I will begin removing authors of steem-centric posts.

in #steem8 years ago

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.

Sort:  

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 the steemit category 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 ;)

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!!

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.

image

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.......