I do not consider myself as a well polished writer by any means. Spelling mistakes and bad grammar here and there but when I do publish a post I make sure I put in the effort and try and make it interesting for the reader. I try and post once a day depending on my work schedule.
People are moaning about the trending page being all from the same people. These people are earning massively from this. A bunch of circle jerkers upvoting each other. I am one of these people. I trended once on Steemit and seem to be trending more on Sportstalk so I am under no illusions that people are upvoting because of the amount of Sports I have in my account.
Maybe I am upvoting the same people. The guys I met on here from the start.The guys and girls commenting on my content. Taking the time to read my stuff and giving me a nice comment or even people who disagree! Whatever it is I love the discussion . Why should I not support the people who are interacting with me?
A couple of days ago I gave myself a little challenge. Instead of reading the posts of the people I got to know on Sportstalk which is normal. I decided I will look at some new content and see if I could find any good posts to upvote. My vote is quite high now given that I have passed the 1 million staked token mark from a mixture of publishing posts but most of my tokens I have purchased from an exchange after selling up my diamond Steem Monsters. I love writing about sports so I made an effort to accumulate sports tokens. So I went to the New and Hot sections to upvote some posts. And to be quite honest I found it very difficult to spend my Voting Power. I gave a 30% here and there but most of the posts were Dlike and Actifit. I have nothing against these dapps. I do realise that there is a place for them on the Sportstalk platform. But It's just as a rule of mine that I do not upvote these posts as I do not consider them good sports content. Some of them are extremely short and the authors have not an ounce of effort put in. Unless an Actifit post has some background around it. Nothing personal. I will not give it a vote although I do think moving around office as a sport somewhat!
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I resorted to going back to the trending tab to find good content. Really!! I actually had to. Not only good content but posts that are more than 1 paragraph with photo that isn't sourced. I was just sick of trying to find good stuff. A title interested me. I would click in and it would have 4 lines. So I gave up. Back to the same people in trending, Phil, Tales, Asher, Flipstar , Leeds, erikah , baltus and a few more guys and gals that slip my mind. All posts of decent quality. So clearly trending is doing what it is intended for. The cream always rises to the top. Is it any wonder that the authors in trending are all voting for each other??? They are the only posts with good bloody quality.
Anyway I found a couple of great posts and I gave them 100%.
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One was from @cynisca who I find is making quality posts. The other one was @cryptoandcoffee about the Stadt de France. I love @cryptoandcoffee's posts. When you start on the Steem platform you find your network by reading posts that interest you, comment on a post and interact with the author. That is the fundamental basis on how the Steem blockchain works. I have known this guy since I have started on Steemit. He started off on 15 Steem and is now a dolphin with over 5000 SP . I bought my way to dolphin hood myself but this guy grinded out quality post after quality post to get to there. He is now very well regarded on Steemit and he is one of the only people that can say he reached dolphin hood with no financial support whatsoever. He has come to @sportstalksocial and we should be greatful he is here but I did hear he is getting grief for being in trending so much. I find that hilarious. I have always enjoyed his posts. In my opinion It is no fluke that he is in trending so I will make no apologises for upvoting a good friend of mine who publishes posts with good content. Maybe if other people made content like him then they might be in trending also.
So in summary I know what I like and I will upvote content that I find interesting in sport. Not posts no longer than 1 paragraph. Not actifit posts about washing the dishes or Steem monsters packs. Not competitions that are not Sports competitions. I vote for the people I get on with on steemit. I vote for the interesting comments people leave. I go to their profiles and try and find a decent post to return the favour.
We are at the beginning of a great platform. People are going to self vote.Thats just a fact of life. No getting around it. I never did self vote until a couple of weeks ago. But now I hold off for a couple of days until everyone gets their slice of the curation pie and then I give myself an upvote. I give myself a pat on the back for spending an hour of my time writing. Why not? It's my money I put in so I may as well try to get some return on it even though I doubt I ever will. Upvoting your own comments is an extreme no go area for me so I will not do this and I will not upvote authors that do either. There is plenty in Sportstokens to go around and plenty of time for the early adapters to earn if they want to.
So hopefully over the next couple of months some great sports writers will come onto the platform and blow us circle jerkers from our ivory towers back to where we belong. These authors can then take the grief about having 6 posts on trending but I will gladly upvote them if they produce good stuff. It will be like sitting down reading the sports pages of a broadsheet on Sunday but you do not have to pay for the privilege. This is where I envisage Sportstalk going in the future.
This post is my first post not about Sport content on Sportstalk so I will be giving the proceeds to @leedsunited charity post which can be read here. Such a great cause. Thanks for telling us about it.
Well said. I actually found this post when I went to Trending to look for new content and writers. It's so easy to grow complacent with my current feed that I find myself missing out on some good work from people I just happened to have overlooked at a random time.
Yeah true . I need to cast my net wider myself. Thats the biggest challenge to proof of brain platforms. Time. Noone has ut anymore . You tend to check out your mates first to stay up to date but then there could be great stuff that passes you by . Thanks for the comment mate. You re a good egg .
I also don't upvote actifit posts with a short description, it just made me think that the person did a one-minute-task by clicking an app and that's it. When you compare it with some articles, which goes to the depth and has something to tell you, this is really different.
I totally agree @ritxi . Thanks for the comment
I think part of the problem is that when some people craft a well-written, thoughtful post, it fails to get the support it deserves.
Take a post I wrote on Steemit last year. This was one where I poured myself into writing about a friend who I later found out was a psychopath. It was long and (I thought) captured the essence of how he treated people. I wrote a snapshot of a truly evil mind at work. It trended, right? Wrong! In fact, I had to pay to promote it hoping it would be seen...
As a busy working student, I don't have the luxury of time to write those kinds of posts everyday. I'm lucky to get a couple of posts out in a week, so I do understand why some people have cut back on writing epic posts no one will see. If it were not for the curation trails I vote for, my content would have no support at all.
So I "get" the quick Actfit reports and since I'm slowly building up my SPORTS token stash, I too, was looking for good content to vote on and found your post. We all need to support good content creators in order for these communities to thrive. Keep voting! :)
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True . The problem on steemit is that great posts dont get rewarded properly. I would like to read your post you mentioned . As i said in my piece , there is a place for actifit posts here. Its a great project they have over there and your example proves it . Thanks for the detailed comment
I spent a couple of weeks on that post interviewing people, rebuilding events and polishing it up for Steemit. I remember thinking If this post isn't worthy of an upvote, I don't know what is. It sank and I had to rescue it with bidbots. I don't even want to look at it because I put so much into it, here's the link:
Are You Dating A Psychopath? - Narcissists and the Women who Love Them
And one more for the road. In this one, you even see me complain in the comments that almost no one responded after 18 hours. However, someone from a trail finally saw it and added me:
A REAL Man Never Hits A Woman - Do You Agree?
So, the short posts? I get them.
It's difficult to find quality content. I try and look through as much of the recently published posts as possible 2 or 3 times a week but I find myself getting side tracked by flagging and reporting abuse which is a hell of a lot easier to find than good writers as it stands!
I do agree with you on this and have started trying to find other posts to vote on and have struggled. I will keep looking though in hope and will get around to any. My new alt @cryptoandsports is going to be the one I use in the future for curation as I don't have enough Voting Power to do Steem and Sports. I will be moving all the staked tokens over and like you have just on a million now. I need to read up about @leedsunited charity post as I don't mind giving either.
I have about 40,000 sports tokens and I have as well gone through what you have indicated. You are sometimes torn between just upvoting random content or content that you can relate to.
Once in a while I do vote a minnow with a good post but the best way I go about it is sticking to a category that I enjoy - football.
That is how I came to follow you after your post on the weekly premier league challenge.
I am extremely active here with so much banter in the comments and I am loving it.
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This was the reason behind the focus on the tags in the sidebar so there could be more specialized tags for people to dig into that was more of their home turf. It's the way I use the site personally. Sometimes by digging into the team I want to check on for posts but always checking sport leagues I have interest in.
Good point actually. Ip have to start using the football and golf tags more often
@deniskj. I throughly enjoyed our little debate about Paul Pogba. I will look out for your Utd posts from now on
lol..I was still waiting to hear from you who you would take to improve your squad. I appreciate the massive upvote as well. I will look out for your posts as well and for the last man standing challenge.
You said except de gea!! That answered your own question.
You definitely right there, i don't post often, but i do put in the effort when i do make my post. I tried a dlike post once, and by my standards, it was low, i did't like it, if i were to be making a post a day, i probably will have to make dlike and actfit posts.
There are definitely some awesome post that doesn't make it to the trending page, but i guess, that's synonymous to needles in haystacks
Some people don't have that luxury of patience to be consistent with quality content. Perhaps, I'm an example.
Although, I agree consistency is key when it comes to churning out great and quality sports post.
But what then is quality content?. Is it an encyclopedia-like post that gets you sleeping half of the way or one sourced around from the Internet and dumped in sportstalk huge recycle bin? or a post that just hit the nail on the head?, could be one paragraph, even seven lines.
I mean, do I have to upvote an author because he wrote out a sourced thesis-like post? Or look away from an actifit poster because he posted about how he 'devoured' a full bowl of ice cream after a 10 minute walk?. I could vote the actifit post because it's funny really. 😅
I believe quality content has always been subjective and will continue to be in the eyes of the reader.
While many are uptight about it, some are just having fun.
True, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or quality posts are. I just think they need to be at the very least more than a paragraph.would you agree with me there? Sourcing doesnt bother me if the content is good. Sometimes sourcing goes too far. All I want is something good to read and be interested in. this is an opinion piece. You might like the 2 line ones but im not a fan and most of the folks with the sports tokens dont seem to either.
Of course, I agree with you. A good piece, well sourced and interesting(though relative) deserves an upvote. But in what I've seen here so far, such is not really the case.
Most posts don't qualify to grace the trending page. But because they hold some huge token, they automatically send it there. I think what killed the trending page of steemit is coming here. Everyone trying to have a slice of the pie on huge payout.
To avoid such endgame, I feel curators would have no choice but to still search for that undervalued posts irrespective of how arduous it could be. Everyone is not blessed with great writing skills. But the curator should be able to look beyond a see the subtle efforts put in. Who knows, that might just encourage the person more.
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Good point. Thanks for your comment. I will try to do more curating to others not so big
Wow, thanks a great deal for that huge upvote on a comment.
I don't even have up to that on a post😅😅
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I was talking about Actfit to a friend yesterday and I'm glad you raise this same issue
It's a pity that Actfit posts are now consistuting nuisance on Sportstalk.. I really don't know why too much of these posts now looks like spam
7 out of every 10 content you see are Actfit
I am not calling it spam but I just skip past them because i don't consider them proper posts unless they have some content with them .
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yes i agree, it's hard to find quality content
Thank you :-)
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