Open Letter To Steemit Community (Steemit can die if we don't do something)
On the last few days i've been reading posts and comments about something that worries me...
There are a few things that may destroy this amazing community.
Whales posting things like "I like soup" and self voting themselves getting as much as 1000$ each time...
More and more people using voting bots and also not caring about posting good quality content...
This two things are disencouraging people to take the time and effort to create good quality posts... It happens to me too... is pretty frustrating when we invest hours to write and take good photos to create something good and we just get a few cents reward...
If this keeps going this direction two things are gonna happen...
Good authors are gonna leave the platform and because of people losing interest and other people just cheating with huge self votes or voting bots steem is gonna fall to a record low price and die...
Im looking for solutions here... I believe this issues can be solved by programmers creating filters... i'm not a programer so i don't know exactly how, but we need a filter to block all voting bots and another to stop whale self voted post to be in the trending section... I believe with those two things we would be safe, at least from this actual threat...
I call on all of you to give your suggestions or tag and contact if you know someone who can actually create this kind of protective filters...
Would be so sad if this community dies... so many of us really investing time and effort to make it beautiful... so many of us putting our hopes on making a living out of this...
anyway... please feel free to comment...
Good luck to everybody!
It is a shame and it definitely pushed good content creators away. Not saying I’m any good but I did make an effort on my posts and content and have seen no rewards and pretty much just feel bitter while scrolling through the trending pages that are half filled with just utter crap making tons of money (there is a lot of good stuff there too of course). So I’ve been a bit turned off from creating more. But in all honesty I’ve mostly just been lazy ;) Also, I’m not so great with tech myself so using a bot and adding Steem chiller and lending Steem dollars for Steem power and all that jazz just confuses and frustrates me but it seems like the only way to get ahead. I just want to make good content and have a fair chance from that.
If I may make another point, your posts are very thoughtful and the content is decent, and I know English is not your first language but you also could make an effort to use some punctuation and edit your work. If somebody posted like this on a site like Reddit it would be downvoted into oblivion because of, for one thing, not making the effort to even make sure all your I’s are capitalized. I’m not a grammar or spelling nazi or anything - I just like to read meaningful content in a clear format. And all those mistakes and this whole ... sentence .... sentence ... sentence style is just distracting the reader from the meaningful point you are trying to make. Good luck on your quest though, I’m on your side.
lol!!!
I'm not sure what I feel about your critic at the end of your comment... I kind of don't care so much when I write free flowing at the speed it comes out from my mind... For me the important thing is the message and not how good is my spelling or grammar...
Anyway, thanks for your comment!
I also have bad spelling and grammar in spanish ;)
Hang on a second though...you want good quality work to receive attention and credit, yes? Then maybe have a think about @hami 's constructive advice. Spelling and grammar might not be important to you, but they are to a lot of people.
I know... but that’s not the focus of this post... if I do a long post that I want to be nice I would care a little more about it... thanks for your observation!
Yes, I used to write like this too when I was younger and didn’t care what people thought. Then I realized that whenever I read things written in that style, I find it distracting and harder to understanding what the writer is actually trying to convey. And you could write free flowing as it comes out of your mind as that is a good thing for sure. Then, you could edit in the end. Do what you will, just have a look at any well know, successful or celebrated online content creator and see how they present their content. The important thing for myself is also message and it comes out clearer when presented in a more readable format.
Maybe check one of the posts I got the curie... on those I did my best... maybe still under your bar but as you said... English is not my first language...
and please, can we leave this and focus on the message... if I’m not successful because of my spelling the only one losing is me... I believe the message in my post is important anyway...
Ps: would you like to reply in Spanish? Lol... just joking...
Hi I agree exactly of what you're saying in this post this is true and something must get done about this we or us that may good content are not being seen or heard so this is a great way to make money but like the whales and other people sometimes take advantage of this
It's bordering, if there can be a way to downvote when chitah spots a similar post, and other filtering technology to spot low quality content, or whale should not be allowed to upvote themselves that will make them work, bots should be spotted and downvote if discovered one is using a bot.
My thought though.
It's dangerous to flag a whale or a bot because I think if they are pretty strong and if also flag you, you're dead... :/
Very true, but there should be a way to build up rules for sustainability by the founder Scott, because I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want to project to crash.
is there a way to contact Scott?
I could not agree more. I only write original content wheather I get rewarded for it or not. Should steemit collapse I will take me content with me and find a place were it can be read , which is one of the main reasons I write after the obvious necessity to just speak my mind.
Yep!
I also post only original work and try to do interesting things but Im feeling a little frustrated...
I'm still new, but: I guess even if you stop people upvoting themselves, their followers will vote for poor content posts, because the followers want to be recognized by the whales. Besides that: it's going to be difficult to filter by content quality. If you filter by many words, you miss good photographers or painters, who don't need many words. If you have some official "guards" to check the content, it's still very subjective. Let's see where the journey leads...
You're right! is not easy but something has to change or the only people left is gonna be whales and bots... :/
I agree, but I also see great artists who earn what they deserve, so I'm confident :)
That’s true but is a few of them and if you check who’s up voting them at least half of them are using bots...
:( ok. I'm sure, if the Steemit guys want to, they could at least control the bots.
nice reflection. self-voting is one thing and I think downvoting or flagging is even more concerning due to the conflicts and hatred that it creates Better ALTERNATIVES to DOWNVOTING.
That’s true! I’ll check that.
Well, the fact that a lot of whales just push their shit posts by upvoting themselves and using bid bots is quite annoying indeed, but I don't think the community is gonna die or something. There's just too many new innovations coming in on this blockchain. SMT's will be huge for the ecosystem. But I do agree that good authors are getting discouraged and leave the platform, because they are not getting paid enough for the effort they put into their posts.
it feels as unfair as real world... 99.9% of wealth in the hands of the 0.0000001% of the population
Unfortnately it would be damn near impossible to truly stop voting bots without affecting honest curation trails as well (which promote quality content, just look at steemstem distilled posts)
To make things worse you cannot stop a whale from self voting, however what could be done is something such as the Grumpycat initiative (I do not have a link to his post) and or build community flagging trails that work where people give their posting key to a bot owner which will then use the shared VP of everyone to flag posts that are not considered quality, however this requires communities to get together and join forces. If say 50,000 accounts (mostly minnows, a few dolphins, maybe a whale or two) were in it then it could be very powerful but then it might be too much power for one person (or a group of people) to control and yeah...
Basically if you want to fight this kind of abuse, use your voting power. Your response will be "But I do not have the voting power to take on [enter voting bot here]" to which I say I know... but there are others out there that are also on board and if everyone whom shared your sentiment worked together to fight the voting bots/whales then things might change. One thing you can do is if you have friends that joined steemit and decide to leave, have them give their posting key (private) to curation trails like steemstem or something as then they can work to fight against this abuse without having to ever do any work (fighting against by promoting quality content)
I use steemstem in this reply due to personal bias in knowing how it works, they could do it with other groups too, the point is that if they want to leave steemit due to this problem then by giving their posting key to a curation group they are promoting quality content and yeah.
Thanks for the thoughts... my friends still here for now and I hope things doesn’t go further on the wrong direction and if it happens I will ask them to do that!
Nothing will be done about the issues you have raised in this post. Fixing issues or concerns with this platform would have to be triggered by the users themselves.
Flagging and downvoting whales or even dolphins is out of the question until Ned cares, I repeat, nothing will be done.