Disclaimer: I am a technology dinosaur and am unfamiliar with the proper terminology, so please bare with me as I attempt to sound intelligent.
One of the biggest frustrations I have encountered in the first week of using Steemit is finding like-minded individuals - specifically roleplayers.
The primary issue for me, it seems, is that the Steemit platform uses some kind of "two-tiered" filter to categorize content.
The first "tier" is what I refer to as the general tier. It files content into Hot, Trending, New, or Promoted (and I believe there is sometimes overlap, but unsure). After that, it applies the Tag Tier - and that is the current focus of my frustration.
When you post, you can enter up to 5 "Tags", with the first one being the main category you want your content filed into. These tags can be just about absolutely any amount of letters, numbers, and (a single) dash that you want to enter. And that is exactly the crux of the matter.
By being able to enter anything, new/casual users have little to no framework with which to "build" their tags. Where one person might call it roleplaying, for example, another may merely label it gaming. Chaos!
Add to the fact that there are multiple systems, editions of said systems, settings, etc - and it's downright headache-inducing!
So, just a quick list of Tags I have searched for (and found): gaming, roleplaying, rpg, ttrpg, tabletop, roll20, game, add, pathfinder, paizo, fantasy, dungeonsanddragons, wizardsofthecoast, pnp, tabletoprpg, star-wars, gamemastering....
I gave up. That's 17 tags, and I quit. Not because I couldn't think of anymore, but because I didn't want to think of anymore. I mean, seriously? Football fans don't have this problem, do they? (they may - I really don't know, but wouldn't think they would)
What we, the roleplaying community, need is a Steemit-backed "Master Tag" (such as streetphotography or even dice have as their own). I personally suggest "rpg", or better yet (to eliminate video games and the like), "tabletop-rpg" (as @lextenebris also suggested about 3 months ago on https://steemit.com/rpg/@danmaruschak/why-steemit-makes-sense-as-a-place-to-talk-about-indie-tabletop-rpgs).
Another post worth reading of @danmaruschak (that directly inspired this one of mine) is: https://steemit.com/steemit/@danmaruschak/trying-to-cultivate-discussion-of-my-niche-hobby-on-steemit
So, how do we go about getting a "Master Tag"?
I literally have no idea. I did some quick and dirty Google searches, but either my Google-fu is weak (likely) or there is nothing to find.
What do we do in the meantime?
Two options, that I see. Hashtag whatever "Master Tag" we want to see at the end of each of our related posts, and using bots like @ginabot, I guess. I will say that I start using @ginabot just last night, and already have been able to find more than one like-minded individual to follow, so it is a workable work-around.
And that's it. That's all I got for this right now. Not a complete solution to the problem, but something we can start using as a whole. Well, three things really.
The "Master Tag": tabletop-rpg
The Hashtag: tabletop-rpg
and bots, like @ginabot
What do you guys think? Could it work? Am I way off base? Let me know in the comments, or if it's valid, ReSteem!
There is an inherent problem with proposing a "master" anything – on the Internet as much as on Steemit itself.
The only people likely to hear it are the people who don't need it and the people who need it are unlikely to hear it.
The only thing that really works is a sort of emergent standardization, where we just get in the habit of doing it ourselves and allow the usage to spread organically. The very idea of something being "master" anything is just – unlikely.
What we really need is some form of community-outreach/centralization on another platform, probably Discord, if only because it makes it easy to find and share links to content which is appropriate to our interests, but kept in a single silo so that there's one place that we know we can go to for that content type.
Other communities have been doing quite well, and I would probably have already created a Discord server for RPG-folk, but I have been brain-eaten by doing database delving on the steem blockchain, and honestly I have no other excuse.
If there's interest, we can probably make it happen.
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Actually, I already have a Discord that I started (mostly) for just this reason. It hasn't taken off at all yet, but...it's there.
https://discord.gg/yQswuBd
Yes, I named it after my former company, but the original hope was I would gain some followers from old stomping grounds.
Then the death-flu/work overtime hit and I haven't been able to get around to it yet.
Yeah, I was wondering if the "master" idea was flawed, but I was at a loss as to what else to do. I fully plan on using it tho, with the hopes that it does grow organically.
As for your database delving, I am glad you are doing it. It is, at the very least, always a solid read and usually answers one question I didn't even know I had yet.
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You would be in the very midst of reading a new one if Utopian were not throwing its hands in the air and giving me a dirty look when I try to shove something up there.
Believe me, I'd much rather be writing some RPG content – but I have to go where the whim takes me and, truthfully? Writing stuff which talks about the inner workings of the blockchain and the social architecture around it pays off a lot more than writing any amount of RPG content (that doesn't heavily lean on 3D modeling as well).
Which is true in real life, too, so I suppose some things are expected.
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One other thing to bear in mind is that no one owns tags. So if we all started using e.g. #tabletop-rpg for our posts, and it grew to be popular (we can dream), other people would start using it for non-gaming stuff, hoping to get our group's eyes on their noise. And the only way to combat that is to consistently flag/downvote when they do it (and for whatever reason, people here seem hesitant to flag posts).
I mean, I think doing something like this and trying to get the word out to everyone posting about our kinds of games, is a good idea. There are just costs involved too.
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There's a really good reason to be hesitant to flag posts, because it is mathematically inefficient.
Every flag is a value trade-off for the potential to reward something that you actually like. Think of flagging like voting up by a tiny, distributed amount everything except the one thing that you're flagging. Everything. So instead of taking that amount of voting power/SP and rewarding someone who has made a discussion of RPG mechanics that you enjoy, you have taken that voting power/SP and rewarded everything but the one bit of spam that you've touched – including every other bit of spam that you haven't flagged down.
It's a bad strategy.
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So the system is broken. OTOH, making them free would be begging for over-use. I dunno what the answer is then. Maybe the first four each day could be free.
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No, the system is as the system is. People have broken interactions with the system because they have invalid understandings of the system. They don't understand how to use the system to get what they want and instead just end up flailing at it, wasting their time and effort, but that's not the fault of the system.
A flag is of particular use in one singular situation, when you want to counteract the amount of SP invested to raise the rewards of a specific and particular piece of posting. If your specific interest is on that particular work and making sure that the rewards are not going to be paid off, then a flag is the right thing to do. But you need to do it with the full knowledge that you are implicitly voting up everything else that person has posted by sending the SP that you can speak for on that posting back to the reward pool.
And that is effort that you could've put toward rewarding something specific that you wanted to reward.
Once you understand how the system works, it makes perfect sense.
Given the amount of abuse going on within the steem blockchain of the ongoing Whale Wars when it comes to flagging? I don't want those idiots to have more weaponry to deploy against each other and everyone else.
Quite the opposite.
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My first instinct is to say that the issue you brought up (others using the tag simply to gain our views)is a "future us" problem, mainly because I doubt it will ever become that prevalent.
However, that is also a lazy answer and, while I have been known to use them, I'm trying to use them less.
So, downvoting seems like a bad idea (as explained by @lextenebris), so let's consider that out.
Ignoring is always a thing to do, but will that be effective? Probably not. Regardless, it will still take up "viewable real estate" and time (looking at the content, trying to find any revelant information).
Hmm. Will keep thinking on it.
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In theory, the advent of some sort of Community architecture on Steemit will help the development of communities out a lot. Of course, figuring out when that is actually likely to happen and how to make use of it is an entirely different issue.
The proposed mechanical changes to Steemit are – interesting, but not sufficient to the purpose, in my opinion.
Still, worrying about tag pollution before a tag actually exists in any number to be polluted is making a lot of assumption, which I'm not really down to do.
That argument is deployable against doing anything that someone hasn't done before. As such, I have to dismiss it out of hand as ridiculous.
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I like it, though ive been thinking of using pnprpg in my posts that relate in the future as well too
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Totally understandable, and don't forget - you get 5 Tags. Use them responsibly. Lol!
Also even if you don't want to use 1 of your 5 Tags on Tabletop-rpg, you can still hashtag it directly in your post, so others can find you easier!
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