RE: Calibrae - Not the fork for me / an update on my position
The challenge steemit has for mass adoption as I see it is in the new user experience. For sake of this discussion we assume there are no technical issues, and there are 300 whales and 300,000 users.
Steemit has a pretty hefty learning curve. A new user has to search and read a ton of various opinions to learn how to maneuver the platform. There is no organization, it's a needle in a haystack.
A minnow can post and post and post and not be seen, or make anything. No eyeballs on your post alone is discouraging, add to that a .05 post payout and only the tenacious stick.
So some whales try to help and out of the blue a newbs post gets hit with upvote bots, encouraging right? So the newb sticks around a little longer and the sincere tries to engage and develop relationships. In addition to talking to other newbs, who are generally chatty, the minnow reaches out to whales and dolphins, many of which don't engage a bunch in their comments, many do, but many don't.
From the whales perspective, they've got 270,000 people vying for their attention.
Add to the mix spam like there's no tomorrow, flag wars, controversy about the "services" that would help a minnow get noticed and you have a recipe for mass exodus, not adoption.
I'm sure I've left some holes in this analogy, but it's hard to write on my phone.
Point is, if steemit goes mainstream with these challenges, it could leave a bad taste in a lot if people's mouths.
I don't have answers, just offering a perspective that complicates any technical challenges there may be,
All of the issues you raise are totally valid and I agree with the lot. I think it's important to remember that if you take all the voting rewards away, steem still has incredible utility as a network and as a token. In many ways, those properties and the way of thinking that gives you that perspective requires you to labor through all the challenges you mention before you can get to that.....despite it being there in plain sight. Once scalability is resolved along with onboarding, I hope a lot of attention is given to the issues you raise. I also hope people can look beyond the money and see the other incredible utility that steem has to give hope.
I think you're right. Unfortunately it takes an education and tenacity, which is an obstacle for the average person.
Facebook killed MySpace because it was so easy even grandma could do it and MySpace dealt with HTML, which only tenacious grandmas would do.
Not the same I know, but similar enough to learn from. And as long as it's presented to new people as a way to make money, that's what they'll expect. Maybe it would be wise to re-examine the initial exposure given when people evangelize for steemit?
I wholeheartedly agree that we should re-examine the marketing completely and emphasise the attributes like free to tx, global reach, possibility ofdecentralised architecture, no censorship etc
Lol, too bad we can't solve all the problems right here in the comments :)
There is a lack of communication, and there is no place where to provide feedback to make steemit greater. Also the way steemit works, where the Money rules on everything, on the quality of posts, on the witnesses, on reputation etc is very discouraging. I wrote a post about what I think how Steem should work: https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide