Substeemit idea: Creating Substeemits for Steemit like Subreddits are for Reddit - Solving the problem of finding content relevant to a specific topic by relying on human moderators.

This post explains my idea to solve the problem of finding relevant content on Steemit, and that is by adopting the subreddit concept from Reddit.

This was originally written as a comment to @ackza post on the suggestion to make subreddits on Steemit.

Find my comment below:

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Yes, we have to have "substeemits" somehow. Otherwise Steemit isn't going to work.

The Problem with Tags and Algorithms

Tags are not doing the job. People don't use them properly and it makes finding good content impossible. Btw, the idea of using tags to make content findable to people who look for it is fundamentally flawed. (Look at google's history with SEO misuse because they relied on html tags)

Algorithm feeds are not doing the job either. Besides Google search, all the algorithms on the social media are tuned to make you "click more". Google search is the only algorithm that has been at it for years and that is tuned to make you find relevant information faster. (Yes, google search does a good job when you DON'T have to use google search anymore... because you found what you were looking for.)

"Substeemits" with HUMAN Moderators

As you know (and I read your other posts on the subject), the power of Reddit is to have subreddits: a cluster of content with the same theme, moderated by HUMANS. Not algorithms. Reddit solved the problem by letting humans decide if the post is applicable to the subreddit. And it worked marvelously for years.

Here is a clip where Reddit co-founder explains that for 7 years they didn't touch the platform and just left to do other things. During that time, Reddit kept growing and getting more influential without them (until they realized that they should milk that cow, 2 years ago - 2015. That's why you see the ads on Reddit now and similar annoyances.)

The beauty of Steemit is that founders don't necessarily need to monetize it like Reddit founders are trying to do.

Also on a moderators level. Moderators can get paid for doing their admin work like on Reddit. They'll be rewarded with the upvotes for their curation effort. And they will get what their Substeemit deserves. If they moderate a good sub, then they'll get their upvotes.

As you said, the problem with having the follow/unfollow thing on Steemit is that good content gets drowned in the mayhem of post feeds. Even if you're on your homepage getting only your followers' posts.

And me too I don't want to punish people by unfollowing them just because they were too excited on a Saturday morning posting memes.

And so the result is that I never rely on my "Home" feed to get good content. To this day, I still struggle to find relevant, recently posted content.

That's why I think there should be a Substeemits. Just like in Reddit.

And like Reddit we can go narrower and have a specific subs. Not just "Art" sub, but one for "art-history" and another for "art-education" and "art-business" and so on... They can be moderated by the creator of the sub and you'll get only latest posts from people you want more content from.

So you get the best of both worlds: the follow/unfollow word + the Subreddit subscription world

I believe that we shouldn't try to migrate Reddit users to here. This should be a bottom-up thing where we first make it work with existing Steemit users. And if it works Reddit users will hear about it, trust me. One way or another they will know about this.

And from what I saw, I don't think we can rely on Steemit team to build anything like that anytime soon.

But still, I have an idea.

How this can be implemented

Now, I read your ideas of creating chrome extensions or other more elaborate stuff but that still requires you doing the tuning of content at the extension level and constanly deal with the misuse of tags and clickbait, and misleading headlines and so on. That also requires a team of people to build that. And I don't know any developers who can do that for us.

The option of creating another site like busy.org is interesting, but programming is not really my thing, I'm more of a "Digital Strategy" kind of guy. And so, maybe this can be an option later down the road, after we prove that the idea works.

I've been thinking about that for the last weeks, since I discovered Steemit. I immediately found that not having subs and relying on tags instead is a nightmare.

I'm actually glad I found you @ackza, it's hard to find people with the same ideas here . Hopefully we can collaborate on something and find like-minded people here that can help us.

My idea

My assumption is that we're not ready to build a website or anything like that, because of our skills, resources.

Before we think about investing our time and energy, let's first try setting up Substeemits as quickly as possible and then we can test that and perfect the idea. Just to make sure the concept works. I'm a proponent of Lean Startup thinking and here is what I suggest we try.

This is inspired by what @curie is doing, but I saw that they're having difficulties with spam and irrelevant posts. The problem with @curie is that their topics are too broad (they accept almost everything on one single account). We should keep every sub narrowed to one topic.

Step 1:

Create a new post that we call a "Substeemit" for a given topic.

Example: /s/SteemitSuggestions that I just created here.

Step 2:

Reach out to people who create content on this topic and tell them that it's been added to the Substeemit post. And that next time they want to post about that topic, they should promote it on your Substeemit.

Step 3:

Update the Substeemit daily, by reading the comments of the Substeemit post and pick the relevant posts to be listed on the page.

Step 4:

Create a new Substeemit post for the same topic every 7 days.

Now if you ever want to read some moderated/curated posts about the topic of /s/SteemitSuggestions, you'll just have to google that and find the latest weekly post from your favorite curator.

Everyone can create the same Substeemit and "steal" the Substeemit name for their own. Viewers will judge who is doing the curation job the best. So there will be no problem of first-come-first-served in terms of Substeemit names. People will follow who's doing the curation and marketing job the best.

Mainly I think the job is dived in 2 parts:

Getting the attention of relevant content creators and promote your Substeemit

Curate on a daily basis posts that are added on your comment section and add them to the list the page.

I created my /s/SteemitSuggestions here, but I don't mind you create it too. Actually I think you'll be better at curating that topic and I can help you promote the Substeemit.

I'm thinking about setting up other Substeemits with topics I'm more interested in curating like /s/artbusiness /s/arthistory and so on. I'll get on that when I can.

P.S. If you are programmer and have an idea about how this can be built somehow on a separate site. Feel free to share with us your thoughts.