EDIT: While I bring valid points below. The comments made me realize that this article was written on multiple wrong assumptions. Please read the comments before adding to the conversation.
D.Buzz is one of my favorite interfaces on #HIVE blockchain. While I switch between PeakD & Ecency all the time for my normal posts. The microblogging nature of D.Buzz makes it perfect to write short posts, read the posts of others & interact with them.
However, microblogs create unique problems on their own. They're easy to write and publish and most microbloggers write a bunch of them everyday. These posts tend to clutter the user's Posts section of their page in the other HIVE interfaces. The more varied/random your microblogs are, the less attractive your page will look!
Automatic Messages!
Another problem, as complained by @edje is Auto Blogs. D.Buzz is intended to be used like Twitter. That's why it got integrated with Hive Based games like Raising Star.
- For more about this, read: Meet the "EMBED BUZZ BUTTON"
In this game, users could automatically make a post on DBuzz from the game itself that shows their progress in the game. That's a cool idea. There are two problems here:
- These automatic messages clutter the user's HIVE account with multiple blogs with questionable value, even on other HIVE interfaces!
- These automatic messages clutter D.Buzz's latest posts section as well. This is only a short term problem! Since #DBuzz is still small, many of us use it to see what others post and interact with them. I use these section to look for posts for my compilation!
I won't talk about the rewards these automatic messages get. Those being a good or bad thing is subjective and it's not one of the problems I see in this.
When @edji complained about Rising Star's automatic D.Buzz messages, I felt happy that I didn't have to do it myself. (I was waiting to see how things played out.)
Solutions?
One of the members of D.Buzz team, @chrisrice addressed the complaint and offered some solutions. I will quote the relevant parts of his comment and say what I think about them.
1. Burning Automatics Posts Rewards:
@chrisrice: "I will task the developer of the Buzz embed widget with creating an option for website and Dapp owners to send the author rewards of Buzz's sent from their projects to @null, that is, if they don't think the Buzz would result in quality original content.. this will solve #1 and the release date is targeted for January 2021."
I do think this is a step in the right direction, it's always good to let Dapps/games have the option to force reward burning so spammers don't use it as way to earn money. I do recommend Declining the rewards instead of burning them, so they go back to the reward pool.
But for me, the rewards are not a problem, at least not the immediate one that should be fixed.
2. Working with other Front-ends/Interfaces
@chrisrice: I just tasked our Lead Dev with writing the code for #HiveBlog, where users will be able to flip a switch that switches between Long-form content, Short-form content (280 characters or less, or BOTH.
The default for @hiveblog (owned by @blocktrades), @ecency & @peakd is that their users view both, by force, and they cannot opt-out of viewing short-form content.
We asked them to write the code, but this is crypto/blockchain, and everyone is busy.. it will get done now, and ASAP (first thing we will do in 2021, starting now).
While I think this will solve the problem we have now. This is a terrible solution in my opinion! Why?
- It requires too much communication for it to work.
- It assumes that all other interfaces will work along with you.
- It's a very slow process because other interfaces already have a roadmap for the next half year! Adding something like this will mess up their schedule.
- It assumes that you could actually communicate with all interfaces. That's not how decentralization works!
A solution for your interface problems shouldn't assume the interference of other interfaces for it to work. I know that many interfaces do solutions that require this, and they work. But I want you to think @chrisrice, about one that could be implemented without all these assumptions.
I believe @jarvie made a good point in his comment. Normal users don't know where to find the conversations of developers:
- If you made a decision after a public conversation, it'll will help if you linked to that conversation. When it's relevant to your comments about that decision.
- If you made it after a private conversation, please specify where that took place (Discord? Twitter? Encrypted Hive Memos?) Also the time-frame of that conversation so we could know the context behind it.
- Quote as much as possible from these private conversations! They may be private but there will be parts that the public should know, the decision affects them after all.
That I would say to any Hive developer who wants to be as transparent as possible, they don't have to do that, but it will add to their transparency and will let us trust them more.
3. Additional Thoughts
- I was thinking "if people had spare accounts for microblogs, the problem will slow down." My conclusion? Asking the players to create new accounts is out of question!
When I first started using D.Buzz, I realized that my account will be cluttered with small blogs, and my followers want to read my longer (+500 words) posts, so I'm only using my sub account: @ahmadmangazap for D.Buzz. You can't expect anyone to do this!
- Another thing I thought about is having a special tag. This might sound stupid but how about making all these add an additional tag (example: #autobuzz) so these automatic microblogs don't show up in the latest section of #DBuzz website. This won't solve the main problem, but at least will stop cluttering D.Buzz itself.
In short I don't have another solution to the problem, I only wanted to put what others have said and why I think we need to look for other solution. I also wanted to inspire a conversation out of this.
4. What About the Back-end?
I don't recommend enforcing a solution for the microblogs problem using the back-end. It's better to not rely on HIVE blockchain hardforks.
But I wanted to add, if the distinction between long form and short form posts was on the blockchain level, we wouldn't have to communicate with other interfaces. They will know which ones to show and which ones not to.
That's what I have today!
This response to the automatic microblogs was written with @chrisrice in mind. He asked us to tell him about anything we don't like in the platform.
If you have a problem with D.Buzz you can go to the platform's Discord server. You can also comment on any of my posts about it. I'm not a part of the team but I can message your problem to them.
Also, you can write posts like this one and send it to them or me. I'll make sure they read it!
If you have anything to add please comment! Even a stupid idea might be make the way for us to find the perfect one.
I am sure @chrisrice will respond in due course but I just wanted to let you know that as soon as we realised how many of these identical messages were being Buzzed from Rising Star we removed the default text and replace it with the message below.
It's all a bit of trial and error at the moment so let's see how it goes but the last thing we want to do is create something negative.
Yeah, and the good thing about this new default text is that it's self correcting.
They will then learn, improve, and start Buzzing high quality captions about what they are doing on @risingstargame.
At least more often than not IMO.
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Imo this is a problem with the other interfaces that made an assumption the chain would be only reddit style content forever.
Interfaces should experiment and find different ways of solving this, would be the best way.
One way might be to let the account select which communities to show/mute on their posts page for that interface
Steemit was originally pitched as a "Reddit alternative", but it never lived up to that, instead being more like a fancy block explorer. The recent introduction of communities sort of brought it back towards that vision (subreddits) but there is still a vocal part that think Steem/Hive should be only a long format blogging platform.
The thing is, that's not really what Reddit is, which is primarily sharing links and discussion, which doesn't really happen a whole lot on this blockchain.
That's why I'm excited about d.buzz because it's the first step in the "right direction" for a decentralized social media that resembles what people actually use (in this case Twitter).
And it's mobile friendly too, something a lot of projects and people here (for whatever reason) are very resistant to, when mobile is where people do most of their social media.
It's been kind of frustrating to watch how things have been going on this chain for as long as I've been a part of it, because so many times it seems like it's been self sabotaged.
With the way things are going with mainstream social media with further censorship banning etc. this chain needs to drop the elitist attitude of fussing over what has "value" and focus more on making it easy enjoyable and fun for people to use.
If not I know things will continue to flounder along as it has for the last four years or so in regards to price and engagement.
I very much agree with your statement here, that for a long time... a few of the old guard control the reins and dictate what brings value to the community. While I understand sometimes you don't want to shake the status quo, and sometimes you want to make sure people are taking advantage of things... If our communities wishes grow further we have to be ready to accept all types of people and that means all types of content. can't be peoples moms forever, gotta let the child go play.
Full disclosure : I do work with D.Buzz as their content author. The views expressed here in this comment are not that of the companies but mine on a personal level.
When we started out and released version 1.0 of D.Buzz, it was met with fanfare but then a lot of really big negative down votes and blacklisting right away, people didn't want to take time to fully understand, we moved rapidly and change things however when people lock their minds in on a positive or negative they stayed and people feared the reprise of higher power (not voting their content anymore, or kissing up to larger stake holders in hopes of a large upvote)... it took diligent work on the part of @chrisrice to talk and sort out what's going on truly. (* that guy worked so hard it's crazey, and has a heart of gold I tell you ... PURE GOLD)
With version 2.0 we have gotten better and with new version 3.0 again one step better, I do know that they are planning a lot of really big things, innovative things (A lot of big things there already moving behind-the-scenes) to try to address these issues outlined, and more... Makes me PUMPED to be part of D.Buzz. However it is not my place to release that information at this point until it is approved.
There will always be those who milk the reward pool, who post one line comments or articles, however there will be a lot more who post great content, who posed thoughtful short form as well as longform content. We cannot limit the enjoyment of the many for fear of what the few might do.
All is being said @ahmadmanga you bring up valid points, its freedom of speech, its about expressing yourself! There has to be some sort of line drawn in the sand right? I do thank you for bringing your concerns, I will send a link to Chris as well. :)
Happy new year, much love
I didn't hear about the history of DBuzz, but I did know it was hard to make it accepted by the larger Hive userbase.
It's sad but I also think there will be always users who milk the reward pool and the battle against them is a losing one.
Comments here made me realize that a lot of what I said was on wrong assumptions, but I'm glad I said them because I would never knew how wrong I was otherwise.
So on point!!! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
This hits the nail on the head. I have only been here a short time and have already seen more than one person chased away by content police. Fortunately and perhaps unfortunately for some, this is a public blockchain, meaning all valid tx are valid tx. It doesn't matter what people's preferences are & we will soon find out How censorship resistant the chain actually is
The only censorship possible is if witnesses agree to remove content which happened on steem after the whole Justin Sun bot witnesses fiasco. As long as witnesses remain real independent people I'm not too worried about censorship on this chain. And despite what many people think, downvotes are not censorship, the content is still on chain (though to be fair it can make it harder to see depending on which interface you are accessing the chain with).
I'm slowly transitioning from trying to see if something has a value to focusing on what makes the experience enjoyable. I was against any form of centralized login system last year (STEEM days.) Now, I support anything that makes it easier for the average person to joing, Twitter login? That's a good idea for me now! It's not like something like this didn't happen with Bitcoin.
I agree with making things easy, and I love the idea of Metamask & Twitter logins.
But I would do it in a way where crypto keys are NOt saved on private servers.
At least that is my line of thinking now.. remember #HIVE is not just a social media platform, it's a Bank Vault, so security and crypto let safety is super important!
Yeah, that's what I believe the right way too...
That is somewhat how Communities were supposed to work @snacky @ahmadmanga, but it never happened.
But once the Communities feature was launched blockchain wide, frontends like @hiveblog, @peakd and @ecency didn't impliment it that way.
And instead ALL posts, even ones published to Communities show up in feeds.. early or mid 2020, we tried to get @blocktrades (I don't think he saw me messages), @peakd (chose not to) and @ecency to impliment Communities as they were intended.
For the record, @peakd, @ecency & @good-karma have helped us, and a good amount, so I don't have complaints.
I just want this short-form / long-form bickering to get fixed, and I think the code our Devs are writing for #HiveBlog is the solution 👍🙂
I agree with this statement... The problem started because someone decided to experiment, and all of this discussion is to decide which experiment we will try to solve it!
That's a nice idea. I think most interfaces are already working on similar things though!
One of the real problems is not that people are experimenting @ahmadmanga, but that people are being DISCOURAGED from experimenting, and even threatened for experimenting 😒
New Dapps, Projects & Software Developers may finally feel more comfortable developing & building projects on #HIVE 🙂👍
Sad but true... On the bright side, it's already changing.
There are Pros & Cons, but also room for improvement!
#2021
Posted via D.Buzz
If they have either:
I haven't heard about it, besides possibly one of them doing it.
They aren't moving very fast at implimenting it.
Eithet way, @dbuzz has a vested intetest in fixing this, and I believe our solution will help #HiveBlog, #Peakd, #Ecency and #Hive in general.
Did you take the latest PeakD survey? I think I saw it in there, but not sure.
Umm, no.. where can I find that?
Posted via D.Buzz
This: https://peakd.com/hive-163399/@peakd/peakd-feature-polling-for-hivefest-and-2021
Thank you 🙂👍
Posted via D.Buzz
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