Incredibly sensible and great metaphor but I don't think its strictly an accurate one.
Sadly, not everyone writes quality articles time after time like yourself and the number 1 issue on this whole site is that very few people read.
There are dozens of initiatives to get people upvotes automatically simply for turning up. This I find completely wrong.
You and many others point out that quality content is of the ultimate and singular importance. I think you're wrong.
People like me who like to read are the customers, and it is we who are the most important. If it weren't for the readers and consumers; The customers - The content providers would be talking to themselves and the autovoting would be much worse, a load of writers just upvoting each other and slapping each other on the back and telling themselves how talented they are.
Steem is sold as a content rich platform, its also sold as a form of social media, as I repeat many times, its a million different things to a million different people so there is no 'catch-all' solution.
However, I want the human element. I want to read and tell someone I like this, I found it interesting and informative. Auto voting and AI will be the death of Steemit. We will have auto respun articles,being autovoted by bots and the owners of said bots counting their vast rewards.
Steemit will not be empowering to the masses, it will empowering to the few. This sounds sadly familiar and links back to what we were talking about earlier.
There is precious little trust in this community. The wealthy technocrats get wealthier, the strugglers devise ever more spammy and devious ways to get the few crumbs dropped for them.
There is no utopian dream being played out here or in Crypto in general, just the same greed but with different protagonists.
On a more positive note, there are some wonderful humans and brilliant writers, but no where near enough.
..and lets have the number of views metric back on posts. This is the most important metric and strangely disappeared. If I were a conspiracy theorist, and Im not, Id say this was done on purpose to stop people easily creating corellation between views and votes....
Another eminantly sensible and well thought out post again my friend but only valid for you and a handful of others on here I think.
What to do? Creation and manual curation. 50/50 reward split. Creators able to earn bonuses for the genuine @tarazkp style of answering and engaging to sincere commenters.
This is true but it goes back to what people are here for. Most aren't here to read, they want to earn.
Can you reward them so they can keep producing interesting content for you exclusively? This is the problem with decent series being tossed by networks because they 'don't appeal' widely enough.
On other platforms, the customer offers value because of ad revenue, that is the only way. (patreon is a little different). Here however, the customer can only add value to an author through direct contribution but, how many can? People want quality content to consume but are used to not paying the direct cost of consuming it. This is the current internet model. Free information and a churn and burn mindset for the producers of it.
You mean the one that never worked? It was broken and was not indicative of actual views plus, it was gameable and would update on every refresh by the author themselves. I would say that many of the view counters online are BS.
It is valid for anyone looking to build a career here in my opinion. Anyone who thinks they are an artist deserving of support, anyone who creates anything they think has value. If they can't produce somewhat consistently here, they aren't likely to do so consistently anywhere. Track record.
Thanks for the reply once more.
So you see Steemit (as opposed to the blockchain itself) as a career opportunity? You see it as simply a place to provide content as opposed to a social media platform? Can I ask then what are your thoughts on the various social media imitation style DApps on the chain, such as musing and steepshot, zapple, dlike etc etc ? Personally I love them as my preference is for a social media experience, but Id prefer more control over what appears on my 'wall', so how does this compare to your own personal ideal for Steemits future and your preferred use ?
PS I didnt know the views didnt work properly and could be gamed. Thanks for that, no one has ever mentioned it to me before.
I see Steemit as a part of the blockchain. For some, it might be a career here, for others it might be somewhere else. With the exapansion of blockchain in general though, the possibility to learn on the ground floor now and turn it into a new career is immense.
The Dapps, that imitate now are essentially targeting low-hanging fruit in many respects but, it makes for easier transitions over to the technology for average consumers. ItLater, there are going to be new Dapps that will become more specif purpose and probably, much less social in many respects. Perhaps they will be industry specific more than catchalls.
Not many people did realise. They thought it was a coverup. If you consider Youtube views, how easy would it be for a media advertising company to game the view counter? A bank of computers on repeat, some VPNs, rolling IPs? Gangnam style... :)