Many of us who use the Steem platform love it. However, we have to admit it has some flaws. I've been mulling a bit on these flaws and what we can do about them. Each little thing we do to improve Steem will have tremendous returns over the long term. Here's where I think the platform can improve:
- One of the easiest things to do right now is to get Steem on more exchanges. On Kraken, on Binance, on Kucoin, everywhere. Steem is already on Upbit and Upbit accounts for 70% of all Steem trading volume!
- You need to be able to promote posts in other posts, not just in a separate "promoted" tab. This will make the promotions feature so much more valuable and act as a powerful inflation sink
- We as a community need to stop upvoting vapid and shallow posts. Everyone has seen them. The posts have little substance but everyone's upvoting them just because it's a whale. This does not reflect well on Steem
- We need to stop treating Steem as a money making platform but as a free blogging platform. Make great content and you'll naturally get readers and followers.
- Just in case you missed the point above, I can't stress enough. We. Need. Quality. Content. On. Steem. The more quality content and the better Steem is at surfacing it, the more valuable this platform is.
- We need to reduce the total number of tags a post can have to 3 tags or less. Posters need to be discouraged from posting with irrelevant tags.
- Reduce the influence of whales. This is incredibly important in preventing a system where a small cabal of whales get to control the entire platform with their upvotes. One way to do so is to reduce the amount of influence a whale gains when s/he gets more Steem. In other words, the more Steem a whale has, the less the incremental gain in influence from each new Steem. In life, the power law is incredibly prevalent and it's bad. It should be discouraged wherever we can.
- Finally, share your Steem posts and get people to join. Don't underestimate Metcalfe's Law and the network effect. The platform significantly increases in value every time a new engaged user joins.
If everyone of us stops treating Steem as a get rich quick scheme but instead focuses on growing and improving the platform as a whole, we can create something so much more valuable, a platform that will challenge existing companies like Medium, Twitter, and Facebook. I believe Steem has the potential to do so.
There's a lot here to discuss, but I'd like to hone in on one. You mention this:
Visibility on this platform is probably the third largest problem it needs to overcome, and it feeds into virtually everything else. When few see the quality content, it leads to creators giving up. Either they give up entirely and quit the platform, or they start making the vapid or quick posts because it requires less effort for the same or even better results (it's strange how that happens).
The UI "Communities" feature is supposed to help with all of this. In my attempts to find an update about it that isn't 10 months old or a part of the general announcement, I have come up with nothing. Hard Fork 20 and its changes were most recently discussed, but it won't include "Communities" because that fix isn't on the blockchain.
I hope the powers-that-be don't intend to bring hundreds of thousands of people on board with an accelerated account process without having somewhere for them to go. It would be nice for those who are here to work with Communities first, then when the flood gates open, we can help the new users figure it out.
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I agree with all of the above points. There should be a measurement of quality content that evens the playing field vs just being a whale and posting memes. Very well written and informed information!
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Good post addressing almost all my concerns with the platform. I notice it when trying to explain the system to someone exploring Steemit and asking these very questions.
But the most asked question is by far: but how do you discourage money grabbers from upvoting each other's bs posts or even from contributing their span in the first place?
I think that will be the main issue to solve
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Good point. I agree, especially with the fact that we have to make the community aware that as long as they're upvoting spam posts, the number of them will increase. We definitely need to stop that, because in the end it might lead to established Steemians taking their high-quality content somewhere else.
When you say
I disagree. Steemit is promoted to the outside world like a place where you can earn easy money. It's getting more popular every day. The day before yesterday, no less than 20.000 new accounts were created. How many of them do you think are gonna last? This wrong image of SteemIt that is presented to the world outside is partially responsible for the number of shallow posts that is overtaking the tag streams.
For a post I wrote earlier, I created this mockup of an ad you see regularly:
Of course, that's not the right way to promote SteemIt either, but it's closer to reality than the original one.
I noticed a lot of new users are signing up for SteemIt and do exactly what they're told to do: post, upvote, comment. They don't know that in order to make some money and to become part of the community, there's a quality requirement. I've talked to several people, and they plead guilty. They didn't know any better, until someone took to the time to educate them.
I submitted a post to Utopian yesterday, suggesting to make new users read the FAQ page before they can start posting. You can read it here if you're interested. My suggested solution is not ideal, but at least it might make some new users aware that it takes hard work, dedication and patience to get somewhere on SteemIt.
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I agree 1000% LET'S DO IT
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