Steemit Needs to Respect It's Users to Grow
I don’t usually feel inclined to post my thoughts about the state of Steemit. I’ve made some comments in my Rambles but that has been the extent of it. Until today.
I just finished reading through an exchange on one of the Steem Chat channels between a member of the Steemit Inc staff and some of the witnesses. I wont name names at this point but I can say I’m not very impressed.
Need for Communication
The witnesses were trying to get across to this staff member that communication to the community in a timely manner is important. This guy sees the lack of communication as not a problem, nor in need of being addressed.
He seems to see the number of active users to be too small to care about communicating to. He also seems to think that it’s okay to ignore their concerns while aggressively working to grow the community to 100x it’s current size.
Need to Remove Head From Ass
Well, that’s a grand objective. I have no fault with that. However, he needs to take his head out of his ass if he thinks ignoring the existing community is going to contribute to attaining that objective.
People Respond to Communication
In October there was a growing number of members of the community who were becoming very concerned about the fall in the value of STEEM and the lack of communication from the founders. It took a while but @dantheman and @ned did hear it and posted on the @steemitblog early in November.
They posted some proposals for changes in how Steemit works to address some of the issues they had identified. They asked for and received feedback on the proposal. Most of it was positive. The price of STEEM saw a bit of an uptick. It drifted back down but not like it had been. It has drifted rather than the plunging it had been doing.
Hardfork 16 Was Announced
A few days later @dantheman posted on his blog that he was moving forward on implementing the changes and was working on the needed coding. He suggested a tentative release date for Hardfork 16 to be Nov. 16th. People started to look forward in anticipation to that date.
Nov. 16th came and went without any implementation and no official word as to why it had not been implemented. Now, I know Dan posted it was a ‘tentative’ date but I’ve enough experience in leadership to know that the word ‘tentative’ disappears from view almost as fast as it is written and people will focus on the given time frame.
Lack of Communication Leads to MisInformation
This morning @krnl posted about the lack of implementation. He posted based on some misinformation so I wont link to it. But, prior to the information being shown to be wrong, the post generated an animated discussion over on the SteemSpeak channel on Discord.
Some of the same witnesses who tried to later convince the Steemit Inc staffer of the need for communication to the community heard about the discussion and joined SteemSpeak to get the misinformation sorted out.
Props to The Witnesses
The witnesses were correct. Had someone taken the time to post a quick update on what had stopped them from taking Hardfork 16 live by Dan’s tentative date, neither the post nor the discussion would have taken place. There may still have been discussion but not fuelled by disappointment at expectations not met and a lack of communication.
Communication is Respect
The lack of communication and the attitude that it will continue is disrespectful to the people who are active on and care about Steemit. When you disrespect people, they will not remain as goodwill ambassadors for your product. They get discouraged and walk away.
Ever hear the maxim about advertising, A happy customer will tell maybe 10 people while an unhappy customer will tell 50? It’s true.
So, @sneaky (oh, forgot wasn’t going to name names, oh well) how do you expect to grow the platform when you can’t respect the people who are here and want it to grow? They need to know not only how things stand but that they are respected by people like you.
It doesn’t take that long to write a quick update once a week. Even a post that says ‘no change from last week’ is more information than silence.
In case I’m not clear enough yet: don’t piss off the willing ambassadors with the silent treatment.
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I don't know which staff member you thought didn't think communication was important, but I can tell you that the top of the Steemit management team is actively trying to address the communication issue and considers it critical.
The problem we have faced is that our peer-review process is taking too long, especially while half the team was at Steem Fest.
@dantheman It is good to see your reply. Possibly Steem / Steemit has brought as much frustration to you guys as it has for others on this platform like the content creators, witnesses, investors...etc. There are so many positive things about this platform like @steemfest @curie @steemsports and many other things but I can tell you this. I feel like there are a lot of other community members like myself that have become so frustrated with Steem / Steemit that we want to punch a computer screen but we are still lingering around because we know this platform has SO MUCH POTENTIAL.
Sometimes STEEM / STEEMIT feels like seeing that kid that has so many talents. They are a straight A student, star athlete, a rare genius but then suddenly they start doing METH and their brain and teeth rot out. We are all left shaking our heads and telling the story of how they threw everything away. That is the best way I can describe the way I feel.
I get it. There aren't that many people who understand blockchain tech, cryptography, ....etc to code this. We understand that. Anything critical we say isn't trying to be disrespectful to what you guys have done. It is because we care so much about the survival of this platform. We have also invested a lot of time and effort into it and some of us haven't really been compensated for that effort. Then it becomes upsetting when you guys post job offers and you don't seem to hire anyone when it seems like you have the funds from the power downs to do so.
You guys seem to still be collecting resumes for months when there are talented content creators right in front of your eyes who have broke their backs for this platform. The community is this platform's most valuable asset. Friendster and MySpace lost their communities so they ended up dying. We really fear that is going to happen to Steemit.
I don't disbelieve you Dan. As I said at the outset, I wasn't impressed with the individual's attitude. I didn't assign it to Steemit as a whole. I did end up mentioning his screen name.
As I suggested at the end of my post, even a quick note once a week would be better than nothing. You'll never make everyone happy on communication but as many as possible helps.
In short, Steemit Inc. needs community oriented Public Relations
Easy :)
Hi @shadowspub - I am in favor of more communication, but one thing that I think we all have to get used to on a distributed platform is that the communication will often come from various channels. For the hardfork delay, it was posted in GitHub, and many of the witnesses created posts to get the word out to the community. As another example, even though it is not an 'official' report, one of the Steemit devs had suggested I write a period "Steemit development updates" post to provide the community with important information about what the development team is working on. It may seem like Steemit, Inc. is not providing very much communication, but if you look at what the community is doing on their behalf, it is there.
Well @timcliff, I know several of the witnesses are working hard to try to communicate but unfortunately, the posts often get lost very easily. It's becoming pretty important that the steemitblog become a source of information so people don't just happen to find out the info. It's not that I don't appreciate the hardwork, it just could be better focused. Maybe the answer is to allow two or three of the witnesses that are good at posting updates posting privileges on the steemitblog.
It's a good idea. One that I'm not opposed to. Ultimately it's not up to me though :)
Thanks for this message. I messed up on some things, but I stand by my intended message to those who object to the economic changes that we need based on their personal issues. That may not be the case now, but from people's mouths themselves (who are in the top 50 witnesses) I was hearing direct arguments against implementing the economic changes. But I mistakenly mixed that in with all of "hardfork 16" that had much more in it, which made my argument fail bad. Sorry everyone. Thanks again for the post.
P.S. Just reblogged for Dan to see.
Thank you for posting @shadowspub. Your post could use the quote from Winston Churchill.....When the eagles are quiet, the parrots begin chattering.
Every organisation has policy, purpose and chain of command.
@ervin-lemark had some good ideas that reflected this.
We need to treat our senior community members on here like superheroes too!!
well, respect is good enough :)
Keeping us informed on what's happening stops the influx of posts asking what's going on. :)
Agreed Karen .. it doesn't have to be long and detailed.. just a quick update I think would do wonders
A post keeping us up to date on what's going on would def make me feel easier on here
There is this troll on steemitchat disrespecting a lot of users. I am really upset to see that no one is doing anything to stop this user from cursing others and being disrespectul. I am not gonna name this user but I think that is quite messed up for the whole community!!!
communication is the key this days especially for brands
I agree. I'm president of a small branch of a larger non-profit, we've built our standing in the community through communication on a regular basis.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
Experimental Crowdsourced Steem Metrics Report for 17th November 2016 by @ontofractal
My proposal for a Steemit Dedicated Communication Channel by @arcange
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