the original idea behind the steem hivemind protocol. Opening a way for people to group themselves in was resembles a subreddit so that people can have a better user experience.
This is absolutely critical for steem to grow because right now, we are all competing for a single "trending" page. We are all stuck under one "community" with much of the content not being relevant to our interests. This is why, a lot of people don't even bother looking at it since it is not relevant to what they are most interested.
But wait...there is more
This is all great but it seems that hivemind is much more than that. As @geekorner commented:
It's quite simple. It's basically going to be a database that tracks certain things on Steemit, and which will be "pingable" for information. Rather than requiring you to always ping the current nodes, which are sometimes slow, overworked, and that you can't make changes to. Hive will actually allow rapid developer changes, because it won't be hosted on nodes that basically mirror witness functions.
Creating New Ways to Organize the Blockchain
Developers wants to have the freedom to experiment in new ways of organizing content and without hivemind it is currently quite difficult. With hivemind, they will be able store all the relevant information in a traditional database and keep it in sync with the blockchain, while adding new custom layers of logic and features. Because it’s written in Python, developers will be able modify its behavior and APIs with ease... and experiment to their heart’s content.
When will it come out?
When will this come online and what will it look like? Well...this is where I'm going to be a downer for you. Be ready to wait another 3 months.
Development always take 3 times longer than we anticipate and of course, this is the kind of thing that shouldn't be rushed. As @inertia posted, it's pretty much like building an airplane in mid-air.
Also, when it will be released, don't expect a complete overhaul of the front-end of steemit.com...this too may take another 3 months for it to come. Hivemind will be running quietly in the background and be a tool for devs to build their own app on. We may see the implementation of hivemind on other website before we get to see any changes on the front-end of steemit.com.
Conclusion
I hope @steemitblog will continue to update us and keeping us in the loop. In this bear market, it's one of the best thing they can do to keep the faith of investors.
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Awesome! I used to browse the overall trending page, but haven't for months. I basically only stick to the photofeed tag and page, since photography is the main reason I'm here. Excited to see what all this could mean 6 months down the road, once it's been established a bit and people are used to using it!
Totally agree.
why agree?
That's a shame the trending page is really the collective waiting room where the remnants of community pray for the platform to finally become something.
It looks like we will all get our own community soon where we can finally be left alone. So much lipstick you don't even see the pig anymore.
I'm hopping it will be like a football channel, as a kind of containment field for that type of program but I fear it will be more like a ceremony where our residential robber barons finally crown themselves into royalty.
Anything is good if it can help with community engagement!
I almost never use the trending page, just check my acquaintances blogs on steemit and a couple that are related to steemit or EOS development.
1 update from @steemitblog, 60% price increase of Steem.
As far as I'm concerned @steemitblog can update more often :)
Very true about the keep everyone in the loop. I think that is the biggest complaint I have about the development team...their lack of communication. The fact that there is nothing to report is no reason not to report on things...there is always progress taking place.
I agree with your timelines and was just happy to see something posted about it. I can wait 3-6 months for things to unfold. I realize development does not happen overnight. There are always bugs to work out. I know a guy who is responsible for installing enterprise software at a fairly large medical place. So far, he is on three months since the software went in...all trying to work the bugs out....
People need to be aware it is a process. There are stages that developers go through and it cannot be side stepped. It is tough to be patient..but there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
Everything that improves the steem ecosystem and features is good not only for this community, but for strengthening the idea behind steem itself, "reward users for the content they create and share with the community".
3 months is actually little time, I am about to be 4 months old in steem and it seems like it was yesterday the day I joined, besides as you mentioned in the articles, important changes such as this should never be rushed.
With the communities feature I think we will have much more engagement and quality comments all around, it should certainly increase the value of this project.
Cheers!
I think this is awesome
First getting updates behind the seen of the admins and programmers
And secondly the news about community feature, looking at the analysis
This will solve many problems
I guess this what we have been looking for, good news ahead
Yes o
Greater news loading
Big big things
The good news is that people will have another 6 months to buy cheap steem. If they're smart of course.
But some people don't have cash right now to buy a lot :(
Me <-------
This is great news. As I understand hivemind from your reference (I'm not that great with the technical stuff) this will address some of the issues I have been very frustrated by with steemit.
To further elaborate, I have noticed a decline in engagement on my posts and also others I follow who write quality creative material (I'm talking about poetry+fiction as they're what I write primarily). I thought long and hard about this, and I'm pretty sure that part of this drop in engagement is a reflection of a lot of people suspending their steemit activities due to the drop in price.
I've been on steemit 8 months now, writing almost daily and fully expected to have made more of an impact. There are so many issues which destroy the chances of success for new steemians of quality, and honestly, I think that if it doesn't change the platform will struggle to find mainstream adoption. The reason why I think this, based on steemit as it is now, is that there are so many barriers to organic growth. I read a fantastic post this morning by @guyfawkes4-20: The Heck is going on with Steem?, which mirrors my views on this in so many ways.
I curate for curie, and in my travels looking for posts, I've come across many instances of new talented steemians, on the verge of giving up because of the complexity of trying to navigate the maze of networking mechanisms it takes to find even moderate success. This - turn off - effect is magnified by bidbots, which return negative profit and also serve to populate the trending pages with a high % of utter shit. Sorry to swear but that's how it makes me feel. I stopped using bidbots many months ago and watched my blog suffer in the amount of comments people leave etc. At the end of the day why should people like me (and many others) who have been published in mainstream publications stick around when they have to spend there own profits, to be read in a section which is mainly populated by very low quality writing.
This is where I can see Hivemind really helping people who are truly bringing quality content to the platform in all different subjects/tags.
As @dedicatedguy said in his comment:
He's spot on, this is how I always viewed steemit, as a place that rewards quality content creation. Hopefully, hivemind will create sub communities which can operate outside of the cauldron of crap that the trending page has become. Communities where everyone who also have the drive and commitment to write/film/draw/create amazing content can go where they won't get that high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). Maybe also a place whales/dolphins, and also curators, can go where it doesn't take them hours and hours to sift through rubbish to find content that both interests them and is of high quality.
Lol, sorry this rant has gone on for so long. Thanks for writing this great post which explains this upcoming development so succinctly, cryptoctopus :-)
Finally the collective consciousness is coming together in singularity and synchronicity. What about the #D-Wave 4096 @CERN, Where the world simulation is the biggest virtual reality known http://YouTube.com/c/vcchisolmfollowthewhiterabbit
Playlist #CERN
This will be great for the Steem blockchain.
I read the official post release but didn't really get it, now I do.
We are growing greatly by the day, the is need to break and regroup
Lately we did not get much good news, because market is in bear territory. It seems we are going to have bear market for some time. So this is definitely great news. Also Steem spike today.