Over the last few days I have seen postings on both the Ethereum and Bitcoin subreddits basically calling Steemit a scam that has failed because in order to even break into the front page you need to be famous or well connected. I don’t believe in their overall conclusion but I agree with some of the points they are making. The fact of the matter is, at this moment in time the new user experience feels like a multi level marketing scheme because to have an upvote worth even a penny you need to go out and purchase steem power. I understand this is how the system is designed, but to people coming into the community it can turn them off right away. It is very important that we retain a large amount of new users especially with new platforms like Steemit because the majority of the time you get one shot and if they aren’t drawn in, they are gone. I wanted to talk about what changes I we need to make in order for a new user to feel like they are part of the steemit community.
Make New Users Feel Like They Have Some Power
The biggest problem I see facing Steemit right now is that new users don’t feel like they have any pull on the content that gets seen or upvoted. Some might call this a “feature”, but in reality it is another way that users are being pushed away from using the platform. There needs to be a way that lets users feel like their votes are being represented, even if they don’t have the steem power to back them up. New users are going to look at the platform and if they don’t feel like they are represented, they are going to leave. The majority of people engaged in the crypto community are not early adopters, if we look at bitcoin, many of the people in the community have less than a single bitcoin. Even if they took that bitcoin and put it in steem power it still wouldn’t make them feel like their votes are being represented. If we want to create a social media platform that fosters healthy engagement of new users something has to be done.
Make Tags Feel Like Their Own Separate Communities
One big problem I am currently seeing is that tags feel less like communities and more like twitter hashtags, this needs to change. Tags should feel like subreddits or boards on a forum in order to engage in community activity within certain tags. New users are also intimidated by the front page, when they majority of them, even if they make a good post, will only get cents. We have seen some attempt to create engagement in certain communities, like contests on the photography tag, but we need to go above and beyond that. Many users on other social media sites stick to one or two areas of interest and don’t look at the front page. If we don’t show new users that there are communities where they can find their place, they will be less intimidated by the system as a whole.
Give The Ability to Choose What Communities/Tags You See
I believe this feature is coming, but it is a very important one that I have to talk about. It’s not a very hard idea to understand. People want to see content they are interested in, not a bunch of content they don’t care about. We need to have the ability to filter out the tags they don’t want to see and be able to still have the trending/new/active, ect. ranking of posts to explore.
Move The Payout Period Down Or Change The Trending Algorithm
Recently we moved the payout period down to 12 hours and there were many complaints that people weren’t able to see the content because it was a short amount of time. While I sort of agree with this, I don’t agree that content should be on the front page for sometimes more than 24 hours, which is the real problem. People want to see new content more often and 24 hours seems like a large amount of time for something to be on the front page. A solution to this could be to simply change the trending algorithm to weight posts on more than just the money they earned. If we look at reddit as a model, you rarely/never see anything keep the top spot for 24 hours and their solution for new content has proven successful thus far. There is not a shortage of content at the moment so why should we have the same ten articles trending for a day straight? New users want to see different content multiple times a day and it is the developers’ job to make sure that happens.
Changing The Price Reference Period Down From 7 days
This is mostly just a personal preference, but I think that the reference period should be 3-5 days rather than 7. The price of crypto moves too fast, especially in a smaller less liquid market like Steem at the moment. We are often seeing price references that vastly misrepresent the price and values on the site. This could be a change made for the time being until we mature.
Addressing The Downvote Situation
It has become pretty obvious in the last week or so that people are abusing downvote button, mostly just out of spite for a post doing well. If you look at the front page you will see posts that break no rules, with an amount of upvotes. While I don’t think this is an immediate problem, because the accounts downvoting have almost no pull, but it still sets a bad precedent to new users who think they can just downvote anything they don’t agree with. There needs to be a system set in place that will punish those who abuse the downvote feature to a point where they will lost the ability downvote altogether.
It is imperative that we give more power to the new users and in time it will benefit everyone that is already in the system. If we don’t work hard at retaining new users, the system will fail. If no one wants to buy the currency because there is no demand, people will leave. Right now we are growing, but we can’t relax because the growth could hit a ceiling. If we make the user experience better now while it is earlier we won’t have to worry about franticly doing it in the future.
-Calaber24p
You have it backwards, if a new user has a lot of power already, then there would be no reason to purchase SteemPower. And if I lose my perks that I get when holding SP, when I may as well power down.
Also, if brand new account started out with some power, then the system would be subject to sybil attacks, as people would just create tons of accounts and you'd see way worse havok then anything you see now.
What they need to do is remove the $ from display of a post entirely. Only the author should see it. That way users upvote feels like it has the same power, even if it doesn't have the payout. The obsession with $ is hurting the platform.
yes
@stellabelle you have a lot of pull here. Perhaps you could propose it in a post? I've tried writing a few things on this topic but I don't think they get "heard" if you know what I mean.
I do and I don't. I am not a developer and I don't have any real pull with the founders. Your post says what you think needs to change......
Still, I think if you made the right post describing the issues you saw and asking for help, it would have a lot more visibility. I see a lot of these posts and I've made these posts but I think it would help make a difference. Just a thought.
@stellabelle you are not a dev but u have a lot more exposure than most of us and as we saw in your post about Synereo @ned commented on it multiple times.
This is a great idea IMO. Remove visibility of the $ for everybody else, except for the author, until payout. As @rampant said - "That way users upvote feels like it has the same power"
& also -
This way, individuals are voting on the value they obtain from the post, rather than voting on the collective value already attached to it, by the time they have seen the post - A system, which seems to encourage the same names to be trending and reward quantity over quality, with some of the already established "big hitters" , outsourcing content to fill "their" blogs more and more rapidly". Gaming the system" - as many people see it.
I agree. For those trying to game the curation system they'd still be able to use the number of votes, but it might be less obnoxious than those four-digit payouts for low quality posts.
@rampant yes this could be very easily done with great results. I think initially they wanted the money to be seen so as to attract people by the idea of making that money. Yet instead what is happening is people are seeing the big $$$ and getting excited and realizing it's not likely they will make any and get frustrated and leave.
It is also as said that when a voter sees their vote not increase the post value at all they feel worthless.
While hiding the $ amount wouldn't change the value it would help people feel like their vote was more meaningful.
I agree with the people who say money is screwing with peoples insentives Clearly, for most people Steemit is not a get rich scheme. The idea of monetizing upvotes is a good one, but the only reason I haven't left yet is that I think the platform/community will become better than it is currently.
I totally agree @laconicflow. The community here rocks and I am all in, but the money thing is seriously in the way. May we both be impressed with the way the community develops instead of leaving with a rant in the oven. Crossing fingers. ;)
that might solve one of the problems with the post flagging too. There are some will flag a post just because it is going to get a good payout. That is just jealousy and an abuse of the flagging IMO
Not at all.
It's not jealousy because every user is sharing the daily reward pool so it's in our interest to divvy up the pot as we see fit. For most users their downvote doesn't even affect the payout of a post appreciably, but if they feel a post is getting more than it deserves, then there should be a way of reducing it.
Also, there are posts where someone is posting something harmful to society at large. Once again it's a pool of rewards and thus we have a say in how our reward pool should be shared and with whatever influence you have earned by your SPower you should be able to wield it.
We can only hope that people will use their influence judiciously and not out of spite, envy or some other abusive way. Flagging is more than just for "abuse", just most users here don't know that. Sadly there still isn't a best practices faq or something of that sort for everyone to read that can really explain how things like this work. There is a wiki though that is very informative. Steemwiki.com
it's one thing to flag because something is harmful within the post. Although "harmful to society" is often in the eye of the beholder and whose society.. the beholder or the writer. The difference could be cultural.
It is still quite another to flag simply because the writer is getting more than that person thinks they should. Obviously other readers have already shared as they see fit, who is anyone else to decide they want to take some of that away? Still comes back to jealousy or envy.
You don't understand how the system on Steemit works. It's nothing against you, it's just not explained well at all.
It's a pie of rewards that we all have the potential of profiting from based on votes. If you vote up one person you are taking some small amount of the finite daily pie to give to that one person. That's the simplest way of explaining it and I guarantee you that less than 50% of the users here understand that. They think the money per post is just given freely, but it's not.
Therefore we all should have say about how the money is divvied up. When the rewards are disproportionate for what that user feels they are worth, there is no reason they can't try to dial that back.
As far as envy is concerned. If the real reason someone is flagging is due to envy then that isn't a good reason. If you have been on this site as long as I have you certainly know that there are many many articles that get rewards disproportionate to their contents value. There are many many more that get no reward for excellent well thought out content that took many many hours to prepare. To overcompensate the rewards on a top trending post, that was likely colluded in to trending in the first place, to the detriment of all of the rest of the users is criminal and ultimately detrimental to the site as a whole.
I could go on and on about this topic.
Cheers
I like this idea.
Yes as a newbie here on Steemit, I agree that seeing the $ each post makes is a bit horrifying because I see mediocre posts gaining a lot of $ and great posts with nothing. THis is a total discouragement for me as a new person, thinking about starting to post.
I don't agree.
This is a shared community reward and should be transparent so everyone is accountable. Taking away the knowledge of how much a post is given would be a huge mistake. There is a great deal of fraud that is going on that would be much harder to stop if rewards were unknown.
Also, just letting someone "feel" like it has the same power is lying to them.
Yes, the obsession with money is one aspect that is hurting the platform, but that can be addressed in other ways.
Im not talking about giving them power in terms of monetary power, just empowerment in terms of feeling like they can still participate without buying a large sum. Even if you bought $100 worth now you wouldnt be able to upvote even 1 cent.
The power of the upvote should still be weighted by steam power, since it adds the advantage that users who do a lot for the system or who invest gain power and are more trusted to do the right thing.
A broader range of people are making money than I have ever seen since I started here (near the beginning). Look beyond the first handful of posts, which are dominated by known personalities, and the Trending page is far, far more representative of diversity and rewarding of newcomers than ever before. It's a work in progress, but progress is clearly occurring.
As a new user I agree with your points. I plan on sticking around for a while as I understand the platform is new and changing. I have some small amount of Steem Power and would like to see what this community evolves into. That said I am also keeping my options open with Synereo and see what that network evolves into as well. My bottom line is I want to put my time and attention into a social media outlet that will pay me enough to justify sticking around for the long haul. Right now I am somewhat disappointed with the payouts, but understand there is a learning curve and growth curve involved here...just as anywhere else. Appreciate your views!
This is the real problem here: Junk getting payouts. There is a bunch of stuff on the homepage that is just garbage.
We must empower the people before we have no people!
i agree 100%
I know a lot of users feel exactly how you described... I have felt that way as well. Once things are set up better for new users I think the founders should do a new push... the last one including an appearance on CNBC (that's how I heard about Steemit).
TWO quick fixes:
This is a great idea.
Give everyone the option to put a higher weight to thier upvotes for users with lower SP ( multiplier ) as you say. This would decrease your voting power at the multiplier used , thus making it cost more to do these kinds of votes. This would give users more pull when it came to giving rewards , I think most would use this feature including me. even for me at a base upvote worth around 11 cents (more then most) it seems very appealing. I may do a follow up post on this idea and really get into the details.
I agree with blue, this would be a great solution.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Regarding your first point, there is a way to do that which is to add one more decimal to payout amounts, like this 0.001$ so that people can see the post value increase after they have voted even if its only a tenth of a cent.
Very good idea. I think this should be dynamic. Is you vote is worth 0.0001 then you should see even 4 decimal places.
This is an awesome idea!
Really, as a new user that was expected creativity and social... Steemit is just the next buzz feed... So far I have only found 2 creative posts and 3 discussions. The rest all articles that might as well been in buzz feed.
I believe most of this is on the agenda, and I'm glad you said it all just incase.
One of the biggest things we have a problem right now with is fear of the long term success. That is only because of our latest bubble. I just wrote a post on my blog today to quell those fears. But perhaps I'm not getting the exposure I hoped for because many of these items on your list aren't coded and implemented yet.
So fingers crossed we see some of these in the next month or two.. I bet you we will.
The inexperience of new users also can play a part, especially when they see articles that many would consider to be junk getting high payouts. This just encourages them to put out as much junk as they can as quick as they can.
Also, there are a lot of rules within this community and ways things work that they may be unaware of, plus things are always changing.
Without new people joining, the community will never grow. I'm glad that many of us are considering how to make things better for all, and I appreciate the suggestions that you've made.
Full steem ahead!
I agree - the fact that minnows are low on the pole doesn't bother me much, but the fact they have NO weight does. If they had even a tiny amount they could group together - they could all swim down, as Nemo said. It's always seemed to me that if many, many minnows feel a post is valuable, that should produce the same result for the author as if one whale thinks so.
Actually, even if many many minnows think a post is valuable, it's nothing to a whale vote. I have posts with 70+ upvotes and plenty of comments - $5. I have a post with 5 upvotes but one is a whale - $200. Then of course it starts trending and a bunch more upvotes happen. But it's obvious (no comments) that it's people just chasing curation rewards.
Sad really.
"The biggest problem I see facing Steemit right now is that new users don’t feel like they have any pull on the content that gets seen or upvoted." I agree with you on 99% of your points.
What is discouraging to me is the fact that people are making money when it is obvious that their posts are not even being read. I was on yesterday and someone was up to $20 and 6 upvotes within 4 SECONDS of posting. Clearly a bot was upvoting based on who it was that posted. Another person had over $100 within three minutes. Again, not enough time for someone to have honestly found the post, read the (very long) post and upvoted it. Let alone lots of "someones." If this truly is a platform where the best content rises to the top, something needs to change so that the best content really does rise to the top.
You've touched on the issue closest to my heart, which is
If transparency is as valued here as is so often said, then we all need to be upfront about the distance between the goal and the our current location. It's so wonderful that Steemit would attempt to promote quality content that I'll stick around in hopes it happens, just to be a part of something that altruistic. But to imply that it is or has even been actually happening here spreads misinformation that will definitely backfire. The best way to not attain a goal is to tell yourself you've already achieved it.
Absolutely. Everyone needs to find their tribe. I look forward to the emergence of a "groups" feature of some sort. Tags are simply not serving that purpose right now.
Well said sir well said.
Yes
I Feel:
Readers should get rewarded
I think a market place would sit steemit on top
Whales should use a % of votes a day or week to minnows and dolphins as well
Minnows too
People are not up
voting=means
not reading=could mean
because need to be rewarded for reading
People use use votes
I think lately, there's been a lot of improvement on scarcity of payouts and we now see more and more users are happy...
How do you address the downvote situation though? There are no rules on what you are or are not allowed to do with the flag feature. Should flags just be for plagiarism? What about content you find offensive, mislabeled, or just plain idiotic?
It seems like it is far too subjective for any consensus to be reached for the community as a whole and as long as there are no rules people are free to set whatever criteria they want for what content warrants a flag.
I had one solution, but im sure there are flaws in it. So upvoting can be seen as sort of a margin long, because you are betting the post will do well and get a curation reward. Flagging could possibly be seen as a margin short so if the post goes down in value and other people flag, you can get part of the curation reward they lost. If you are flagging content that does well, instead of losing money, you can lose a bit of your reputation. If you have a reputation under 5 or something (just randomly chosen on my end) then you lose the ability to flag things.
I don't see that really working either, what if I flag a post because I find out it is plagiarized but the post is doing well due to a few whale bots upvoting it? Why should I lose reputation in that case?
Hi @calaber24p i´m completely agree with you, I know that are still developing the application of new features to steemit, as we saw yesterday with the function Promote I think it will be helpful for novice like me can promote their post and be a little more visible.
I think another good function is that we would be able to share the content we like
not only with external social networks we should be able to do it with our followers right here in steemit, This can be helpfull for novices to get a wider audience.
For example, if I make a post and a few dolphins upvote and they share it with they followers here in steemit, it would give much more visibility to my post, which generally would be lost at the bottom of the trending page.
I believe it honestly comes down to self-motivation and willpower. Those who come and don't have instant success and then bitch and whine and complain about how it's a "scam" or "you have to be well-known" are just they type of people we don't want on steemit! I wasn't greeted by some amazing success when I first joined and I didn't quit.. You know why? Potential. Those who aren't willing to look past the fact that they weren't greeted with (or even a month or so down the road still haven't had any) instant success, don't have faith in it's potential. They aren't willing to truly put in an effort and produce quality content and not make it about the money. Steemit should be looked at as a community first and an outlet for possible financial success secondly, not vice-versa. As time goes on though, even those who are complaining and crying about not receiving thousand dollar payouts for their post of a meme (or other various, useless posts) will start to even see their posts become more valuable (even when they aren't really, to the masses), as more and more people who are like-minded to them will join and stay. One of the biggest issues with the steemit users who get discouraged, is them! Patience is a virtue and steemit is the type of place that, with a continued persistence and will to continue providing content, you will get noticed and you will be appreciated for your work by those who find it interesting/worthwhile.
Just my thoughts on the matter. I don't believe anything is wrong with steemit, in fact, it's only gotten better as time has gone on. :)
Your first point is I think the most important one. It is the one that will drive retention up. Let's hope they will focus on this :-)
I agree something needs to change to keep newcomers. It's all to easy to get discouraged.
Completely agree with OPs points. Mainly regarding New Users and how they have absolutely no power.
It's in the best interest of this platform as a whole to give more power to new users. Right now only a handful of whales get to decide which content becomes popular, which in turn encourages everyone else to post the same type of posts--- basically anything promoting and praising Steemit. If you want this platform to be an advertisement for Steemit keep it this way. If you want it to be a melting pot for fresh content discovery where the majority gets to decide on what content they want to see then change it, give the users a bigger mic
This is a great topic, but honestly, it almost feels like Steemit is so new yet that everyone here is still a new user along for the ride of the beginnings of Steems life.
I totally agree that tags need to be made more like subgroups rather than hashtags that are always changing, could both be incorporated somehow?
One other issue I want to raise that wasn't mentioned is the power of commenting. Right now getting rewards from commenting is damn near a waste of time. It rarely nets any reward. I have spent more time I think reading, commenting and trying to be interactive than some of my posts with little to no reward. It would go a long way for the future of Steemit I believe if we have lively interactive conversations going on in the posts, I think finding a way to incentivize the activity needs to be looked into more, and in the case of Steemit, money talks. Even if 80% went into SP instead of SD with increased rewards for commenting would be a great start. Or am I the only one feeling this? I look at most posts and it is a bunch of 0.00's in the comments, even great comments seem to go unoticed as a by product it seems.
I think we all need c redistribution in weight of stakeholders. Just use some squere-function, which will down votes of whales and up votes every dolphins, and problem will solved. Yes?
I must admit, I'm very discouraged with this whole process. I just started posting yesterday, but I really feel devoted to this system since it's not just a money-making endeavor for me. I am very outraged with other social media sites who are bascially ignoring content creators and I hope to one day have my work be recognized on this site above all others. Steemit in my mind is not just the future of the internet; it is the future of the ethics of social media.
Some good points for sure, for me a nice change would be curators dont earn from upvoting. Most minnows only upvote the crypto-celebs to try pick up some SP scraps on the flood. Take thoses scraps away and see how much they make. It would also kill robotic/bot upvoting. Upvotes should still benefit the poster in the same way just not the upvoter.
As a new user, i view it as a matter of perhaps modifying the reward structure as described by several above, but equally important is modifying expectations. If the pitch is "blog and get paid", the motivation and expectations of new users center on the "paid" part. The product will need to deliver/meet expectations on that or disappointment and flight will ensue. My sense is that mainstream social networks are built on a premise of parity (each user vote is equal). If steemit is to diverge from that standard, it should be made painfully obvious as to why or new users will feel 'cheated'. That said, i see great potential in the platform and plan to stick around.
The more I think about it, creating accurate expectations will be increasingly key to user retention. I love the article @senseiteekay wrote in hopes of setting realistic expectations. However, I doubt a new user will stumble on it. I have seen and written love letters to Steemit, praising everything it might do for humanity and pledging my sword. It makes sense that such posts do well as they are inspired and electrifying. Yet, all that joyful optimism has the unpleasant side-effect of misrepresenting Steemit to new users. Even helpful posts about improving ones articles make it seem like post quality decides payout, which is unfortunately not yet accurate. Maybe there'll be a helpful introductory message in the private messaging feature. Maybe mentorship will take off in some cool way. Maybe it already has. ;)
You've made some good, valid points here. I find myself agreeing with most, if not all of them. Particularly the issue of tags, and making tags their own communities. And changing the trending algorithm weighting so as not to leave one post at #1 for 24 hours is also a valid point worth considering.
Overall, it would be good to see Steemit evolve in to a more complex social media style site, with it's own multi-communities, taking on a life of their own, instead of the onesize fits all that it seems to be now. I like Steemit, but continual evolution is not necessarily a bad thing, if done right.
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I agree. There should be a score for each post that gives a higher number than the $ amount made. E.g. Instead of seeing "$0.07" you should see "72 points" or something.
may i please ask, what exactly does all those $amounts attached to posts mean? what can i be used for? i may appear dumb but i am new and should be forgiven. and steem power like it is called, how is it earned, is it only when your post or comment gets upvotes?
my quick thank you. i am taking a look now!