Improving Steemit: a noob's ideas

Hi, I'm Jekteir, a new user to Steemit!

It's clear that Steem is an exciting platform and a clever use of cryptocurrency. The concept of a group of Reddit-like content creators/curators getting paid for creating and transmitting value makes sense, if we assume that value can be generated from the cryptocurrency ecosystem itself, sufficient to cover users' opportunity cost of generating that content for this platform instead of spending their time and energy elsewhere.

But there are also ways that I would humbly suggest, as a newbie who recently arrived here at Steemit, the system could possibly be made even better. Below I go through those ways.

• The Tags and Topics sidebar should be reorganized into a primary index page of some kind. To begin with, the index could be generated programmatically, based on the most popular categories. At the moment the sidebar on the front page feels like an afterthought, and doesn't draw attention. Depending on how successful that is, a revised set of categories could be curated by trusted users or groups.

• Speaking of which -- curate Steem more. Right now there are many low-quality posts (post with poor spelling, repeated concepts, no original thought, hate speech, etc), which tragically can crowd out the more original and higher-quality writing which is available. In order to make Steemit a real, viable destination like Reddit, posts should not only be upvoted, but also be moderated and curated by trusted users. Obviously, the Upvote system exists, and this is at the heart of how Steem works. But perhaps a more specific set of moderation guidelines could be created. Steemsquad and similar accounts are a great start for this ( https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@steemsquad/hello-we-are-steemsquad-and-we-are-here-to-support-the-minnows-read-on ) -- but a formalized version of it, perhaps incorporating existing trusted users from these groups, could be a powerful asset to the Steem editorial ecosystem.

• Separate photo-centric posts from text-centric posts. Posts which exist primarily for the purpose of showcasing one photo or a set of photos, as opposed to writing on a given topic, are more likely to appeal to a subset of users. For that reason, it would be more effective to categorize these branches of Steem separately in order to provide more value for visitors who either wish to browse photo posts or wish to browse articles / writing.

• Similarly, editorial content ("This is my opinion on X") could be categorized separately from news or informational content ("Y just happened"). That would help identify writers who focus on news or informational content, versus writers who focus on opinion or argumentative content. In fact, you could add a third category, "Personal", for content that relates more to sharing individual life experiences. So we'd have:

  • Editorial / Opinion Content
  • News / Informational Content
  • Personal / Story Content

• Speaking of sharing personal experiences -- it seems to me that a further logical step could be to expand the Steem ecosystem to encompass the notion of Friends or other Steem members we trust to see certain personal content. If we create social graphs as an option within Steem, we do several things:
  • Power up the platform through the network effect, as users seek to bring in friends to broaden their social graph on Steem.
  • Improve content for users by promoting content from friends, which is more likely to be relevant to the users' interests.
  • Create one Public feed (all posts not marked as Friends-only) and then many sub-feeds which are within social graphs.

Naturally, how this would pair with the Steem Power, Steem and Steem Dollar ecosystem would need to be assessed. I don't fully understand yet how the public-ness of content on Steemit assists in generating value for the ecosystem, so the viability of friend groups versus the need for public content is a primary question for me.

Perhaps someone could let me know if these ideas make sense? I'm sure there are a lot of holes in my logic, as I don't fully understand the ecosystem yet. But maybe these thoughts will spur on some additional ideas on how to take Steem to the next level. When expressing new ideas online creates real monetary value for ordinary people, then we ought to be able to generate some great discussions and ideas through the power of the marketplace and the power of the crowd!

Thanks for having me here! I'm excited to see Steem grow.