Content Crusaders: The Fight to Save Steemit Will Fail

in #steemit8 years ago

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There have been a few vocal opponents of certain types of content lately and I don’t believe it’s the best path to “save” the platform.

We all have our preferences when it comes to “quality” content. Some of us acknowledge that these preferences are personal and often do not align with those of others. Some of us refuse to acknowledge this and believe that “quality” isn’t really subjective. And still, some of us may understand how such preferences work, but believe that our own preferences ought to be the preferred preferences.

There have been arguments that posts involving sports and games don’t really add any value to the platform; that the quality is poor; that they require little to no effort or time; that they are manipulative campaigns to drain the rewards pool; that they are dishonest and dishonorable.

Let me tell you a little story, then we’ll revisit these criticisms and accusations.

The motivations of @ats-david – in case you were wondering.

I’ve always been a fan of sports. I grew up in a sports town with several big-league major sports franchises. I played sports growing up – spending nearly all of my free time outdoors, participating in various activities, even throughout the winter. During the winter months, we moved some of our sports indoors and continued playing. It was a year-long effort, every year.

With such a sports-rich childhood, I grew into an adult who enjoys watching sports. It doesn’t matter if those sports are live or on television, whether I’m watching football or Olympic slalom, or whether I’m watching the local favorite or two teams from the other side of the world. I enjoy competing and I enjoy competition, particularly in the form of sports, but any competition will do. It often serves as my entertainment. It’s one of my entertainment preferences.

When I joined Steemit back in August, sports posts were virtually non-existent. My plan when I arrived here was not to write about sports – but to try to grab attention from readers and to raise money for my business project. During that process, I noticed what a few others had: that the content was becoming somewhat bland and that there was a particular lack of sports, sports posts, games, and interactive posting. There certainly was interaction, but mostly it was just the typical blog comment.

At the time I joined, the anarchist community was arriving in droves and anarchism was trending regularly. I knew from my previous experience that a large portion of anarchists despised sports altogether, so I decided to take the opportunity to write a post about it titled, To My Anarchist Friends: Why Do You Hate Sports? I published that post on August 30th. Needless to say, it didn’t earn much. However, it pretty much confirmed my suspicion: As long as anarchism was dominating the trending cycle, sports and sports-related content didn’t have a chance of being successful.

I talked to a couple of people about their thoughts on sports and they said that they also noticed what I was seeing. One of them stated that he wanted to post sports-related content, but that he was afraid he would be wasting his time. Another user even stated outright that there was a specific lack of sports and some other “manly” content – and that he would probably find another place to socially interact where such content existed.

So, I decided to take it upon myself to try to create a way for people to interact with each other in the community with content that I thought could fill some of the sports void. I had planned to publish my initial Winner-Takes-All post for the first week of the NFL season, but I was pulled away for a few days and wasn’t able to get it together with enough time to allow other users to make their selections. So, I started with the second week of the season and my first Picks post was published on September 15th.

(I would like to note here that @steemsports didn’t publish their introduction until six days later, on September 21st. I am the original sports game in town, as far as I know. I just didn’t have the initial whale support.)

My first post had six participants. Thanks to a donation from another user, every weekly post for the entire regular season had a guaranteed 5 STEEM Dollar payout. On top of that, I offered to split the liquid rewards with the winner. At the time, I had not earned much through my posting efforts. I was certainly no whale or even a glimmer in a dolphin’s eye. I happened to get a few good payouts just within the two weeks prior, but I didn’t have much to promise any participants, so the rewards would be based on how well the community supported me.

I pledged some of my rewards, another user donated some STEEM Dollars, the game was up and running, and the football Picks was receiving interactions.

So, there it is – the birth of my sports-related content. Now, back to the previously mentioned criticisms about such content.

Is my content dishonest or shameful?

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I’ll let the community be the judge. I have never attempted to misrepresent anything that I do. I create my contests, lay out the rules, and ask people to participate. That’s it. If nobody wants to play the game and nobody wants to upvote the posts, then my posts fail and I likely stop creating them. Such is the blogging market.

When it comes to upholding my end of the bargain, I think my track record speaks for itself. I have had zero disputes and all of the post payouts have gone to the winners as promised – in some cases, more rewards were paid out than were promised. There is no integrity issue here.

Have I manipulated anyone in order to drain the rewards pool?

As stated above, I have done nothing to manipulate users. Now if we’re going to talk about rewards and an intent to actually earn something from my posts, then yes – I am guilty as charged. I create posts so that I can earn rewards. That’s pretty much the entire point of this platform. It’s why these very people who are criticizing others are here as well. They want a chance to earn – and as far as I can tell, they can do so without anyone calling for their posts to be flagged/downvoted or otherwise relegated to some sort of second-tier status.

What I find troubling about the complaints here is that the criticizers seem to believe that certain types of content ought to be prevented from having a chance to earn like all of the other content. They seem to believe that rewards should only go to posts that “create value” – but their definition of “value” falls within their narrow preferences for content. What exactly is the value that they believe they are creating with their own posts? Who judges that value? Them? Do they judge their own value as well as the value of others? Or do others get to have a say about the value that these criticizers are creating with their own posts? Why do they feel that their opinion of value ought to supersede anyone else’s opinion of value?

So, I reject outright this notion that a post about sports-related games or sports “betting” is somehow less valuable to the platform than a science, philosophy, art, or news post – and that creating such content is nothing more than “manipulation” of other users and the rewards pool. Do some people actually manipulate or abuse the trust of the community? Sure. But that doesn’t mean all users posting this type of content are manipulative and abusive.

Do my posts require time, effort, and creativity?

Regarding time and effort – I can tell you that I spend a fair amount of time putting my sports posts together and I make sure that they are formatted, edited, and presented in a manner that is consistent with any other type of post that I create, whether it’s a series on my coffee knowledge and experiences, a post about government and politics, or just a batch of photos that I upload and share. Sorting through the entries from the participants and making sure that the contest results and payouts are accurate takes time as well. With my format, I can’t just post it and forget it.

When it comes to creativity, I think I’ve done a fairly good job as well. I have been complimented many times over about the uniqueness and/or fun of the contests. When critiquing or judging the creativity or quality of a post, it would be helpful to make comparisons to other posts of its kind. You’re obviously not going to critique a sports opinion column based on the same standards you would apply to a post of a scientific study. Critiquing an essay on metaphysics based on standards or comparisons to a photojournalist’s blog would be equally absurd.

Do my posts add value to the platform?

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This isn’t an easy question to answer because value is subjective. However, we can look at what my posts do accomplish.

First – my posts have engaged other users on the platform who enjoy participating in the contests. Whether their motivation is to win money or to simply enjoy the experience is irrelevant. If they derive pleasure from the experience and they feel that it was a good use of their time and effort, then it doesn’t matter what others think about it. As a user/investor of the platform, they can likewise do what they want with their vote. If voting on my post and submitting an entry into my contest is how they want to be entertained, so be it.

This is the key to entertainment. We seek entertainment mostly for the simple pleasure of it. Some people seek ways to be entertained with minimal exertion. They want entertainment efficiency. If one user creates a game or a post that can maximize one’s entertainment with minimal time and effort, couldn’t that be of great value to others who are seeking such efficiency?

Furthermore, one of my most recent sports-gaming posts engaged 28 unique users. Compared to one of the more vocal criticizers of “low quality” content, this was better engagement than all but one of his posts over the past two weeks – a total of 49 posts. So, if we are using engagement as a metric for our critiques, then it would appear that sports-gaming is on par (or better) than what he perceives as “quality content.”

Second – I am offering the community a way to earn rewards that they may otherwise not earn. They also have an opportunity to earn these rewards without having to create their own blog posts. For all of the users out there who do not wish to write blog posts, this is a great opportunity for them to increase their stake on the platform.

Not everyone wants to be a blogger – and the bloggers here need to wake up and realize this. Without a large amount of people reading, voting, and engaging, you won’t have much of a platform. Giving people incentive to engage – even if it’s minimal and not your preferred method of engagement – will help draw them in and keep them here. Earning money is the big draw for Steemit. My posts offer that to readers without requiring much effort from them and without needing to be a professional blogger and subject-matter expert, like some people apparently believe all Steemit users ought to be. (I actually find most of these posts from the wide-ranging subject-matter experts to be unbearable – but that is just my opinion.)

Third – the posts that I create redistribute rewards from larger stakeholders. Those rewards go to me and to the winning participants. Due to the popularity and support that I have received recently, I have been able to donate full liquid rewards to winners and have received additional STEEM from certain users to be paid out as well. Every time a vote is made and these coins are donated, distribution (or re-distribution) occurs. If the popularity continues and I decide to branch out into other sports, I may even start powering down some of the SP rewards to use as payouts as well. But if I decide to do that, it will be my decision and on my terms.

Fourth – my system is creating additional network transactions that add value to the STEEM blockchain and also add to my personal trustworthiness within the community. If anyone wants to know if I can be trusted, there is a growing network of users who can vouch for me and this can be confirmed by the data on the blockchain. This adds value to me personally, and as a member of the community who can be trusted, I add value to it in return.

Fifth – the content that I create allows me to earn rewards and increase my stake on the platform. As one of the more active users here who is consistently posting and curating on the platform, the rewards that I receive can be used for furthering my own goals for STEEM/Steemit, which involve bringing in new users who will be working with me on my business projects, crowdfunding supplies for it, and setting up a storefront that will accept STEEM and STEEM Dollars as payment. So voting on my posts and participating in the games – even if you don’t necessarily like my style of engagement – will contribute to my continued efforts to build up the Steemit community and to give users another way to spend their STEEM and STEEM Dollars.

Returning to my initial argument.

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One of the most outspoken users who criticizes the gaming initiatives on this platform seems to think that Steemit must be used only for creating “meaningful higher quality content” for the purposes of raising the “quality of consciousness” of people around the world. He has even suggested that if you can’t create content that is up to (presumably) the standards of his own posts, then you simply should not post on your blog.

This leads me to wonder what is meant by “meaningful” quality content. We already have a hard enough time expressing which content is considered “quality,” let alone anything higher quality or something meaningful. If those things cannot be explained in an objective context, then those words themselves are essentially meaningless and arguing for them in order to allegedly improve the community is also meaningless.

What about using Steemit – or any other internet site, for that matter – as a way to raise the “quality of consciousness” of the world? Of stating that certain posts shouldn’t even be published unless they conform to such an ideal standard of excellence, according to one particular user? I’m not quite sure how to address this, other than to say that I hope this person never acquires a whale’s share of influence. Can you imagine the general pretentiousness of a website that has such influential users like this as an example of what is best for society – let alone a project that is supposed to be decentralized, or at least encourage decentralization and related moral/philosophical values?

If our goal is to criticize any content that is not up to our personal standards, or to argue that such content ought to be moved somewhere else or that users ought to simply refrain from posting altogether, then the results will be the exact opposite of our stated intentions.

If we want to expand the user base and grow this social media platform, scrutinizing content for what we subjectively consider “quality” or “meaningful” won’t get us there. Publicly criticizing such content as worthless and harmful to the platform won’t get us there. Flagging/Downvoting such content won’t get us there.

As a matter of fact, doing those things will likely push users out and keep new users from joining.

Additionally, it’s a losing battle in the first place. If Steemit were to become a popular social media site, the “low quality” content will inevitably exist and probably thrive. A crusade to prevent it by complaining about its popularity will have virtually no impact – because most people just don’t care about your personal preferences. The only way to prevent certain content from being popular right now on this platform is for the most influential users to either refuse to upvote it or to flag it – to discourage other users from voting on the content, lest their vote be repeatedly wasted altogether. But this isn’t a solution to the content problem. It only offers a way – for now – to push one’s own preferences on the rest of the relatively small community. If the active user base doubles, triples, quadruples, etc., and more investment comes pouring in, those efforts can be quickly defeated.

Do we want a thriving, welcoming community? Or do we want a closed, stagnant one?

This is the question that we should consider when we try to push our agenda about quality and the types of content that we think ought to be allowed, removed, or redirected. Claiming decentralization and censorship-free shouldn’t come with qualifiers based on a few preferences by a few people.

Criticizing the quality or value of content probably shouldn’t come from users who have had the privilege of receiving plenty of automated voting that has raised them into the highest ranks on the platform in both rewards and reputation. Such efforts will not only push people away from these particular complaining users, but they will also push people away from the platform as a whole, thus reducing the adoption and retention rates and the value of the platform for which these people are hoping.

There are arguments to be made about how certain things work and how certain users behave, but these are functionality and trust issues and are not necessarily related to content. If you have a legitimate complaint about a user or a function on the website, address it accordingly. Personal preferences about quality and value really have no place in that conversation.

A friend of mine always says, “You do you – and I’ll do me.” It’s great advice, especially for Steemit. If you don’t like someone’s content, just ignore it and vote, comment, and share what you like. If Steemit becomes something that you loathe, then you can always move on. That’s something that we all need to accept and be prepared for, because there are certainly no guarantees here.

Tell us your opinions about quality, but spare us the useless value judgments and the endless campaign to push certain content into dark corners. Lobby for better filtering features for users, not the outright exclusion of content. That is in direct opposition to what this platform is supposed to represent.

So, good luck to the content crusaders out there. You’ll need it – because most people don’t care. And that’s not a problem with them.

(I hope this post meets the standards of quality that are expected.)


*The images in this post are from Pixabay.com.

Follow me: @ats-david

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It's really not your fault, seems like the Steemit.com people are sitting on their money and not developing fast enough. We need basic "subscribe to #hashtag", "ignore #hashtag" or something better ASAP!

Even on Reddit.com I can't stand watching more than 10 min per day of the homepage... Of course putting every subject in one melting pot is going to lead to shit overall content experience for most people.

I certainly don't have any problem with anyone's subjective preferences when it comes to content... I just feel obligated to oppose unrepentant predators in our midst.
I've been digging your price analysis posts, by the way. Keep up the great work :)

upvoted for "unrepentant predators" that has a ring to it

I just feel obligated to oppose unrepentant predators in our midst.

I think that's a legitimate thing to oppose. Sports-gaming? Probably not.

Right. Thinking more along the lines of real estate and passport scams here ;)

lol I wonder who you could be referring to :p

Steemit needs a lot more sports, no question about it. Sports topics have not been that popular yet. SteemSports and your contest posts have been a good experiment; I hope that gambling/contests/fantasy sports have a future on their own Steem-powered interfaces.

I have to be honest that I have not enjoyed seeing so many of those posts taking up space on the Trending page. A certain quantity of them are quite welcome, but it's been overkill in recent weeks. I would like to see some more diverse content there because that is how Reddit and other sites grew. But I have not complained about this either because I don't want to substitute my views for the community's. Also, it's important to try new things to see what works - kudos for your efforts on this.

The way reddit and other sites have grown is various different categories of content being extremely popular (i.e. filling up what is misnamed as "Trending" on here) at various times, and then having tastes (and the makeup of the user base) shift over time. Especially in its earlier days (though to be clear, the reddit user base even then was much, much larger than Steemit's today). At any particular time you would see a high concentration of a particular topic, be it NSFW, science, programming or politics. Small sites/communities can't be diverse; attempting to force this means destroying any possible network effect on a particular topic/subcommunity.

As you know I, and others, have been somewhat critical of Curie and similar efforts to "spread the wealth" in this manner by promoting a hodgepodge of disconencted posts/topics and in doing so discouraging any particular topic or subcommunity from thriving and driving growth. It is only whale domination on this platform that allows this to happen, essentially forced from the top down. Voting driven organically by a user base would naturally concentrate on a small number of interests (at least for a time, and especially with a "small" user base). Indeed, the periods of successful growth on Steemit aligned with it being first a hub for information and writing about cryptocurrency and decentralized systems, and later anarchism. Since the shotgun approach to "curation guilds" and "quality content" has taken hold, the growth has died. Coincidence? Maybe, but I'm not so sure.

I'm sure you have seen this graph before. There is a lot of wisdom contained within (for example, observe how long a particular topic remained dominant, generally a year or so). In terms of Steemit's scale and user base, we are at the extreme left edge:

http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/SubredditGrowthOverTime-all-time.png

Good luck fighting this battle. I think it's the right one but I think it will be hard to convince the other whales. I thought crypto people understood decentralization versus top down but alas the whale content choices here suggest they do not.

I agree and disagree. The whale's "content choices" on things like SteemSports are decentralized. Maybe not decentralized to the point of all 100K+ accounts (mostly shill/scam accounts anyway), but there are probably a few dozen to a hundred or so whale accounts (of various sizes of course) and they choose what they want to vote for and support as do all the dolphins, mid-staked, and minnow accounts.

When you have a list of a dozen or so whales supporting SteemSports (at the moment; these things can change quickly in both directions), which in turn leads (along with votes from other non-whales) to SteemSports receiving and distributing a large portion of the reward pool, it is because we are each exercising our decentralized voting rights and expressing our preferences about what we think adds value.

If SteemSports posts were a ghost town and no one was participating in the games and benefiting from the wide and low-barrier distribution of rewards, the brand wasn't growing and developing new formats and content and investing in trying to grow the platform and its own brand, then I would stop supporting it. Other whales may or may not feel the same way.

I like it as an activity booster and reward distribution strategy just not as content strategy. Net net it's a positive.

People left Steemit when the price tanked (and we've seen the # of posts increase once again now that it's bounced back a bit). Did curation projects kill the price? We actually started after that. Curation projects arose to help authors in tough times, rewarding content creators who would not have been discovered or rewarded otherwise.

You know I'm supportive of many of your attempts to get other communities going, and indeed I'm glad to help you with more of them. Plenty of voting power out there and curation projects have concentrated some of it in areas like photography and Spanish, which have grown nicely. You may not think diversity is best, but you have to keep the masses happy or you won't have a site.

Also, when people stop by from other parts of the Internet, it's nice if they can see a few different things here rather than just one or two niches. Reddit had diversity also, even if there wasn't much going on initially in some of those subs, but I agree with you that we can build some communities here also.

I'm not claiming any particular direct cause->effect in terms of price, curation guilds (including my own) and "spread the wealth". Obviously there are always many different factors at work. I'm pointing to it as one factor and component of what seems a very questionable direction. (I'm not the first, or even the second, to point out that small growing communities need focus; if I could remember who those were, I would be happy to give credit.)

I'm still skeptical of the 'jack of all trades' approach, at this stage (again look at that reddit category graph and particularly the contrast between the earlier and later years). Spread a small community thin and each of 'a few different things' (presumably 'a few' there refers to quite a significant number since you contrast it with one or two) amount to basically nothing at all, each being too small to thrive and drive growth, viral or otherwise.

Taking Steemsports as a specific example, there are more people directly involved with Steemsports as writers, editors, coders, enthusiasts, sponsors, and marketers than there are in most if not all of the other subcommunities here, possibly combined (anarchism and cryptocurrency being a possible counterexamples but those seem to have faded). Those directly involved with Steemsports are not only creating the content, but they are creating a real subcommunity, recruiting friends to the platform and so forth. It has also spawned imitators and spin offs, further growing the sports niche. None of this happens without a certain critical mass of both people and resources with common interests.

There are billions of people in the world who are interested in sports (or gambling or porn). There are probably a few million interested in anarchism and maybe a million or so interested in cryptocurrencies. I'd be happy to see Steemit grow to a few orders of magnitudes larger than it current size on the basis of any one or two of these, and then have it grow horizontally (as did reddit, or Facebook, which started exclusively with college students and their particular interests), which would happen naturally because many people who are interested in X are also interested in Y. Once you bring enough people with a focus on X, then Y (and Z, etc.) can grow from that naturally. We can not be all things to all people with maybe 1000 active users. If we try to do this we will be nothing to anybody.

As a matter of fact, curation guilds are curating posts across a very narrow band of topics. There's no hodgepodge of niche content, because as you say, a community this small does not support it. Every week, ~85-90% posts from Curie are in the top 5 categories/tags. A post about a niche or diverse topic is very rare. Steemit has naturally consolidated on a bunch of topics, and curation guilds only work to pick out the best among them.

A community of 1000 people can never be about all things to all people in the first place - that's clearly illogical - and there's nothing a curation guild can do to change that.

There are dozens of curators involved in Steemtrail and over a 100 weekly active curators submitting to Curie - around 25 daily active; not to mention 700 users in the channel. The curation community is a vital and thriving part of Steemit, as inclusive and engaged as Steemsports.

Activity is tied directly to the price of Steem, and we have seen a substantial increase in the last couple of weeks. Indeed, there have been many returning users who were ignored 3-4 months ago, gave up and left. Let's hope we can retain them this time. Personally, for me, that's the end goal of curation guilds - user retention and engagement. We lost thousands of users when the price was high and the community was only voting for a couple of dozen users - it's not an opportunity we can afford to lose again.

The proof is in the pudding - there are countless people who have said they'd have left Steemit were it not for curation guilds - each day there's at least a couple of comments to that effect on @curie's posts, all by different people.

Without curation guilds and other engaging initiatives like Steemsports, Steemit would be a barren wasteland of about a couple hundred people, and only a couple of dozen people who would be voted for over and over again.

Of course, there's scope for all kinds of initiatives on Steemit, and curation guilds should absolute be part of it; as should be Steemsports and many others.

You make some good points. Thank you for the added background information.

I respect your perspective although I don't entirely share your enthusiasm for this form of what I would call corporatized curation. I very much prefer to just see people organically voting for what they like, or what they want to see more of. There are obviously different points of view on the matter.

Let me ask a serious question. When does the need for curation guilds end, and Steem/it become like other social sites where the users simply do their own voting and it is not funneled though a guild structure? What measurable and achievable criteria would you put forward for declaring that the mission of these guilds is accomplished and they can be disbanded?

EDIT: I just took a look at the latest Daily Curie, and I frankly would have to once again say that opinions differ on these things because I do very much see a hodgepodge. I don't know if those top 5 categories/tags are very broad or it is a question of whatever Curie votes for ends up defining the top 5 tags, but either way what I see defies any obvious themes (to my eye at least).

Replying to your last comment (comment tree limit).

An obvious benefit of curation guilds I didn't mention in my last comment is that curation guilds encourage and organise organic voting. Previously, people would just vote for whatever was profitable, generating bot swarms behind a very select few users. Of course, these bot swarms still exist, but curation has diversified greatly.

With curation guilds it's much more profitable to vote on good content, because they know a curation guild will be looking out to vote after them, so they can cash in greater curation rewards. (Needless to say, it would be much more profitable to vote on a post with few rewards generated than voting on posts which already attract bot swarms).

We can see this complete change in behaviour - even bots now look out for popular content (i.e. lots of votes with but very little payout). The top two bots by curation rewards - @biophil and @better (laonie) follow a similar algorithm.

So, curation guilds are just as essential to promote organic voting - which is definitely essential, as you mention.

That's a very good question! When I first took interest in curation, personally my chief goal was to retain users. It sucked to see thousands of users exit the platform en masse because they were offered no exposure or rewards. My initial thought was there would be a point at which curation guilds won't be required - I used to joke about "Curie being successful when there's no need for Curie".

But the more I work with a curation guild, the more I see other curation guilds like Steem Guild, the Reddit tag project, Steemtrail form; the more I realize that this may be the only true USP of Steem. Authors do get rewarded in other social platforms - whether by attention, exposure or engagement. But not curators (upvoters/likers etc.). Steem may be the only social network that actually rewards curation, and I have seen many people take interest. I'd say 10%-20% of the active user base are also active curators, and this does not include bots. I'm pretty certain (it would be logical) that they vote more diligently since there's a reward involved. (The of course - I hope the algorithm is fine tuned) I have also seen the enthusiasm and passion shared by many curators first hand - they are as involved as top authors and commenters. Curie really encourages this - our #curie channel is arguably the largest collaborative project in the community, with a hundred people collaborating every week.

So maybe curation guilds should stick around - if Steemit ever attains critical mass, it's going to lead to a better platform than Reddit, where there's a real problem of good content being undiscovered. One may argue that a curation guild would have a greater, more important purpose when there's volume - as then there will be truly great posts chosen. To add further, as a long term Redditor I can totally see how Reddit desperately needs a curation guild - but why would they take the time and effort to form one without the incentive of any reward?

Of course, I'd like to see a better allocation of R-shares, away from the top stakeholders to the top curators. (I have proposed a curator's reputation system previously, which would also weed out the greedy bots and naturally prevents Sybil attacks) That'll make curation guilds much more direct, doing away with the seemingly "corporate/top-down" nature which I totally understand why the community would be distrustful of. For now, we'll just have to work with what the network offers.

Reddit also has a much lower barrier to entry. If you can sign up an account and cut and paste a link - you can play. On Steemit - unless you can write, or want to spend your dowry on SP so you can curate - you play Steem Sports. If Steem Inc. was doing targeted advertising to various groups - perhaps this hodge podge of content idea would work. As it stands right now - this is the top post (as Steemit cult related posts almost always are). Instead of concentrating on doing away with SteemSports - what about the low quality poetry, pictures of cats, "photography", or posts that aren't that great that make large sums of money because of nepotism?

What's wrong with "photography" on Steemit?

Biggest market isn't the best. There are a lot of sites serving sports enthusiast. What does this one do better. That sounds not clear but I am nirvana really a sports guy. Cracking that will lead to success.

I don't know or particularly care if sports is the right market. It may not be. If sports stagnates and something else starts to take off, I'm perfectly happy with that. Whatever that might be, it will quickly dominate trending as its promise and popularity earns it support from existing and new users. Then the same sort of crusaders (even if not necessarily the exact same ones) will be up in arms about "too much" of it on the Trending page. That is the attitude and behavior that is incredibly toxic and is an existential threat to the possible success of the platform. It transcends sports.

Reddits Policy:
Content is prohibited if it

Is illegal
Is involuntary pornography
Encourages or incites violence
Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so
Is personal and confidential information
Impersonates someone in a misleading or deceptive manner
Is spam

Good enough for 250 million people.

A certain quantity of them are quite welcome, but it's been overkill in recent weeks.

I completely understand not wanting to see four posts by the same account sitting at the top of the trending page every day. But I just don't see how that translates to, "All these sports games suck and they need to go if we want to save Steemit!" There's a bit of difference between those two.

Any category that grows faster than the others, especially on a site that starts out small, will quickly dominate Trending, which after all is a leaderboard of the pre-payout posts getting the most stake-weighted votes. That is simple math. Take a look at the reddit content mix chart that I posted in response to @donkeypong, especially the early years. That is what organic, viral growth looks like when categories have different growth rates and those rates shift over time. Exponential growth means that whatever is growing fastest at any particular time quickly dominates.

Stomping on categories because they have "too much" in Trending is stomping on anything that starts to thrive and drive growth.

If Sports and/or betting took hold and grew the Steemit user base by 10x (from about 1000 active to 10000 active users) would fill >90% of Trending. If something else then took hold (again, see reddit graph) and grew it by another 10x (to 100K active users), that would push aside sports from Trending and fill >90% of it.

Instead of crusading against concepts and categories that dominate Trending (i.e. the ones that grow the fastest), we should be embracing them. To do otherwise is to successively sabotage each source of growth in its earliest stages. A nice 'balanced' Trending means that nothing is particularly growing. Trending is not and can not be a "directory" of every category on the site. If people want that, a completely different page needs to be created for it. Until and unless this completely wrong-headed idea of "balance" is abandoned, Steemit is going nowhere.

I agree. It feels like there are some people who want to try to push Steemit in a certain direction right now because there's a small user base - that they're afraid there will be no way to control it once it grows. And they're right about that. When thousands of users start joining per week, there will be very little that any one person or small group of people can do.

So, I can only guess that the intent today is to try to make people conform to a specific viewpoint and certain subjects/styles that these few people want with the hope that they can actually steer the future of Steemit. But that's a losing proposition. I don't know what would make them think they can direct/control the content here, even now. It's not like there's any evidence that anyone other than the top ~5% of stakeholders has that kind of power.

There's a lot of delusion going around.

It feels like there are some people who want to try to push Steemit in a certain direction right now because there's a small user base - that they're afraid there will be no way to control it once it grows. And they're right about that. When thousands of users start joining per week, there will be very little that any one person or small group of people can do.

They are not wrong, in that if sources of growth are stomped on, then it will remain small and controllable. That isn't what most of us want, but some either want control more than growth (for example, you hear derisive comments about becoming another reddit), or they aren't capable of thinking through how this actually works.

It's not like there's any evidence that anyone other than the top ~5% of stakeholders has that kind of power.

There are people in the top 5% of stakeholders who behave in this manner.

We need a core group of people of which the steemit interest fits. Where would it make sense to have a steemit post that was tagged something else? It's technology crytpocurrency software networks.

This is a great, well thought out post that clearly took time and effort :) resteemed

It took a little bit of time and effort. But was it meaningful and high quality?

That is very subjective and it is for tastes, I particularly liked it a lot and I am 100% agree with your post where it says great truths.
@networker5

This was quite a heavy read @ats-david. Personally, I think sports, porn, gaming, and even the fake news and cannabis posts add value to the platform - not because of the content necessarily but because of the WIDE AUDIENCE.

We have this wonderful thing called FREE WILL which allows us to pick and choose, post, comment and curate whatever our hearts desire. I love the plethora of choices. It subliminally tells me I can be open with my content and share my subjective truths - whatever they may be.

I think it's fair to say the internet is big enough for everyone -- and so is Steemit. That's why I love it here - payouts or no.

And by the way - your sports posts do bring value. You put in an extraordinary amount of time to format them, be informative, and you are clear about the rules and payout structure. To my knowledge, there has been no complaint about you reneging on anything. Your reputation and integrity is intact.

And, because of the way your post is structured, it requires engagement. People need to post something to participate. And if memory serves me correctly, it's only recently been encouraged to COMMENT on posts to show engagement, so you've been ahead in that game too.

It subliminally tells me I can be open with my content and share my subjective truths - whatever they may be.

Yes - and this is what we should be encouraging, not telling people that their posts suck and that they probably shouldn't even post in the first place. That's exactly the wrong message to send and it's the wrong message if you're trying to "raise the quality of consciousness."

...so you've been ahead in that game too.

That's been my life story. It's awfully hard waiting around for everyone to catch up all the time.

I think you make a good point, however, as someone who very frequently expresses the need for higher quality content I wanted to distinguish what I believe (and what i like to think many of the quality of content advocates believe, though i speak for no one buyt myself) from the position that you seem to be arguing against.

I don't believe that "bet on sports" type posts are evil, or that they don't deserve any rewards at all, or even necessarily that any single one of them is overrewarded.

However, I personally would say (and yes, this is a subjective opinion) that the rewards they recieve are inconsistent with the amount of value to which they bring to the platform. They are also inconsistent with the quality of the individual posts.

Granted im not a huge sports guy, but to me steemsports doesn't really provide great sports content. A copy paste of the wikipedia entry for both teams playing, and a copy paste of their roster photos plus a very general original paragraph about each team.

Which is all to say that yeah, steemsports is about sports. But its a series of poorly written posts about sports that no one outside steem would really care to read. ANd yeah, its about gambling. But its about gambling to free roll for whats usually around a dollar.

So it does two things. It informs people about sports, but it does it badly, mostly using information already readily available on other sites. And it allows people to gamble on sports, but it also does that badly, because theyre gambling for less than a dollar. Granted its a freeroll for less than a dollar, but still.

And its successful not because it addresses an appealing topic, but because it has a "hook" that appealed to smooth and other whales, then it got on a bunch of lists. and now it gets 200 views and 800 votes. ANd because its so forumlaic, it can be cut and pasted many times a day with no effort. And since it has a guarnateed reward due whale support, it will be cut and pasted many times a day.

That is to say, the question with posts like steemsports and other whale favorites is not:

How can I write good quality posts that add value to the system and get that sweet sweet whale love.

it is:

What gimmicky format can i come up with that allows me to basically cut and paste my posts with no effort so that i can make as many posts per day and take as much of the reward pool as possible for hitting control-c and control-v.

If you want to consider steemit a lottery where one buys one's tickets by creating content, the problem is that what you're rewarding isnt good or original content.

However, I personally would say (and yes, this is a subjective opinion) that the rewards they recieve are inconsistent with the amount of value to which they bring to the platform. They are also inconsistent with the quality of the individual posts.

I think that this is a valid argument. That's not to say that I necessarily agree, however. I'm not sure that we can really quantify the value of @steemsports in any meaningful way. Regarding the quality - that's certainly true. The different presenters have different styles and for some of them, English isn't their native language. I'm not sure if you ever read the ones when I presented, but on two different posts when I did, I noticed people saying how well it was done. Not trying to brag, but there are people out there who recognize quality within the category and among the various posts.

To be clear - I'm not saying that we can't offer constructive criticism for improvement. My issue is that there are people explicitly stating that the content does not add value and that it shouldn't be on the platform - or should at least be separated into its own shadowy corner where it can essentially wither and die.

And it allows people to gamble on sports, but it also does that badly, because theyre gambling for less than a dollar. Granted its a freeroll for less than a dollar, but still.

This is mostly a consequence of bot /trail voting. There aren't 360 users voting on a winner every game. I would imagine that at least 20% of those (don't quote me on this stat) are bot/trail votes. Before such voting, the distributions were commonly 5+ SP for the winner on even some of the crowded bets. I remember receiving 10+ SP several times. Then the autovoting bots and trails came, along with the continued price decline.

What gimmicky format can i come up with that allows me to basically cut and paste my posts with no effort so that i can make as many posts per day and take as much of the reward pool as possible for hitting control-c and control-v.

That's certainly one of the downsides to game posts - the same game can be repeated easily, to the benefit of both the poster and the players. But that's something that has to be monitored by the more influential users and they'll need to judge for themselves whether or not the games are being favored or hated by the community in general. So far, there hasn't been much backlash about it. Most of the "active users" participate in their games, as well as others around the platform.

But as I said - it's not an issue about whether or not we agree on what's quality and what isn't or what's valuable and what isn't. We won't always agree on that. That doesn't mean we need to try to push certain users or content off the platform...or continually, publicly denigrate certain users and their content. That isn't going to magically make Steemit a better social media platform. I'm not saying that you do that, but there are others who do and have been at it for a while.

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a large portion of anarchists despised sports altogether

That's why I didn't renew my membership. ;)

Sports (organized or otherwise) has been a part of my life since I was taking batting practice at 6 months old. So I realized early on that I did not fit in with most people who identify themselves as an anarchist ... which is kind of a blessing, because I generally avoid people in groups ... especially armed groups. ;)

Yeah, it's really disappointing to see some people champion competition...but only in certain types of competition between willing individuals. It boggles the mind. I am both an anarchist and a sports enthusiast.

I am a unicorn.

I think there's a GIF for that ... if not, someone should make one. ;)

ha! likewise, brother

good new @tuck-fheman! that anarchy stage is fading. When I first joined also it was full of all of that. now I rarely see it at all^_^

#steemsports posts suck! There I said it.

I don't really watch sports and I don't think I have ever even read a #steemsports post, but that is just me and my personal opinion. I would never downvote a #steemsports post based on my personal biases because well... I think that would be flag abuse.

Keep up the good work @ats-david!


P.S. crazy anarchism and conspiracy posts suck too, but I'm not downvoting them either.

P.S. crazy anarchism and conspiracy posts suck too...

Holy hell...those conspiracy theory posts really give anarchism a bad name. I wish they would stop self-identifying. I'm not like them, I swear!

I love the anarchists and conspiracy posts. Everything is a conspiracy these days no matter what political view you hold....I think it's all the Russians fault anyway, they weld weapons of mass distraction and the hypernomrlazation of chaos!!

amen to that! I don't wear the label anymore because there are too many assholes claiming to speak for me. :(

Haha yeah so true. the way anarchy is described on steemit the majority of the time is not really what it truly is.

For me: this is a high quality post. Everyone on steemit should read it. We gain 500 new users yesterday I think. How could one expect all of them are bloggers? Probably 50 % of them have problems with English like me for instance. But in my eyes they are all welcome here. I'd learn on steemit in 5 months more than in 10 years in real life. Steem on, everybody.

I'd learn on steemit in 5 months more than in 10 years in real life.

Steemit is like the Encyclopedia Britannica!

Mostly...

Its a 3 to 1 ratio.. 3 users to every 1 author post... its incredibly incestuous. Lots of back patting.

I do not know English and I use the translator, that limits me a lot, I only post in Castilian, but there is a big disadvantage because the Spanish language in that sense is a minority here.

And if you are right besides that, what would be of this site if there are only blogers and more bloggers with text and more text? That would be something completely boring, diversity is good because we are all different and unique.

@networker5

You'll be good with Spanish. A lot of people in world speak Spanish. Just wait for a while, they will come.