The trending trap: A better way to view Steemit content
A lot of content is being created on Steemit at the moment, lets design a better way find the best.
Choices are really hard
Many of us hate making decisions in life. It always feels so irrevocably permanent, and a little part of us will always regret and wonder about the what could have been. Many studies have also shown, the more options we have, the worse we get at making decisions we end up being happy with.
Lets stop making decisions
Okay, we can't. Decisions are an essential part of life, and we literally can't do anything without them. But what we can do is, is use design to build systems that make these decisions a hell of a lot easier.
or
Wow. My mouth is watering so much from looking for those photos. They both look so good. If I was standing the in proverbial pizza and burger store right now, I'd have a really hard time making a decision and then end up leaving happy.
Why not?
You take the first bite of your delicious choice, you see the melted cheese dripping off the edge of you pizza crust. The smell of the crispy bacon is amazing as you take a second bite, the hot burger bun feels so soft in your hands. If a pizza is $4.50 and a burger $4.00, what if we had 73% pizza, and 27% burger. (0.73 x 4.50) + (0.27 x 4.00).
"Thank you, that will be $4.37."
Discrete vs Continuous Functions
This all boils down to the problems with discrete functions and the disjointed results that spring from their different input values. In my opinion, where practically possible, continuous functions for solving problems and making decisions are almost always better than discrete ones. Why this works is, you completely sidestep the initial question. You change the question from, "What would you like to have?", to "How much do you want from each of your available options?" Note that this does not at all remove the option of having 100% pizza or 100% burger. Out of these two options, by simply making use of a continuous decision function, we have created and infinite amount of new options.
The Trending Trap
Our current situation on Steemit looks like this. You write your wonderful and inspired article, you post it, you wait. The first few minutes are the most important. You know that it takes about 10 minutes to read your article, and if by 20 minutes you do not have at least like 100 likes, your article is doomed for the dark pit where articles make less than $0.07. I call this, the Trending trap. So we are effectively classifying articles within a few minutes as either completely amazing, deserving thousands of dollars, or complete junk. I don't want to know how many great articles just missed the cut, maybe not deserving $50 000, but was then just doomed to the pit.
Breaking down the problem
If we break the Steemit problem down to its pizza-burger essentials, we only have two important factors: Popularity and Age. Popularity we can easily define has the current amount of rewards paid out or to be paid out for said article. Age, even more easy, is just that, the age in seconds. Now lets create a continuous function solution!
Concept: The Steembar
Imagine opening up Steemit and finding a beautiful bar like this, awaiting you. Your choice is simple. Newer or Better. If you are feeling particularly brave and would like to delve into the endless stream of posts just uploaded, you pull that bar all the way to the left. If you're new to Steemit or just want to catch up on the latest news in the community, you push that puppy to the right. It's that simple, and everything in between.
This will give all users, new and old, a lot more power over what type content they would like to view and also more fairly reward everyone in the system for not only writing great articles, but also curating them.
Help!
I do not have the technical expertise to give you anything more than the idea. But I know enough, to know how easily something like this can be implemented on current Steemit GUIs. So please, anybody who thinks this is a good idea and can make it happen, make it happen. uhhhhemm.... @xeroc
I have a much simpler idea - just adjust the algorithm for trending so it's not so heavily weighted by money earned. There's stuff that gets much more votes but misses the trending page because it never caught the eyes of whales. I say weigh trending page more towards a bit more towards raw number of votes.
At least for a while, so they get the attention of whales.
I agree that it would be better to add less weight to the amount of money earned and more on raw votes, but I also like my idea that each user can tweak the balance between age and popularity to what they're looking for a the moment.
I agree - giving the user the choice will certainly help. But they need to get the basics right first.
Great post and great points! Thanks for sharing.
I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Excellent post, thank you. Maybe add the #proposals tag?
That is a great #proposal :D
Your idea, and @liberosist's too are spot on ideas. Id like to see something like this implemented because yeah I'm curious what's earning a lot right now, but I come to Steemit to learn new things and a lot of that comes from everywhere, not just whales or professional writers. So yeah, options!
Exactly! I wonder what @dan and @ned thinks about this?