I really love steemit. I like what it can do for the future of content. I like what it (and related tech) can do for the future of the internet.
But it won't ever happen if 90% of what gets upvoted heavily is more talking/videos/etc of steemit and other cryptocurrency.
Seriously? Look at this
There is so much more to life
Life isn't (or shouldn't be) lived online. And as a social network, the real power comes from sharing the things that happen offline. I'd love to see more well written stories and experiences make it to the top. I'd ALSO like to see the top be less extreme. There's a lot of content here that's over-rewarded and a lot that is under-rewarded.
The occasional story talking about crypto is great, IF it really provides new value. But so many of these stories are basically the same thing over (and over) again.
Is this people just chasing money?
I wonder if we get so many of these things at the top because of the bandwagon effect. We know that things talking about steemit will get upvoted, so we upvote them (curation rewards!) and off to the races we go. I think this really sucks and leads to this sort of incestuous behavior where people vote for things not because they genuinely think they are good, or valuable, but because they KNOW that everyone else will vote that way. I'm certainly guilty.
I'm guessing a lot of those votes are cast the same way. This really distorts the rewards. Is yet another bit about how steemit/bitcoin/fiat currency is or is not a scam/pyramid really adding value to this network? No. Is it making it a less interesting place? yes. Is it making steemit feel like the type of place where "normal" people who aren't obsessed with "the man" can join in and make a difference? No.
The content is there.
I've seen great series on coffee on here, on economics in general (not just crypto), articles on different flavors of linux... There are a LOT of options. Sadly, for all those that do well a lot of good content goes overlooked because it doesn't "look" like a winner. When people are voting for things they think OTHERS will like it distorts genuine curation. This should really be fixed. If you like it, upvote it.
What I would like to see
A lot more art at the top. A lot more stories from people's real life. Even political rants - goodness knows there is enough to rant about. A lot more comedy.
- Video game reviews
- Movie reviews
- Tutorials
- Opinion pieces - I know people here have opinions on things other than crypto.
- Programming topics
And probably a bunch more things I haven't even thought of.
Why aren't there more of those things?
Probably because of the way the economics on this site where the top things get overcompensated, IMO, and the medium popularity things are under-compensated. I'll be really blunt here: The economic model of this site/zipfs law (I've read the whitepaper) is the wrong way to model things. What we observe in nature and what makes the most sense for the site are not the same and by FORCING that model it's actually caused distortion. The combination of the way curation rewards and the payout distorts rewards away from that which is actually new and interesting and towards the "known popular" and really harms effective and "risky" curation of interesting content.
This model also draws away good content creators because other sites (through targeted advertising, products, etc) reward creators farther down the long tail WAY better. Popularity isn't universal. It's definitely not the same thing as value - a truth I would expect the geeks of this site to understand instantly.
In fact - look at Facebook. They became THE social network by connecting the minnows. It wasn't like twitter (which is flailing) where it was all about having a gajillion followers who listen to the trite spam of celebrities, it was about connecting and sharing between the "little people" that made it a juggernaut.
Medium is another good inspiration, and the style of steemit is much closer to medium than Reddit or twitter or FB. Allowing better branding, linking, etc to be similar I think would inspire people to join and share good content.
Write interesting stuff anyway
One of my LEAST compensated articles was about my childhood growing up next to a brothel and being friends with hookers back in the 7th grade. I'm still glad I wrote it. Steemit isn't perfect, but it's better than the other options and I trust that the site operators will keep tweaking things.
If you wrote something interesting, put it in the comments.
I'll read it - promise. And I'll upvote it. I'm not a whale but I DO have some steempower and want this to succeed.
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