With Hardfork 20 mostly settled at this point (minus Redfish still experiencing a significant limitation to their posting ability), the ongoing discussion about improving Steemit has once again turned back to the subjects of self-voting and quality. While both do present a significant challenge to Steemit’s growth and future, I want to take a minute to talk about the latter because there's already been significant positive voice on the former.
(Read @kevinwong's analysis of self-voting here if you haven't already.)
Steemit needs a ‘quality emphasis’ to survive
Demonizing those who actively promote and campaign for ‘quality content’ isn’t productive to the continued growth of Steemit because Steemit needs an emphasis on quality in order to survive as a premium platform. All the demonization approach to the problem does is use strong language to polarize the issue into the ‘quality’ and ‘no quality’ camps. In reality both camps are looking for quality, but what level and type of quality varies from person to person.
For example, some people seek to simply look at photographs, while others want to read articles about cryptocurrency. Some enjoy conspiracy theories, others silver and gold, gaming, art, and countless other subjects that are currently linked to tags without any way of filtering those tags to see exactly what you want to see when you load up the platform. Because of this (and rampant mis-tagging, which I’ll get to later), the ability to find and properly engage with the quality of content you’re looking for is difficult and severely limited.
The Solution
Communities. From what I’ve gathered, we’ve been asking for this for a long time and now it’s finally coming. With ample time between now and the implementation of SMTs, SteemInc has picked up on the idea that now is the time to execute.
Full documentation of the upcoming changes are available here.
With Communities, what we are promised is the ability to create a specific tuned ‘lens’ into the blockchain. To put it quite simply:
The goal of the community feature is to empower users to create tighter groups and focus on what’s important to them.
Communities will allow the diverse population of Steemit to tailor their experience directly to what they’re looking for, whether it’s long-form original content or micro-blogging, pictures or video. Steemit is your oyster and Communities will now be your pearl.
Hear me. Allowing anyone to post anything to the blockchain is a necessary part of the health of Steemit as a whole because it brings new users into the pool. However, helping to streamline posted content into tighter fields will not only help with the overall quality of experience for each user, but also will help with finding and curating content worth upvoting to the Communities that it matters to.
TL;DR
Hold your horses and take a deep breath. Ranting about ‘quality’ isn’t the problem, and SteemInc has it well in hand with one of the more positive changes I’ve personally seen since I’ve been on this site. In the meantime, continue to fight the good fight by curating the content that matters to you! At its core, that’s what Steemit is about.
Do you agree? Disagree? Have other solutions to this perceived problem? Let me know in the comments. Or better yet, let the witnesses you support know that you’d like to see systems like these developed and implemented to further the health and longevity of the Steem community.
Until next time,
~ Mako
All images courtesy of Pexels.
Thanks to @followbtcnews and the PALnet Discord for tipping me off to the upcoming Communities changes!
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There is no demonization of those who actively promote and campaign for ‘quality content’ . You probably still didn't get the point which I was trying to make. Let me try to be as clear as possible about it as I can.
Instead of demanding quality from those who don't have the ability to offer it, or participating in such activities in general. The quality maximalists should work on ways of discovering that great, quality content.
Because there is plenty of it here. There are so many under the radar authors on here that produce the quality content you are looking for yet, they hardly get any exposure. Instead of demanding everyone to get on that level of quality, it's our job to find that content and push it up.
We can't do it. Shit comes up to trending and everyone is butthurt because of it.
What you are demanding is a consequence of the innability of the community or the system to find and adequately reward quality content thus, pushing it to trending where everyone can enjoy it.
That's the real issue.
The demand on quality has been here for the long time and it's strong enough. Curation projects that rewar based on "quality" are a big help here. Those who will want to create that quality content will do it on their own. There is no need for further encouragement. On the other hand, those that will shitpost will do it no matter what you do or say.
What's the point then?
It’s already being done and I think it’s being done well by projects like @curie and @c-squared. The problem is that many of the high stake voters don’t manually curate content for themselves, and that’s not a problem that ‘quality maximalists’ can solve.
I deep dive the #writing, #story and #fiction tags daily and often come up empty. There’s a lot of writers, yes, but nothing exceptional or breaking the mold. If you disagree, that’s your prerogative but the fact is that the majority of authors here, myself included probably, are mediocre at best.
I’m working on the shitpost side, particularly with mistagged content. I have a potential solution that I’m trying to get off the ground. Standby for that.
Anything else? I’m trying to make it clear that we’re on the same side, but see two different problems for the same issue.
~ Mako
You are not going far on here good luck you are going to need it 😂
As I said you will not go far @ned check out this account
@steemcleaners please check out this account flagged me for no valid reason
!popcorn
Flagged for post farming @steemflagrewards
personally I tend to agree more with @runicar here, particularly:
I am sure of System first of all, community already depends on it and adjusts ("bends") accordingly. System is made that way: it is an Investment platform, which encourages people to invest into its Crypto token on a long term basis and focuses on anything and everything which may support its value first of all. it rewards first of all those people who figured that out and adjusted accordingly, helping the System to accomplish its own goals, which are not about good Content. LOL
in recent post @trafalgar has also expressed similar thoughts and conclusions:
So, it is the System itself which has to be changed ! to start being Good Content focused and thus motivating, emphasizing and rewarding people who cares about Content Quality what they really deserve.