My 1st Utopian.io Post Just Exposed A Flaw in Utopian.io
As a software designer, engineer, tester and almost everything else related to software - I found the idea of Utopian.io interesting - since it appears to reward users of the popular code repository 'Github' just for doing what they have been doing for free for years. However, what happens when I need to log a problem with the software that is intended to log problems?
The ongoing problem with steemit's signup process is a topic I have posted about twice previously and when I saw that Utopian.io claims to extend the bug reporting process into one that rewards users for participating, I thought I would use this issue as a test for Utopian.io. My post about the issue with Steemit's signup process is here.
I quickly received a comment from a moderator who pointed me to a rule that I had not seen on Utopian.io:
Contributions MUST BE Informative and Narrative
The contribution must contain as much details as possible and have some graphical contents into it (videos, images, etc.). The length of the body of the contribution must be enough to give every possible detail about the submitted contribution. If this rule is not met, the contribution won't be submitted in Utopian. A moderator can request for changes before the contribution will be accepted.
The moderator didn't specify what changes were needed, but since I know my post didn't include an image or a video, I guessed that this was the issue. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to make a meaningful screenshot or video of the issue without going through the whole saga of attempting to signup again, which can take days to demonstrate the failure. Anyone who actually knows the Steemit.com signup process and who is going to be in a position to fix it will know from my description what I am describing and will not really need an image or video.
There are MANY examples of bugs and ideas in software that literally cannot be shown in an image or video in a useful way. By requiring that posts to utopian.io literally require a video or image, a significant portion of the potential posts will simply be rejected automatically. This is not good design. I suggested that the moderator consider changing the rule (and by inference to communicate with whoever set the rule that the rule is not a good one) - but so far I have not heard a reply.
Does anyone know why this rule exists?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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@mkt @ura-soul the rules are more a draft and a set of advices. For the ideas/feature request in particular images are important because we had many ideas with just few lines of text and without any kind of visual representation of the requirements.
The Utopian bot votes based on the averages of each category. If a category has usually less images than others the bot won't care if you are putting less images there.
Images are always preferred because, at least for the moment, posts without them look empty in the feed. This will change when I will roll out a different layout.
Utopian was born 2 weeks ago guys. Please don't forget that.
I see, ok - thanks for the clarification. From my perspective, I am trying to improve a problem with Steemit that is highly annoying and apparently being totally ignored (for 6 months at least) - causing lots of knock-on problems for lots of people .. that is largely based on poor notifications for users and poor explanations of what is occurring in the system - so if when using utopian to maybe get some kind of fix arranged for it, I meet the same kind of problem AND a human moderator is involved who doesn't explain the situation either.. It's just a trigger for more annoyance! I appreciate it's a new project and don't expect it to be perfect. I appreciate you taking the time to clarify the issues and wish you well with your project!
Thank you @ura-soul. Utopian is meant to be a community project so if you want to join with your knowledge and the same applies to you @mkt you are more than welcome to join on Discord https://discord.gg/82cHTK
@ura-soul You are my man for info about this stuff... When I sign up there, do I need to post my article on both platforms or my my Steemit account is visible from Utopian? Do I sign up with Steemit password? If yes, is Utopian verified? Thanks.
P.S.
Are problems Steemit have last few days all attacks on Steemit or Steemithave issues of it's own?
Utopian is an app that accesses the Steem Blockchain, so it is independent of Steemit - but posts made using Utopian will also appear in Steemit since Steemit looks at the same Blockchain. It's just like how Dtube works.
You can sign in to Utopian using your Active Key from your Steemit Permisions Page.
I don't know all the details of the problems with Steemit because I don't have access to the server logs and Steemit Inc. are not being transparent regarding the problems being faced. :/
I can't imagine that contributions will never ever be submitted without graphical content. I'm pretty sure they know that this is just not possible in some cases. The text just seems to be misleading... otherwise this has to be discussed. @elear Maybe you can clarify this, as you're probably the author of these rules. :)
Oh... I just realized you already did. :D
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@ura-soul you posted in the category Idea/Feature. The category is meant to provide all the details to actually build something. This requires great details, images and examples included. Moderators are there to check the rules not to tell you exactly what you have to write.
In addition to that your contribution was accepted. So I won't call it a flaw, but more good advises ;)
Thanks for assisting here.
As I understood it, I was posting in the ideas category and I provided ideas in terms of solutions to a poor design in the steemit signup process. There are also bugs in there too, so it is not immediately clear which category the post belongs in. In software engineering there can be many ideas that relate to esoteric coding elements which don't really have a visual representation that is useful - they need to be described by words.. That's my point here.
Which contribution was accepted? The one about the Steemit signup? If so, does that mean that the requirement for images and videos is being changed?
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