Proposal: How to fix the broken Trending page
The broken trending page
I think many will agree with me if I say the trending page is broken.
Over the past couple of months I have been on Steemit, what I have understood is that this platform does not have the fundamental mechanisms in place to truly promote and encourage good content.
Flaws in the meritocratic system
What was originally envisioned as a meritocratic system, where the larger the stakeholder, the bigger the influencing factor over content rewards, recognition and spread, has resulted in a broken system where merit has come to mean money or Steem Power.
The result is that this platform is no different from the capitalist and competitive systems which Steemit aims to eliminate.
Disclaimer
My above statements do not mean I don't see any value in Steemit, for if I don’t see the value here I would not be spending time and effort to get a toehold.
What I mean is that the current system of content discovery needs to improve if Steem and Steemit have to reach greater heights of quality and subsequently scale higher highs in terms of user count, content quality and market cap.
Alternate Solutions?
Much has been said about the problems of the current system where the same set of people perpetually share the trending page because they are already so high in Steem Power that it's a default for them to be there with each post while smaller Steemians with decreasing order of Steem Power find it exponentially difficult to be there. I will not elaborate on this but will rather talk about an alternate system.
A proposed and available alternative is the 1UP initiative from @flauwy.
Here I talk about a different solution which I propose to be built into the Steemit website itself.
Use resteems rather than upvotes for Trending and Hot sections
Below are some of the salient features/propositions of how this can be done.
◈ Bigger Steem holders will continue having bigger say in allocating the reward pool. This should remain unchanged as this encourages people to get and stay invested in the platform and encourages loyalty towards the future of the platform.
◈ However, the trending and hot pages should not be populated with posts getting higher cumulative upvote rewards but through a democratic selection through resteems.
◈ This will make the platform similar to how existing social media works, wherein virality is created through democratic means such that each share or retweet counts as one and not through vested power (as in the current Steem system). Newer users will find it more natural and acceptable as they will also have a say.
◈ The posts with the most number of resteems should be at the top of the trending and hot pages. Each resteem will have equal weightage irrespective of Steem Power of the resteemer. This will ensure that everyone has equal say in quality if not on rewards. This creates a balance and new users also have a say in the system.
◈ If there is an argument that higher Steem holders will have their influence decreased, that is in reality not true. Higher Steem holders will still have the power to allocate the reward, only their current ability to rule the trending page always will be to some extent curtailed as their resteem will also count as one, same as the newest plankton. They will still be able to influence it in proportion to their Steem Power, follower count and quality of curation as their higher number of followers will be more likely to resteem their posts or resteems.
◈ But since the criteria for being in the trending and hot pages will now be the number of resteems, there will be greater churn in these pages which will give a better chance for a variety of content and content creators reaching these coveted pages.
◈ This change will have to go hand in hand with encouraging more resteems by users so that users are not shy of resteeming what they find of value.
◈ This can be done by some clever design changes in the user's blog page so that resteems can be shown in a separate tab so as to not drown the user's own content with resteems. The feed page also needs tweaking with a separate tab for resteems. In the resteems feed tab, each post can come only once (with a note showing number of resteems and resteemers).
I am new to Steemit and do not have the technical know-how or the influence to make this a reality, but I wanted to start a conversation. Would love to know from others what they think about these proposals, how it can go wrong and how it can be made even better.
Would love to see a whale noticing this and starting a bigger discussion around this. I cannot say if this is the best solution, but at least this is a starting point for an important discussion towards a choice which Steemit will eventually have to make.
Any coder using @utopian-io reading this?
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I think resteems could be one of many signals that determine this property. Comments, resteems, and upvotes, all with various weighting, and spam removals. I also think there should be a separate section with $$$ just so we can keep tabs on junk that is slipping by the cracks that should be flagged. Nice suggestion. I have yet to see how this 1up works, but something is off about it... I guess maybe not enough people use it. It's a good idea to reward within that system though.
I haven't used 1UP but the post talks about giving a large upvote to the top post everyday, doesn't quite seem right to me
I'd like to see some kind of serious conversation started about the awful "visibility' problem on Steemit. One point in this post that I certainly agree with is ... either make the "Trending Page" relevant and worthwhile ... or shoot it. Shoot it dead and do it quick.
Right now it is a depressing embarrassment to all of us who care about Steemit and its future. Depressing, because when you look at the crap on that page and the huge amounts of money pending for the authors you just want to hang yourself. Embarrassing, because other people -- outsiders and potential recruits -- take a look at this junk and think that's what we're all about.
That Trending Page may do more to entice the spammers and crap-promoters to come here than any other single feature. There should be new words to describe how awful it is.
I'm not sure your resteem idea is the answer though, attractive as it is in theory. It would -- as some have said -- only replace upvote bots with resteem services. And for some reason people on Steemit passionately hate resteems. I don't understand why, but they do.
I haven't had much experience with FB or Tw. Neither of those places appealed to me (to put it mildly.) My greatest social media experience was with G+ and I dearly loved it. Shares there were the norm, and wonderful, and everybody did it. If you found something nice, you put it on your stream. It was a compliment -- and people enjoyed the variety (or they stopped following you. Simple remedy.)
I know people made fun of G+ but I enjoyed it ... and I miss it ... and sometimes I go back to my old friends there just for the relief of some decent content and conversations.
If Steemit doesn't solve its visibility problem, it's doomed to a slow and unlovely death -- which would be a real shame. That Trending Page is a starting place for improvements. And people like you with moxie, original thoughts and initiative are among those who can help it happen.
As I have said, I do not know if my suggestion, as it is, is the ultimate solution to this problem. But resteems, I think need to be encouraged. The reason why people don't like resteems is, in my opinion, largely because sharing other's contents in your feed has the potential to negatively impact your own earnings. This is the reason why I suggested to have a separate tab for resteems.
The most important thing is that a solution needs to be discussed and arrived at. If a primarily blogging platform can't figure out how to discover good content, it's an ailment which needs immediate attention and cure.
I learned early to not look at the trending page but when I first found Steemit that page was enticing....and then ultimately I figured out it was very misleading. I think it definitely needs to be reconfigured and I like your resteem idea. Let's hope the powers that be get it figured out!
If there is a trending page, it should be usable, if not it should be removed
I think this is a great suggestion. I am too new to know for sure how practical your solution is, but no matter what it’s a discussion that has to happen, so I’m resteeming. I think it would be great to have multiple feeds, and maybe ones that we can control in some way. For example, I would like to see a feed of posts have generated a high number of comments but not much $.
Thanks for the resteem. And I think that's a great idea, to be able to control your feed stream more personally. Yes, discussions are important to move forward.
I haven't looked at a trending page in months, it isn't where the best material is found on steemit, just the most rewarded.
Your ideas are worth examination, but new users re-steeming a bunch of posts will find themselves in a band width issue in no time at all so they surely need to be cautioned on re-steeming.
I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
new users will have bandwidth problems while resteeming and doing anything else as well. this is fact is good as they will not be able to get into a resteeming spree, they will rather resteem select posts.
one more idea may be a limit on the number of resteems per day for all users, some kind of limitations similar to voting power. That can solve a lot of abuse. @lifeaef this may be an answer to your question on abuse.
I think it's a strong point. For something to be trending it surely has to be a mixture of engagement and sharing. If everyone is resteeming and I'm leaving comments on a post, that shows it's trending and it's an active topic. The garbage that is popping up on trending if laughable. It's also bad news because every newer users thinks that this is the way to go.
Im very interested in the 1UP initiative. I've been creating a community called BuddyUP and it sounds like some weird fate that our names are the way they are. I'm going to reach out to @flauwy and find out a little bit more.
Great ideas from yourself and nicely formatted post!
Good to know that you are also thinking about this problem. I think a permanent solution needs to be found for this and that solution has to be accepted into the primary site itself because any other initiative or tool will just be an alternative for a select group of users
It just needs some simple guidance to good communities and projects. If people have the opportunity to find a good community, they can learn about whats right and wrong quicker.
Thats why I started BuddyUP.
When I first started reading this, I thought it wasn't such a good idea because resteems can clutter your page and detract attention from your own posts. But I like your suggestion to place resteems on a different tab on the feed page. I think this would be a great solution.
yeah, I put in quite some thought into this. I think it may work with some tweaks as needed. but I don't think anyone will notice my little post and starting thinking or taking action on it
some cool ideas, but does so many people really look at it?
thanks for visiting, I am not quite sure if I understand what you mean by people looking at it?
I don't look so often to the trending page and trending posts. I have several tags I follow.
but when you follow tags, even then the top trending posts follow the same logic. you can bypass it only by following the new page and your favorite authors I suppose
I'm aware of this problem, like @detlev I follow only few tags. I only check "new" page of these tags and look up the past 20-30 posts or so for the best titles. I think I should write a proposal on how to make tags more searchable.
A filtering system where you can search two tags at the same time, or filter out a tag... search a person's posts with a tag, search a person posts without a tag and so on.... This alone will make finding great content on steemit way easier.
That's a great idea. The current search function in Steemit just uses Google search, not fair to the community I think
This is really interesting @svkrulze , as I have personally been thinking about a similar idea with regards to resteeming. I agree with the problem of the trending page. However, I see resteeming to be potentially abused by a plethora of resteem bots, which haven't invested as much as whales in the platform.
I think we can both agree that the resteem option is under utilised and undervalued and can be used better. In the end there will always be a correlation between the number of resteems and reward count.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
there will always be chances of abuse and I am not claiming that my proposal is full-proof. It needs wider discussion and improvements. It would be great if there is some discussion started around this
Creating a thousand account in steemit is difficult but once these are created then one resteem is all you need from each one to push it to trending and it won't be a bandwidth issue , that's why I think your idea is great if SP is also taken into account.
I definitely agree that a discussion about the future of this platform is always good
This is an interesting concept SVK, it would be interesting to see if anyone bites. Good luck! xx Eagle
it's highly unlikely that someone who can do something about this will read my post :) so, that's that :)
thanks for visiting, I like your "seal of approval".. it looks great :)
You never know, I mean why say that? You got a personal vote from Ned! LMAO
Haha, yes @ned is my guy. He will definitely read this lolz
At least you aren’t sounding so fatalistic now.
Fatalistic?? Lolz
“Highly unlikely”