Hey Steemit! Where the heck is everybody? Also, let's have a discussion on upvoting.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thought I'd make a post like this in honor of finally achieving 1600 followers.
That's a pretty big number but I've seen people with much larger numbers.
Having said that I felt like it was time to have a discussion about two things.
1 - Where the heck is everybody?
2 - Maybe we can talk about upvoting just a bit.
Source: Pixabay.com
When I joined Steemit in October of 2016 I had kind of a tough time figure things out. However, by March I was rocking and rolling.
It was a time of looking forward to posting every day. It was a time of talking to all of my followers, which were much fewer then, but had much more to say than they do now.
It was a time of discussions, ideas, hopes, and dreams.
I am a much better poster today than I was back then. In time, through posting quality content, you will eventually find that not only do you format your posts better, but you come up with better posts overall. Certainly my fiction stories have become more interesting.
So here's what's so strange.
The price of Steem today is about 10 times higher than it was back then.
Nevertheless, I'm seeing hardly any comments and views even on the higher-ranked posters.
You would think that with high price of Steem and it's ability to continue to rise that more and more people would be coming here, commenting, engaging their audiences, and trying to have the kinds of discussions that form friendships and communities.
That's not happening.
People in the mid-ranked seventies that were getting 50 comments before are now getting 5 comments that are all spam. Why did everyone leave?
This is the time that we should be coming together. It sucks to see that we're looking at a pool of just empty boats. The money is still here, the content is still here, and everything else seems good. There's just no one here to read it.
Where did you go?
Secondly I'd like to mention the issue of upvoting. If you make a comment on someone's post you should upvote it even if it's at 1%. I'm noticing a heck of a lot of comments on my post that do not have the accompanying upvote.
For now I will do this:
1% for people that do not upvote me.
2% and higher for people that do upvote me.
Why would I even give people 1% that don't upvote me? Because it's clear that they read my content. If you didn't actually read the content you won't get an upvote, but if you read it..... even if you don't upvote me I will upvote you at 1%.
I hope we can get a little bit of discussion going.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Is kind of strange isn't it. Here are my theories: 1. the price of Steem has bummed people out, 2. People might be anticipating an exodus to EOS ( but I don't think so... not yet), 3. a nasty energy has crept in because of misuse of voting bots, flagging, and other platform damaging tactics . I'm relatively new here so I don't have enough history to look back and know how it used to be, so am limited in my perspective. It seems that there is a core group where I am hanging out. @davemccoy is one of the energizers. @wwf is contributing good energy, and then there is @littlescribe who is kicking butt with her new Dtube posts, and there are others too. These core folks keep me plenty busy it seems, though, yeah, not getting as many comments and upvotes lately even though I thought some of my posts were pretty good. Anyway @jeezzle I think you know some of the folks I mentioned. Come on over.
That's the way to do it @mistermercury.. Invite em in! I think its great that the herd is thinning a bit... It will give us a chance to really gel together as friends and prepare for the next phase ;)
Thats what I've been thinking too. Gives us a chance to connect with a strong core group. It really is an opportunity to build a stronger base.
I do know who those people are. They seem like nice people. I usually write fiction stories though, so I usually run with kind of a fiction crowd. I'll come say hi though.
The price of Steem is currently over $3 and it is up something like 52% for the day. It's very possible to hit a huge number before long. EOS still has a ways to go before anything substantial is produced. Will it eventually come out with a blogging platform that is able to rival and possibly create issues with Steemit? It's possible. Still, Steem is on the upward trend so I feel that now more than ever people should be here.
Just so you know EOS is set to launch in June. Mid June if I recall. Yes, and delighted that Steem is rising. Will have to check out your fiction. Best to you.
I always enjoy your positive spin/attitude @davemccoy! 😁
With comments without upvotes. I think it falls into a couple of categories. Firstly if they are newbies with low SP they do t have the vote slider in Steemit so their upvote power drains quickly. There are also lots of newbies that don’t understand the etiquette of commenting. And of course you have people who may not support your post value but feel the need to make a comment, at least they dont flag you.
Well that's certainly true about the newbies.
However, my content is mostly fiction stories. If people disagree with those, then I'm not really sure what exactly they're disagreeing with. Most of the comments that they make are talking about how they like the story.
I had a post earlier this week with 136 votes and ~20 views. People set their bots and forget. Its easy to tell because the votes all come in at once.
Well, certainly that is a factor. However, I am mostly noticing the severe lack of comments. There just hasn't been a lot of community engagement.
On Steem Supply there's a calculator showing engagement and audience retention, in addition to reward forecasting.
It seems like the vast majority don't choose to engage with content too deeply. Either no one is home, or they've forgotten.
This is my experience too and I only joined last December @jeezzle. There has been a marked drop off since then.
I really miss people being here in the morning as that picked me up and got me going for the day. Now I'm finding I'm having my conversations about midnight my time which isn't good for me. I'm normally in bed at 10 p.m. with a good book! 😊
I have been fortunate to receive a delegation from @abh12345 from his commenting Leagues which has enabled me to upvote to my heart's content. The only comments I don't upvote are the spam ones.
However, I'm not sure how much that helps in terms of "meeting" new people.
Being seen is by far the most difficult thing here and I'm hoping, that by leaving quality comments, some quality people will start to upvote my posts too. 😁
Well I can tell you that leaving quality comments and engaging the user base is definitely the way to be seen. You should also join Discord and interact with a few of the different groups there. I recommend Steemspeak, SteemUSA, and the Isle of Write if you are into writing.
Thank you @jeezzle. I'm already in a number of Discord groups so I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing. 😁
I'm going to the Crypto currency Show In London tomorrow and looking forward to meeting some Steemians there, face to face. Should be fun!
Have a great weekend! 😊
I've never had a problem with reading and commenting. I enjoy it. And yes, the upvotes are also an incentive. Don't know about others.
Thanks for your comment.
Hey @jeezzle
I've noticed the same as you and I think one of the reasons is that so many now delegate their stake to bid-bots.
No need to curate and interact if you are making a nice return I guess. It's not a good situation, and I'm really trying to boost engagement and curation via competitions, but it's the big guys that need to change their ways.
cheers!
I actually think that you're right. I think that this is one of the main issues going on right now. It's nice that you can delegate your stake because it means you can make money without posting. However, that also means that you don't have to take part in commenting or engaging the user base at all. Is that a good thing? It's making for a barren wasteland of empty posts and streets with no people on them.
Thanks for commenting!
A barren wasteland where spammers and vultures live!
Sometimes I want to engage with people and comment but I can't vote as my VP is getting low. Is that not okay?
Well, I think when you're just starting out VP is something that really needs to be conserved I guess.
Indeed! I dont like it going below 75 percent. But I always upvote when I can..
a think on the follower is a big number of user just giving up the follow the the leave. its just have it is. mostly on the dream of making big money
here a think and we all now its hard to make money here.
Then on the up votes am always up voting when a commenting.
a blame the chased after money on user ho do not.
Agreed. Sometimes it's just about chasing the money and not about leaving quality comments are engaging the user base.
1 Monetization of content creation means we all want to be content creators, so much so that we forget about reading others content and connecting with each other. I can only find two solutions to this aside from a change in the layout (communities), which I am tired of waiting for and they work best together.
The first is a wider distribution of wealth so we don’t have to fight so hard to gain consistent payout and readership, a smaller number of readers could allow us to make at least a few dollars. If we think only those with millions of viewers deserve payout, how is that much different from youtube? The other answer is a change in the culture where we actively come together to change our behavior and support real engagement and quality with our upvotes and deny our support to anyone who doesn’t behave with he communities interests in mind. This will take a whole lot of work and it’s exactly what I’m focused on, even more than content creation which is why I started here.
2 There are to many ways to game the system and self-interest is blinding a lot of people to how they damage the ecosystem, especially users who gain the most from them. Bidbots, self voting, multiple accounts, higher curation based on higher paying posts rather than a fair community evaluation, auto-votes, insane amounts of delegations to certain projects, shitposting etc. Users with Steem power can’t agree on how to approach these issues because many are using their ideologies to justify their behavior rather than looking at how they are effecting the ecosystem realistically. Many of these methods of gaming were created to combat other methods of gaming. It’s so easy to point fingers but hard to look at our own behavior.
All the ways to game the system makes engagement less fun and turns our attention towards making profits rather than real contribution, because just like in mainstream society, this arbitrary concept of “adding value” is played with in order to justify our selfish behavior because we know that we deserve more (and we truly do deserve more, all of us).
So we end up just going through the motions.
I’m with you. Think I’ll give this a resteem.
I think a change in the culture or at least in the mindset of the general user base is a great idea. It is possible this is going to happen with communities, but once again I think it's going to come down to people wanting to be the one person that gets seen instead of being part of a pool of people where everyone has a strong voice and a good payout.
I also think you're definitely right about gaming the system making things harder. it's not as fun when you know for a fact that your post is not going to make it to trending because you're not using a bid bot. That kind of ruins the joy of it a little bit.
those higher ranked posts are now mostly garbage promoted with bid-bots. People are commenting on stuff which they care about.
Well I think most people care about money more than anything these days. There was a time when I got a bunch of comments on a fiction story because people read it because they liked it, but it seems like nowadays people aren't reading things that aren't going to give them a definite payout. It seems like the incentive to just have fun seems to have somehow been taken away.