THE PROBLEM WITH STEEMIT: WHALES AND MINNOWS
THE PAIN
When I took up the task of Steemit, I never had any experience about the concept of blogging nor the need to producing content that would be rewarded.
As a matter of fact, I only took pleasure in making creative works and posted them on Facebook. The likes and comments I got was enough of the satisfaction I needed.
Now I am here, almost a month old and my second week of active blogging.
A lot has been learnt and unlearnt. Concepts have been created, such as the minnow support project as well as project BIG wave with the aid to helping the minnows in the system grow.
These are nice ideas, but as we all know ideas are the state of mind. Without any plausible efforts, it will only be a great pop that died in the path of time and lack of motivation.
My point is, I have noticed that irrespective of these projects, there has been a serious lacuna in the development of the minnows in the community.
Reasons is simple, the structure of Steemit is created in the form that once you are a Whale, it becomes too hard a thing to look down from the Olympian height to help others climb up the system.
Whale
Even more pitiable, is the fact that they created a Steem voter that encourages the minnows to upvote the post of the whales in other to gather peanuts in form of curators reward, while those being helped end up with the whole Steem. Whether content is good or not, they make good money through their reputation, that is all that matters.
Come to think of it, how many of these persons as a way of kind gesture decided to give back to those who gave to them?
A handful. If at all there was a handful.
Emphatically, my stand point is that the whole structure is aimed at favouring the lords of the platform, and the tiny minute gains are left to be fought for by the minnows. It is a problem.
Minnow
This at all is not encouraging, because you get a situation where by someone will make post that is worth what it is worth, only not to get the deserved audience he/she deserves because such person does not command such attention.
Quite demoralizing is the fact too that one would spend so much hours of hard work on an article only to be seen by just 3 persons and receives zero or no cents for them. I am not talking about the dollars here. That will be a topic on its own.
You also have a situation where you read a post and discover that it made over $100 and the begging question would be, what exactly did this person write that I have not done or even done better. It is a problem.
So bad is this, that a user had to express his dissatisfaction in strong words when he saw a post by @molokwu.
Calling him an idiot for what seemed to him an unfair measure, when he saw a story of his that earned over $80.
Trust me, I understand his grievance. Too well I would say, but then I guess his approach to airing his view was a strong and wrong one. But then, if he wrote about it and nobody read it or gave audience to it, you will discover that the thin line that holds rationality would be lost and it will not be out of place to call some persons idiot.
It is a problem.
THE PROPOSAL
Now, my aim is not to highlight these problems and let seven hells discover the appropriate solution.
It is my desire to see that some if not all of these solution should be applied to encourage greater participation of both minnows and Whales.
- The resteem project.
Now this is simple, the idea to to create a platform where these whales are to resteem good post buy the minnows. I think @minnowsupport has already has a project in that light, but theirs is restricted to just Thursdays of resteem.
If an avenue could be created for these whales to resteem post of minnows as a point to duty, the growth will be swift and progressive.
Now I understand that bane that there are thousands of minnows out there, so how would these whales know the exact post with good content to resteem without the whole stress of reading each and every post on their feed. That brings me to the second point.
- Robot Dictate content
It is simple. There should be a pre-notice by the robot programme which could easily direct the audience the worth of a particular post. It is a better way of telling the audience that based on the content created in this post, this post should be worth the while of read and upvote. Instead of the post call comments we get on post from the robots telling us how undervalued it is.
- Whales as Guilders
The Guilders scheme should be created. This you get these persons who are well experience in the platform play the big brother role to these minnows.
Steemit has made it better that you could actually write about any of your interest on the topic icon. These guilders who have actually distinguished themselves in a particular topic should be manned as the directors of those topics to see that minnows post and thoughts are in conformity to the ideas and desires of such topic.
That way, one mustn't necessarily write about bitcoins or ethereum, in other to be voted on in a post.
- Hard fork strictures
I would suggest that the post of an individual should be reduced to one in every 24 hours. This way, the assault of post by minnows would be reduced and aid them to creating better contents too. As well as the cashed being amassed by the whales would go a long way to equitably distributing it among every one. Comments on post should be encouraged the more and have attractive curation rewards.
To avoiding the stress of reading so much a lengthy post, I will have to stop here.
Questions on these points could be asked on the comment box and I will give further clarification.
I am not expecting this post to make any dollar. My humble plea, is that it should be resteem for the concerned parties to see and make suggestions.
Follow me @gunneresq
Thanks for the read!
Image source: google images, Pinterest, Pixels
I agree that there need to be changes to smooth out the inequality between whales and minnows. As someone in the middle (I think I'm considered a dolphin or something), I do feel as though I have a good understanding of the differences inherent in both categories of users. I think it comes down to whether a minnow can actually rise to the level of a whale by actually producing good content and not by pumping their own money into the system.
Yea. That is the light at which i am coming from. Thanks for the read.
This post received a 2.0% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @gunneresq! For more information, click here!
I feel more like plankton than a minnow so far, I'm still just trying to learn how everything works. This post made sense even to me as a total beginner- I like how you laid out the solution as neatly as the problem. I'll upvote, follow & make this my first re-steem! Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the read too. I appreciate much. I followed back
This makes sense, thanks.
you are welcome
No matter how great an idea is, without implementation it will go no where.
You have said it all, but who will bell the cat?
The truth is that finding a single person to do this will be out of proportion.
I guess with concerted efforts the problem will be addressed and solved
Thanks for the read though
So how do we resolve it because the interest of all minnows is of a great concern to me
well, these few days have made me realise that the easy way out too is to network. not entirely easy, it it will go a long way to helping one in the system. have been doing that lately maybe you should try it out
I totally agree with you.
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Thanks for this post...! It is obvious now, your sentiments are the sentiments and thoughts of virtually everyone on this platform...
I see that everyone concerned about steemit growth is doing what they can in every way they can....
I can commend projects such SBD giveaways, post resteems, etc... They are some of the ways people are fighting back to stay above the injustice in the steemit system, and add more value to a system which was really built to reward value, but is still debugging.
I am following your account now. You made very good points on a topic that deals with the heart of steemit. Well done!
please accept this gift
So you accept and agree that there are several injustice on Steemit.
I remember the day that I made a post about bitconnect
Bitconnect is a cryptocurrency just as steem is, and two people flagged me.
Where is the freedom of speech?
Everyone should be given the right to say it post what they feel like as long as they are not copying another post and claiming to be their own.
These days I find it hard to make post on bitconnect because of the fear of being flag.
I cried hoping someone will hear my plea but no one did and those guys felt they were doing the right thing.
Honestly I weep for Steemit, if this guy's are not put to check, they will keep flagging anyhow they like.
this is quite funny. just keep of the perseverance bro. i believe with it, things will be right, and when you get to the top, you effect the needed change
Thanks alot. and i must say i am glad about the creative influx you bring to the system. more power to your elbow
Congratulations !!!
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