Why SteemIt Should Focus on Curation
I've been getting quite into SteemIt and the whole Steem platform over the past couple of weeks, including making a fairly sizable investment in Steem Power (for me at least). So I believe in the technology and concept potential long term.
But one thing that's been bugging me from the beginning is that the so called "curation" doesn't really seem to be working, at least the way I think it ideally should. The best content doesn't get voted to the top. ANY content posted by popular users gets to the top. So really all this has created is a popularity contest of sorts.
So fine - it's a popularity contest - but still I wanted to try to find the good content that's not at the top of the trending list and it is NOT easy...I couldn't believe how much junk there is on here. Other similar sites do not have this much junk. I read Hacker News all of the time and there is GREAT stuff there. StackExchange always has useful questions and answers. Even Reddit has much more easily accessible content that I want to read than SteemIt does.
So the questions is - why is there so much junk on here? It finally hit me today. People are paid to post here (or at least have the hope of getting paid) so they post...and they post and they post and they post and it's mostly all just for the sake of posting. And just to be clear I think most of my posts (including this one) fall into the same category. I've considered writing a blog for years but I never did it, and now here I am posting for the sake of posting.
On all of the other sites I mentioned people only post things when they actually have something to post - they have a question, they have an answer, they wrote an article, etc. But here we just post post post post because more posts gives us a better chance to get noticed and get more followers and more upvotes and more chance to become popular.
So this all makes me wonder about the future of SteemIt - if more and more people come on and do the same thing that everyone is doing now then it will just keep filling up with more and more junk and actual good content will be even harder and harder to find - if it will even exist on here at all.
I don't know how to fix this exactly, but I'm thinking that more of the focus needs to go to the concept of curation rather than posting. The vast majority of people are consumers of content, not creators[1], so if we want SteemIt to really be mainstream then I think it should focus more on content consumers rather than content creators. If there can be a way to earn good money by actually finding and surfacing good content - and not just anything posted by popular users - then I think this can really grow to a great platform.
Otherwise we will just have a bunch of consumers (like myself) pushed into trying to be creators, posting a bunch of junk, and then eventually leaving and going back to being consumers on sites that have easy to find, good content ready for them consume.
Anyway, since I'm not very popular here this post is likely to get lost in the same great big sea of junk of which I'm speaking. But nevertheless I am going to post it, and we'll see how it goes!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
Maybe a quality dimension can be added in addition to the quantity aspect. Not sure how this will work but some kind of algorithm similar to google search which gives a quality score based on length, links, quality of comments etc. I agree there is a lot of junk and momentun posts.
Good remark! As a curator, i would love to see a kind of quality number like that. I use eSteem a lot for the one and only reason it shows the reading length of the article so i can skip 80% immediately.
That's a good idea! Will be hard to implement but well worth it if it is done well I think.
I agree
Nice @yabapmatt. I am often surprised by the smart insights children can have on a very young age. In the same way, this is a very correct insight while you seem to be just joining Steemit. Many new members are attracted by the money promise and that leads to an incredible amount of junk indeed. It normally doesn't lead to anything so they also fade away in their efforts after a while but it is disturbing that is there is so much junk out here. The approach for new members now in this junk world should not be to post daily but to post once a week and spend all energy in connecting with other people through comments etc. If I get a comment from somebody, I will always have a quick look who is commenting and maybe follow. I found your post through @theleapingkoala, somebody i connected with in exactly that way.
Anyway to conclude, your insight is great, if more focus would be on curation, then junk would be greatly reduced, very good post, much love.
Yes - good point about the value of comments. A site I read regularly is hacker news and the real value there is in the comments. Sometimes I don't even read the article and just skip to the comments section! A few of my posts have just been questions about how SteemIt works with the goal of getting a really good discussion going in the comments. It hasn't happened yet, but hopefully as I get more followers and SP it will start to.
"It hasn't happened yet"??? This post has +40 comments, that is not too bad i would say :-)
One of the things I like about Steemit is its democratic access - open to all, whether they can spell or accurately string a sentence together. I like that people contribute. We can exercise our own judgment and curate at will. I follow people whose stuff I like, therein I filter what I choose to read. I don't care that it's potentially full of junk, as you call it. I just filter that out. One person's trash is another person's treasure. The characteristic I like most about Steemit is how polite most people are to each other, and welcoming. This I love. It's not a freelance periodical. It's a social media platform.
Wise words @katyclark, i go with that!
Good point!
I did made a similar post that webt into a slightly different direction of how people vote popular people with more power for the sake of getting that extra 0.50$ or more from a "Great post!" Comment. I think once the site is developed with better search engine maybe or a way to at least sort our own posts it might be something that will make the finding of good content somewhat easier. Keep in mind there is a lot of junk on other platforms aswell, even more so because they are bigger.. But in here it is full of people that try really hard to poat 20 times a day, very often quite irrelevant things in broken english. There are surely quite a lot of problems with the platform but there is a lot more to come from it yet. We can only try and give suggestions since at the moment we are all Beta testers still. :)
Yes it's exactly the posting 20 times a day just for the sake of posting that I'm talking about. And maybe it's just me but I don't get why people can't even take the time to edit their posts or use spellcheck! All the spelling and grammatical errors really annoy me.
I am wondering how do people find time at all to post so much.. for me writing a post and structuring it takes at least an hour or two if the post isn't too long.. And I just ignore posts in broken English..
They are jobless. They don't have any opportunity to make money except steemit, and they post 20 + times a day.
followed! & will be looking out for your posts
Thanks! Followed you as well.
Well, what I've noticed is that the junk posters soon realize that they are not experiencing the growth the others have and move on to other platforms.
Thanks for bringing up this subject @yabapmatt, it is an interesting one and I agree with you on the amount of junk collected in steemit.
But I am really impressed by your ability to have a decent amount of votes and payouts, even though you started just a couple of weeks ago. Congrats!
P.S: Have you found the answers you were looking for?
Thanks - I'm slowly getting answers via comments / replies to my posts in addition to a lot of my own research. As for my results - a lot of it is from paying to get my posts promoted from services like minnowbooster, but that can be a good and profitable way to get your name out there. I'm planning to write a post about that at some point (even though there already are a bunch).
I am glad you are getting answers to your questions. Things are slow on steemit sometimes, but as long as it is steady, you have nothing to worry about.
Writing about promoting your posts is very interesting and it is never too much to write about it even if somebody else did.
I look forward to reading your informative posts :D
Agree 100% with your observation. I feel I'm in the same position like you.
Mister @oldtimer, you have a reputation of 64, how can you be in the same position as somebody just joining Steemit? :-)
,,So the questions is - why is there so much junk on here? It finally hit me today. People are paid to post here (or at least have the hope of getting paid) so they post...and they post and they post and they post and it's mostly all just for the sake of posting. And just to be clear I think most of my posts (including this one) fall into the same category. I've considered writing a blog for years but I never did it, and now here I am posting for the sake of posting.''
You see. This is what I meant. And you try to imagine if English is not your first language. I bought my steem and enjoyed reading and curating, but I also want some ROI. But look at me now. Did you get my point? Reputation will grow anyway; eventually. It's calculated by an algorithm. Oh, and btw. Please don't call me mister. There's no need for that. Keep grinding.
Ok, i'm sorry, didn't mean to grind and i live in India where mister is meant respectfull and good. I see what you mean, i understood the post as minnow difficulty of being seen through all that junk but it was more than that, applicable to everybody. Thanks for clarifying, no offense meant!
We are in the same boat here, therefore no need for mister. I'm using that word in the same way as in India. And with grinding I meant: keep working or steem on. With my English, I often came to misunderstanding. Sorry. I didn't understand your comment like an offense.
It would had been better if you had used the quote marks to save my time from reading it again 😜,
??
Well, nothing serious. Perhaps it was my personal preference. I'd have preferred if you have used the quote like:
It makes easier for me. But keep doing whatever looks good to you!
I used ,,hjghjgkg'' That's the only way I know from books.
How you did that? Can you teach me, please?
Oh, I understand you now! I know of two ways of doing it:
Put the command < bolckquote> before you start your quote and end it with </ blockquote> (without any spaces in between)
And this is the easier one which I prefer to use as it needs only one key to be pressed. Just key-in ">" before you begin to quote ....and that's it. This one symbol is enough. To discontinue the quote and coming back to your writing, you may need to put a couple of "Enter / Return" keys.
Hope you get it. Try it and let me know if I was not clear enough. Thanks for your interest in learning this!
Hey, great post! I agree, Steemit's lack of rewards for curators makes it an authors market and most people post useless junk because they see it as 'free money'. Great post btw, I followed you and can't wait to see more!
I think you should only be able to net revenue from two posts a day. That would force a lot more thoughtful content. I only do 2 a day and they are always well planned researched and executed. It diminishes my odds of mass exposure but the couple of people who have discovered me know that 100% of what I post will be worth looking at. I have no desire to read someone's post that is nothing but a misspelled one sentence with someone else's artwork or link to another post.
Exactly. In some ways this system discourages taking the time to write clear, thought out and edited posts. Hopefully the dev team will see this too.
@corpsvalues, i think 2 quality posts a day is a fulltime job :-) I would rather say 2 a week...
True that would really summon some well developed posts
To each his own. But are you against a full time steeming assignment for everyone?
Not at all @xyzashu. I just notice i need a full day for 1 medium-sized post (includig answering all these comments) so I conclude that more than 2 posts/day will need way too much work or will be less quality, nothing else meant.
I'm fairly new here myself. I was draw in by perception of finding good content. Enabling myself to improve my own writing skills. If good content is being paid out, then great writing should follow. Well many of the writings are decent......many are questionable. Plus it hard to find those excellent written articles. And I am looking. Then again, I am fairly fresh. So I am finding my way around. I feel that down the line because there will be many more participants, a focus on better content must step up.
You made an important point about using SteemIt to "[Enable yourself] to improve my own writing skills." I think that's potentially an area where being paid to post can really be helpful. If there's a way to focus on that I think that can be very valuable. Perhaps someone could make a separate site that runs off of the STEEM blockchain that just focuses on learning how to write.