RE: The Value of the Steemstem Community
I don't think anyone needs to follow everyone. I mean we have multiple curators (along with curators for different sub communities) that spreads the work out specifically so that each curator doesn't need to follow and read every single post, and we don't expect the community to either.
Personally what I would like to see is a post that is decent, that leads into though provoking items, that has a lot of potential to get some comments on it, maybe even get resteemed a couple of times. Like there is no reason why someone can write a good post and get 12 comments, of which 8 are spam.
As for how they can engage with content they aren't interested in, first if they aren't into STEM and are just writing it for the money then they are in the wrong business. I mean DMania will upvote anything meme related (spam included) and they could easily steal 10-15 memes and post them earning $150 a day and have it take less than 10 minutes. However on the flip side is that STEM spans a lot of subjects from aspects of video games to mechanics to, well, just a lot. Trumpman wrote a series (I will call it that) on the phallic members (penises) of animals and that isn't even the strangest thing curated. STEM is more than just textbook science from PhD candidates and I personally think you would be hardpressed to find someone not interested in STEM at all. If they do have absolutely no interest in the topics but want to find a community that is engaging then they can always hang around in the general chat and maybe to collaboration posts with other members on non-stem related items. That, believe it or not, is still community engagement. And I mean from my views of our general room, quite often it has non-STEM items going on.
I don't want to pretend like I have all of the answers, I don't. Maybe you cold think of way more things that I can't (I am human, I make mistakes sometimes, well, a lot) but that doesn't mean we can't try. So thank you for this comment, I promise my response is not purely argumentative (I actually don't mean to argue, I really liked your comment).
Thank you for your response. It really explained in clear terms how we may begin to engage better. I have learned at least one thing from what you wrote. I did not know that DMania could upvote memes. If that is so, then those trying to fit into STEM without having much interests in STEM topics are really in the wrong business.
Somehow, for me, my engagement has improved since steemSTEM went on break. This is probably shooting myself in the foot but I suspect that this improved engagement was born out of the need to have fun now that I don't have to expect steemstem curation. Another reason would be the fact that most people who would upvote my content now that steemstem is on break are community members so I better engage them on their posts, right?
How we can replicate this level of engagement if steemstem does come back is unclear to me but I really feel that engagement of the community has improved since the break.
I really appreciate your comment and no, it wasn't argumentative. If you agree to everything I say, then we would have no communication. The more predictable a communication signal is, the less information it carries.
I think us going on a break and everything that happened (publicly) is getting a lot of the community members to realize the very real potential of steemstem disappearing and if preventing such a thing from happening is to engage more than people will have no problems doing that. I mean just for a metric lets look at the number of comments on the past few steemstem posts:
I mean it went from 19, 51, 36 to suddenly over 200. I mean we really aren't expecting 200+ comments on every post but like that shows that we are effecting the community. So I think, in regards to your question of:
can be answered with we may not have to but we will see in the future when it presents itself.
I truly appreciate your comment (both original and this one) as it shows engagement of and beyond what most get. While I agree that disagreement, when polite, can bring forth communication but I also think that we could find communications out of agreement. Anyways, thank you for commenting.
Yes, quality discourse does not have to be argumentative. Thank you for always replying back. I hope the community members see the benefits of engagement for what it is worth and no go back to our old ways. All the best.