Diary Game Project: is it easy to write a diary?
We all know that the Diary Game project is a project that was born since Steemit was split and the whole idea behind was to support the users and give them an opportunity to write about anything. It is sometimes difficult to choose the topic but when we write about our day then any can do it. Because we live, we do our daily routine, starting with breakfast, traveling to work or have some stuff to do at home.
I do not know how it is for you, but in my opinion, writing Diary post is easy. Sorry if somebody is offended with this statement. But we are all different, if I can write easily, then there are other people who can do something else easy.
In general, I do not like the fact that now all the SteemcuratorXX account make it as a rule that users have to write not less than 300 words.
I wonder, if someone write 300 words essay is it then automatically becomes High Quality?
Especially many Visual Art creators creating something for eyes and it should not be put on one shelf with writing skills.
Yesterday, I mentioned that I can write 300 words essay in 15 minute and some people did not believe. That is why, I just wanted to show that this is really the case.
Once upon the time in my school time |
|---|
This is my essay, taken from my past and typed using the real time. I also made a snapshot of the time when it is started and another one when I finished
12:52 PM
Today is an experiment, after a conversation yesterday I thought to try it and to make check if this is really so or not.
When I think about writing or in this case typing it brings me back to the time of being in school. That was my 8th year and together with other subjects we had to learn some professions or skills. That probably was something to help young people to decide about the future jobs.
The boys, all wanted to do driving and of course, all of them submitted their names for that.
As to our girls, we all wanted to be typists. The job itself was very exciting because of two things:
first, it was that we had typing machine which were first electric versions and they were very quick. The other reason was, that skill would be able to give us an opportunity to learn how to type quickly and correctly.
on other hand the job was also clear and being a fast typist even like a summer job for pocket money would be a great chance for young teenage
Anyway, the test itself included typing the text that the teacher was reading. Of course, before doing that we were taught to type with all fingers and not only with just few. There is a certain technique that used and we had a week to learn and practically to prepare ourselves.
At the end of the week we all were gathered in one room and the test began.
The teacher was reading not quick but also not slow. Still many of us struggled to follow the speed.
At the end from 15 of us only 5 passed the test. I was not one of them, on other hand I was not really upset. When I think now I never needed to use that skill but the good thing it was a good exercise and it gave me a chance to be able to type like I am doing now.
13:03 (332 words) Actually it took me only 10 minutes
As I said before, I have nothing against Diary Game but I ask everyone to be attentive to others too and not necessary to get stick to 300 words, when you are setting the curation.
I agree the 300 word rule is too harsh, especially for people who write in English as a second language. Additionally, not everyone has had the opportunity for higher education. Writing is not "easy". It takes a lot of practice to gain skill.
Personally, I do not mind when I see a post that starts off with "I woke up and brushed my teeth and said my prayers". That is a witness to lived experience. The fact that so many diary posts begin this way actually means something in terms of cultural expression. They delivery may not be as sophisticated as other types of posts, but it is what it is.
What I enjoy in the diary posts are pictures of what is going on in the writer's life. I want to see their village or city, I want to see what they are eating or what they are working on. That is of interest to me. It doesn't need to be profound. It doesn't need to be 300 words. It just needs to be honest.
So, I guess my opinion is that the 300 word rule is oppressive and elitist. There are other ways to judge quality.
Hi @brittilicious, thank you for taking part in this discussion. Yes, agree with you too. But have you noticed that for D.G. many write in their own language, there never was a rule to do the Diary in English. That is why anyone who has finished a secondary school should be able to write in their mother language and writing 300 words should not be too difficult.
I believe what was mentioned before, some posts do not have a high point, like in any story there is a beginning, the main body and conclusion, only then the story is interesting. Many users rush and do not think about it. On other hand many posts are daily and of course there is not much happening on daily basis, therefore, it becomes something ordinary.
I also agree that to see how other people live and work or the nature. I do not think I would be delighted to see daily meals, except there is a recipe and of course nicely made pictures.
At the end, we are all different and there are definitely many people who like to do those D.G. routine posts for one or other reasons.
I thought it was very funny. :) You missed the moment that after a person wakes up, he does not immediately brush his teeth. 😂😂😂
And by the way, I taught my children to brush their teeth after breakfast, not before breakfast. And I didn't teach them to pray.
The posts that begin that way tend to be from followers of Islam. I expect there is some sort of function for proclaiming that they have properly performed their ritual ablutions and prayers. As a reader, and non-Muslim, what I interpret is a proclamation of faith and an assertion that they adhere to certain values.
It's all good for me--even if I don't truly need to be reminded every single post that they continue to be observant Muslims. :-) I trust them.
I totally agree with you! I also noticed a similar trend.
You nailed it my dear. When I read some of the Diary posts I feel sorry for Steemit and in the direction it's going. People write things like, I woke up in morning, I brushed my teeth, I combed my hair and blah blah and guess what they get voted very well, against those who come up with some real good content on the table. Sometimes when you have had a meaningful day it is good to write a Diary to bring in some value to your content, otherwise I did this and that is shit which I do not shy off to say is a very low and poor quality content.
I do not want to lose hope on Steemit, but there are times when I feel there is no value for quality posts here. I do feel bad when sometimes my such good travel content and other content never gets a good vote against someone who writes any crap any gets a 100$ vote, but now I am turning a blind eye on all of this and just focusing on the people who support me and I support them as well.
Since I was a child I remember my friends were writing their Diary, that is very girly thing. I was very jealous because I did not know how to make an interesting diary and just gave up. I always had respect for such people. When Diary game started here I was very excited because it was something where one could report about their highlights of the day. It is a shame that it has taken the majority of the produced posts and curators concentrating on those tags more than on any others. It would be good to discover new topics, new users and just support them because of their uniqueness, that may help to create diversity and colourful mix.
@nainaztengra I'm about to make a lengthier comment on this topic (I lost most of yesterday and wasn't available, so I am just finding it now) but wanted to respond specifically to
I'm not sure "turning a blind eye" is the best approach. As with politics, which I mostly stay away from in general, ignoring the issues can let them fester. On the other hand though, I firmly believe from a personal standpoint, focusing on making your own content for the users (current or future) that enjoy what you have to offer is the best strategy to grow. There are so many people out there and we'll never please them all.
I think it's important to call out issues as we see them, as @stef1 is doing with this post. For most of us though, the optimal contribution we can make to furthering the platform is to just keep creating the best content we can and support those like @stef1 that push for higher change.
I agree with @nainaztengra thinking. Of the many communities that who held challenge the diary game, I see most of the content is very disgusting and has no quality. His words always start with wake up, going to the bathroom, having breakfast, bla.. bla.. bla and the end of the story is sleeping again. And it's got a great rewards, but it doesn't tempt me in the least. I love writing but I don't like creating the diary game content for big rewards. Where I live I am the only one who joins WOX, they ignore writing about the art of photography because they don't get big rewards, they prefer trash content but get big rewards.
Hi @adivender, it is a pleasure to have you among our users, you remain loyal and also you are quite active around. I also like you see that it is an easy way just to write about your day and if the one has a luck then will be vote by the accounts who are voting D.G. like you I just can not overcome myself and write such posts. Only if there was something exciting like I am on holiday and then writing everyday my experience, impressions and events. I wish all curators to visit many different users and also cross different communities.
This is such an interesting conversation. If it were not for @jae5086 having been a user on the platform for the past ~6 years, I would have considered my knowledge inadequate given the short amount of time I have been an active user to warrant commenting. Since he is joint owner of the account (our "business" account, so to speak), this is largely his opinion...
Specifically in regards to the diary game, this was not something that existed many years ago when I was first active on steemit. More recently when we created this account, I couldn't help but notice the insane number of diary game posts. They were written in so many languages and in virtually every community. I wasn't even sure what the deal was with it but I certainly took notice to the fact that they were earning!
At first, I thought about doing them to try and help get the account established, but the more I read them (at least, the ones in English that I could understand) the less interested I was. This is not that keeping a diary in blog form is inherently bad, but rather that - when the point here is supposed to be writing quality content - I saw very little of it.
Couple this with @stef1's point that words don't specifically mean the content is of much value and one can see the validity that there may be too much emphasis on the number of words. After all, those of us who are posting our artwork put in a lot of time to create what you see in those images. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say...
Conversely, even though I place great value on the original pictures others (especially fellow artists) post, I can't help but feel I want more when there are many wonderful pictures but so few words to add further substance. It's not that their artwork is diminished, I simply find the posts a little less enjoyable. After all, a blog is inherently about reading. If I wanted to simply browse beautiful pictures, I could go to Pinterest or many other sites.
This is why my personal choice was to make each of my art posts about both the art and, to some extent, whatever else was happening in my life, usually still art related. You will never see me posting about "waking up, then brushing teeth, yada-yada-ya", though I may talk briefly about some things that others may feel mundane. Those things at the very least won't be daily activities but more importantly, supplement the rest of my post; they are not the meat and potatoes.
I don't know where the balance is or how to solve the underlying issue, but in my time here on steemit, I have seen some very nice posts be completely overlooked while what I perceive as, frankly, very low quality content, garner a lot of attention. I appreciate the efforts of @stef1 and others in trying to change the culture here in this regard. Posts like this and the actively engaged responses I have read in these comments is a great place to start.
I look forward to seeing where this discussion goes and sorry to everyone for such a lengthy comment...
Hi Erika and @jae5086, thank you for this comment it is really worth a value of a real post, that is containing the analyzes but also the view of a person who were not involved much recently and can judge from the post of view of someone who let's say just joined the platform.
The platform is overwhelmed with big number of such repetitive posts and do understand those users who do that because they receive their daily Upvote and that might be their daily bread. On other hand the fact that curators concentrating on those posts is also not really making it better. Some users after posting some posts and receiving no attention simply leave, which is also very understandable.
I also agree with you that posts with few photos and less writing are not attractive, even though they might be really good quality. But this is like the user also had not much care about his blog and does not care if people will come and like the posts or not.
As curators especially those who received such a post from the Steemit Team, they should be people who think and not only automatically checks if the post long enough, if there are markdown and so on. Because otherwise it is possible to create a program and let program to check if post is complies with rules and get reward. Because AI has no soul and can't read between the sentences.
I know I caused a whirl of emotions and people do not like any open discussion of such sensible topics and I was even been told that we should be humble and follow what we are told. Really?
I was grown up with and encouraged to tell what I think, no matter how different my opinion is and it might be wrong but how I would know if I do not speak up. I am not afraid of being heard, that is the way how we should be here. Speak up what we think. I do not like the people who are friendly and nice in face but have completely different opinion in their soul and never tell you.
I really like how you developing yourself Erika, this is the great way and I am pretty sure you will find many people around.
I've written that program 😉 It helps me to find posts with specific hashtags, etc. which I might be interested in reading and (the important bit) then I choose whether I consider it worthy of my vote or not. I did similar when I was using one of the steemcurator accounts.
I second this. I've only just discovered the work of @scratched-burnt and it's very impressive.
I happened to read that post over the weekend. You caused a bit of a commotion, haha!
Thanks, I appreciate that!
Quick unrelated question. How do you emoji? I saw a list of them from the markdown guide but they don't seem to work, example :smile:
Which post is that? I like to cause a bit of chaos every now and then to get people thinking 🤣
I'm on a windows PC and if you press the windows button and "." together, you get the option to add them. There are also lots of GIFs that you can add too. They don't always work so I might look for the HTML code which start with & and then #.
If all else fails, this link has a few tips 😁
This one
I understand that many people use the diary game in order to be rewarded, but in any case there should not be a requirement of 300 words.
But the quality of the post makes it possible for them to win a reward.
I never check the tag #thediarygame, but now I'm curious and I want to check the posts and what they are rewarded for.
Maybe #thediarygame has played its role and that rewards for it should be focused on other activities in the communities or from steemit. I probably won't be popular when I say that.
I checked a lot of posts in #thediarygame now and there are some great posts there, but I'm surprised how big the rewards are compared to other quality posts on steemit.
There are always good quality and poor quality as everywhere in every tag, but the fact is if the post meet minimum criteria then it is getting Upvote especially because the last Challenge has 3x topics of DG.
I know that is the same with me, once people like us start to tell our opinions the others feel being spoken to. Without much understanding how other ordinary user feel being outside of that circle of 300+.
In my opinion, there should be separate community created called "Diary Game" and such DP need to be done from the community then it will be clear how much those posts get rewards and how much the other communities. Would be an interesting statistic.
I’ll split my reply into 2 as I believe there’s the topic of diary games and the 300 word “requirement” here.
With regards to the 300 words, I’ve said somewhere before that this arbitrary number shouldn’t dictate how people view a post. The example I like to use is that if I record myself sky diving whilst ironing a Steemit T-shirt whilst I’m on fire and lay down a self-written soundtrack, this epic performance would say a lot more than 300+ words. Should it be ignored because there isn’t this arbitrary number of words supporting it? Of course not. But…some community users in a steemcurator role want / need rules (rather than guidelines) so that they “know” they’re doing the “job” that’s been asked of them. Other users are happy simply to do what they think is best in the interests of supporting good content.
With regards to the diary game, at a high level, it’s not something that appeals to me. But much like UK garage and other genres of music, if it’s done well, it’s something I can appreciate. There will always be other people that appreciate it even if I don’t and perhaps the rewards reflect that. Much like the UK Top 20 being the most popular music… which would probably make my ears bleed.
So (as other comments have said), to generically call it all “shit”(not your words but those of another comment) is somewhat disrespectful and unnecessary.
Hi @the-gorilla, thank you for your opinion and also for explanation. I agree with you:
The posts should not be strictly judge on number of words, that recently became a main rule, you can see it in every SCXX rules, that made me think that people stopped thinking and just counting words.It is true when we want to share something then sometimes it exceeds even 300, is that mean that we get double % of curator Upvote. Also writing more than that again does not make some of the posts good quality. We all have to judge the posts on the content, topic and how much the person behind the words put his effort, it can be less than "that number" I just do not want to repeat it.
I know what you mean we have our own taste, our likes and dislikes. You know that sometimes there is shit posts even among DG but I absolutely agree we can't say that all of them bad.There are might be some gemstones too among them.
The experience I have gained in life has allowed me to understand that knowledge has nothing to do with respect, I can even say that most people who believe they have more knowledge than others, can become more disrespectful, perhaps, the ego often plays an important role in this.
The essence of the journal game is not to compete to know how long you can write 300 words, but to allow the user to have an option so that it can achieve a constancy in the platform, in fact, the 300 words is a requirement that arises for all publications regardless of what the main topic. this in order to give depth to it.
The diary game has shown those who read them that they are not just words, but real and true situations that people live day by day, without "newspaper" intermediaries, and add value in terms of social information.
To conclude, it is important that we respect all the other topics that are developed on the platform, in my life I have met people who do not like paintings at all "much less abstract", I have heard people who do not like music, there are even people who do not believe in God, but do not live criticizing them.
Thank you for the opinion Adel. I still feel that you do not understand what I wanted to clarify, it is the fact that many curator teams and even challenges put these 300 words as a firm condition, if it is less then they do not visit a post. Just to highlight it again:
Based on the title and introduction you use, you're implying that journals don't deserve the attention they get, because it's supposedly easy to write 300 words.
I want to tell you that newspapers are not only valued for the number of words used, but also the quality of photos, organization of content, even the quality of spelling. On the other hand, community curators only follow the basic rules issued by the Steemit team, who request that content must be exclusive to Steemit, bot-free, at least #club5050 and a minimum of 300 words "estimated", although a post by good images or drawings could be supported with at least 200 words, it all depends on the point of view of the curator.
Congratulations! For me writing is an ordeal.
We should write because we want to share something important and not because we need to get reward if we do Diary Post and do 300 words.
I agree!
The artist should show his drawings, the photographer his cool photographs.
The 300-word text to these pictures is just water that needs to be poured. And the most interesting thing about this is that these same curators may simply not read this very text.
Anyway, all our posts in this community are reduced to the "diary" format. We write mostly about ourselves, about our present day, about our thoughts.
Yes, blogging is writing about ourselves, but it is just made too simple now. I believe many curators prefer to curate those posts because it is really unique because it is really a day of the person, nobody will copy the day of other and re-post, because it would be too silly.
I can write 300 words pretty quickly, especially if I have an idea, and I just throw out a stream of consciousness. Maybe I should do it more often, but I don't, I'd rather be known for my renders, not my ideas…lol.
Except maybe finance, which I do for a living, and it’s benign, so I don't mind talking about that.
That said, especially if it's an idea, it has to be vetted, because when it comes out of my head, it may not be entirely accurate. So I have to verify those ideas before posting…to make sure they are reasonable... and that takes time.
But if it's in a diary format, and talking about the day, then it probably doesn't need to be vetted :)
Yes, I agree when we describe our daily activity or the facts what e did, then yes, it is straight forward. But doing so I feel the whole magic behind the Diary as such has been lost. For me it was always something very personal, related to the person, like the evens and their analyses with thoughts and ideas. The experience or reaction to something, the sweet memories. The diary is the part of our life that we decided to capture like a photo. so that we can return and while reading we experience again the same emotions. You understand what I mean. That everything is lost with the way how Diary is used by many people just for sake of been Upvoted. That is why for me personally it lost its flavour and became in the Reward generating need.
I can understand what you mean with analyzing again your writings and vetting, I do often the same myself. Thank you for leaving your thoughts in regards to this hot topic :)