RE: What Should Be Trending At Steemit? + Jerry Controversy Of The Day (Bonus)
To answer the question posed in your title, at the risk of stating the obvious, what should be trending is whatever those who are curating find to be the best of what's available on Steemit.
As noted, that's not what's happening, because instead of the curators having a say in what's the best content, the creators are the ones saying it, with their self-upvotes, paid votes or delegation.
So, those among us who aren't regularly getting what they feel is fair for their subjective quality content who regularly use bid bots are definitely taking away from the curators who might otherwise help them, and (this is gut only), are probably taking away from themselves or other creators because of the bid bots, since there's only so much reward money to go around each time.
Thus, the same circumstance that drives people to the bid bots becomes an endless loop of self-perpetuation. Post isn't being seen without the bots, but then getting upvoted by the bots takes visibility away from other bidders and those who don't bid at all. You can't always win the bidding, or the bots are too crowded or not fully charged, so your post doesn't get seen, anyway.
Round and round we go.
Other than everyone needs to stop thinking their content is awesome, let others decide that, and everyone do their best to create value and curate it, I don't know if there truly is a fix through code. At least not incremental tweaking or refining. Every change has its unintended consequences followed by some kind of user workaround.
So, the whole system might need to be scrapped.
Which isn't going to happen, so, most likely we will spin ever farther out of alignment.
Until SMTs, of course. Then everything just magically falls into place. :)
I agree and I think a big part of the problem is the Trending page itself. If you use revenue generated as the metric for what's trending, or at least for what is highlighted by whatever label, then that incentivizes looking at the platform as an earning competition to be seen.
So if you've been on here long enough to have a lot of followers, or had a large community elsewhere you could bring here with you, you can get your content seen without bots. But if you're new and starting not knowing anyone here, it is very hard to get your content seen without bots. The way posts are selected to be shown to people who aren't already followers is the issue that I think most needs addressing. Do that and the bots will naturally lose their influence.
Totally agree. I think there's way too much reliance on the upvote button. Anywhere outside of Steemit curation is handled through a sharing mechanism, which in our case is the resteem. So, I don't know how that might work, or if it even could. When/if Communities shows up, I wonder how that will affect the trending/hot pages simply from the standpoint that the existing tag system will be modified in someway.
It's amazing how, even with recent updates and more communication over the last two weeks, we still don't know a whole lot of how things will ultimately be.
I have question. Why would anyone use SMTs over EOS? The creator of the Steem token, Dan the Man, left to create a better token. Assuming someone discovers this during their research, what is the incentive to use SMTs to launch your ICO over EOS?
I know I'm not qualified to answer your question, so if someone else with more working knowledge comments, too, go with their answer. In the meantime, I'll take a stab.
What I've read from others, and agree with, is the STEEM ecosystem is already created, up and running, with social media apps and users. Depending on when EOS finally arrives, STEEM will be a year and a half, two years, or more down the road. So, until there's somewhere to go with EOS other than the promise of a great blockchain with Dan behind it, STEEM is still the only real player up and running.
So, some of this might come down to when SMTs drop vs. EOS, but barring some massive shift to EOS without any major glitches, STEEM wins out because it's already in the space.
In concert with Velocity, I believe the STEEM ecosystem becomes that much more attractive.
I'm not sure how this is all supposed to work, but I also understand that SMTs will allow entrepreneurs to use their own site (existing, modified or new) that can sit independent of the blockchain, and yet still access it with their own token. They won't have to build an app or site from scratch (I believe), or necessarily conform to every protocol or line up with code other than what's necessary to use the SMT.
Those are my guesses. I'm sure there's more, but I hope that gives you something to go on.
Thanks Glen. Whenever EOS comes out with a social network (that attempts to improve Steemit), I'll certainly use it in addition to Steemit. My hope is that we have 2 great platforms and that competition makes both of them better. It is starting to get a little nasty. I don't know if you heard, but Ned downvoted a Dan post that was about EOS (effectively censoring it). So there is no love lost between these two right now. There's no reason for any of us to take a side. We'll see how it all plays out. I'm pro-competition!
Oh, I saw it all right! It's hard to choose which one of those is actually the one you want leading out. I guess we'll see what EOS does. I agree. Competition is sorely needed and will make things better.
I'm totally surprised there's no kind of non-compete agreement for at least three years after EOS gets up and running. It seems like plenty of entities do that, especially where a founder or principal employee strikes out on their own. I've been a part of them.
Maybe the tech business is different. It's sour grapes, though, if you don't have a non-compete in place and then the ex-partner goes and competes.
And I'll probably be over there on the other social media platform, too. :) Why confine yourself to just one, unless one proves so obviously better.