Oh no!! The trending page is being Ransacked by Rich Gremlins!!!
It's a little disheartening to see so many people complain about this almost every day, I get it, we get it, trending is filled with things that don't make much sense most of the time, people buying their positions on global trending with questionable content is ugly we know. But the truth of the matter is that to get worked up about this, to get angry, to even flag these posts is as productive as screaming at clouds.
Who owns the tags?
This might seem like a bit of a trick question, after all there are initiatives within Steem that have coined a tag or more importantly use it to be able to function. For example #openmic uses it so that us the judges can find the entries easily and pull of the monstrous feat of listening to 300+ entries every single week. But I don't think anyone within the community is too bothered by someone using the #openmic tag even if its not an actual entry for the contest.
This is of course assuming that the user who is using a tag like #openmic is doing so simply because he/she believes its a good strategy to get some traffic, and not really some scheme with ill intent. I'm obviously assuming many things, but I think my point becomes apparent. The tag itself is not owned by @luzcypher it's just the tag he started for his initiative, yet It's not policed by any of us as if it can get stolen if we stopped watching.
What about the Popular Tags?
I guess there are those who believe that tags have some sort of sacred element to them, meaning that if someone uses the #music tag on a post that just talked about music but did not really have a song or even a beat, then that person is hijacking the tag!!!
I guess I do understand the argument, at least if I'm able to stand on the idealistic side of the conversation. #art should be used for Art and #music for musical content, but at the same time we seem to forget that our personal ideas of what is or is not #art are not the same, and sometimes by a long shot.
For example:
By my standards this piece of #art has absolutely nothing remarkable to speak of. Don't get me wrong I like the color blue, as a matter of fact it's my favorite color, but what I fail to see is how this blue square with a while line can sell for 43 Million Dollars. You read that correctly, this blue square sold for more money than we will ever see in our lifetime, and I don't see anyone yelling injustice on the streets looking for blood.
If they are buying their Trophies... let them
I for one have never looked at the trending page and thought to myself... "How am I going to record a song today when there is a Dmania post about Nutella making $80 on the trending page??????!!!!!!!".
I realize I'm being a little ridiculous here, but I'm trying to make a point. What does the nutella post have to do with my emotional necessity to create as a musician? If It's stopping me from creating, if looking at the trending page removes my inspiration, then I must have to revisit my motivation for creating, maybe In my heart and mind I have to something figure out that goes a little beyond the nutella conundrum.
As much as you hate it.... we need them
If these rich Gremlins are "Hijacking" the trending page, by spending all their bitcoin to buy more steem and SDB's and then send them to the bitbots in these negative ROI moves, keeping the price of Steem from plunging back to under $1 that is a good thing for you! Yes you, artistic soul putting your heart and experiences into short stories, poems and songs, you want them here, you need them buying up our currency.
What gives this market its liquidity? The answer is not artists.... We would want it to be, but if an amazing/unknown artist all of the sudden jumps into the platform and creates his masterpiece it would do NOTHING to affect the price of Steem, and I'm not being fatalistic, this is just a fact.
Before you attack me for selling out
I'm not, not at all... I'm just too old to believe in this magical world where money is ugly and icky and I don't want to see/hear from rich people because of UGH!! and barf!!!
Do I think the trending page needs a makeover? Yes, hands down!!! I happen to agree with @lexiconical on this matter, trending page should probably be reserved for authors of content that have the most upvotes and interaction and not so much payouts, since payouts as we know have very little to do with quality.
A couple of days ago @themarkymark made parody post about this, and what is hilarious to me is that even there, where he was basically showing the warts the way our trending page works, instead of people understanding his point, his message, he got attacked by the same cloud screaming trending defenders.
Do you want things to change?
Act like a grown up, engage in discussion, talk to the people who can make a difference about changing trending. Maybe if we stop attacking the people who are spending money on the bots and adding liquidity to this market, but change the code of Steem to showcase quality content we can have the Rich Gremlins buy their trophies all day long and the artist get featured for adding good content to the platform.
The whole virtue signaling thing gets old and really fast. If I had a satoshi for every time someone makes a comment about their titles and degrees and how this platform does not reward true talent I would be a freaking whale right now. Your complaining with no action does absolutely nothing to fix this, and masturbating your ego because you are frustrated about how things work, saying to everyone on a post "I'm leaving Steemit because I'm not being appreciated" shows to me at least that you are not in this for the long haul, you don't get it and you think life owes you something.
Here is the cold, ugly, wart infested truth....
The price of steem!!! What is happening????
Honestly, as I was collecting my thoughts on this weird rant post, (I started writing this a few days ago and abandoned it) I ran across this video by @benleemusic and since I could not do a better job than he did, I will recommend you watch it if you are feeling a little down about the price of Steem....
In any case... I'm sorry for my rant.... believe it or not I'm not upset, I just want everyone to get a grip of themselves...
Love you all
Interesting post, I definitely agree that there's nothing we need to do about it besides just let it happen. But really i think solution is to follow people you find interesting and develop a steem frontend that can segment content better (filter #openmic by people you follow or have upvoted in the past, etc.). Clearly steemit.com will not catch on as it is now, it is easily the worst website I visit daily (working in UI/UX i think about this all the time).
I see no reason for the trending page to exist, and I don't think it's worth anybody's time to look at it. Social media should be about people and topics you care about, not "trending". In fact, I think the trending should be more like twitter where you have trending tags, not trending posts.
Just my 0.02 STEEM.
Well said. Personally, I’ve been trying to figure out what the difference is between the ‘trending’ page and the ‘hot’ page.
There doesn’t seem to be any logic or rationale in the algorithms.
What purpose do either of these have?
Not knowing these things, I think, has freed me from giving a toss about them. Lol.
In this case, I guess the old idiom ‘ignorance is bliss’ works for me because I can just get on with creation and sharing.
(Not to say I don’t want to understand all the rules of the game we’re all playing)
Thanks for the post, buds.
Hey there bud... well the way its supposed to work (not that it does) is that Hot is for the posts with lots of interaction, more upvotes and more comments... and Trending has the most payouts pending...
To me the solution is get rid of the Hot label.. use that algorithm for trending, maybe optimize it a bit (it does not work as good as it should) and leave the Promoted Tab for posts that have been upvoted using bot services...
That makes sense to me..
I know you don't cry foul about this stuff, you are here to put out some great music and ignore the noise.. but I get DM's about this stuff a little too often to not rant about it! hahahha
Oh I see! Thanks for removing the obfuscation for me on it. It's clear now.
Jeez! I reckon get rid of the 'trending' one instead then.
Interaction is far more important. The payouts aspect is just the bonus.
The idea of putting the botvoted posts into the 'promoted' tab is a salient one.
Omg I just started writing about this lol
But @meno, that isn't just a blue square. There is a white line down the middle of it!
Oh wow.. you are right Carl.. I was like, yeah... white line, white line..... booom and then I saw it!! it was there, it had been there this whole time to remind me of what I had forgotten to remember the time i had thought i had not remembered to forget...
I was like... wow.... now i know that if i had known about this knowledge then i would had for sure not forgotten and remembered it all...
thanks mate... you saved my yorkie's life
I think there may be to many non voters in the audience, that will not understand the concept of working together to solve the problem...it is broke,not working right,means you have to get involved and solve the problem,not ignore it and hope it fixes it's self....
;-)
I don't know,I can't get feed back on my post...lol...
pretty bad when you don't even get the f4f everyone else complains about...lol..
Hope you find plenty of smiles today!
Namaste!
I can guarantee you, not that i would recommend you to do it.. that if you were to bot up your posts it would get them a bunch of comments... but there is no money to be made there, so don't really do it...
cheers brother
lol....
Figured out how to use them 2-3 weeks ago..
been there done that!
Get a bot comment,that cost $.... pay for votes...
lol...think you might make a buck,and last 30 sec. someone wipes out the profit. Seams intentional!!
Wish I had more sbd then maybe I could just buy the whole vote,when it first opens,go the greed is good approach.. but thats's not my style... :-(
You know, I haven't looked at the trending page in probably 6 months, and I see no reason to do so any time soon. I'm not going to find anything interesting to read or listen to on there that I won't find in my feed. When I joined steemit last May, people would flock to the trending to try to vote early on the big posts to get a piece of the curation reward, I suspect that hasn't really changed all that much.
As for the price of steem, it's still twice as high as it was when I joined. I got no real complaints about that.
It is my belief that only software solutions and algorithm massaging can deal with these issues. As well meaning as many involved in tag wars are, they seem to end up as pissing contests which eventually cause collatoral damage.
Your idea of displaying ranks based on popularity and curation rather than monetary values sounds like a very positive solution by software means, @meno.
Then what stops this from becoming ..... facebook......... gulp
Well due to the open source nature of the code and the semi-democratic nature of voting for witnesses and the democratic vote of witnesses to except or reject new software forks, we seem a long way from the closed door decision making of Facebook. That's my perspective, anyway.
@meno I appreciate your post and your point of view. I was thinking of joining this discussion but as a newbie I often question if I'm losing my mind or if I'm just not familiar with the system enough. This post in a way let's me know I'm not really delusional.
You just hit the point
> Maybe if we stop attacking the people who are spending money on the bots and adding liquidity to this market, but change the code of Steem to showcase quality content we can have the Rich Gremlins buy their trophies all day long and the artist get featured for adding good content to the platform.
> Here is the cold, ugly, wart infested truth.... Honestly, as I was collecting my thoughts on this weird rant post, (I started writing this a few days ago and abandoned it) I ran across this video by @benleemusic and since I could not do a better job than he did, I will recommend you watch it if you are feeling a little down about the price of Steem.... In any case... I'm sorry for my rant.... believe it or not I'm not upset, I just want everyone to get a grip of themselves...