Questions About Steemit Framework, Culture and Norms
I've been dabbling in Steemit blogging for about 4 months now, with a conscious effort toward increased activity and interaction over the past couple weeks, and have several questions that I haven't been able to answer through participation and observation. Can anyone comment below and help me out? If other readers have other questions, comment with those as well and let's see if we can get a conversation going.
Why does there seem to be at least a significant subset of Steemians who are fanatical about 100% power up posts? I know it boosts influence for the author and probably indicates an intent to actually contribute to the Steem society, but I don't get why some posts seem to indicate it's a special virtue to power up 100%, and a breach of etiquette if you don't. Am I getting false signals here?
I still don't understand the need for Steem Dollars at all. I get Steem vs. Steem Power as a set of distinct, useful functions but the Steem Dollars just don't make sense to me, and it feels like an unnecessary complication. Especially when it's tied to a national currency. What benefit does it offer that I'm not seeing?
One of my posts was recently listed as "undervalued" in the daily updates by @screenname, but what irks me there is that it was probably bots rather than minnows voting in the first place based on getting 180+ upvotes with only a few pageviews. I'm not the only one to notice this.. Is there any solution? I don't like captchas, definitely not for every upvote, but this strikes me as a serious problem in the Steemit infrastructure than need ssome kind of solution.
Is there a way to bookmark or resteem articles that are past their 1-month payout? In my efforts to find answers to my Steem questions, I have seen some posts from several months ago that I cannot resteem. Other than using the web browser bookmark, or sending the URL via an outside message system, there's no way to share old info. This is supposed to be about sharing useful knowledge than it is about making cryptocurrency points, right?
Thanks for taking the time to read through this, and thanks in advance for your participation in the intended conversation below!
On the bookmarking of older posts, there is no functionality that I know of that covers this, but it is definitely needed. It might be easier at this stage to create your own bookmark lists through an external third party.
I have thought to myself that a conscientous steem participant might create an index of all posts sorted by tags that could be browsed more efficiently than the current process. It is sorely needed, but again, we are in early days and not everything is in place to give the perfect user experience.
Steem will be what you make of it. I wouldn't get too caught up in the various interest groups that are springing up. At the beginning of any revolution, there is a certain degree of chaos. We have not reached a stage where a clear vision of the way forward has been communicated to all the players.
Primarily, I would concentrate on using the platform in a way that suits your own needs. You may prefer a conversational style over formal blog posting. You may prefer twitter style, short succinct posts.
The other thing to consider is that the Steemit.com website is still being designed. We experienced a new update today that added the ability to change your displayed nickname, and about field for personal descriptions, a weblink and other interesting changes. Steemit.com does not have to be the part of the Steem ecosystem that you find most valuable either. Other developers can tap into the content being put on the blockchain and develop their own communities. I know, for instance that there is a Steem Chat, although I haven't visited it yet.
It's all very new and unfamiliar. You are not alone in this respect. Everyone is finding their feet at the moment.
Steem, steem power and steem dollars are all explained in the whitepaper accessible from the menu to the right of your profile picture. I'll try to dig up a video I saw that explained the relationship.
This is quite old, but does a good job of describing their function, and includes Steem Dollars.
The video helps a bit.
I am looking for layman's terms, not a referral to the white paper. Break it down for me in a practical way.
That's the purpose of the video link.