My community proposals for the Steemit Development Incentive Program

My suggestions for the Steemit Steemit Development Incentive Program

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So... I have a lot of suggestions ( and I'm not even mentioning the second price auction ;-) )... I have grouped them in four main categories. Some of them aren't really perfect fits, but hopefully it's close enough. The categories are: (i) Audience / Engagment; (ii) Information for curators and blog consumers; (iii) Usability / integration; and (iv) Promoting development. In the following section and in no particular order, I have a bullet list with a high-level description of the suggestions. Following that, I'll offer a few sentences of explanatory text for each of them.

Summary

Audience / engagement building

• Bring back the "Promoted" and "Hot" menu items, along with "Trending", "New", "Payout", and "Mute".
• Prominent placement and/or feed injection for /promoted posts
• "At a glance" indicator for @null beneficiaries and post promotion (Repeat from @moecki and @danmaruschak)
• Verification checkmark/badge for influencers with large audiences on other platforms.
• Revisit "nofollow" logic.
• Enable embeds for Tron-related platforms and popular sites
• Simulate "resteem with comment" where the original author gets a slice of the "resteem" value through beneficiary rewards.
• Switch entry page from /trending to /promoted
• Bring back the "Promote this post" button.

Information for curators and blog consumers

• View an account's voting history (repeat from @moecki)
• On YouTube embeds, also display the YouTube publication time/date and YouTube's author/channel name.
• Bring back the post view counter
• Add word count/reading time to post summary in feeds
• Badges for witnesses, Steem country reps, Steem Greeters, Steem curation teams, etc... Enable "levels" to indicate length of time participating.
• Visual "at a glance" indicator for posts that are mostly valued by known bidbots.

Usability

• Editor with side-by-side preview or WYSIWYG (and don't scroll to bottom after inserting image) (similar to suggestion from @michelangelo3)
• Save drafts and templates (repeat from Steemit announcement post)
• Scheduled posts
• Add beneficiary option to comments/replies
• Prevent setting beneficiaries to IDs that don't exist
• Activate SMTs and/or link communities with TRC20 tokens
• Move photo storage to BTFS (decentralization, tron integration, cost savings)
• Set up a sharing service for people to easily share from other sites, like these - List of Sharing Service URLs
• Changes to facilitate microblogging
• Automatic barebones plagiarism screening through subscription to plagiarism site/search engine with "at a glance" notification of possibly plagiarized posts.
• Add a tipping button to posts to facilitate tipping with TRX, SBD, or STEEM.
• Reenable RSS subscriptions to authors, feeds, tags, or communities. (build on steemrss?)

Promoting development

• Allow saving of a default beneficiary list for new posts. Include optional 1% default for Steemit (or something like the Steem Foundation, if that can be recreated.)
• Integrate Steemit wallet with Steem proposal system (SPS) to streamline proposal submission to the SPS
• Update developer documentation
• Update steem-python for current systems and libraries.

Commentary

Audience / engagement building

Bring back the "Promoted" and "Hot" menu items, along with "Trending", "New", "Payout", and "Mute".

Right now, the top menu only shows {"Trending", "New", "Payout" and "Mute"}. The blockchain also offers feeds for promoted and hot. I think it should be easy for site visitors to access these feeds. This gives alternative views to articles by making use of feeds that are already built into the blockchain, so it shouldn't require much effort. Hopefully, this can help with audience building by offering more variety to site visitors.

Prominent placement and/or feed injection for /promoted posts

I have already mentioned this a number of times, but it bears repeating. I think that post promotion should be viewed as a form of visibility as a service that's provided by the blockchain. If people promote their posts, I think it would be great to give them placement in "prime" screen space and also to interleave the promoted posts into the feeds that people are viewing. This would make the capability to burn steem more attractive to authors.

"At a glance" indicator for @null beneficiaries and post promotion (Repeat from @moecki and @danmaruschak)

In addition to indicating when a post is promoted or has the @null beneficiary setting, I think that curators should also be able to tell at a glance what the burn amount is. As proof of concept, this was implemented to some degree as a browser extension by myself and improved by @moecki.

Verification checkmark/badge for influencers with large audiences on other platforms.

As I noted here, I think one of the best ways to bring an audience to Steem is to harness the influencers who are posting here. Verified influencers that I'm currently aware of include these: @answerswithjoe (1.44 million subscribers), @skycorridors (147 thousand subscribers), @vesislava (123 thousand subscribers), @marketreport (231 thousand subscribers), @stefan.molyneux (11 thousand subscribers [rumble]). In my opinion, the Steem community should be determined to see that these people will succeed on Steem.

The problem with influencers, though, is that it's easy for anyone to set up shop here and pretend to be an influencer (see here). So there should be a system for verifying and badging them by using linkbacks from their external media platforms or by some other mechanism.

Revisit "nofollow" logic.

"nofollow" attributes on weblinks are a directive to search engines not to follow the links. In general, this means that the site on the other side of the nofollow link won't get credit for the link from Steemit in the search engine if the "nofollow" attribute is set. Currently, the code is set that all posts except "High Quality" posts get "nofollow" attributes. And "High Quality" means that the post value is $10 or more. This has a couple problems.

1. It was set in 2017 and never adjusted.
2. When the price of Steem changes, it becomes easier or harder for a post to reach $10.
3. When a post pays out, beneficiary rewards get subtracted from the payout total, so a $10 post with a 25% null beneficiary setting is going to lose it's "dofollow" status when the post pays out.
4. It becomes easy to buy "dofollow" status by using a bidbot.

I propose that the trigger for removing the "dofollow" status should be done based on the value in STEEM, not the value in dollars. Also, after payout time it should be based off of curation rewards, since they're not affected by beneficiary settings.

Further, if the post value is only over the threshold with the inclusion of bidbot votes, it should not attain "dofollow" status.

This still leaves another problem for "decline payout" posts, but I don't have any ideas for those at the moment.

Enable embeds for Tron-related platforms and popular sites

Embedded objects should be shown instead of links wherever possible for media from sites like:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• TikTok
• DLive
• Rumble
• LBRY
• DTube
• Spotify
• SoundCloud
• As many as possible!

Simulate "resteem with comment" where the original author gets a slice of the "resteem" value through beneficiary rewards.

Since "resteem" is a blockchain/custom_json operation, I don't think that a true "resteem with comment" is really feasible in the near term. However, it could be simulated by the following steps:

1. Create a new post
2. Embed a "card" that's constructed from the post to be resteemed
3. Add the new author's commentary
4. Set a beneficiary so that the new author and original author share in the rewards from the "resteemed" post.
5. [maybe?] Reply to the original post with a link to the simulated resteem.

Switch entry page from /trending to /promoted

I don't think I'm telling tales out of school if I mention that the /trending page is painful to look at. IMO, this is definitely Steemit not putting its best foot forward. If we change the front page to be /promoted, that leads back to the visibility as a service theme for token burning. Hopefully, it would be more pleasant to look at than the current trending page, and it would also provide additional utility for the SBD token (which retires debt in terms of STEEM tokens).

Bring back the "Promote this post" button.

Again - visibility as a service. Let's make it easy.

Information for curators and blog consumers

View an account's voting history (repeat from @moecki)

As @moecki noted in this post, it is sometimes useful to go back and find posts that I have voted on. In addition, curators and blog consumers can use this as a tool for content discovery. It is convenient to be able to see how a trusted curator is voting when looking for content to read or vote upon. Finally, it can also be used as an abuse-detection tool for identifying reward-farming schemes. Even though @moecki already mentioned it, I'm repeating it because it was already on my list, too.

On YouTube embeds, also display the YouTube publication time/date and YouTube's author/channel name.

Curating YouTube embeds is tricky. Is it current or outdated? Is the author of the YouTube video the same as the author of the Steem post? Currently, I have to click through to YouTube in order to answer those questions, then I have to come back to Steemit to vote (or not). It would be good if some metadata like that were automatically included in the Steem post, along with the YouTube embed.

Bring back the post view counter

Once upon a time, Steem posts had a view counter at the bottom of each post. This was eventually removed - I suspect because the numbers were generally low. However, that number would be useful to know for authors who want to increase their audience and for curators who want to decide how to value a post.

In the short term, the low views is a problem, but I think having that information would help with producing more views. As a compromise, perhaps it would be good to not list specific numbers, but just a range. i.e. {<100; 100-1,000; 1,000-10,000, etc...}

Add word count/reading time to post summary in feeds

Again, this is useful for curators to decide whether or not to click into a post and spend time on it. It's also useful for readers who want to decide how to distribute their attention.

Badges for witnesses, Steem country reps, Steem Greeters, Steemit curation teams, etc... Enable "levels" to indicate length of time participating.

With the way the curation teams, country reps, greeters, et al change from month to month, it's hard to keep up. So, a badge would help people to know who are the current people who are occupying those roles. The badge could also have a number in it to indicate how long the person has been performing the role.

Visual "at a glance" indicator for posts that are mostly valued by known bidbots.

When used properly - in a way that builds audience and promotes the platform, I'm a fan of automation, and I'm a fan of bots, and I'm even a fan of bidbots or delegation bots. But, when used improperly they harm the platform's reputation and credibility. If a bidbot has wildly overvalued a post - as compared to organic voting, then some sort of visual indicator could call it to the attention of curators and warn readers to steer clear and spend their attention elsewhere.

Usability

Editor with side-by-side preview or WYSIWYG (and don't scroll to bottom after inserting image)

Self explanatory?

Save drafts and templates (repeat from Steemit announcement post)

This was included in Steemit's announcement post, but it's long been on my own "wish list", too, so I wanted to repeat it. I'd like to be able to save multiple drafts for later, and I'd like to be able to have multiple template files to provide standard "look and feel" to my posts. Templates and drafts should save beneficiary settings, titles, tags, power-up percentage, and "decline rewards" settings, as well as the post body.

Scheduled posting

It would be good to be able to write multiple posts in a day, and then schedule them to spread out the posting times. Also, scheduling posts would facilitate coordination of posting time with events happening elsewhere.

Add beneficiary option to comments/replies

Right now, it is possible to designate a beneficiary on top-level posts, but not on replies/comments. It would be useful to be able to set beneficiaries on comments, too. One use case would be for polls. Being able to set @null beneficiary settings on comments would let an author post poll questions without collecting rewards when people vote on the answers.

For example, I could issue a post saying: "Will the BTC closing price be over/under $20,000 on October 9 at 00:00 UTC?", then I could reply with two comments: "1. Vote here for 'over $20,000'" and "2. 'Vote here for under $20,000'", both with 100% null beneficiary settings. That way, people could collect curation rewards for their votes without being spooked off at the thought of giving the pollster author rewards.

Prevent setting beneficiaries to IDs that don't exist

Right now, as far as I know, there is little error checking in the beneficiary account name. This makes it easy to accidentally send rewards to accounts that don't exist. (Speaking of... has anyone else noticed that there's now a @burnsteem25 account?)

Activate SMTs and/or provide a link between communities and TRC20 tokens

OK, this probably isn't likely, but as long as we're writing suggestions...

Move photo storage to BTFS (decentralization, tron integration, cost savings)

Not much to say about this, but I would guess that it would be valuable for Steemit and Tron.

Set up a sharing service for people to easily share from other sites, like these - List of Sharing Service URLs

I've been a fan of RSS and link sharing since Google Reader launched back around 2005 or 2006. I would like to see Steemit plugged into this technology from both sides. Make it easy to send links from other blogs to Steemit, and make it possible to read Steem feeds in RSS.

Changes to facilitate microblogging

If we want "the masses" to come to Steem, we need to get over the idea that everything has to be a long format blog post. That's not how "the masses" use the Internet. Blogging is a niche application. Microblogging gets widescale adoption. IMO, we need to cultivate microblogging on Steemit while simultaneously trying to avoid cultivating spam and plagiarism.

The only specific idea that I have on this front is to note that Facebook and Twitter don't require titles for their posts. I'd propose a separate section of the Steemit web site for Facebook and Twitter style, "title free" posts. (titles could be autogenerated and hidden)

Automatic barebones plagiarism screening through subscription to plagiarism site/search engine with "at a glance" notification of possibly plagiarized posts.

When posting through Steemit or displaying a post on the web site, some cursory plagiarism detection could be implemented. If plagiarism is detected, a visual indicator could be applied in order to weed out some of the most flagrant cases of abuse. This would be far from a cure-all, but adding friction to the process for plagiarists might reduce the scale of the problem.

Add a tipping button to posts to facilitate tipping with TRX, SBD, and STEEM.

To be honest, I don't guess this would get much use, but modern social media platforms should provide tipping capabilities, and doing so with TRX, SBD, and STEEM would add utility for the tokens, too.

Reenable RSS subscriptions to authors, feeds, tags, or communities. (build on steemrss?)

I've been a fan of RSS and link sharing since Google Reader launched back around 2005 or 2006. I would like to see Steemit plugged into this technology from both sides. Make it easy to send links from other blogs to Steemit, and make it possible to read Steem feeds in RSS.

Promoting development

Allow saving of a default beneficiary list for new posts. Include optional 1% default for Steemit (or something like the Steem Foundation, if that can be recreated.)

I know this is going to be controversial because of "decentralization", but Steemit deserves to earn some revenue for running the web site and API and everything else they do. No business can stay in business indefinitely without income. I have no idea what Steemit's revenue source or amount is with the limited advertising they deliver, but I can't imagine that advertising plus curation rewards is enough to keep them in the black.

Alternatively, if decentralization is too big of a hurdle, then maybe something like the Steem Foundation could be rebuilt, and an optional default 1% beneficiary could go to them for blockchain development and promotion.

With or without that optional default, I'd like to be able to save a list of beneficiary settings to be applied to every new post (unless I change it).

Another possible use for this would be the creation of blogging teams. I suspect that most people will never find the time for daily posting - which makes it hard to build an audience. But a team of 8 bloggers, all dedictaed to a single topic, could probably manage to post 5 times a week. If the team all shared a posting key, they could build their audience on the shared account and use beneficiary rewards to distribute rewards among the team members. Saving a default list of beneficiary settings would make this easier to implement without forgetting to set the right beneficiaries.

Integrate Steemit wallet with Steem proposal system (SPS) to streamline proposal submission to the SPS

It should be possible to submit proposals from the Steem wallet, without needing to find an external website.

Update developer documentation

Developer documentation is stale and getting staler.

Update steem-python for current systems and libraries.

Same with steem-python.

Whew! That was a mouthful. Thank you for reading.

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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