An Open Letter To The Developers Of Steemit
This is an open letter to all of the people who are actively involved in development of steem, steemit & anyone who is interested in the future development.
First of all, I wanted to take a moment & thank you for all of your efforts both now & in the future. You've done a good job so far. I know that myself & thousands of others are happy to have this platform as a method to be rewarded for our contributions.
I don't want to seem ungrateful, unfortunately, A negative pattern is beginning to emerge from the core influence group. This pattern is causing many including myself to feel marginalized & alienated.
Recently I opened a topic on GitHub regarding a simple change, to restore longterm payouts in order to encourage the creation of higher quality content.
It's sad, but frankly understandable that we have to go to GitHub to in order to bring these topics up. There is a terrible signal to noise ratio right now. It's unlikely to get better anytime soon. At the moment there aren't enough mods to highlight relevant content. It's a bit of a free for all on steemit with everyone vying for the very limited attention of a very tiny group of influencers in a system that is supposed to be representing anarchist ideals.
Since the only way to get attention on an important topic is to go to GitHub, I opened this issue as well as a handful of other issues on GitHub.
Yet as I explicitly stated when opening the issue...
This idea originated on steemit, when I posted it as a reply to @stan who was discussing the difficulty of explaining steemit & other initiatives of cryptonomex to VC's.
Because I recognize that this core group is extremely busy with huge changes that have enormous impact , prior to opening the ticket I solicited input from the community in order to gauge the importance of the topic. I wanted to be sure that I wasn't the only one who felt it was important enough to raise the profile of the topic beyond the comments section of a single user's personal blog.
Once the issue was opened, I expent a significant amount of time & effort, attempting to bring attention to a critical issue that I think we can all agree is highly relevant to future growth of the platform.
Plenty of others agreed with me enough to head over to github & discuss the topic vigorously.
Nevertheless, the ticket was closed unceremoniously & immediately brought back up as a new topic here
Where @theoretical literally says
I would ordinarily have closed the ticket right then, but it was generating a lot of high-quality discussion, so I decided to let it run for a bit. I'm closing it now, though, & asking the discussion to continue in the comments here.
At first, I was a bit puzzled by the degree of controversy this straightforward change created...
Here's my answer to @theoretical...
It generated controversy & high quality discussion, because I am exhausting myself by going all over the place both here & on other platforms, raising the profile of the issue & asking people who care about the issue, to drop by & comment.
Unfortunately, because the issue is closed
THIS HAS HAD A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE DISCUSSION
Now it can't be found as an open issue. It's closed now & if anyone tries to comment, then it will be summarily ignored. To make matters worse, it now links back to your blogs, & I have to follow you, in order to keep tabs on an important topic I broached while asking others outside of steemit to monitor. in order to watch a democratic process in action.
This negated my efforts & then to add insult to injury you personally monetized an important topic in the process.
This is not a one time event & it's not limited to one person. It appears to be a pattern, but I'm bringing it up now because this is the most important issue to date and the one I spent the most effort trying to raise the profile of.
This pattern may be an oversight, but even as an oversight I'm extremely disturbed by this & I'm not alone in that feeling.
The opening of important issues on GitHub by the community is not an attempt to harass or annoy you. It's an attempt to make sure that you are aware these are issues we'd like your feedback and attention on.
The problem is that it seems to not be worth core's time until it's worth hijacking.
While that may not be your intent, actions are more important than intent & unfortunately, as the core influence group, including developers, you are giving the appearance of attempting to monetize ideas of others, to the exclusion of their creators & originators.
I don't mean to be all "me, me, me", so I hope you'll understand when I say this, but in this particular case...
I already have nearly zero visibility on this platform beyond my own little core group of dedicated followers, many of whom are people I've brought over from other platforms.
The core audience for that topic were actually content creators who have been considering making the jump to steemit from other monetization platforms such as patreon. I thought it might be worth your time to see the size of the market being ignored.
Thus far, they've refused to make the jump, because they believe they will be marginalized as their content is taken away, & reposted by others with more influence.
As it turns out, you've now demonstrated that yes, content hijacking by larger influencers will happen, so don't bother coming.
This needs to stop!
Consider the impact that discussion hijacking has before diverting like that.
Going forward, please give credit where credit is due, this means going beyond a single one word link to a closed issue when you decide to take an issue to your blog instead.
You can do this by highlighting content you think is worth your time instead of expending the effort to move it wholesale to your personal blog & not even bothering to address the source of the idea.
A better solution would be to ask us, who are opening these tickets which you feel would better be handled as steemit topics, to make it a posting on steemit instead. Yet there needs to be acknowledgement that it is worth talking about first, which means demonstrating that you are listening. That means, once we actually do it, please drop by & participate. The visibility is helpful for us, even if you disagree with either the premise or the specifics.
This way, huge discussions don't fill up your inbox as each reply filters in from open topics on GitHub.
You'll be able to keep tabs on important topics by bookmarking them and just checking in from time to time.
Plus, we like knowing that we are making a difference too!
Furthermore if people are regularly bringing issues to your attention which are worth your time; These people & their ideas ought to have real value to you. Hijacking totally negates their effort & devalues them.
At a minimum, when I & others go to this level of effort to open an issue on GitHub & bring people in, we would greatly appreciate it if you didn't close the issue, only to reopen it as a personal blog topic, which is what I mean when I say hijacking.
Anything less is harmful & is negating the efforts of contributors who are trying to be helpful. This maginalizes us & makes us feel alienated.
Thank You For Your Time.
Sincerely,
Everyone trying to contribute valuable ideas & trying to get your attention.
*p.s. Yeah I know... You want me to use the form here...
I had no idea what problem you were addressing in this post (i.e. content hijacking) until nearly the end of the post. Could you be more clear about it at the top of the post so readers don't think some other "critical issue" you posted on Github is itself the source of you frustration here? Thanks. And by the way, I think you're totally right about the "content hijacking". I seriously doubt it's done maliciously, but there's no reason it should be happening and more care should be taken to avoid it.
@tombstone The issue is the discussion hijacking at this point.
I started a discussion about a simple change to restore longterm payouts for content.
I sought feedback, got quite a bit of feedback encouraging me to move the discussion off stan's blog and onto github. I moved it to github as asked and sent tons of traffic to the issue, then the issue was closed and it moved to a developer's personal blog. Which is my gripe. One time it would just be an oversight, but I'm seeing a pattern here and asking them to please stop doing that and instead ask people who do open issues like that to take it to the originator's blog.
Thanks for the feedback though. I'll try to reword the post, to raise the profile of the original issue as well.
Just as a suggestion, perhaps it would help to first start your own separate steemit post in order to discuss and gauge interest in an issue (rather than doing it in the comments of a post on an unrelated topic) before moving it to github. Then in github you can refer to your steemit post, which can a) serve as a reference for the github discussion, and b) would also prompt the dev to join the existing discussion on your steemit post if he thinks that is a more appropriate venue than github.
@tombstone
Thanks for the feedback. It's appreciated.
Initially I considered doing as you suggest.
But I decided it would feel more sincere if opened as a standalone issue.
I was trying to avoid using GitHub as whale bait for my own blog. The issue extends far beyond me personally.
However, you'll notice that my suggestion for improvement, was that if core feels some aspect of an open issue might be worth the time and effort of making a blog themselves. That perhaps in lieu of closing the issue and moving commentary to their own blog. They should encourage the person who opened the issue, to make a blog posting instead, whilst leaving the issue open for reference.
Once the user does this, then they should actually visit said persons blog, to keep tabs on the debate.
This way the issue will be a sincere issue and we won't have issues being used as whale bait, for personal blogs, but core can jump in and voice their thoughts, feelings and ideas without generating a ton of GitHub traffic either.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
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@williambanks This is an article with some useful information but it is burried in dozens of paragraphs. I do agree that people should keep comments ON-TOPIC and think that more users should flag off-topic comments.
Thanks for drawing attention to this. I hope you get a response from the dev team and that this doesn't get overlooked as seems to happen all too often.
PS love the Butthurt Report.
@thecryptofiend Yeah sadly I stole that form from someone and forgot whom.
Any chance that form is one of yours?
No not mine. I wish I was that clever!
LOL
This is just a thank you comment, but it might go a little long because conversation hijacking is one that always creates a build up of stifled feeling. Holding conversations in a place where they can be completed is the usual practice for good reason.
I deeply appreciate the personal time you are putting in, @williambanks, to generate discussion and bring people into discussion. You're a hard worker and warm leader (as well as excellent writer). We're lucky to have you.
@pulpably Thanks! I really appreciate it. You made my day!
One of the independent devs, with one of the great tools, to whom I proposed a set of easily implementable features and made an informal bug report, did thank me and called them great ideas, but didn't even upvote me although he had just made tons of billions of money for announcing his new tool.
I wondered why I wasn't angry or disappointed. Because I am now looking forward to the implementation; being able to browse and filter the blockchain will be "reward" enough!
Thank you for your effort. On to new shores!
I don't know all of the details of the complaint but I do recognize a well written letter. Too many people on here try to make their point by getting angry and ranting. You took time to word this in an appropriate way. And you even ended with some humor! Good luck in your endeavors.
@hanshotfirst Thanks! The specific issue is that there isn't presently a good way to raise the profile on important issues unless you happen to be in a certain small influence group.
The problem is that if you expend the effort to get their attention, what happens more often than not is that it becomes a high visibility blog post for the influencer instead of keeping the discussion where it started.
To compound problems, if you happen to spend the effort to raise it to their awareness, including inviting others to comment on it as an open issue, then the issue ends up getting closed and at most you can expect a link to the closed issue as part of an influencer's blog. As opposed to them sending the conversation back to the original topic that started it.
All of this wastes effort and breaks the flow. It devalues the effort involved in trying to attract attention and allows them to monetize the issue rather than letting the person who raised the issue attempt to monetize it.
When this occurs it negates the impact of those involved in the discussion thereby alienating them.
This has turned into a regular pattern and it's driving potential adopters away, who view this sort of action as not boding well for content in general.
The specific issue has already been hijacked, and so I'm content to just leave it where it's at now. But there was no credit an barely any reference to the source, which frankly felt a little like a slap in the face to those of us who were trying to debate the proposal on it's merits.
Solution, if an issue is opened on github and core believes it to be a good idea to close it and turn it into a personal blog topic. Please ask the originator of the issue to do so, then follow that topic.
I really appreciate the comments on the letter! :D
[As a reminder, copy/paste my comment from chat.steemit]: @williambanks: Well, if you expect a feedback I have to give you a bit of criticism here. Your post is quite unclear - someone, like me, is reading and reading and reading, and going to links like dan's post (attached for whatever reason) and scroll and finally at the very end I got your point. I do not want to be mean, but you should think about it, because the topic is pretty serious but the way you presented it will make it die.
The issue is payout time range , idiot
be nice please
@radoslaw I normally have an editor I lean on for stuff like this. But she's out and about today. Plus this one needed my personal touch.
Dan's blog posting was just a citation to demonstrate the closing a hotly debated topic on github only to reopen it on their blog it's not limited to any single person.
In dan's case he actually opened the issue, so the monetization of the discussion is not the issue. Just the "I'm gonna cut you off right here and close this" in the middle of discussion, then shifting it to steemit with nary a reference.
I tried my best to convey the issue, without using any charged language and just using a lot of links with explanatory to text to try and get my point across. But it's also a complex topic.
It's easy to dismiss it if it only happened once, or even twice. But I'm seeing the pattern over and over again.
This diversion of discussion, breaks the natural flow of the conversation and has the effect of dismissing the conversation which as already taken place, in favor of what exactly? And that's my point. Seems like if they are going to open a blog topic talking about an issue that was opened, that they ought to keep the issue in place.
Otherwise they should ask the originator to open a personal blog topic on the subject instead, and then actually pay attention to the conversation occurring about it.
I really don't know any other way to put it. But when they hijack a discussion it is not conducive to furthering the debate on the topic.
Guess maybe I just feel dismissed, and am wondering if others are starting to feel the same way.
I like the idea of posts getting a monthly payout for life. This would only work for posts that have earned above a certain $SBD threshold.
Can't say that I've ever experienced this particular issue, as I don't deal with the technical aspects of Steemit and STEEM, but I can understand your frustration with it. Here's to hoping that some sort of resolution can be reached for it. Content hijacking in this fashion doesn't help anyone; it casts the devs in a bad light and it alienates the originators, like you said.
Andrei, The issue William is talking about is the fact that posts here in steemit, have a maximum of one month to get votes, if someone sees the post you just made, 32 days from now, they cannot vote on it,
and you will only get the rewards you obtain in the first 4 weeks.
The other issue you mention is a secondary issue that derived from presenting the first.
Roger?
Yeah more or less, it breaks the conversation flow to cut it off at the knees on one site and bring it over to another.