So I’ve spent a short amount of time on steemit, about 3 months if I’m not making a mistake. In those time, I have been privileged to meet a lot of individuals and read a lot of interesting posts. But in those time Ive been plagued by a question, an idea that has been on the back of my mind since I found out that posts become locked after 7 days.
What happens to posts after the 7 days limit?
I have actually talked about this in the past, but I didn't get the required amount of support I needed. This time around, I felt the need to talk about it even more, and this time hopefully open up a good conversation about the topic and what should be done about it.
Before I go further, I understand that people no longer read long posts, so ill give a summary.
- make your posts future proof
- post with the mindset that your posts are going to be viewed after the 7 days has elapsed
- post with the mindset that your mistakes would be viewable by the entire world forever
What we know
On the steemit blockchain, when you create a post,it is recorded and a timer of seven days is set on it. The seven days interval from my perspective, is so the post gains attraction, and people, if they like it, can vote and curate on it.
Although not necessarily true, posts these days barely get any number of exposure,this is mainly due to the fact that more and more steemians are on steemit and visibility of posts on average has dropped
refreshing the new feed shows how frequent steemians are posting
The seven days limit gives the post ample time to be viewed, understood and curated or voted onby whosoever likes it.
After the elapse of the seven days, the post “pays out”, meaning the money that the post makes is divided equally between STEEM and SBD.
After the seven days?
From the moment a post is created, a post is editable,meaning silly mistakes, missed words, unsourced images, quotes etc and all other corrections can be made to the post. This makes one capable of tailoring a post to the best of their ability, and to the taste of those who might come and correct them
But after the seven days has elapsed, posts become locked in, unaccessible, a permanent mark in the blockchain, if thats a way it can be said.
The reason for this is not far fetched though;
- steemit is founded on the principles of the cryptocurrency world, one of which is the total transparency in transactions, everyone having access to the blockchain and seeing or being able to see all that has been done on the blockchain *
or to get a good explanation;
What are cryptocurrencies really?
If you take away all the noise around cryptocurrencies and reduce it to a simple definition, you find it to be just limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions.
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/
Many people call it the abyss of no return, or maybe only I call it that, but ,many have their own opinion about what the stored and uneditable posts lie on the blockchain.
What can be done
The main fact that posts become uneditable, but still visible on the blockchain should give us the incentive to write with the future in mind.
On a daily basis, blogs of different individuals are visited by many other steemians and the best practice to do is simply to write good, quality and deserving posts all the time.
A good idea I saw by a fellow nigerian is the idea of ‘tips’ given to deserving posts,by steemians viewing posts thats are past the payout date.
I feel this idea is very great by the way and should be implemented by the steemit devs in one place or another.
A practice that I sometimes err on, I follow the simple principles
no one knows tomorrow.
So restate what I said at the beginning,
- make your posts future proof
- post with the mindset that your posts are going to be viewed after the 7 days has elapsed
- post with the mindset that your mistakes would be viewable by the entire world forever
Pictures from pixabay and pexels