RE: [Vlog] Views on Steem delegation, the Utopian.io 'rant', Communities and why I avoid the Trending page
Damn this was cold. Though I do see your point, so please don't feel I am against what you are saying. Delegation abuse is hot news right now: https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/whales-witnesses-we-have-to-talk
Regarding utopian.io I actually believe (and I would say by the amount delegate to them, ned and others do too) that it has massive potential. Both as a project alone and as a tool to attract quality individuals. If anything, coding and development is more aligned with where the blockchain and crypto are currently at. It might even attract a major player that funds it further and in turn invests more into the steem blockchain.
Personally I don't think growing steemit for mass adoption is right. It should be fine tuned, better developed and grown slowly but with quality as the primary focus. Such as in the way Behance developed. Or in a dual-comparison example. The way Ebay vs Etsy developed. Ebay now struggling to clean itself from crap in attempt to remain relevant. Whereas Etsy has a very solid reputation with quality users/sellers.
As a very new user of Steemit, @utopian-io is a big reason why I've become super excited about the entire Steem ecosystem. It's the strongest signal I've seen here yet of the kind of deep and passionate community that decentralized platforms need to grow into something special.
I haven't been this excited about open networks since the early days of Napster & (the little known) Petridish.net. While that's mostly been thanks to Ethereum until recently, Steem excites me enough to have jumped into coding new products on it less than 6 weeks after joining.
I don't know what that's going to turn into yet, but it's something.
I actually like Utopian.io too, it's just unfortunate that the top trending topic was an off-piste post by them.
Maybe you're right about mass adoption being too soon. I think there is a debate to be had. If the focus is quality, then the effort should also be focussed. Rather than scatter-gunned.
Agree, a more focussed/targeted approach could happen quite easy if they proceed with communities. Devs could get a clear picture of user engagement. Thus know who to market to. Also, steemit will retain people better even when they take some time to gain rewards. The reputation of steemit would benefit. Driving more interest.
This brings up another interesting point to be made when we talk about content in the trending page we don't personally value. Should we be more free to flag it without concerns of starting a flag war? Should we hold voters accountable for their upvotes as much as we do for their downvotes? Is the problem the content or the people who vote (or don't flag) it?
In principle... yes.
In practice...
(a) very few people want to volunteer their time to join a social media site and police behaviours. There are not enough hours in the day to counteract all the downvotable content. Also the cost/ benefit doesn't stack up even if you have a large amount of SP. In many ways the Trending page is the low hanging fruit. With delegated SP there are people gaming the rewards in a way more worthy of downvoting, so a certain degree of technical know-how is needed to effectively combat 'abuses'
(b) I'd rather reward as many people as I can that do provide value, which is why I am here afterall. One of the results of doing this is low voting power, which in turn means my downvote has limited impact, that then dilutes the votes I want to give out.
(c) often we're attempting to downvote those who have or have been delegated very large amounts of SP, again limiting downvote impact
(d) people do take downvoting personally, so you end up in petty situations that I personally have no time for.
Again, if there was a "SteemCleaning" Community (rather than just an account) or even better competing Communities that countered voting that the community deems 'abuses', then SP holders could 'outsource' the job of combating abuses (using SP delegation) in a far more efficient way.
Thats a big comments but its really good comments @teknow