The authority fallacy on Steemit and the search for quality
What is the meaning of value, when reputation is the main criteria to obtain it? There is a slippery slope here, where being seen equals power equals money. How can we make sure quality is a factor?
When traditional publishing houses are concerned about staying alive in this internet age, and sales become more or at least as important as quality....
When social media and even politics becomes about followers instead of content...
When having a name, a reputation, is a reason to be trusted...
... quality is at risk.
But how then to measure quality? We trust the market to make sure the yoghurt nobody likes either changes or disappears, right? Why not trust the market for writing, for creation of ideas, for development of thought? I guess early on it was realised there had to be places where thought and ideas could be produced, a place outside of the market, outside of the political market. Wasn't that the reason for the story in the Bible where Jesus threw out the salespeople from the place of worship? A place where one could occupy oneself with thought, community, spiritual life... that was no place for people with commercial interest.
Quality is perhaps best measured by the time one allows for something to develop.
This why curation is important. Curation that does not allow for half measures. Curation that focuses on providing visibility to what remains unseen. But what happens when something gets curated, gets seen, but when that doesn't lead to more views, more interaction, more community? Isn't curation not one more way to give a name, a reputation, to someone who doesn't have one of his own? Doesn't this kind of curation keep a commercial system in place, adding an illusion of quality to it?
I'm not sure.
I saw this picture, shared by Philosophy Matters on their social media. Normally I would hit the 'share' button, but there is none here. Please visit the original post, and follow them on Twitter, if you happen to do such things...
Yes, it is quite sad. But is there really any way to solve it? The market (as you put it) was supposed to control reputation growth with their upvotes, but somewhere along the line, it turned around and reputation began to control the votes. Is it the system that's flawed, or the market for not doing it's job and really looking for quality?
You are right. Everyone just wants to make a quick buck, quality be damned.
I am not sure yet if it's about trusting the market-system which is the mistake, or the trust in human beings...
Or am I just one of the small fish trying to complain about a system, but when I'm ride on top of the waves, will I still look towards change and improving a system that is, perhaps, flawed beyond repair?
It's a really complicated issue. We have both subjective and objective criteria at play. 'Ulysses' by James Joyce could be a masterpiece in the history of literature, but really few people are able to finish it. We have instead 'Fifty Shades of Grey' as one of the best-selling books of the decade. Content can be objectively great, but I think we are not educated to go deep into things, we are educated to give value to what is useful and/or entertaining. Of course we have really quality posts in this platform with lots of votes, but we can also see some really bad written peaces with very high support. For their readers, that was useful, even if the author spent just five minutes to think and write about it. Can we say that a high voted/bad written post has intrinsic quality? While we try to think about this, however, I will always prefer to give the people the power of curation that have some 'experts' deciding for us. Everyone should decide what is useful for them. Maybe we should try to make the better pieces more available to them. We need more pop philosophy like your posts and less obscure academics.
PD: excuse my possible English mistakes, it's not my mother tongue.
I completely agree we need accessible philosophy. And yes, Steemit is also great in that nobody can decide what is quality and what should be made available. That doesn't mean that a certain type of quality, decided on by certain users with similar interests / ideas about quality, shouldn't be made more visible, accessible.
But you're absolutely right, it's a complicated issue. Great to meet you, and gather some thoughts here!
And don't worry about English mistakes, it's also not my mother tongue!
You raise some interesting questions.
It seems sad to me that Steemit seems to be so widely "gamed" and that content creators with quality input get overlooked. It would be good if better ways were developed to find and raise up and reward quality writers.
😄😇😄
I absolutely agree. More collaborative ways to create would be one way to go, I think. And if you have other ideas, please let me know :)
Sola tried to solve this by making upvotes (called endorsements) lead to more users seeing your post (card), but I'm not sure that works either. The cards with lots of endorsements overwhelm those just starting out, unless (like here on Steemit), a lot of persons have prioritised (= followed) you.
The solution, I think, will be to just keep 'sensitising' steemians on quality curating with posts like this until the tide turns.
I don't have an answer to the question either, although I have given it a lot of thought.
And I love that photo. Two very 'classic' philosophy quotes. I am sure they are genuine :)
Genuine? As in honestly meant...? I'm sure they are! ;)