Where have all the intelligent Steemians gone?
( THIS IMAGE IS MINE )BACKGROUND
I have over 180 folowers now and my article tagged 'science', asking for input about the idea that the Earth is growing has had only 11 views in 2 days (at the time I'm writing this). That is what I would expect from the days when I had 25 followers. What is happening to this platform? Where are all our curious minds? Why am I not getting lots and lots of feedback and ideas? I know there are some very intelligent people here.
My post can be found at https://steemit.com/science/@happyme/is-the-pangaea-theory-wrong
THE PROBLEM
I believe this subject has lots of facts and ideas that can be explored and debated but if nobody sees it, the discussion will never take place.
Steemit is supposed to be a place for social interaction, but what I am seeing lately is that many of those who have already established themselves are too busy writing articles and earning money to bother reading articles by others except for possibly their friends. Those who have not established themselves are busy trying to get the attention of those who are established and have no time to read articles by their peers. This leads to a closed loop where those on the inside get more and more attention while those on the outside are stuck and remain outside trying to get in.
I see this as promoting SPAMMY comments by those seeking attention and exacerbating the problem. All this might go away when the value of Steem goes up and the little guys are able to earn what they feel is a reasonable return for their efforts, but somehow I doubt it.
A POSSIBLE SOLUTION
I think there is another issue at play here. I believe that there are just too many people overwhelmed by the amount of material that enters their feed on a daily basis. I suspect that if the interface allowed for better filtration of what enters a person's feed, there will slowly develop a situation where people will gravitate to watching only certain tags or themes. Those then will become true followers in the sense that they will actually open and read what comes into their feeds.
DISCUSSION
What do you think? Am I way off track or will a better interface create a better platform?
I sincerely thank you for your interest!
I'm on board with you. I'm new here but my first thought as soon as I came on here was. Disorganized. That is to say that, too many things are just going on at once, that if they don't perform some improvements to the interface, it's going to take more and more attention away from stories that are really worth a read just because users are overwhelmed with content. I'm still trying to figure things out on here but I'm glad to catch your posting on here . But that was after like 20+ spam postings. It's still in it's early stages so I can hope it'll improve as things progress.
I'm impressed that someone with just 25 reputation is so observant. I think you should do well here. Keep learning and adjusting how you use the platform. I'm stubborn in my morals, so I don't make nearly as much as I could, but then money isn't everything. When the price of Steem goes up, things will get better as far as earnings go.
I wish to see the social aspects of this platform succeed, so my interest is in making the platform as good as it can be. Keeping issues out in the open and having honest discussions about it will hopefully reach the ears of those who can actually do something about it.
Welcome to Steem mcsteemit!
It is becoming a dilemma for sure. I want the eyes on the platform, but we really need communities, and or filters to help sort and find the content that we enjoy.
Thanks for your response. If enough noise is made about it, perhaps those in control will make it happen.
When you're following 2000 people, some of those peoples posts are gonna go unnoticed. So is it wise to follow so many people? I dunno!
That is a very valid point, however is that not caused by those desperate for attention and having the follow 4 follow mentality?
There are big problems with the feed system as is. The more members are coming the less useful any of the New, hot or trending are to discover relevant content.
The other problem is that curation on this platform is widely misunderstood. What people are selecting is not relevant content that fits in a framework but a bunch of posts that seem to be upvoteable. The fact that for most people this is complete garbage does not seem to alarm anyone but it should, it could wreck the platform's growth.
A slightly better manner to discover relevant content is ChainBB https://beta.chainbb.com/
Thanks for your input.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Unfortunately chainBB only gets a small fraction of Steem's traffic. It might be that everyone brings their friends into Steemit or that chain BB has its own issues. That might be something to look into. I started with Steemit and did look at chainBB, but for some reason came back to Steemit. I should go back and see why I didn't explore it further.
my elaboration got a bit out of hand...
made a post about the curation problem
https://steemit.com/curation/@the-traveller/upvoting-is-not-curation-so-i-want-to-manually-solve-curation-for-my-own-purposes
Wow. Yea... this is what it is supposed to look like. I wonder though, if making a post compiling articles is the way to go, or rather simply suggest that certain tags be exclusively used for certain topics? (Which is really what they are there for.)
Good point. the particular problem I am trying to solve is giving the context. Currently making up the proper curation library post, and for each article adding a why you should read it section. This helps to decide before you click if it is worth your time or not. Tags still don't help with that...
Good point!
For those not wishing to read it all themselves and have someone screen their material, this will work great.
For those who think that is a kind of censorship, it won't work so well.
It will be an interesting experiment!
That is the point about curation, IT IS CENSORSHIP or DISCRIMINATION or what ever you want to call it. In the sense that it is a filter on a public set of criteria. If the curator DOESN'T discriminate content, they are in fact useless because there will be information overload quickly rendering the whole exercise useless. People don't realize that too much information is NO INFORMATION at all!
I understand that. I was simply pointing out that we all have a different view of things. It is not a 'one size fits all' world. Some will appreciate the filter while others will not. I'm sure there will be enough that do like the filter and you should grow a nice following from it.
I personally flip-flop on the idea. If I'm pressed for time, I want the 'Coles Notes' version. If I'm looking for random new ideas/authors, I prefer doing my own filtering.
There is enough material on Steem now that there will be no shortage of interested people on both sides. Ultimately, communities are what is desired. How we build them will remain to be seen.
I agree with you on the point of the feed being an issue. Even following just a few dozen people I find my feed to be cumbersome to sort through. What would really help is an interface in which you can filter/target by user-tag combinations, e.g. I only want contest posts from this person, I only want math posts from that person, but I'll take everything from this really smart person, etc.
Another thing (and this is more specific to your Pangaea post) is that readers may have gone through an article but have not had the time to go through the accompanying videos or other media yet. Furthermore it's possible that even after going through everything they may feel that they cannot contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way, therefore they won't comment.
Thanks for the feedback.
It seems I'm not alone in suggesting the Steemit platform needs better filters.
As for the comments on posts such as the Pangaea post: it isn't just a lack of comments... there is an eye icon that shows how many have opened the post to read it. When you see just 5, you know only 5 people looked at it.