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RE: What I’ve learned my first week - or so - of Audacious March
There are still a variety of curation groups; make a list of them all and see whether any fit your writing - or change your writing to fit them.
Resteemed and upvoted by the MAP-AAKOM community.
Thanks. Of course I’m not strictly a writer but I get your point. I had the good fortune of being curated very early on by some of the best. It was a huge boost and I absolutely appreciated it. But I want to ask you a tough question because I’m not sure I’ve fully wrapped my mind around this yet:
Do you see this type of curation as being truly helpful in any sustainable way?
What I’ve experienced is that there are a number of accounts which essential swoop in and vote for posts that are curated by the big boys. I’m sure some are bots. But even those that aren’t...for the most part I don’t get the sense that they are reading the content. Or forming connections. In fact, after eight months of being here, I still need the boost of one of these groups to create substantial activity on one of my posts.
I’m not complaining here. I’m truly trying to understand. And learn. Clearly I’m not doing something right. I know it’s not my content. Or my stellar personality 😉
Perhaps it’s what @nikv said...there’s a lack of cohesive community.
You’ve been at this for awhile yourself. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Interesting. My view is that Steemit is not functioning as a "complete" social media site insofar as a lot of the community-building and connection-forming dialogues take place off-blockchain on the chat channels. So that the upvotes one sees on Steemit are often the result of such off-site connections rather than rewards purely based on content. (The bidbots are now another source of upvotes but irrelevant to community-building as such.)
I've only recently posted this question on chainbb highlighting that their platform fee has dropped to 5%. That is an opportunity for communities to be built within the blockchain and gain rewards for dialogue and interaction, not just posting full articles.
As to sustainability, every curation group or community is limited by the mathematical certainty that their voting power will drop! Therefore choices need to be made and support "rationed" by some criteria. The assumption by many has been that good content creators will eventually have a following large enough to sustain them without further "big upvotes"; this has generally proved to be untrue as the stream of posts is unmanageable. Ironically, the most helpful way to help humans-support-humans is to use some auto-voter to upvote your favourite authors! This includes upvoting the communities too as most rely on some delegated SP that can vanish in a click.
This makes me sad. I’ve been in the arts and entertainment world for quite awhile. And I simply refuse to participate in “pay-to-play” on any level. People have encouraged me to do so - and to join the power voter groups with fees - with the argument that the fees are negligible. And I agree that they are. But that’s how it starts. Small fees in exchange for big value. And then before you know it, we have a ‘vanity publishing’ culture where everyone has been slowly conditioned to pay substantially for nothing but the illusion success.
I absolutely support folks like you and @curie who are truly attempting to improve the quality of content and community. And of course you need support. But you guys understand that part of the deal is to generate that with your process and build it into your model.
As far as I’m concerned, expecting creators to pay with more than their blood, sweat, and tears is a deal breaker.
The real-life publishing models are relevant here. In the case of books, you will often see literary fiction making a loss that is covered by pulp fiction or textbooks, depending on the publisher, yet literary novels continue to be published because they are seen as culturally important.
At the other end, we see some glossy magazines are, maybe 90% adverts and advertorials yet retain some cultural influence.
Disturbingly, even science journals, especially those related to medicine or any mass product, are now pay-to-play as the fabrication of a consensus is vital to profits.
Having devalued truth to the level of a profitable advertorial will devalue all other values.
I started the MAP Rewarder precisely to overcome this dilemma of balancing quality and rewards - we shall see if it is successful!
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. As I told you earlier, I want to get more involved with MAP and be an active member of your community. I see your vision and support it.
I am already pretty committed to my March madness...expect more from me in April.