3 Days ago @berniesanders posted a quick article with the title:
"Please stop using #steemit just to promote posts!"
Now, in theory I agree with this. It does the community no good if you go to the 'travel tag and see articles about 'politics or go to the #steemit tag and see articles about 'homedesign.
BUT...
#steemit simply isn't ready for the use of correct tags.
Case in point:
Today I posted an article about getting my credit card information stolen. The post was a call for help from the community since I know there are a lot of security, computer and crypto experts here.
I tagged the post with 'hack and 'help.
The problem is, if you look at the #steemit main page you cannot find the 'hack or 'help tags. This is a big problem, since I genuinely was looking for help, similar to posting a question on Reddit and getting feedback from the tag specific community.
Not only were the 'hack and 'help tags not visible, I couldn't even search for them in the provided filter box. At of the time of writing this post 8 hours later, I can search for the 'hack tag and it now appears but 'help does not.
So, I did, what I thought, was logical. I tagged both #steem and #steemit and added 'money for good measure as these were all visible tags and I hoped my questions would get answered.
What was the result of this strategy?
It worked. Within the hour I had 4 detailed replies. to my answer and I was very grateful for them.
Would I gotten those same replies had I left my original tags of hack and help only? I guess we will never know, but given that they were neither visible nor searchable I would have to theorize my article would've never been found.
So @berniesanders....I guess my question is this...Am I #stopusinghashtagsteemit abuser?
I don't think I am, simply because the segmentation on #steemit is not finalized or working at quite frankly.
When articles can easily be found via 'tags or search than yes, I will consider myself an abuser. But as of right now, the only way for content to be found is through visible tags as I am postulating that neither search or the tag filter is used often (again filtering for 'help returns null anyway).
What are others thoughts? Abuse or not?
By the way, I write this article knowing that it could cost my previous point some downvotes for alleged tagabuse but felt it necessary to share my rebuttal with the crowd.
Thoughts?
FYI - apparently tags within the post are used as well and it wouldn't let me post the article with all 13 tags....damn...haha.
All I can say is that the #steemit tag is heavily abused. It's so difficult to find actual news on the Steemit platform without having to sift through so much fluff and cruft that doesn't have much to do with Steemit.
I used to think that flagging was the answer, but now I don't know what the answer is.
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It is. I can't argue with that. But I can argue that, at this time, getting content discovered, you need to be using popular tags.
Especially since #help is not even filterable!
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The answer likely is TIME. Time for Dan and Ned to implement new things. The FEEDS tab is a step in the right direction. Right now DISCOVERABILITY is an issue with steemit. Hopefully that will be addressed soon. I am fairly confident it will be. I am glad you don't think flagging is the solution. You know my view on flagging, so I am with you here. I see a purpose for it, but not for something like that.
I used to use steemit for a number of my posts. They all had something to do with steemit I believe but I usually would look through the list of tags and try to find ones that fit, and I do try to do 4 tags and only 4 tags. There are times I know that steemit seemed the best fit.
As to @msutyler post above. I tried to get HELP with some bugs on steemit by posting a blog too. There really is no common sense place for help on this platform. I had a legit bug with the editor I was trying to resolve.
I didn't get any help. I went back recently and saw that my post asking for help was FLAGGED. I have no idea why someone would flag it, but it was. It didn't really have any impact on me, but I do agree trying to post bug reports, examine bug reports to make sure it is not already known, and get help in general can be a challenge here.
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I agree with this. I think the tag structure and discoverablility will be fixed with TIME.
But I think it would be wrong for some of the whales to flag posts for tag abuse until the tag structure is fixed.
Again, the two tags I wanted to use, #hack and #help, were not even filterable, let a lone visible. My post would have been pointless.
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"Would I gotten those same replies had I left my original tags of hack and help only? I guess we will never know, but given that they were neither visible nor searchable I would have to theorize my article would've never been found."
You know, it's not that hard to experiment. Why not try to write a post on something non-steemit and use the right tags and see what happens?
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I actually don't filter by tags much. I just hang out in the NEW channel when I get a chance. Yet I also MISS a lot of stuff. :)
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I don't mean to brag and sorry for the blog advertisement, but here is a post of mine that did pretty well:
https://steemit.com/cyberpunk/@neoxian/cyberpunk-tunes-opening-song-to-serial-experiments-lain
I only used "cyberpunk" and "music" and it's got 8 bucks. It is possible.
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Not to say it's right, wrong or indifferent but it also looks like you have a healthy list of bots following all your posts as well. So that $.30 jump start helps give you credibility when people are curating. Might be what you need to get the ball rolling.
See a post with 10 upvotes gives it legitimacy as opposed to a post with 1 upvote.
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Oh those bots, they aren't mine. I'm a part of MinnowsUnite:
https://steemit.com/minnowsunite/@cryptohustlin/livechat-minnowsunite-230-steemers-strong
If you join that and get involved, you can gain from friendly help.
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Will give it a look!
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Most of my posts are correctly tagged. You can go through and see. I've had mixed results.
But with regards to my post mentioned in the article where I was originally going to post with #hack and #help, there really was no point. That couldn't be found.
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