Steemit encourages long time contribution, and it is all about sharing information. At the same time the only element of categorization are the tags. If we want to support long-term use further more we need to make it possible to systematically archive content. The Information scientist in me needs to share his thoughts.

Current problem

The way how Steemit works right now is, that every post you make is ordered by the date of creation. That is super important in order to see the new post on which we all want to curate. At the same time though, it can never be the only option in user-friendly environment. What effectively happens then is that all the blogs are just theoretically endless rows of unsorted content. In a while, if an author is active, the blogs turn into some sort of “Big data” for any potential viewer. For a PC it wouldn’t be “Big data” of course but for an average user who seeks information and has very limited time this is an impassable obstacle. Even all the Resteems are in there too! Long story short - very fucking ineffective.

The brainstorm on what needs to be done

I am no programmer and I have no clue about how hard it is to make any implementation. So I’m just going to state what I think is needed in order to make this site effective for what it claims to be and if anyone would tell me what is easily doable and what is not I would be happy.

Resteems

Ok so first of all, remove the Resteems from authors blog and make an option for user to choose whether he wants to see the Resteems of any given author or not. Implementation of this is just vital and should be fairly easy.

Archives/Files

We need to have option to sort out the content we create. I for instance am here for like a month which means I have missed a whole year of awesome posts. When I want to go through anyone’s blog, what I get is an endless dungeon of random content and Resteems. I propose we should implement an option of creating files. Even if those files were to be sorted and named just by the tags in the beginning, it would ease the pain of going through all of the posts just to find those with desired tag. It should of course evolve later into a function where everyone is able to name those files and sort content not just by its tags.

Let’s have a look at this image. There are spaces that haven’t been utilized yet. The idea a like the most is that the blog would stay, Resteems would be added and where there is the green box (it would be next to the Resteems), would be Archive. Archive would hold all the created files. It should be fairly easy for the user to navigate himself to the desired topics. Where there is the yellow box (either move the flags to the left or the yellow box could be moved to the left too) there would be simple information about the place in Archive for every single post that has been archived, or/and a add button for any post that hasn’t been archived by you. That way if a viewer liked the post, he might as well like similar posts from same author and could navigate himself there with just one click. With just one click any user could also add any post into his archive. Optionally, where there is the red box there could be files that apposite the author the most.

Projects that would contribute the most by this

Let’s face it. Projects like Pevo, or Education can never possibly work without such a feature. Can any of you imagine an educational project with an output of unlimited unsorted data?

Storage of all posts

Your archive shouldn’t be just about your posts. It should serve as a tool of spreading the contribution to the rest of the world. Gather all of the most valuable content from your perspective and sort it out for the rest. The site is not only about you anyway. You could also not only share single articles, but maybe the whole series! You would just press plus button on the article and it would be added into your archive from where it would be sorted.

Comments

I don’t see any reason not to implement an option to archive comments too. Often times comment is basically a short article, which deserves to have the right to be treated as one!

Some kind of categorization will have to be implemented sooner or later if Steemit really means it with the long term contribution. I don’t necessarily say that my take on it is the right one. The truth is though that the sooner the users start categorization, the sooner we will create more digestible data. If you feel the same, feel free to share the word about this post.