The barbwired blockchain: Steem communities

It has been a long couple of days but, Steem hasn't been so far from my mind. I have even managed to post a couple of times and hopefully do some good with my VP. Thank you for all the comments wishing my family health, they are appreciated. I have spent the last hour and a half trying to answer as many as I can but I missed a lot. Just so you know though, it is nice to come home after a tough day to some support. Thanks again.

Which leads me into a little topic about communities here. @krnel asked me about how to incentivize quality content and I think that community functionality will go a long way to making this at least somewhat possible. And, some people are doing it already and some are using it very poorly.

A community is essentially a circlejerk around one topic or at higher level of a range of topics. Essentially though, community is about exclusion, not inclusion as to be a part of the community and get support, there are generally hurdles to jump over. In the real world, to be part of the community one must abide by a set of social rules and if unacceptable behaviour takes place, there are social costs to it. This is only useful of course of the costs are paid directly by the rule breaker. Now, I am not condoning this, it is just the way it goes in community.

Steem already has communities built up but for the most part, they are disorganised and random and those that are organised are generally the ones who base their community on 'friends, family and finance' so to speak. These groups can be very well supported and very lucrative for members but, there is a very narrow chance of obtaining membership once formed and many were formed well before most of us were on Steem. Large amounts of value is spread in narrow circles.

Okay, not very 'community orientated' sounding I know but, this is pretty much how many of the SMTs could work and the groups created on community will also. What this means is that communities will likely be much more sensitive to the content they create, curate and where they put their value, as their own SMT will be affected by how they manage their community. That means that they will likely need some decent SP to curate and be relatively picky with how they use it to not only maximise their return but, build their community.

Do you see how some of the problems we have now could be approached with SMTs and community? Instead of having a melting pot of content with wildly varying degrees of effort, quality, skill and understanding, the communities will mean that there will be barriers of entry to be included in the supported echelons. Not very inclusive but, reward should go to those who are actively pulling their weight and in niche communities, they are going to get more sticky on various points.

We kind of see it now with something like #deepdives in their research challenges (supported by @v4vapid, @canadian-coconut, @ausbitbank, @fulltimegeek and several others, you can find more here from their intro post) as to 'qualify' for the larger amounts of support, a fair amount of research and effort is required in areas that not everyone is able to excel at.

It is the same for groups that will be based on things like music, art or banjo playing. You are going to have to know or learn how to play a banjo to take part in that community. Going there and offering irrelevance or low quality is just not going to get support and is likely to see some kind of social penalty applied.

Each large community is likely going to try to attract or be founded by considerable amounts of Steem Power that is looking to support a pet topic or area of interest. Many will overlap and it will be possible to be part of more than one community of course but, each group is going to get increasingly demanding on what hurdles must be overcome for membership and as the values of some increase over others, there will be even more competitive pressures.

This means that even though everyone technically has access to the pools through content creation, unless they are associated with and significantly proficient at something, they will slowly find their chances of random support diminished greatly. Many people now are going to find themselves out in the cold or at least, the water they swim in increasingly icing over. I am pretty sure that I am in this group myself as for the most part, my content is me, not a highly trained skill other than my ability to write and think. It will be hard for someone such as myself to get a foothold in any particular community however, for most people, this is a blessing.

As more and more niche communities are created, more people will be able to find something that both interests them and they are able to contribute to at a decent level. This is a part of the melting pot problem and why a newcomer has so little chance of being seen and why community functionality is an imperative tool. Combined with SMTs and Hivemind, there will be increasing ways to decrease the numbers who qualify. Make sense? It means someone can come in with nothing and find 'their people' straight away with a few clicks.

People want more filters so they can better discover content that is relevant and of quality but what a filter does is exclude content that it deems doesn't qualify. It is judgemental and if one is unable to 'beat' the filters and get included in the search, one doesn't have much hope of being seen. But, beating the filters is only the first step as once in the eyes of a particular community, it is those community eyes who will judge worthy or not. Is your content worthy?

These filters will also have various new abilities that will be able to identify various types of accounts and potentially include or exclude them automatically. Who knows how this will be used but perhaps those who offer Spam, plagiarised content or do not reply to enough of their comments received will start finding themselves in those cold waters. They could also potentially look back in history and see what kinds of behaviours there were to some extent also perhaps. Interesting isn't it?

As 'official' communities start to enter the pools and the SMTs begin to compete for air also, Steem is going to look fundamentally different. People should stop worrying too much about the trending page today because it will be even more irrelevant tomorrow. There are going to be opportunities for many more people to embed themselves into a supported group but, there is also going to be increased competition due to this.

Yes, this is social media and it is the way it works now but, very few actually have a chance to be a part of the monetized world of it as a central authority's algorithm dictates terms. Here, it will be the actual communities who will have a make or break affect and in time, they will become somewhat authoritative as they will become exclusive.

I think that the best way to be a part of the Steem Future, is to be a part of the Steem Present and start building your network and community now, not wait for changes to happen. Social is social because of the interactions and sharing of idea as well as the willingness to care about that interaction and sharing from generally more than a financial perspective. Once communities are built based on things people actually care about, engagement becomes critical.

The future of Steem looks bright for people on Steem who are willing to be part of the community in some way. Quality of content will count in the future but it is the quality now that will be the foot into a community door. I am hoping that when the time comes, when I knock, someone will let me in and I won't be standing cold and hungry, filtered-out and on the wrong side of the barbed-wired blockchain fence.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Notes:

I mentioned deepdives in particular because it is new, interesting and the amount of work some people are putting in is incredible. Good work to all involved.

Due to recent events, I have had ~6 hours sleep in 3-4 days so I will try to get a few more hours now before getting up early to head back to the hospital. I am slowly catching up but, I will get to the comments here later.

Talk amongst yourselves.