In this post I explain that I will begin removing from my author list those authors who make steem-centered posts.
As a prelude, I humbly ask that large steem holders express approval only by voting with their smaller accounts. This post is not intended to be a revenue generator for me.
After some discussion with @ned and @nextgencrypto (witness) and some input from others, I have decided to contribute to a common effort to promote a broader set of topics in steem. My author list has generally been about maximizing my curation rewards, but as the STEEM currency has gained incredible value over the last few weeks, I don't feel like this type optimization is necessary any more. Instead, I will try to help optimize in such a way that helps the Steem platform by attempting to appeal to a wider audience.
I will begin this process of auditing my author list in 48 hours. I will review all members who authred a steem-centered post in the prior 24 hours and remove them from my voting list.
I hope everyone understands why I am doing this, especially the authors who are currently in my list. Finally, I am not myself a robot and understand that "steem-centric" is subjective, so will try to review in such a way to be fair to the intent of any author.
i think art tag deserves more attentiion.
i agree, i prefer looking at photos looking like nat geo's and some fantastic artpieces or impressive designs
I think this is a great move and fully support it. By sacrificing your curation rewards, you're protecting the goose in hopes of more future golden eggs. It's the rational actor motivations of the top accounts on this platform which will make or break it. Sure a whale could act selfishly or dump too much STEEM on the market, but they are (currently) acting smart enough to realize this would only hurt themselves on a long enough timescale.
I missed out on being considered for your author list, and I'd like to submit my blog for consideration if you choose to add new authors. But here's my caveat: From time to time, I'll still publish a post about Steemit. I write about my passions, and clearly my lack of sleep lately would indicate I'm passionate about Steemit. I think it has a very good chance of improving human well-being over the long term.
If you're open to suggestions, here's one which might still qualify me as a candidate for your list:
Improve your bot's algorithm and have it search the content of a post for
steem,steemit,steem power, etc and only give an upvote if those words are not present. You could also ensure no posts with thesteemitcategory get a vote from your bot.This would enable you to support great authors which will improve the entire ecosystem of Steemit (as you're already doing), while at the same time giving them artistic freedom to write however they want. The only other alternative I can think of would be to give authors a special keyword they could add to their post which, if found, would exclude that post from your bots automatic upvote.
Thanks for your consideration and, so far, for being a rational actor thinking in terms of longer times scales. :)
This is a great move. What Steemit really needs right now is a diversity of content. I see a lot of great posts about topics like science, gaming, history, fiction etc. - let alone niche topics - go by the wayside for something directly related to Steemit. It'd be wonderful if you replace some of these Steem-centric authors with some great new authors creating diverse content.
It would be great if someone as influential as yourself would support authors creating content for these varied subjects, and in the future, for niche subjects. Only then will the masses adopt Steemit. This is why Readit has been so successful - there's a sub for every little niche.
Keep up the great work, you're a crucial part of making Steemit a diverse blogging platform.
The key is to expand to areas where existing users have interest and talent. That's why our crypto news is already among the best out there.A common business mistake is to diversify when you need to play to your customer
I think we need more diversecontent. However it must start with the interests of the posters. I think with this crowd we could make waves in technology politics finance science or economics. That's what draws people into crypto and what will be easy to expand to reach best content mantle.
it's a waste to promote content with no critical mass of voters
Crappy sports content, art content, or other stuff won't work until we have a more generic user base. It's a waste to try to lure that content here until we have millions of users. We need to focus where we can have best content. ( sidenote music fiction and photography might also work because there are few venues outside steem to monetize that content)
This is weird I got some really strange votes on this post. No one is actually posting anything. Looks like more bots
I also think that science should be upvoted more but I am biased here ;)
No but seriously, if steemit wants to be widely popular then we have to attract people from all niches. Like liberosist said Reddit got to where it is because you can find a subreddit with at least some people on just about anything... That means that you can find like minded people to interact with.
@steemed I actually wrote in the comments section of your post where you are looking for writers. I hope that you will consider adding us to your list someday ;)
clap I sincerely wish this will happen.... Again, just a wish.
Two weeks ago I wrote a big tutorial from my old account "Create HTML5 game without writing any code" https://steemit.com/tutorial/@dubovoy/tutorial-create-html5-game-without-writing-any-code where I showed how to create simple Arkanoid game using Scirra's "Construct 2". But community were busy upvoting "introduceyourtits" and "steemisawesome" posts. So I got $0.30 after about 5 hours of hard work.
What if couple Whales and Dolphins upvoted this post? Maybe we had more tutorials here today? Who knows.
PS: this tutorial is now on 4th-5th page of Google for "html5 game tutorial" and "create html5 game" keywords.
The site in my opinion needs more manual curation at this point. By using 3 high SP accounts to autovote its equivalent to pouring fertilizer in a few locations but leaving everything else barren.
Seems like a logical step forward but if this idea can scale then people need to feel like they have a shot. The same authors are automatically getting pushed to the trending list every day. It's not about 'steem centric' posts.
User numbers are falling, curation award maximization may need to take on a smaller focus for the big holders as you can have more of a positive or negative influence on market cap.
Sure you can maybe make a 100% return on curation in a year, but you could also shoot yourself in the foot and give up on a 1000% growth in market cap.
Just my thoughts, I don't have an influence on the market cap. But with such a large distribution of SP in so few hands theres infinitely more pressure on you guys.
There are lots of ways to spread the love. My strategy is to have my bots do it. If I try to curate manually, then I get only two or three votes a day. Bots can spread much more. If I only use one account or vote with less weight then the payouts actually get more concentrated into the posts that are already biggest. If you don't understand the math of the latter, I can make an example.
You're probably one of the most transparent and open larger SP holders on here and in the Steemit.chat. I also know that you've hired manual curators to help you find overlooked articles.
I think I understand the maths of it, it basically comes down to there's a limited supply of Steem being produced per day and it's allocated by the amount of steem power used to vote in the day.
Looking back at my comment I think my tone was off, I'm just trying to figure out in my head what will give Steemit the best chance for long term success.
I think @jl777 has a great idea in focusing on building up tags.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@jl777/specialization-jump-starting-new-steemit-sub-communities-and-creating-insurmountable-obstacles-for-others#@jl777/re-wingz-re-jl777-specialization-jump-starting-new-steemit-sub-communities-and-creating-insurmountable-obstacles-for-others-20160804t125826590z
While I posted a few articles on trying to figure out Steemit problems I couldn't solve, I've started posting the alt scientific content which I've been into for decades. So I agree with what you are saying!!!
https://steemit.com/science/@alkemix/weather-wizard-dead-at-90-monumental-contributions-to-humanity
We need more people posting science, and upvoting science content. Science is important and of general interest to everyone IMO.
Finally a step in the right direction. I have been saying this for some time now. For steemit to mature, more categories need to be promoted other than the steemit one. I have been noticing that analytical, statistical and other technical posts have been getting a lot of traction whereas beautifully crafted masterpieces are being ignored. We may lose a lot of good content creators due to this. And these are the very people that will be responsible for the success of steemit's success.
I personally write for varying categories myself, including but not limited to, technology, life, photography, news, meditation, marijuana, travel and I am going to begin my own fiction series as well. This step will be good for all steemians out there.
From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!!
Remove me please.
Done!
Thanks for removing me, please consider adding @dragonslayer109 in my spot as he is digging for discarded content and your vote on my account gave it visibility... some of his linked featured posts of the day have done quite well as a result.
As my first phase of featured authors has been rolled off my account he has been posting on his account for the last couple of days.
I am featuring all new authors now.
I think this is an important shift that hopefully more people will fall in line with.
Medium isn't a popular blog because everyone's blogging about medium, reddit isn't a popular discussion platform because everyones talking about reddit, and twitter never got popular because people were just tweeting about twitter.
Steemit isn't going to get popular is all we talk about is steemit.
We really need to start bringing in other communities of content creators or start being that community ourselves. I've been thinking a lot about more of what I could commit (besides updates to the few projects I'm working on) and think I may start blogging about web development and server technologies. I haven't done it in years, but it's a subject I'm passionate about that others could learn from as well.
All it's going to take to kickstart this all is a few people, who take initiative, to establish new "niche" categories within the community. It's likely in the beginning many of these posts will "fall through the cracks", but the blockchain won't forget that content, and eventually Google will help bring in the masses.
Can you please use a smaller picture?
Clap
Another big step forward and hopefully some positive results.....
I wrote that i am moving my phd to steemit. Had ned's support and @ned upvoted. Went into trending and 560 people upvoted.
Wrote about my actual PhD on 3dprinting and sustainability. No whale upvoted . 93 people upvoted.
Shows the different between steemit-related content and non-steemit related content huh.......
undelegate this guy please. he is doing nothing for the community imo.
I found my way here for the same reason. :/
Bravo, good on you guys. Thinking about the bigger picture is important, and all you whales are stepping up to the plate.
It's a good idea, I think. Today is my 12th day in Steemit. When I joined, I just wrote a post on psychology. But after I saw that the community is not interested in this topic, I decided to examine what topics are popular. Because I have valuable thoughts not only on the subject of psychology.
And this is natural. After all, before you say any idea to the interlocutor, it is important to understand whether he wants to hear about it. Whether he is ready to understand your language. And if he is not interested in this topic, what's the point talking about it? This is an adequate behavior. If I want to convey any message to the audience, I first, to some extent, studying the audience in order to speak their language.
Thus I saw that people are interested in the posts tagged with "introduce yourself". And I wrote a post on this topic. And then I began to read trending posts and saw that the theme of Steemit is the most important for most whales and dolphins. And it is also natural. After all, they are the largest shareholders. And they are directly interested in Steemit growth. Therefore, they support the posts on the topic of cryptocurrencies and Steemit. And thus raises a barrier for those people who are not familiar with the theme of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
For example, my sister is a doctor. She registered in Steemit and offered to create a medical community within this platform. However, her post was not upheld and she lost her enthusiasm, which again is logical. Why talk about something that is not interesting to the audience?
On the other hand, my wife is an artist. She started an art blog, posting her pictures and the community supported her. Dozens of compliments and a few tens of dollars. This response inspired her to continue to share her artwork here.
Personally, I am very close to the theme of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, programming and crypto-economy. That's why I enjoy analyzing Steemit platform and writing posts about it. My article in which I talked about the benefits of Steemit before Bitcoin and Ethereum, gained about 1500$. Naturally, this inspired me to further analysis of Steemit.
I share my story in order to give feedback and one way or another to help you the whales. I think, that you have a real opportunity to guide the community in a particular direction. And I like your decision, @steemed, it seems to me that the further growth of the community will be difficult to implement due to only crypto-enthusiasts. However, if the big players will continue to support the discussion of the blockchain and cryptocurrency, new topics will be difficult to develop.
And lastly I will say again that I would be very happy to receive your support, @steemed: in addition to the theme of crypto-economy and Steemit, the most interesting themes for me are psychology, philosophy, self-development, music, money, photography and art. I would be grateful if you check out my blog and maybe express your opinion about it. I believe in Steemit and would like to contribute to its development.
In my city I and my friends have formed a team to jointly participate in the life of Steemit. We plan to make a video presentation of our team and our ideas. I hope the community will meet this with enthusiasm :)
I'd love to read more about psychology. Please post on. I also have a similar story where a friend joined, hoping to do an AMA about his involvement in the Virtual Reality company and working with Steven Spielberg. It didn't get the attention he expected, so he left. Granted, his expectations may have been out of alignment with the current state of community here, but it serves as an example of what we may see more of as we tackle the chicken/egg problem of supporting niche content while also explaining what Steem is to new users.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of similar stories. And I believe that with joint efforts we will be able to make this Steemit world better.
Roger. The Steem posts I've made I've felt were more valuable than a circlejerk post but I understand why you'd want to reward people more for non-Steem content. Any Steem posts I make from now on will be from another account.
Curious what you think of my suggestion to improve the bots to exclude posts with Steem related words? I'd love to see all your thoughts, including those on Steemit, which is why I follow you. If you and others use a different accounts then your reputation and influence will be split and some of your great content might be missed.
Maybe if the voting script excluded steem and steemit tags, but that would be up to @steemed to code, and it might be tempting to just not use those tags for a Steemit-related post.
Yeah, that's why my first suggestion is to count the number of times steemit related terms show up in the post. It would be quite difficult to write about Steemit without using the word
Steemit.@steemed Is your author list published anywhere? I'm asking because with a lack of subs like reddit, many posts get buried long before they're even seen and it would be nice to have a reference table of curated authors.
It might help the rest of us out when searching for content because of the way posts are organized right now. Many of us are having to dig through a massive list of trending posts that aren't really sorted very well aside from the way they're tagged to find content that was buried before it was ever even seen.
You do what you have to do its your account
Awesome. As a manual curator I have been doing the same. Time to make Steemit a place for everybody to enjoy.
I just want to make sure I'm understanding this properly. You are removing these "steem-centric" authors from your author list because you are trying to make steemit as a whole more diverse and not focused specifically on the platform?
Steemit is so new and exciting that I can't blame users for wanting to write more and more about it. I think it will settle and sort itself out sooner than later.
Either way, I support what you, @ned, @nextgencrypto, and others heavily involved feel is best for steemit as we certainly want this to be around for a very long time and not dissuade new users from coming here because all they see is "steem-centric" posts.
Hi, I'm new to Steem and I want my posts to gain some traction, although i feel like the concept of minnows/dolphins/whales makes it very hard to start out. I was wondering if you'd consider adding me to your author list. My posts are not Steem-centric and you can check out what I've came up with so far. I plan to release a post of similar or better quality to my existing posts every day and hope to achieve "dolphin" status eventually, although I'm aware that it doesn't happen overnight. Thank you for your consideration!
Sorry...I feel like it's all I've been posting about. I've only been around a week and I'm still pretty giddy about the system, especially the changes over the last few days.
I'll cool it. Thanks.
Great. Absolutely needs to start building some diversity of content, there is a lot of great steem related stuff out there... I think, bit of it gets pretty technobeyondme (made it up :P). Happy to hear about several pieces in your post.
I concur. Spreading the Steem beyond this category is a good thing. It will reinforce diversity of content and give more opportunities to those producing creative and informative perspectives beyond our beloved Steemit.
Good move. Spread the joy around a bit.
That is a great move for change.
A prudent decision.
It is a curse because our world is currently revolving around Steemit. It is natural to write about something that you are fascinated with.
And it pays good - usually :)
This is really a gold idea! I think people should stop talking about steemit. If newbies come,there should be room for them to understand steemit. Honestly, I dont fully understand the context of it. I tried reading the white paper and the interview of Ned Scott last months. Some sunk in my mind and some were not. So to be different, I do contribute on steemit in such different.
@steemed If youre thinking adding authors that fits on different genre of writing, try to check my posts. I will be providing facts from different categories in life, articles, stories and informative news that will help nourish every user in steemit. Thanks.
So, reading between the lines, you're going to start showing my potatoes some love?
good news
still not a fan of whale curator bots but at least this is a step in a much better direction for the community. and showing great honesty there by admitting that your previous list was mainly about maximizing your revenues, something the "whale-riders" tried denying. I hope the intellectually dishonest will be the first shaken off from the list .
looking forward to the future of steemit with renewed optimism.
This post itself is about Steem... will you remove yourself? :)
I forgot I was in my own bot and that is the reason I voted for this post. I changed my vote to the lowest possbile power and removed myself from my bot.
I sincerely applaud you, and this kind of dedication to the platform's success makes me very happy to see. This is a topic I touched on a few times in a few of my comments in several posts. Of course, I was told I am wrong by what I was saying in those posts.
This kind of attitude by all the big account holders will go a long way in improving and making sure the platform succeeds. There has just been way too many great posts on topics gone to the wasteland because those topics just weren't appealing on an individual level to the big time upvoter or was not a topic being voted on. I was happy to see the food category finally get some love last week thanks to @berniesanders !!
I applaud and hope to see more of this kind of attitude for the sake of longevity and success of the Steemit platform.
♥ Jen ♥
I got told by a user that in order to get noticed by the whales I needed to relate all my content back to bitshares. This really really put me off Steemit. I'm happy to see that a variety of content will be considered
This is a great move and I hope this allows writers to write about their interests rather than whale baiting for cash. Great initiative steemed!
Steem posts are almost the only posts that can have votes, comments and rewards for the common mortals as we are.
I tried to post something about love and got 55 cts only even if it was featured by a notorious member. The message is clear to us, post about steemit to get rewarded.
Thank god. I'm so tired of seeing Steem-centered posts. I recently made a Steem GIF post just to get somewhere with my posts, but if people are finally going to make a move to curate more diverse content, I'm happy as hell to hear that.
I posted a book review of "Batman: Year One" and it does not look particularly great the way pictures are set-up although the writing is a college assignment I have turned recently. All I get is two comments and one of those comments is a critic of the post, blog, whatever, with only two upvotes. I have put a foodies posts of a locale Chinese restaurant I dined in yet still nothing while bitcoinars have no problem giving bitcoin to Trump and other governments around the world that don't even like bitcoin or care.
#music #health #weddings #gadgets all too quiet for my liking
Thanks for the hint, Steemed. As Steemit.com is an analogy to a free market, as Ned and Dan stating in the Steemit Whitepaper, the Steemers will move on to other topics, were they receive more Steem. Till now, the biggest rewards were given to posts about steemit. Its all the time supply and demand, that drives Steemit. Like on the free market. Consider me to write in the future about other stuff, not anymore only about Steemit.
Great, this is the right thing to do. i would appreciate if we get more categories trending. not only steemit content.
i consider Food, Photography, Art, travel very interesting (but for the geeks which are now on steemit, these topics might be not of interest)
how are you evaluating requests for your author lists?
i am trying to write different topics https://steemit.com/@knozaki2015
please have a look.
thanks
This will really help the community. I am loving the growth that is being seen in the photography and science section. Steemit is growing and that means a wider range of curation. Keep up the good work!
I just voted to express approval. Thank you for promoting a wide range of topics! I see a lot of good original work being neglected: stories, musical compositions, artwork, and posts under tags that don't have large followings.
More diverse content seems like a good hedge, for both the value of the network, and the perspective of future users that will stumble upon it.
Nice to see you do your part to promote that some more, Steemed
amen to this. Let's get some actual content on here
Thank you much for the post. This makes sure People start to deliver more creative Content to secure the diversity.
We for example startet a fictional Story series
Thank you for this post, as someone still in the Plankton pool, but making some progress, I appreciate it. I'm a damn good writer and seeing some of the things that are getting rewarded, simply based on the steemcentric theme was hard at first. I figure I'll eventually establish an audience, but it is good to see that some who are toward the top of the food chain are making these kinds of statements. I know, that if Steemit persists, much of my content may be discovered in subsequent payout rounds, or that is my assessment, and I've been writing a long damn time, so I know not to expect much in the beginning, but, kudos for making this challenge.
The "Photography" tag also deserves some attention :)
I hope you all like B&Wart photography .
I agree with you
please like have me
Huh, so you're saying there's a chance for guys that don't primarily post about the platform. That's a neat switch. You got my vote for Witness.
Well it's been 2 years already! Very interesting project. I think curation on Steemit is the way to go. May I ask if you're interested in comics? Only a few are available on Steemit but more will surely come. ;-)