RE: Steemit Suggestion Box: A Modest Proposal to Solve the Trending Page Issue, Once and for All
I almost would be more in favor of added button for top 20 trending blogs site wide. It would be new kind of flag/site self-policing that does not remove rewards or cause reputation damage. Instead it simply removes a blog from trending if the community determines it not to be worthy.
My issue with giving such a small group of people the power to control trending. Then again they already control who gets to be a top witness and who does not. Either way there no perfect solution or one that can’t be manipulated and exploited for personal gains. If someone willing to pay $500+ to be on trending an extra $50 bribe where those people than get a cut of the profits on top of that could really make some people wealthy.
While I hate how trending is now. It also lets the community see as a whole what is going on. When you see that 1 photo and little text be at $800 and on trending. You can at least see it and so can the rest of the world. That alone I think makes the system want to be better in the long run. As it just makes it look bad. Otherwise it just looks like you are trying cover it up by removing/hiding them from trending. Which many sites already control what is seen to the public and since those they do not agree with their view point. While empowering their friends or for “other” reasons.
The reason I suggested it the way I did is that we have Witnesses in charge of the technical side and the nuts and bolts of RUNNING Steemit.
With that in mind, why not have formal Curators who are — in a similar way — the overseers of the content we have here. It's not about censorship, or about who can say what, or favoritism... it's simply about making the first impression of Steemit look as good as possible.
Whereas I essentially agree with the bones of what you say about the system "wanting to be better," it skips past human psychology, to some extent. The people who are buying upvotes to the top of trending don't give a rats ass about "being better" they just want MONEY. They don't care about Steemit, and if this community goes TU, they'll just head off like a swarm of locusts to the next great thing they can milk for every penny they can find.
But let's consider Trending again. What does it mean to be "trending?" To me (based on twitter, Flopbook and others) "trending" means something is hot and of interest to LOTS of people. Does a post on which the 5-10 largest upvotes are from bid bots qualify as "of interest to lots of people?" In my opinion, no.
Perhaps a limit on how long something could be in tending would be better. Trash or not they can’t keep buying themselves to the top on the same blog for three straight days in a row or longer by overspending. 12 hour time limit. After that the blog is no longer up there. We live in a very short time and fast moving site. It’s a little odd things hang in trending for days on end.
Otherwise, I fear it will just be the same old same old. Everything here is based on vesting. Those “curators” will be put in by vesting totals as that how everything is done. A lot of the top is into vote selling and as a result they have the powers to put those who share their viewpoints into power.
The community as a whole needs another way. The issue here is everyone has different options on what should be in trending. For many anything that is not programing related that is not a new app or update announcement for their programs they are running here is not adding value to the platform and therefore should never be in trending.
Best I could think of. The top 10 tags each should each have someone who represents them and there interest to bring forward every day blogs that are worthy of being on trending. Each person would than put forth a Curation Announcement of their intentions to be a tags leader. Every quarter the top 10 tags are recalculated. There would also be term limits within x amount of time.
Even this has its massive drawbacks. Instead I would rather focus on tags and whenever communities come out to avoided the current trending issues. On top of that I think Steemit should find a more clever way to either have the front of steemit change every time you refresh it to show one of the top ten tags and its trending list or have a way to customize what mix of tags are in your trending. As far as those not logged into the site I’m not sure if it would become economy viable for steemit to have top trending results be relatable to the person who is landing on that front page.
Other method is simply allow steemit inc control and who and what is in trending. Hand pick like many other sites really do. Than you run into issues like twitter or YouTube where they have a bigger hand then most realize on what is “trending.”
I just don’t see an easy solution that won’t over time become corrupted. If we moved off liner rewards and back onto the old system it would at least be cheaper voting power wise to as a collative remove the junk off trending. There is one piece right now up there that many have down voted. The person can easer outspend and the brainless masses will keep upvoting it. This is also very subjective. As who am I to say what should or not be on trending? Why that what my vesting share are for. As such I have no impact on what goes there or not.