@kaylinart, I've been thinking about the 'lifespan' of a steem post too. Right now, Steem highly incentivizes fast content that is somewhat bitesized or entertaining, and disappears in a week. It's pretty exciting, but it also predisposes the KIND of content that will proliferate across the network.

One of the coolest things about the internet is the amount of USEFUL information out there, in depth tutorials, DIY instructions, well documented experiences...these things tend to take a lot of work to create, but can useful for a long time. Think of StackExchange, there's a community that gets a LOT of google traffic, and helps a LOT of people get detailed solutions to whatever they're looking at. I think it's one of the coolest community systems online. Steem has the possibility of being better...but not without some work.

Stack exchange is a great example of highly targeted reference content, it excels at answering technical questions where a helpful answer actually does exist somewhere. Once somebody takes the time to Document this, that answer is then helpful to thousands and thousands of other people oftentimes over several years, if not longer.

Right now, Steem as a system disincentivizes longterm reference or tutorial content. This is a HUGE market, not to mention a hub of really competent, creative, skilled people. How can we encourage a variety of useful content beyond the "most entertaining facebook of the last 5 minutes" variety???