Another user friendly feature has been removed for no reason. It appears the "reply" button has now been removed from posts older than a month.
So, lets review. Since launching a few months ago, the Steemit.com website developers have made these changes to the user accounts:
- You cannot edit your post after 1
daymonth.
EDIT: Ability to edit posts extended has been extended to one month - You cannot delete your post after a vote or comment has been added
- You cannot delete your comment after a vote or comment has been added
- You cannot get any replies to anything over a month old.
No questions, contact, applause, snarky comments, or simple conversation of any kind after a month.
This kills the usefulness of old posts, UNLESS YOU ARE STEEMIT.COM and need Search Engine bait.
These kind of actions are starting to pile up and create a pattern. There is already very little effort put into usability and cool features to entice more users, and now they are slowly removing basic controls over everyone's content to benefit their ecosystem.
Not even Facebook and Reddit will stoop this low, they still allow users control of their own personal information and who gets to see it.
And for those with the "blockchain is permanent" argument: The Edit\Delete\Reply functions worked perfectly until just recently, they were purposely removed during the last upgrade. The capability for the Steemit.com website to only show your edited posts or not show your deleted posts is already built in, it has only been disabled.
This is just another thing that will piss users off and drive them away. Right when the price is tanking too, great timing.
It is about time people started talking about basic Social Media Rights around here. So here is what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has to say:
A Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users
Social network service providers today are in a unique position. They are intermediaries and hosts to our communications, conversations and connections with loved ones, family, friends and colleagues. They have access to extremely sensitive information, including data gathered over time and from many different individuals.
Here at EFF, we've been thinking a lot recently about what specific rights a responsible social network service should provide to its users. Social network services must ensure that users have ongoing privacy and control over personal information stored with the service. Users are not just a commodity, and their rights must be respected. Innovation in social network services is important, but it must remain consistent with, rather than undermine, user privacy and control. Based on what we see today, therefore, we suggest three basic privacy-protective principles that social network users should demand:
#1: The Right to Informed Decision-Making
Users should have the right to a clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.
Users should be able to see readily who is entitled to access any particular piece of information about them, including other people, government officials, websites, applications, advertisers and advertising networks and services.
Whenever possible, a social network service should give users notice when the government or a private party uses legal or administrative processes to seek information about them, so that users have a meaningful opportunity to respond.
#2: The Right to Control
Social network services must ensure that users retain control over the use and disclosure of their data. A social network service should take only a limited license to use data for the purpose for which it was originally given to the provider. When the service wants to make a secondary use of the data, it must obtain explicit opt-in permission from the user. The right to control includes users' right to decide whether their friends may authorize the service to disclose their personal information to third-party websites and applications.
Social network services must ask their users' permission before making any change that could share new data about users, share users' data with new categories of people, or use that data in a new way. Changes like this should be "opt-in" by default, not "opt-out," meaning that users' data is not shared unless a user makes an informed decision to share it. If a social network service is adding some functionality that its users really want, then it should not have to resort to unclear or misleading interfaces to get people to use it.
#3: The Right to Leave
Users giveth, and users should have the right to taketh away.
One of the most basic ways that users can protect their privacy is by leaving a social network service that does not sufficiently protect it. Therefore, a user should have the right to delete data or her entire account from a social network service. And we mean really delete. It is not enough for a service to disable access to data while continuing to store or use it. It should be permanently eliminated from the service's servers.
Furthermore, if users decide to leave a social network service, they should be able to easily, efficiently and freely take their uploaded information away from that service and move it to a different one in a usable format. This concept, known as "data portability" or "data liberation," is fundamental to promote competition and ensure that users truly maintain control over their information, even if they sever their relationship with a particular service.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/bill-privacy-rights-social-network-users
"You cannot edit your post after 1 day." This isn't true. You can now edit a post up to the second payout (one month). I just edited my last post which is 5 days old.
Thanks for the updated info, I will update the post.
That is better than before. But delete is still missing, and the removal of reply is just idiotic.
Yeah, noticed that the other day and had another wtf moment.
It's mind blowing isn't it? Removing edit, reply, AND delete has got to be the dumbest changes I have ever seen on a public message board since the beginning of the damn internet! Now old posts are of no use to anyone, except steemit.com for SEO of course.
Time to start a campaign - edit/wipe your posts at 29 days, to protest for Social Media Users Rights.
Do it Tuck! Rile up the users one more time before you disappear again.
lulz
Yes you are absolutely right on that. I will be editing/wiping it clean every 29 days it is!
I've just joined Steemit a couple hours ago, but this already feels like a major problem to run into, the loss of a reply button at old posts. From all the promotion material I gather that this should be a platform to foster community, but if anything older than a month is removed from interaction we're only left with hype. As if anything old does not have value to be engaged with. It reduces the material to pure consumption instead of fostering conversation and creative discussion that could lead us all further. Most big or important things are still significant one month later.
I can imagine that there are reasons behind the time limits regarding pay-out, but with this limitation it feels as if the monetization takes priority over valuable content creation. Can you be the next hype? Instead of can you create something with lasting value that can foster intelligent discussion for a longer time?
Yes, exactly. It takes all the value away from anything over a month old, what a waste. Your description is pretty good, you should post your point of view on the problem too. The more people that speak up the better the chance they re-enable all these features.
Exactly I could not have said it better myself. If at the very least the reply function after a month does not come back, I think I will be LEAVING. (and I just joined this site yesterday thinking it was an open community)
This site is completely useless as it stands now in my opinion. Everything over a month old should be removed if you do not allow others to reply. What is the use of old posts at all?
Yeah. That's my reaction too. Why leave stuff here if it only benefits them and not me? I may not get $, but I will definitely get more interesting comments and even some conversation if I post stuff ANYWHERE else.
Make sure to post your thoughts about it too. New users input should be important, especially when it is an enthusiasm killer like this. It will only change if more people start making noise about it.
the whole set up here is like treading water in a whirlpool while wearing lead shoes. if you stop for a second, down you go. most posts are never seen again after 12 hours. some articles take almost that long to research and write, if they are any good, unless someone is straight up plagiarizing. i save my best writing now, and don't post it here, so i can post it somewhere that will reward me fairly.
i have had my own issues with the comment/edit cutoff. i understand the maybe reasoning of a voting cutoff, but even that puts unnecessary limits on appreciation of quality. maybe after a certain point a non-payout upvote could still be had.
honestly i don't know why i even type this stuff. i have accumulated enough to leave here and get a real job writing, where i at least get rewarded value for value. this is eating my soul. if i didn't have friends here, i would be gone already. this is ultimately futile and pointless if you don't already have huge steem power, and lots of whale friends.
Yes, it has recently changed into that, like an over-complicated twitter with bots and brigades you have to make deals with to get anywhere.
I would be really pissed if I were you, that is a lot of your original content that they just decided to keep. That was not the deal when this started... I have a whole series of how-to's I was going to reformat for this place, but it is more fun to post on a forum where it will generate discussions for years. Without tips, votes, and replies it seems dumb to leave anything good buried here.
The only thing I can think to do is try to get people to make a post talking about what would make it worth staying around for. There is not much time left though, if steem hits a nickel I think its done.
now pretty much what i do is look through the new posts until i find something poorly written or poorly reasoned that pisses me off, then i write up a whole original article on the subject. i can do that almost anywhere. youtube even. i'm still searching for more markets for my content, but i know i'm not making anything here.
i have copies of all the stuff that i'm very happy with. live and learn. this place, at least, jump started my writing urge again, so, not a total loss.
they should have called this The Content Graveyard.
true