Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN!

in steemit •  7 years ago 

Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN!

I haven't been around for a super long time, but I've been around long enough to know when an algorithm is rewarding the wrong things. That's the downside of decentralized - there's no tweaking when the train derails. Garbage posts get bad attention because people are assuming that commenting and liking highly rated content creators will somehow benefit them more than commenting and upvoting on a person with a low-reputation score. I have been careful to curate and only support quality content. There is a catch-22 occurring here - and people need to know that upvoting crap content isn't good for anybody. Well, except maybe a dozen people who already have very high scores for no good reason at all.

Thank you for reading.

Don't comment. Don't upvote, I don't really care to be honest, it's not like anybody will see this.

Settings/Equipment (click image to enlarge)
Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN!CANON 5D M III70-200 MM F2.8

Settings/Equipment (click image to enlarge)

Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN! | CANON 5D M III | 70-200 MM F2.8

Settings/Equipment (click image to enlarge)

Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN! | CANON 5D M III | 70-200 MM F2.8

Settings/Equipment (click image to enlarge)

Photographers, Steemit IS BROKEN! | CANON 5D M III | 70-200 MM F2.8

Thank You For Looking

Josh Pabst is a photographer
living and working in Chicago.
Please show your support. UPVOTE

@pabstblueribbon


Pabst Photo
@originalcontent @originalworks

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Hello @pabstblueribbon, I a @geekis, a marriage and relationship content creator. I clearly get what your grievances is and I personally do ask myself how some of the high rating score guys hit to the top. I know I will get there too with consistency but I am ready to post values. Do same.

Good for you. Keep going! I have high hopes for what steemit COULD BE, but if people don't start behaving more rationally, it will not survive. The idea of rewarding quality-creators is brilliant, but currenlty, the system is not working well - or people don't understand and are simply trying too hard to raise their own score, but upvoting and commenting and poor-quality content. It really is unfortunate and puts the whole ecosystem at risk in the near-term.

You're not alone in these sentiments. There are significant efforts being made to improve the platform. Check out @SteemCleaners who are working hard on wiping out some of the rampant spam and bot abuse.

I'm contributing to these fixes myself, because I want to see this platform succeed and I recognize the need. There's many others in the community who share these opinions and are contributing in their own way.

The platform is not dead. It is under constant development. Hardfix 20 includes some significant changes to the platform that should help to address some of the multi-account bot abuse that's taking place.

Many high profile whales are trying to push changes to the system outside of code. GrumpyCat has been downvoting bot votes that are affecting posts older than 3.5 days old. BernieSanders led a campaign to downvote one of the most major earners on the platform, Haejin as he feels that this user is eating up an unfair amount of the reward pool through posting too often. Battles are being fought on the daily as users try to define exactly what is and isn't acceptable conduct, and different factions fight for their vision of the platform.

Keep bringing up the problems as you see them. Engage in discussions with others on SteemIt.Chat and meet people who might have the same vision as you. If enough people make their voices heard, we can influence change.

I have high hopes for what steemit COULD BE, but if people don't start behaving more rationally, it will not survive.

People don't behave rationally. They behave emotionally.

Are you part of any of the minnow support groups, any discord, steemit.chat, or Facebook groups? Have you read the white paper? Are you watching any of the myriad of YouTube and DTube vidoes out there on how to succeed on Steemit? What about reading up on the plethora of blogposts written by people who have succeeded? I'm looking at your post history, and you've only started posting consistently since January 11. Success leaves clues. Steemit isn't a like a traditional job, and so if you're expecting to be paid for mere effort, you're gonna be bummed. But if you work to build relationships on here, like any other social network, I promise your experience will change.

I think you're getting too caught up in what other people are doing. If you go to my profile, you'll see a bunch of videos that I've started publishing on tips for newbies and minnows, as well as a bunch of old posts where I'm publicly troubleshooting my learning process on here. Watch and read a couple and see if they give you any ideas.

Also, your photography is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

I'm not trying to make money or have huge success on here. I don't care. I would like to see a new social network grow and blossom and not be dictated by a mega-corporation, but that's not going to happen if the most featured product is garbage. Which, 90% of it is.

Okay, I think I understand your issue better now. So what are you doing to help surface better content?

To be honest, I'm very careful not to upvote garbage, no matter what their score, I'll flag crap content, and I upvote anything I deem worthy of real effort or originality. There is probably more I could do, but I am not at this moment. I am open to suggestions. I also pay absolutely no attention to reputation scores. Seriously. I mostly look at photography to be honest.

You just have to give it more time to get some reputation or followers first.
Dont give up friend, just keep making good content and soon youll have more rewards.

I am not worried about my own reputation or $$, I have plenty of both. I think Steemit has a real problem if it wants to be around in 1-2 years, if it wants to grow. Some of the top earners produce garbage. It's not secret, and they get more comments/upvotes because the decentralized system has algorithms that are unclear - as such, people make guesses as to how to rise through ranks rather than enjoying content. this alone will be enough to ultimately flush the network over time of any real quality.

I do agree that some of the stuff are broken, but i have to say it has still a potential to be great. There are communities that are trying to build a better steemit environment. Dont loose hope Sir.

By the way, your photo skills are amazing. I like all shots, I believe you capture the best emotion there is. Keep it up :-) Thanks for dropping-by my post.

lovely lovely tones :D

and yes I've been trying to limit myself to only liking good stuff, be it from friends or otherwise.

there is one other thing here that you dont get so much on other social sites,... there is an atmosphere similar to when flickr first started, when the internet as a whole first started,... not sure what it is, perhaps just a friendliness. despite steem's brokenness at the moment, i think I'll stick around a bit longer,... maybe steem will wake up and drag itself to rehab one day :P

What you don't realize is the garbage posts as you put it are doing well because either people are using bots and the majority of the time these people have a huge following as they've put in the work of commenting and connecting with other Steemians. Plus you'll also find they've been on the network for quite some time.

I know it's a bit frustrating - but that's how the game goes. It's a grind.