There is a very clear trend that has manifested over the last few months, which I believe to be deleterious to the future of the project - I talk, of course, of the exodus of posters from the bitshares forum to steemit.

Once or twice, in private and in public, I have expressed my opinion about this phenomenon, namely that I do not believe this is the way to go forward.

I am (quite categorically) not saying that we should ditch steemit, not at all -- the advantages are obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes, ears, and something between the ears.

It seems to me that we need both to keep bringing awareness of bitshares to a wider audience.

bitsharestalk - a place with history

Look closely at the image above, and you will recognize some of the legends that inhabit steemit.com as well - bytemaster (@dan), @xeroc, fuzzy (@officialfuzzy), @riverhead .. to name but a few.

Look closely, and the "Top 10 Boards" will betray how important the #cn community has always been to the project. Incidentally, this area is something I believe we are still lacking on, there appear to be massive language gaps preventing further cooperation and development between the western and eastern communities -- though quite possibly this observation just reflects my personal experience ..

History shows us those who posted the most, who were online the most.

How we have all been trying to bring this damn beast called #bitshares to the world.

Search through the forum and you will see all the excitement, all the struggles, all the disappointments (and there were plenty) .. but each time, you see someone taking the lead once again, scrambling to find solutions, advance the project.

Because those of us who remain, still believe in the project.
Still believe that if our vision is to materialize, the world will be a better place for it.

Search through the forum and you will see all the projects that came and went (most stayed), some of the brightest minds in the crypto space putting their heart, minds and sweat into making possibility become reality.

While the numbers do not tell the whole story, 2016 has certainly been slower over at the forum than the last couple of years before it.

Those of us involved in the ecosystem know that people are working, behind the scenes and on the front line, to keep bringing new bitshares-based and graphene-based projects to the light of day.

But it seems clear that there is, in general, less posts happening, the action appears to be mostly over here at steemit now.

I think this is a mistake.

Different formats

Have you ever spent a couple of hours reading a thread, seeing the opinions evolve, the arguments mount, the counterarguments swaying your opinion back and forth?

Possibly hundreds of posts, spanning weeks, even months, 30+ pages of content.

Is it not wonderful? All the stuff you learn from that?

A forum provides a much better format for that style.

Here in steemit, like other sites like it, the emphasis is more on the original post, and it is hard, if not impossible, to follow the thread.

Posts with the most upvotes get promoted to the top, destroying any possibility of sanely following a timeline.
Replies are limited to about 4 depths, ending many a discussion prematurely.

Indeed, in my view, it gives rise to a completely different style of communication, shallower in a way. This is not to bash it, understand.

It has its place.

The monetary incentive

I think that to some extent we all now realize that if we post here instead, there is a chance that it will make us some money, while if we post at the forum, then it's just another post that will net us $0.

I do not think that is the correct way to look at it, however.

To begin with, nothing stops you from linking your steemit post on the forum (provided it is relevant).

But it does not stop there - if you regularly post quality stuff in the forum, and use the same username in steemit, people will naturally start looking for your content over here as well.

And at any rate, money is not everything in life.

Let's not forget that steemit is precisely designed to achieve this sort of effect, inviting people to post with the lure of riches. But let's not throw everything else out just because we can make a profit posting here.

Conclusions

In my view there is an over-reliance on steemit right now in the #bitshares community, to the detriment of the forum.

I would like to see the forum back to its old glory, with more active users and more posts every day.

We need to keep attracting new users, and I also believe that providing support on the forum is a better format than here on steemit - countless help & support threads are testament to that.

We have (at least) two great tools (forum and steemit), let's make better use of them.

Thanks for reading!

(the moon was not enough.. to eta carinae !!!)