Good morning Steemians! I think things are finally starting to settle down, patches have been and are being implemented (for HF20) and people are returning to the Steem-o-sphere!
I've been reading up on the effects of the Hard Fork and seeing what the new changes really mean. I made a positivity post on Friday, encouraging people to look at the long range view. While my vision for the future of Steem is overwhelmingly positive still, I want to bring up some concerning elements this morning and share with you how we grew our account on Steem and why commenting as a newbie is one of the most important aspects of success here.
Here are my reflections...
When new users come to the ecosystem, we are like small fish (unless we already have friends here) swimming alone in a very large ocean. Smaller than fish even, we are plankton. High quality posts are valued on Steem and so is interaction, so that's what we started off doing.
I realized early on that just making posts without interacting would be like standing on a very small soap box like a roadside preacher trying to connect with people walking by on a busy city street corner. That's not my style and it doesn't yield good results, so I set out to engage.
Commenting
In our first few months here (we joined December 2017), we commented voraciously! It was winter then and things were quiet on the homestead. I spent hours on Steem each day engaging, posting and commenting! I made good friendships and connections and beyond the possibility to earn Steem and SBDs, Steem blockchain very quickly became an important SOCIAL site to me. In fact, that is what I missed most during this HF and honestly during this downturn in the price of Steem (currently waffling just below a dollar in value) which has slowed the frequency of interaction here.
We would make dozens of comments each day!
In fact, it was a solid goal of mine to get out and make as many comments as could. Not only replying to the comments on my blog posts and videos, but intentionally going out and finding people, new and old friends alike, to expand my horizons.
I made $20 on a comment once, but mostly the cents just started adding up! This is how a newbie makes connections and starts to slowly grow their account!! This is the basis for the incentive to earn on Steem!
We joined groups like @ecoTrain, @qurator, @helpie, @tribesteemup, and participated in the #sndboxsummercampquest and ultimately got into the @sndbox incubator. I even helped start a group circling people around one my strongest passions, @naturalmedicine.
Connection
I've connected with hundreds of bloggers on Steem and it is THIS which brings value to the ecosystem. This is the backbone and worth of Steem!
Now I have a major concern that new users can only comment or post once a day! This is extremely inhibitory! I know they are still working out the Resource Credit (RC) value (which acts as the bandwidth allotted for transactions such as commenting, posting, voting, etc), and have already made it worth 10x as much transactions as people weren't able to do much with the first trial amounts! But this is not enough!
We wouldn't have come here if it was Pay to Play
Let's talk some honest truth, we wouldn't be here if it was Pay to Play.
I don't think Steem will survive as Pay to Play.
Blogging for cryptocurrencies and joining online communities on a blockchain is already a kind of out there thing. I am vocal about the merits and possibilities of success through engaging on this platform with many people IRL (anyone who expresses interest, I share!) and 98% of people don't care! I can see them disengage most of the time. People are content with Facebook even though their data is being sold (and stolen) and advertised back to them...
But! I jumped over that hump after reading some articles on Medium by @stellabelle. Could this thing be real? In December I decided to "give it 3 months." After my first @curie vote (way to go, you hooked me!), I knew that I would at least finish the 3 months. I was genuinely excited. 7 months later we are still here....
I learned more and more that it is crucial to bring value to this ecosystem not by being a preacher on a soap box on a street corner, but by being a grassroots community member.
I wouldn't have given Steem a chance if I had to invest to be able to engage
Everyone is taking a chance by being on Steem. We're all investing time, some people invest money and tech skills.
Taking the chance of asking new members to Pay to Play to engage on Steem blockchain is too high of a risk.
The entry fee into Steem must be free. I agree it is wise to provide incentives into powering up Steem (and that has been a priority my whole tenure here), yet I would not be where I am today if I could only comment 1 or 2 x a day in the early days.
I never would've come here at all....
I hope by sharing this that I can provide some data for @ned and others who are determining the activity thresholds for new users.
If you are reading this, please share in the comments your own story about how you grew your account and if you would have been on Steem with the 1 post a day parameter for newbies.
This problem must be solved and it must be solved quickly.
Newbies need at least 30 comments, 60 upvotes and 2 posts a day allowed within the base RC allotment. Anything less is simply shooting this entire ecosystem in the foot.
I agree completely. I’m waiting to even start my Native American youth project until SMTs come out that measure value to the platform by something other than SP. Flauwy’s 1up seems like a good option.
In the meantime, for people joining one by one as they find the dapps, I hope the current SP focused system is at least adjusted to make it possible to take the main path to success on here, which is assuredly plentiful, meaningful comments left. That’s how I intend to train my group, and honestly, even if someone is able to buy SP, they still need to first have a positive experience on here to be willing to. So without lots of positive interaction for free, even those willing to pay to play won’t.
Let’s hope adequate change is made, because right now all my developing nation followers are mia. I don’t know what will become of this place if it cannot grow.
Posted using Partiko iOS
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this ^^^ It is truly absurd to think that people will take a risk to invest before they've had any positive experiences. i'm not sure in what universe they are truly thinking that people will take this route.
it seems to me that this RC model is fitting into a future scheme that we cannot see fully yet- that's why it doesn't make sense. as you and i have been finding, however, the goal of STINC and the leading developers isn't necessarily the goal we have for the platform and their focus my not be on the developing nation steemians or even individuals, but on getting wealthy and powerful corporations and organizations to create SMTs and lead communities on the blockchain.
it will indeed be interesting as this ecosystem continues to evolve now having some prior experience here ourselves to compare it to... obviously for people who have been here from the beginning it has changed many times over already!!
i hope for the sake of your group and honestly the success of the newbie and person who comes here without fiat to invest (and indeed even see it as a potential for greater wealth through creativity- as we hope it will be one day) that stinc will heed our concerns. i have been reflecting on it and it's obvious to me they are just coming at it from a completely different angle.... we shall see!
i am not sure either. if they shut out the newbie with no SP or positive experience here (which we all started as basically), i don't think there is much potential for growth.
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yeah, i don't understand how this is supposed to work at all if we can't comment much or post much. it also creates a hierarchy, of which there is already one, but before it seemed like to me, that if you engaged the platform, and posted good stuff, and cared about what you were doing, that merit and dedication was all you needed. I still don't understand how all of this works, but what you are saying here is the possibly future reality seems absurd...
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Quantizing this is rather interesting, but it seems you are encourage a higher noise level. Shouldn't a person make comments when they have something valid to contribute or a question to ask? It seems that your strategy (while likely sound) will make hash out of reasonable discussion.
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i beg to differ. frequency doesn't necessarily deplete reasonable discussion. there may be a correlation there, but people are incentivized to make quality comments for hope of a higher upvote. just spouting trash isn't incentivized so why would it seem like i'm simply encouraging a higher noise level?
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I agree. While I wasn't exactly 'social' when I first got here I quickly made the same realization you did - if I couldn't be social via comments and interacting I was going to get nowhere. That was why I joined #steemitbloggers and from there have tried to be part of other communities too. It was only by creating a network of people and I daresay even friends with this commenting and communicating that I started to see any progress here.
If I had arrived way back when and found that Steemit was essentially Pay to Play like it has become now I would have turned around and gone back to the platforms I was using. The appeal to me aside from being decentralized and the chance to earn money was that it was free, I didn't have to invest any of my own money into it to start climbing the ladder. Before the RC system I would have been very comfortable starting to invest money into Steem, but not anymore. New members need to be able to engage and comment and be able to experiment, figure out what works, and find their own way without having to worry that they'll use everything up all at once and have to wait or start investing money in order to get more or else I have a good feeling many of them will turn and leave too.
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To grow Steem platform and see Steem price increase long term, the bigger the network the better. This is accepted fact in silicon valley. To increase value of network, increase number of users. It is crazy to do anything that discourages newbies. If the whales want value, bring in newbies.
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exactly. @ned's dream is to tokenize the internet. a steem full of SMTs, no matter the value, will only work with a user base. kill the user base, decrease the chances of success within the network, therefore shooting all of our investment in the foot. thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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You know me. Mr Comment lol
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I really agree with your thoughts here. Although I have been able to grow my account here with investments in Steem, I too focused early on with active engagement by mostly commenting. I actually limited my posts to use my time more efficiently by reading and commenting on many posts everyday. I found that most of my SBD earned was from upvotes received from these comments instead of my own posts.
That being said, I don’t think the intention of the change was to limit engagement from smaller accounts as much as it was to limit abuse and spam. I still get this signal as they have continued to deploy patches to improve the usage of resources credits to ensure engagement is possible. While I certainly know that I am not a good benchmark, I have rarely seen my percentage below 98% despite me posting at least 3-4 times an hour this weekend. This bring an additional important point in that I think this system will develop to allow those with excess bandwidth to deploy then to help those projects or accounts that need more. The future of the ecosystem rests on those who have yet joined so limiting their engagement is an error and I think most know it.
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Appreciate your point of view on the pay to play issue. I share similar views and really don't see it working
Commenting helped take my $0c posts to a consistent $0.10c post with 500+SP. Shame a lot of people will be deprived of that.
Always said that thr platform needs to prioritize the new people coming and not making those already established feel more comfortable
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My sentiments exactly! When I heard they were counting a comment the same as a post I thought that was absurd. - all comments should be the extra bonus for engaging. It was that ability to engage with people, commenting freely and getting to know folks better that I started to see the real value in Steemit - the community. There is wonderful people here and I want to be able to encourage people to come and find their community here but I could not ask them to pay to come play. I was thinking of putting this point in front of witnesses to bring their attention to it. @taskmaster wrote a good post about where you can find some witnesses who are approachable. I think I will get this message out to them. I don't want to loose the ability to comment freely.
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Hi @mountainjewel!
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Your UA account score is currently 4.664 which ranks you at #1522 across all Steem accounts.
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In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 477 contributions, your post is ranked at #89.
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@mountainjewel Thanks for the really inspiring and passionately written post! (:
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Hahaha this totally cracked me up. As a minnow, I'm still trying to be less of a roadside preacher - and your post just gave me more encouragement to engage with the community via comments.
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Also, I've followed you and @naturalmedicine because it's also one of my passions! Looking foward to reading and learning more (:
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I prefer commenting over posting, though lately, I am finding it harder and harder to comment. I am not sure if it is because I am following the wrong people or if it is because I have not had time to find good content or if because so many people are writing about the platform itself (which is not really interesting to me). Are you finding the same thing or is it only me?
Next week when my travel schedule calms down again, I hope to spend more time here reading, commenting, and voting, with the occasional post when I feel inspired!
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