Hey again, steemitizens!
I have a secret I need to get off my chest and share with someone. You look trustworthy enough to me, so pull up a chair, this might take a minute to explain.
Okay, all comfortable? Need a cup of coffee or a bottle of water? Joanne from customer service made some excellent brownies too, help yourself, they're in the break room down the hall.
No thanks? Well, your loss. They're kick ass brownies! Anyway, let me get straight to the point.
I've asked you to drop by today because we've got a problem to solve here on steemit and I think you might be just the right person to help. The steemitizens are a fine bunch of hard working folks. All trying to find a way to get along and survive together out here on this sweaty, dusty, backbreaking blog farm.
And some folks are just not pulling their weight.
Let's face it. Some people are just shitposting. There. I said it. Some are putting more manure than plants in this great big garden.
I'm not gonna lie. I really expected more from what I was told before coming on board. Since joining the community here, I've seen such a wide disparity in individual output, that I'm sometimes just shocked by the widespread lack of originality. And these people still get a paycheck?
Look, I've only been here for about a week myself, and I don't claim to know everything about how this place runs.
Maybe you know more about it than I do. Maybe we can figure it out together. All I know is that something needs to change.
I have been asking around, and listening in the halls and overhearing chats. There seems to be a group of people dedicated to doing quality, original work here and that's the core and heart of the entire thing. It's just that there is a second group. The group that just dredges up stuff already posted somewhere else, and rehashes news that is already published for free on dozens of sites. These are the people that are effectively littering on our playground. They add no value to posts, and they just blast noise into the flow of otherwise beautiful work going on around here.
On one hand, I'm all ABOUT decentralized, chaotic, unpredictable, uncontrollable, freedom and liberty from tyranny of any kind for all. But I also expect some dignity, self-respect and added-value from community participants and speaking even more generally, I expect nothing less from civilized humanity at large.
However:
I am the boss of no one and no one is the boss of me.
I just want to put this idea out there in my show of solidarity with the other steemitizen's voices I read saying similar things.
If you want to post and discuss a news article, add your commentary to the post. Voice your opinion. Don't just publish someone else's research, or work via a link and run off, and think you have added any value with no additional thoughts or opinions of your own added to the post.
Maximize value in what this community has time to consume from your personal contributions here.
Personalize your posts. This is just straight up my personal opinion of course, but if you don't put your personal mark on your posts, you'll just be forgettable anyway. Yes I used the word personal a lot in the last two sentences. Own it. Personally.
Find your voice. Find your niche. Produce the best content you can every time. Or save the post till it can be better. Be original, creative, inspiring and freely speak your mind here. We can take it. These are smart people around you. Just like you and me.
Spend some time welcoming newcomers. It helps them and it helps you. In 47 hours, I got my first 100 followers, by simply reading introduction posts, and making new friends with the comments section. We conversed. We laughed. We shared support for lost pets. In 47 hours, I found a warm waiting family here, starting from zero as a totally uniformed, just walked in the door, clueless and confused minnow point of view and so can you! Maybe it will happen faster for you, maybe slower. But without followers here, you will soon become forgotten.
Yes, I've already mentioned two ways you can quickly become forgettable on steemit. Perhaps that is enough for now, to get you thinking about how to be memorable. What sorts of things you see here that stick with you. What sorts of things you might do with the power of your steemit podium and platform, to get YOU out to the world around you.
And if you need any help figuring it out. Ask me, or any of many other helpful, wonderful people here on steemit. We all want this place to succeed and grow beyond our wildest imaginations, right? So we better plant the seeds and water them now and along the way, help each from turning into weeds that choke the place to death.
Love me or hate me, I can comfortably stand by this rant. We've got people of all ages here, from all over the world. Respecting the time they spend here and creating a wonderful library of content is the best gift we can give each other.
I don't care about your offsite link dropped without comment. I also don't care if you can spell or use grammar perfectly. I don't care if your language is not my language. I care about who you are, and what you can share with this community that we can all learn from, relate to, laugh at, cry with, or experience together. That's what will keep steemit's steem engine running, and keep you from becoming forgettable in the mist.
Come out of the fog, and back into the steem!
I can read crypto news on a thousand sites, and see the latest politics everywhere else. Tell me your feelings about them in your post. Add some value. Tell us about yourself. Show us your art. Expose your brains. Don't just post some rehashed old meme. Create a new one! Write a story, or tell us how you did something and how we can too! It's so easy, that even young children here manage it just fine.
Nothing is stopping any of us from being real here, except ourselves.
Hit me with your reactions below!
And with that, this post is finished. Full steem ahead, steemitizens!
Yours in steem success!
@sircork
Well said. In the long run quality and creativity will win but there will always be people abusing the system. I've seen some new guys following others like crazy in the beginning to get followers on their own and then dropping it back to nothing when they reached enough, sad😭.
Never take your pedal pushers off the petrol pedals, friends!
Its a problem. When there is a large influx of new people into an uncensored site, its going to be a bit chaotic. I think many of us feel time and the marketplace will help sort things out.
I see you as an individual Steemer have 3 options.
Glad you brought it up. Followed :)
Thanks for understanding followed back! Lets see some old guy photos. Im old by steem standards myself at 48.
Ive met guys on here in their 70's, I'm 51!
I usually put a fair amount of pics in my post generally. I also host the monochromemonday tag and the treetuesday tag. Thanks for following back ;)
You have a day for photos of trees? I might already be a winner! I live in the middle of 17 acres of the damn things!
This post received a 21% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @sircork! For more information, click here!
Very lengthy but a very good point. Thanks for the post. Hopefully some folks will really listen and change what they are doing.
This is sort of the point. This is not really the platform for short form articles, in my opinion. That's what twitter is for. This is for meaningful, useful content. People are paying to read it after all, through voting with their steam power.
I agree, but somewhere there is a happy middle ground. I see a lot of folks on here complaining when something is pretty long. I have shortened some of mine up, especially when it comes to my genealogy posts. Too much info at one time tends to lose people's interest, and also not enough will do the same thing.
I write for readers, not speeders.
AMEN. I feel like there's a portion of the steemit community that is only here for the possibility of making money and I think many of those people are the ones creating the unoriginal/recycled posts, compared to those who want the platform to be the best it can be and for steemit to be successful as a whole..
Exactly that!
I am a beginner blogger (thanks to my friend @ilyastarar )and have only written 2 blogs for the first time in my life. This article really inspired me for further writing my stories.
Awesome! SO happy to inspire someone to write! I have followed you to see what happens next!
Thank you. Hope you enjoyed first part of my 100 km ride.
I did! That's a super post! I am also curious how you managed a "hardcopy" of google maps, unless you meant you just mapped your trip and printed the results :)
Initially I mapped my trip but for further details I zoomed the Map (Divided my entire journey into 4 stages) and printed them step by step and labelled them as A,B,C,D. Well hardcopy was the standby option because It was a new track for me and I didn't want to be loss (Which I did for 5 minutes but came back on track quickly) :)
Good planning. I'm sure the trip was amazing!
One of the best in my life :)
@sircork I must say that your observation regarding content influx is based on facts. But I feel inside me that it will be fine after some time, after all steemit is still in Beta phase. Maturity will come around I believe.
One thing to be noted is, there are several bots working hard to run down content posters with no value, @cheetah is one of them.
What we can do as Steemians is flag and report the plagiarized content and comment under the content which is no value to spread the word. Eventually those who don't care about value will fade away.
Cheers
Follow @shawshank
I appreciate your position and hope you are correct, however, my experiences as software engineers and director of technology on some large social network development projects in the past leads me to believe, unfortunately problems scale with user count. We will see for steemit.
Steemit seems to me something exceptional. If i m right it will pass these hurdles.
I hope you are right, it's growing like crazy though, and that usually leads to diluted platforms in the social space. We need to be setting precedents now as a community so that newcomers learn the style before they overwhelm us and destroy the value!
That is right. Many things aren't clear hen it comes to collaborative efforts regarding content posting.
There are some posts explaining the quality of interaction one should have but it should be something like sticky posts for every new user.
The quick start guide available at the moment isn't enough to emphasise on quality of content.
Agree!
well said and I hope I am being real and giving out content that is meaningful, but get frustrated when my post dont get shite and other dribble gets tons of upvotes, and I resteem stuff that is liked by me and I think is good, so where do we go from here
In your case, keep doing what you are doing. Regardless of other noise, non one's blogs will get much traction until you get up into the hundreds of followers following you. That's just how it all works apparently.
Good Very interesting. Thank you.
My pleasure. Thanks for reading!
As someone who is brand new to Steem, your post hit it on the head for me. I noticed the "junk" right away and I am determined not to shitpost! All of my content will be original. I might never end up with a fat Wallet but I see this as another platform where I can share our journey. I am a self-confessed Luddite and only got my first smartphone a year and a half ago, so all this stuff is very new to me! When I first heard the word blockchain I immediately thought it was some type of fencing...
Everybody has to start somewhere. Still surprises me to meet "luddites" now that computers have been a part of daily life for over 30 years in people's homes, but hey, welcome to the game!
I think this definitely will continue to be an issue throughout the entire lifetime of this site. The fact that you can come here, see some random person who wrote a welcome post and has made hundreds of dollars makes people think that any old crap content can make easy money. I've only been here for 2 days and I've already written one unique story post that I thought was rather interesting, but sadly it got lost in the noise. I'm sure a lot of people will get discouraged that they're writing quality, heartfelt content and not seeing any comments or community involvement but see other people literally doing nothing special and walking away with massive cheques. I'm hoping that quality content creators will succeed more than "shitposters". And thanks again @sircork for my greeting yesterday :)
My pleasure. Focus on following... Not followers... Even as you remember that your audience is everything. But let it choose itself while you just choose your voices and choices . Quality should always win in the long run.
Just loved reading this till the end! You're so influential with your words and so strong when delivering an idea. I don't need a second thought to agree with what you said because you know my views on the matter. I absolutely vouch for this one. Upvoted and resteemed. Following you definitely and looking forward to amazing content from you. 47 hours? Wow! I did it in 8 days. You're a ripper! Good to see you!
Im not one to waste precious time OR beat around the bush. Stay tuned for more to come. And thanks for the humbling compliments!!!
Staying tuned. You're welcome.
I have a group of people who have been invited here by me and they are new to this. I shared this post with that group. Such a useful advice for them.
You are a steemit superstar! Thanks again!
Great article here! What kind of posts will actually do well here? I find my posts getting drowned in the noise despite writing and sharing my original pics.
Follow follow follow others, that's my advice at first! Read and watch and lurk and learn. You don't have to be an overnight sensation, that's a sure recipe to be a flash in the pan. See what's working and add your sound to the jam!
I can't honestly say "you should post X, Y or Z" when the only real answer is you should post "U" ;)
Thanks @sircork! I'm following those I love :)
That is step one! Step two is to be sure to talk to them too! :) Water those seeds!
Nice lines and upvote.
Thanks!!!
Congrats on what you've done here, absolutely awesome. I'm still new, finding my way about Steemit and loving it. You're right, it's not cool to litter the playground with poor content. It's worth taking sometime and posting quality. Upvoted and following you. Looking forward to seeing more of your posts here!
Thanks @judym ! See you in the steem!
Thanks for this post! You have some great thoughts on getting past the informational clutter that ALL platforms encounter. Although quantity has a quality of its own, users should cleverly remix when they are not being completely original.
I agree! Reduce, remix, repurpose, but don't just repost. It should be a law of physics, or at least a guideline for any principled person. :)
It takes some time for people new to Steemit to figure out what's rewarded here. I am a big fan of original content, with few exceptions. I go so far to say that I would rather have lower quality original photos than stock photos that don't have a personal connection with the person posting. There are exceptions, like when it's not possible to get an original photo. But I think the attention economy and Steemit are about each of us being unique. Here's to quality content!
I'm an author, more than a photog. So I cop out with clip art and such, but I fill in the blanks by telling stories and painting pictures with my words. I do a lot of photoshopping though, so I usually try to personalize even the images I use. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, I try to be entertaining, informative and compelling as much as possible though.
Yep, adding value is the real key here. And having a unique perspective. It's not about writing a book report, but having a point of view! Steem on! : )
Too many people post crap. I post for readers, not speeders. The ones who do the work here, will reap the rewards, all of them, and they might make some money too. But do it for the love of the game, or don't do it! Glad you enjoyed the read. See you in the steam!
Definitely. See you around the Steem!