Attention fiction authors, Fiction Trail has changed. Curation will occur in these posts.
What it was supposed to be like, what happened, and what it's like now.
I was the main curator when it became popular, and I influenced a lot of the decisions that led to what happened. This may give me a little insight about things to avoid in the future, as we try to bring some life back to the community. So first let me put forward what I tried to do, and what happened as a result.
The goal was to find good writers of good stories and give them good recognition and a good incentive (upvotes) to keep writing. I'm still happy with that goal. We curators read stories, found good ones, checked them against our standards, and promoted them for the group vote. That group vote, the SteemTrail Streemian vote, was the incentive.
To give those stories readership, we also posted those stories on the conversation channel in hopes that people would discuss them as a sort of Book Club. That was the recognition we hoped to give, and for a little while it worked. The few people actually following our trail would see those stories, read them, and maybe upvote them.
But two questions occurred to us which set the path of an unstable future.
- Are the Fiction Trail curators good authors who write good stories and deserve recognition? IOW, can we promote each other or even promote ourselves by posting our own stories?
- If the answer to the first question is "Yes", then why can't just anyone get on the channel, post their links, and promote themselves?
My answer to these questions put us on the path to the chaotic results. Because yes, I believed that the other curators were good authors who deserved recognition. That's why I asked them to be curators. And so yes, if we were going to promote ourselves by posting stories, then so could anyone else. At the time I saw it as a way to build community, and indeed we had a lot of people visiting our channel. This meant that the recognition for posted stories would be high, since many people would see them.
But of course, that's not what happened.
That larger number of visitors were mostly people who dropped a link and left, looking for other places to drop a link. The people actually hanging around started noticing that their conversations were disrupted by pages and pages of links from anyone and everyone. Pretty soon all conversation stopped and then what was the use of the channel except for self promotion? Self promotion that didn't even work, since no one was reading it.
Then, I had scary bad health news which shocked me into Ghosthood for a long time, some other systematic changes happened, and all that was left was an unread link drop. The Silence of the Bots.
So what's happening now?
I still believe in my original goal. I think that people who write good stories should be recognized and upvoted.
The Discord channel is almost useless for that and I've set the permissions to restrict the links that can be posted. That channel is for discussion only and links to this post. Curation will occur in this post, usually twice a week. You can support the authors I curate by reading and upvoting the stories I post, and by following the Fiction Trail account on Streemian.
I promise in return to try to find well written and interesting stories for you to check out. For now, that means stories I like, but the conversation on Fiction-Trail discord channel can add variety to that. But don't bother telling me about your story, I'll see you in conversation and judge for myself. Tell me about authors you follow.
Self Promotion is discouraged.
@fiction-trail would love to hear about Authors you've read and enjoyed. That's what the Discord channel is for, as well as discussions about how to write better stories. But curation happens on this post so that spam cannot happen.
A normal curation post will follow on Thursday, since it would be unfair to connect an announcement post to a promotion post. Please look for that and support our Steemit Fiction Authors. - @baerdric
At the moment I don't have much time for reading or going to the trails site but I'll keep an eye out for the curation posts and upvote your picks to support fiction trail, after all you helped me out back then.
I appreciate that. Hopefully I will develop some traction as long as I do a decent job on a consistent basis.
Hopefully....
I'm in.
Question:
Is this guy anything to do with this?
https://steemit.com/@lalo78
Nope, never heard of him. Why? What's up wid him?
He got flagged...
[-]lalo78 (-1) · 2 hours ago
Hello,
Congratulations! Your post has been chosen by the communities of SteemTrail as one of our top picks today.
Also, as a selection for being a top pick today, you have been awarded a TRAIL token for your participation on our innovative platform...STEEM.
Please visit SteemTrail Now to get instructions on how to claim your TRAIL token today.
If you wish to learn more about receiving additional TRAIL tokens and SteemTrail, stop by and chat with us.
Happy TRAIL! And Click Here
@Trail stopped giving away TRAIL tokens 8 months ago. These messages would come from the @steemtrail or @trail account. This user is just spamming messages. Has no affiliation with SteemTrail or Trail projects.
Thank you
I wanted to make sure, that's why I waited until I flagged the post.
Wait, how did that even happen? They took down the Steemtrail upvote a long time ago.
I think it just copied a post, including some of the links?
Oh, I get it now. Wow.
Yep!
Ouch!! that was totally me... I support your final decision, I always thought #post-promotion pages are just luck based anyway.
Since I'm already here I'll mention two stories I read, one by a good author "The Hive" and the other seems beginner and wish it was written better, but I liked the story Superhero Strength.
Well, I've done it too. I still drop off a link at the Steemitchat post promotion site. And SteemTrail now has a post-promotion channel. There's nothing wrong with that, it just didn't work the way I hoped it would work, to develop a discussion forum.
Hello @fiction-trail an in here...and a message was dropped to me by lalo78 that my post has been rewarded and i need to claim some sort of token...but going back to the post, the post has been flagged and it affected my reward. Do you know him or have had any affiliation with him?
No, absolutely not. He is just lying to you. I'm very sorry this happened but we don't have anything like that anymore, not for a long time. He must have copied it from a very old post and is just putting it on people's replies to make them feel bad. We are trying to stop him from affecting people like that anymore.
But you have not been flagged, nor your post, just his reply.
Thank you for this info, please he should be stoped quickly to avoid more havoc..thank you.
Yes, he has already been flagged into negative Reputation numbers. He's going to have some very unhappy days in the future to remind him of his good manners.