I was doing my morning reading, and in doing so came across the usual batch of posts "about writing on Steemit."
What I also noticed was quite a few comments from members questioning whether we really need any more posts "about Steemit."
The Nature of User Generated Content Sites
Tiny blue flowers in the forest
That's a good and valid question, so I pondered it a bit... for maybe the 50th time.
Truth be known, I have never been part of a "User Generated Content" site-- and community-- that didn't have extensive discussions about the venue, itself.
As is true with Steemit, there's typically a lot of really good advice from those who have used the venue "since the early days," along with a crowd of newcomers enthusiastically bombarding everyone with a slew of "how to" guides... pretty much every time they discover something new... which is perfectly natural.
Whether we "like" it, or not, it's just part of "the nature of the beast."
As are-- ironically-- posts like this one, suggesting everyone just chill out and have a good time!
How "Steemit Related Posts" Might be ESPECIALLY Appropriate on Steemit
I had a couple of quick thoughts, though, which I'll share before I get back to my usual content:
Oak leaf in the sun
Consider-- for a moment-- the possibility that so many people "writing about Steemit" might also be an indication that people actually care about this place. How many people post about "How to use Facebook?" Not many...
Sure, we can "earn rewards" here... but you could just as easily earn rewards posting about Bitcoin, Donald Trump, Fake News or something controversial.
Consider part two-- that "posting about Steemit" actually makes more sense here, because this is not a traditional "company," but a decentralized network organized largely around the concept of "consensus."
How does that matter? In a consensus based structure people "writing about the platform" might feel a little more like their voices might actually be heard and might make a difference. The likes of Facebook and Instagram? Odds are, they are not listening. EVER.
Of course, the possibility also exists that I am just excessively idealistic in my outlook!
With that, I'm going to return to what I was doing before...
How about YOU? Do you think there are too many posts "about Steemit" on Steemit? Do you find value in posts that address various aspects of life in the community, and how to best use the site? Or do they mostly annoy you? Do you feel like you-- personally-- have more of a "voice" here than on other social sites? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20170715 14:04 PDT
I sincerely after 1 year here do not believe in the "freedom" speech preached by Steemit. We are being governed by a decentralized government that is a government and like every government there is a central power that commands everything. The success here is for few and I believe that the power model here should be reviewed once again (maybe a new HF), because this HF 19 I would say that "killed the interaction" here in the community. Your post is great and thanks for the opening in wondering what I think.
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@jsantana, HF19 yielded some interesting and possibly unexpected outcomes. The fork was subtitled "equality" but from where I am observing it could also have been entitled "selfishness."
Sure, the rewards were distributed a little more, but this also made it more attractive for more people to only "vote for themselves." Whether that is "good" or "bad" it does AFFECT everybody. The sudden growth of "purchased upvotes" is also AFFECTING everyone regardless of whether we call it "good" or "bad."
In a sense, it is a strange twist on "Gresham's Law" (Bad money drives out good money) in that "artificial" upvotes are starting to (to some extent) replace "real" upvotes... reducing the potential vision of Steemit as a "gift economy." My concern (which I voiced) with HF19 was that it would discourage curation because people are selfish. "No, no, no... that won't happen here." Uh-huh....
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I think there is a place for them but I do hate the rehashed version of others work which are thrown out solely becaue of posts about steemits popularity. When you see a newbie with two weeks under their belt you know they are doing it for the votes and hey, there is nothing wrong with that inherently but how much can they really offer if they have not been here so long themselves?
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@meesterboom, this gets down to the core nature of any place that offers "rewards," no matter what they may be. There will always be a share of "money for nothing seekers" whose primary objective is "exploiting the system" rather than simply "using" it as it was originally created.
Project originators often follow great ideologies... but unless they also have 6-year degrees in human psychology, they tend to underestimate such factors as "human greed" and the desire to "get something for nothing."
Of course, Steemit is also a "personal blog site," so someone writing a post called "What I learned during my first two weeks on Steemit" is really just telling a personal story... which is different from holding oneself up as a definitive "expert" on Steemit after two weeks. Story vs deception.
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I like what you are saying here - showcasing care and regard for steemit - also with many new users daily it is cool to see more people writing about such things as there is updates all the time...and when new posts come out it keeps things fresh for new users.
Real cool analogy and observation with regards to the fact not many people are writing about facebook on facebook.
Writing about a topic you are interested in helps with substantiating and integrating understanding. So the fact that writing about steemit is such a popular topic - really does show the growth in community here and education about what it is we have here with steemit, which, really is something extraordinary!
re'Steem'D
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Thanks @worldclassplayer-- in some sense, my (relatively few) Steemit posts are "selfishly motivated."
If I can post something that helps someone else "do better" or "understand," then they have a better experience here, so they are more likely to go elsewhere and say "Steemit is cool!" to other people, so the community grows... as a result of which the value of my Steem goes up...
In a sense, it's the core of a "gift economy;" our gain comes from being "of service" to others... a strange kind of self-motivated selflessness.
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Good post about an interesting topic. True, there are really a lot of articles about "how to..." on Steemit! And honestly sometimes I find interesting new things in those articles as well. If I see very quickly that it's old stuff, I quickly switch to the next post, thinking most of the time something like: "This is for sure of use for new users", or "This could really have helped me a couple of month ago!" And because articles grow old and disappear in the chain, I think it's good that those hints come back from time to time.
There are (especially in the German community) lots of complaints that there are to much flowers. Well, if I'm not in the mood to see flowers, nobody obliges me to open those posts. There are so many others to pay attention to.
I think, there's a lot of cryptostuff, and as I am a crypto-newbie, I do not understand everything and if the articles are to technical with all kind of charts and other insider-stuff, I quickly switch. But I would never ever say that there is to much crypto-writing on Steemit, because I know lots of Steemians understand and love to read those posts.
Finally, I think, if people post about what they like, it pays sooner or later. On the contrary, if a guy writes about a topic that doesn't interest him, just because he thinks this is a rewarding issue, I think he's on the wrong way.
Have a very nice afternoon @denmarkguy! :)
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You make some good points @pipurilla... also one of the things about "Steemit articles" is that the platform itself changes with each Hardfork so articles about "updates" can always be very helpful. And, of course, very little is read after 7 days, unless someone finds it from an external Google search.
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Well honestly, I don't search out posts on "Steemit" in general, but I think within your own network of followed members a post now and again from them is helpful in gaining insight into not only the platform from another person's point-of-view, but also into how that person sees the overall deal with the community as a whole.
I think that helps us each in developing an inner network of people we trust and value for bigger decision making opinions, vs others in a second-tier who we follow for other types of content and take more at face value.
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One of the things I have noticed is that the people who consistently author the best content and involve themselves in the community can often be recognized by the fact they have 3+ time more people following them than they follow. I follow people I find consistently interesting or engaging... no disrespect to anyone; simply because you follow me won't mean I necessarily follow back. My feed is already super full... but I still am likely to check updates from people who leave me good comments. Regardless of whether it's "about Steemit," or something else.
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I get annoyed by plankton (reputation 25, .05 SteemPower) pretending to be an authority and telling everyone WHAT TO DO!..
.
yeah right...like they've been so successful?
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Step right up!
That part does annoy me, too.
Reminds me of....
"Let me sell you the Exclusive Secret to Making $50,000 a Month Online, for just $49.95! This Report will Tell YOU Everything!" The "secret" of course is duping others into forking over $49.95 for the "secret" report, so they can talk others into forking over $49.95 for the "secret." Didn't we used to call those "chain letters" before there was an Internet?
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I like posts about SteemIt and there is only one topic that ALL of us have in common. The topic is SteemIt.
On several occassions I have tried talking about other topics and those posts just don't get much traffic.
I think about it like this.. What is on your mind? Usually SteemIt. :)
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@whatsup, it is indeed one thing we all have in common. And-- as a "consensus community"-- we also have in common that we care about community welfare... and that requires us to TALK about it.
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I think part off the issue causing this is the fact that posts have such a relatively short lifespan. Being no one, I think my posts last about 26 seconds before they're swallowed, never to be seen or heard from again.
If they would just pin my brilliant Steemit post somewhere that it could be seen by everyone new coming here, that would solve the problem.
At least, I can probably convince myself of that.
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On Steemit yes.
They do, it's on Google. Google gives posts on Steemit a higher preference than posts on some other sites. Get on the front page and people will see your post a lot.
In a sense it is. People on Google see your post, they come to Steemit to read your post. Congrats, new people to Steemit are now reading your post for years to come. :)
Good luck on your journey @theblindsquirel
BTW, I just did a search for "Lacto Fermented Green Beans & Swiss Chard Ribs" (in case people are looking for that) and your post was #1 out of 28,300 on Google. Your post goes on living forever.
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Wow, thanks @internetguy, I hadn't even bothered to look.
That's a pretty specific long-tail keyword but I'll take it.
I guess I could write a "Steemit" post about how to build a following by driving readers here through targeted keywords. Those do seem to be the money makers.
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lol.. true. I did a search for "Lacto Fermented Green Beans" but it didn't show for that.
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Well, you do have a point there... our feeds can move extremely fast. I tend to "subdivide" by looking at new posts within specific tags.
Follow-up site activity can be very important. I've noticed quite a few people complain about the declining payout value... happens a LOT less if you're actively engaging and commenting around the community... the flow of new upvotes makes up for any reward pool declines.
True brilliance notwithstanding...
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I'm not that organized, I go through my home feed, then new and by the time I've gone through one of those, there are 3 or 4 more posts that require reading and commenting.
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I think that because people are building communities. It would help them to share post on steemit to help the new people on their team, because there are bound to be people who don't know or worse be misinformed. :)
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Yes... and the other good point that was made is that many users don't "search" for info... they just browse their feeds, so they may not actually see more than a handful of things that go by.
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I'm new steemer then even if I think someone wants just to enjoy the easy "steemit" tag, I like those posts because most of the time they teach me something new!
Obviously when you start to swim by your own as much to teach to the others "how to" this kind of post become boring for you, but not for the thousands minnows join this community every day!
Think about it, new starters never end.
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You're quite right @rapdenny... there will always be new people looking for information, and that's worth remembering.
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I'll follow you and when I'll be a bigger swimmer I'll give you some money regularly with upvotes!
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If you can't ask the questions you need to have answered here, then where are you supposed to do it? If you want to find information about steemit, isn't it better to look for it on steemit? Or has it come to the point where people actually believe wikipedia is more authoritative than actual sources?
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good point @ajdohmen... and with a couple of thousand new accounts per day, it's inevitable there will be a lot of questions.
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I think that is sort of a double edged sword. It is like asking a pharmaceutical company about their new drug. It may well be the best thing ever but of course they are going to have quite the heavy bias and reading posts about how great steemit is from someone that knows they are going to make hundreds from that post I think is similar.
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You have correctly noticed. I also noticed that about steemit they write a lot. And assess the posts about steemit is also good. I guess it's because of the advertisement for steemit. It probably acts like a rolling snowball on the snow. The more rolls, the more it becomes. If I take a picture in a T-shirt with a steemit logo and put it in my blog, how many votes will it collect?
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Some of this is definitely true.
Quite a few, I'm sure. But let me turn the question around: How many new people might look at Steemit if you post a link to this on your Facebook page?
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I do not know how many real people Facebook will see my record about steemit. I have several thousand friends there, but I do not use facebook all the time.
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Yes..and here is why...people come into Steemit and maybe they are more "surfers of data" and not "diggers"....all posts help them as it's easily seen IMHO.
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That's a good point, too, @floridanow. I'm a long-time researcher... rarely a "surfer" without a specific purpose. But not everyone uses the web like that.
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I don't think it should even be debatable whether there are too many of one type of post on steemit. If the subject if helpful and excepted by the community then that's just fine, otherwise they can just unfollow, not re-steem and of course not vote for them. Like the other replier stated: "We are here to steem so steem on!!!" well said. Next! .......Wait! that's what this post thread is doing steeming on. arg!!
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Ultimately we are part of a "free market" of sorts, here... as long as people are interested enough to keep reading the posts, then people will keep writing them. If there's suddenly no interest... they will dwindle away by themselves.
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We are here to steem so steem on!!!
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Very true... we are, indeed!
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omaigadddddd
very beautiful flower & plant
thank you for share
up vote back please
thank you
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Well, thank you, I think...
A suggestion: instead of asking people to "vote back," why not just create good content and leave engaging comments on people's posts that make people want to visit your page to see what you create?
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Actually, I agree with you completely. I think that people should write what they feel passionately about, and a lot of people here feel very passionate about this platform. I myself feel passionate about the people on this platform, so generally if I write about steemit, it's about that :)
But my true passion is fiction and a newfound passion is pictures, so that's what I generally post :)
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As a minnow I find some all about steemit posts are worth my time, in that I get some value out of it. Whether something that is worded differently from the last time I read something similar and manages to solidify a fact or concept on some aspect of Steemit in my mind.
Others I can see right away are just pump 'n dump posts. I think we all know what I'm speaking of here.
First I check any comments and if there are I like to see some indication the OP is engaging or off on the placing another collection cup a little further along the blockchain. I get the math...it's all a numbers game.
The only real thing that matters is the quality of content that takes my time. I still haven't decided if I am going to be a content provider or a content provider...or some mixture of both.
Thought provoking questions...certainly not a waste of my time for having stopped by.
Enjoy your day.
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When you are in your first Steemit days, you discover more and more and you get an internal desire to share what you've learned with the ones who are still at the beginning of their journey. I think it's something natural.. had a similar period as well.
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I am brand new, so will be looking for the posts that you wrote about. LOL
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