What can users do to add value?

It's a question that's been on my mind for a while. In his recent post, Hive account@timcliff asked the question: What can users do to add value?

The answer is really simple, users should blog about what they love by expressing it with the best of their ability. Of course, not everyone is capable of doing that, because some users are preoccupied with making money fast, that they are blind to the purpose of a social media. To earn more, focus on quality. Nobody will remember what you ate for breakfast or how cute your cat looked this morning. To captivate the attention, users need to ask themselves: Is what I'm posting useful to the rest?

Surely, we need to have some fun too. Being too serious and trying to always post quality could be draining and not always met with the expected upvotes.

What types of contributions do I consider are adding value?

Value is relative and can be found in art, music, history, politics, science... the fields are endless. One thing common to all those, value is something that is useful to the rest of the community in the long term. What that means, if something is worthy to be bookmarked or pops up at the top when doing a web search, then it's a valuable and useful asset. Therefore short term vs long term determines what value is.

As an example, when a musician plays a piece, the audience would certainly appreciate the talent, but the true value comes from composer who wrote the piece that transcended the centuries!

What types of things will I upvote/reward?

I have appreciation for everything in life, in particular arts, music, science and computers. I will curate those mainly, but that doesn't mean I'm oblivious to other types of posts when brought to my attention.

What types of things will I downvote?

Spam, scams, unfairness and abuse. I don't necessarily seek them because other projects are already taking care of that (Hive account@steemcleaners, Hive account@spaminator, etc). But when I see them in the comments on my posts, I'll downvote them immediately.

What types of projects will I consider delegating SP to?

There are so many interesting projects on Steem, which is great, they brings a diversity to the platform. Although I do appreciate and would love to delegate to so many, I'm not a super whale so I'm limited in my options. Also, big projects like Hive account@utopian-io (focused on developers) have massive delegations already, thus I'd rather delegate to smaller projects or people.

Obtuse thinking

Unfortunately, some people think their own opinion is what matters most, so they look down on others with disdain. I'd like to reiterate to those people that Steemit is a social media platform, it's meant to be multicultural and multisubject. If they don't like some type of content, that's fine, they should search and seek what they like, instead of going on a flagging crusade. Tastes and interests are relative. Downvoting content is one thing, downvoting it out of spite or hate against the person is a different thing. The latter does not add value at all, it suppresses it. We should all remember that, in particular the large stakeholders, since they have a bigger impact and may discourage new comers from continuing and loving this place.

Total value

The total value is the sum of all the little values. There will always be contention between the good, the bad and the ugly, that's what human nature is all about. We need a mix of everything otherwise life would be unidirectional and boring. If each individual can focus on offering their best, the total value of Steem will rise. Those who do that will shine, those who don't will slip into oblivion.