Yesterday, I wrote a bit of a rant on the very poor quality poetry that is often being posted on Steemit (not such a big problem) and massively upvoted (big problem). If you want to know what I said about it and are honestly open to hearing, take a minute and read that.
I will be writing a follow-up to that soon as well clarifying my position a little.
(hint: my intention is not to snuff out new artistic flickering flames or encourage us all to be cruel cynics.)
(image via www.pixabay.com)
Anyway, obviously if I’m going to stick my neck out and say, at significant personal risk of being disliked here, that a lot of what is being posted and supported is just plain bad and that that says something about us and about Steemit, it’s going to ruffle some feathers. It seemed to do that, but it also seemed to bear fruit in terms of a conversation of building a better quality culture on Steemit (amazing that these kinds of conversations are possible here, btw!). And so I feel encouraged to keep talking about quality on Steemit in general, and, specifically, about the arts as that’s my “arena”.
And that's what I want to write about today: the fact that, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we are building a culture here; a new sort of quirky but real society even—and one that will have real effects in the world.
Steemit has the potential to eventually shift world dynamics. Actually. That is the potential I see in this platform—and not just in economics and with cryptocurrencies!
Steemit, to my mind, is ripe to be a leader in the curation of excellent culture, and to help us regain some semblance of taste and excellence again in the humanities and arts. This is for two reasons:
*One, that the community so far, on the whole, is an uncommonly intelligent community of people who are willing to have real conversations, ask hard questions, and tend to be people who don’t tow the party line, who see cracks in things and are willing to speak out about what they see--and all with a good sense of humour!
There are pioneers and thinkers and creatives here, and ones who are capable of rising to the challenge of developing a taste for excellence and quality, and using their voting power to share this excellence and quality with the (massively growing) user base, and to lift up the very best in the community.
In short, Steemit members are poised to be leaders in cultural curation because of their general giftedness.
(image via www.pixabay.com)
*Two, that Steemit is still a wee little baby in terms of being a successful social media platform.
If Steemit continues to take off, the kind of culture we set about building now will have way more effect than on a more established social media platform, because users coming into the platform will have to adjust to the existing culture we create if they want to succeed. It's much easier to set the tone from the start than to try to backtrack and fix it later.
If we are intentional about building a community that recognizes and rewards GOOD content at this stage, Steemit will continue to attract the most talented and intelligent and gifted people, and will challenge all users to be constantly growing and producing better quality content. And therefore it will also become significantly influential on the world stage.
Don’t we want that? And don’t we understand that if we reward poor quality, that that is what is going to become more and more common?
And the best writers, artists, thinkers, experts will leave due to such low engagement with their work. It won’t be worth their time.
This is already happening!
I’m not too fazed by poor quality being rewarded, at least in some respect from a personal standpoint, but it certainly is discouraging to think that I would have to compromise my work in order to make money on here. I certainly won’t be doing that, but it is the risk we take with our users—that they get frustrated and leave, or they lower the quality of their content in order to be seen.
For me, for altruistic large-scale reasons, I don’t want that dynamic to take over because I really think we could create something incredible here that would come at a key cultural time.
(image via www.pixabay.com)
However, even from an investment standpoint, isn’t the quality aspect of this platform the selling point? Because it’s a platform that demands a lot of its users, more serious bloggers and artists will be attracted to it. But those same people will get bored and tired and frustrated and will leave if they are not justly recognized. That’s just how it is. So even from a financial perspective, I think it is vital that we become VERY intentional about what we upvote on here.
Now, this of course applies to every subject matter under the sun that is being posted here. It is imperative that we only reward really good work, or people that we want to encourage because we see real potential in them. And I don’t mean everything has to be serious or perfect.. just good. I happily upvote funny things and silly things if they are done well.
Upvotes should mean something. You've got more influence than you realize. Make sure you make yours count!
Xx,
Kay
P.S. Happy to hear your comments and suggestions here!
If this conversation interests you, don't forget to follow @kayclarity. I write regularly about art, Steemit, life in general, and post my own poetry and music.
You know, for some reason this post popped into my head today. Now that I have some more time here on Steemit, my perspective has changed a bit. I came to the realization that withholding your vote actually helps to reward bad poetry. The reward pool is the reward pool and your upvote helps to decide how much of that pool goes to each post. When you abstain from voting, you are essentially relinquishing that power to the rest of the community. That would be such a bad thing if you agreed with how the community was distributing those rewards, but as you have stated, they aren't exactly rewarding talent as you. So the best thing to do would be to upvote any post to which you would rather the funds be distributed. That will, over time, decrease the payout for the crappy poems and give it instead to any poems you feel are more deserving.
PS,
Please disregard the request I made of you in your wallet. It was only for if you were planning on staying inactive for a while.
I totally agree. There is the push/pull between "delivering great content" and "I wanna make as much money as possible" and many (including myself) sometimes fall in the cracks. I don't put out garbage, but a lot of the top money earners on Steemit consistently produce 4-5 horrible posts. But they have their dedicated followers who will upvote literally anything they see.
Do you see a solution?
I don't know. Not specifically, but I think the starting point is to at least discuss it. One thing that holds sway here with a lot of users is a sense of certain things being "faux pas" to most of the users. If we create a sense of looking down on a lack of integrity and promoting bad quality (it's here somewhat which is why it's been so much better than all other platforms) I do think that helps.
So.. that's why I post about these things.
Always open to solutions and ideas! Xx, Kay
I've been thinking about this a bit. I thinkI may have come up with a solution, but it will take people like @kayclarity to participate if it is going to be successful. Here are the steps:
Ignore the trending poetry, at least don't start there. If they're trending, they most likely don't need your upvote. Plus, as you've already demonstrated, trending does not necessarily make the poem more likely to be good.
Start using new poetry as your starting point. When you find something worthy, upvote, comment, and resteem it.
This is probably the most important part. Whenever you can, create a post with links to your favorite pieces over the last couple of days. This will allow you to again coment on the work and point others to it as well.
Sorry - been travelling the last few days. This is a GREAT protocol for getting a great conversation going and supporting really good writers. I love it. Thank you!
How about we designate a tag that says you're open to criticism.
Crit-me? Tell me? I don't know...
Hi there,
I don't tottaly hate your post. With some of the things I am agree, but other make me feel that you envy some of the people with upvotes. I think that some of the quality posts don't have many votes and stay unpopular, because they need to be noticed. But before that it takes
Of course when money are involved there is much posts that are just about that.
Also I'm wondering if people like something who have to judge, not only the author, bu5 the audience, too?
I understand that sometimes it might seems not right, but everyone likes and sees different things.
:)
Happy to hear your comment. If you read some of my other articles, like the one I would linked, you'd see I've already spoken about that a bit. You can believe me or not, but it really isn't jealousy that motivates me, although no matter what I say some people will think that. For better or for worse, I live based on principles and with as much integrity as possible. And I am very sad to see really good writers and artists get discouraged because people don't recognize the excellence of their work.
In the end, of course there will always be poor quality and people that will upvote it.
But I think it's important to have an ongoing discussion on the platform about quality if we want Steemit to be as good as it can possibly be, and maybe shift the balance at least a little. I'm just one little voice, but I hope I can influence at least some people here. Quality matters! Xx, Kay
I get your point. And if you say it's not jealousy- I take it for true. I believe that this is not the typical social media and there is not so much vanity. But the talented people don't have to give up. It will take them time and hard work to get to the place to be valued. It takes more than talent and excellence for this, they need to find audience that will read.
I agree that quality matters, but my point is that there is different tastes. There is a lot of things that I don't like, but that don't makes them less meaningful.
I upvoted this article because I like the debate and I'm happy to endorse the conversation, but it is not a high quality article IMO.
I think quality is the wrong metric to push, but I do agree that people should read and put some thought into their upvotes. It'd be really great if they documented those thoughts in a comment. I personally crave the comments more than the upvotes, though a little money is always appreciated.
Take me to church SISTER!!!
"Birds of a feather flock together." I believe that as we continue to have open lines of communication and continue to give feedback to encourage others to step up their "game" we will all benefit.
Yessssssss
I haven't read your other post yet - but I will. I agree with what you are saying here. One thing that really bothers me is the "mining" bots. I would much rather see upvoting being done by real people who are actually reading the posts, rather than having things being upvoted by a program. I think that one thing would possibly help to ensure only good quality content is being curated. But, I am sure that a lot of people would probably disagree - especially the ones who are mining. I've also seen a lot of new users asking for "follow for follow" - and I don't know if they know or even care about that potentially diluting the quality of the platform. I only follow/like people/posts that are interesting to me. I also have had to unfollow a few people who have overused the "share" button. I believe its like most things - people are going to get out of it what they put in. If they put in the time and effort (and care & friendship) they will get that back, and will be able to sort through all the other "noise". Thanks for this conversation!
I think we have to keep in mind that there are multiple cultures here. The interactions in the sports topics will vary greatly from those in the poetry section. I think you the system is designed to upvote work which you like. Not necessarily quality. This mimics real life where catchy pop star tunes by far out sell deeper lyrical masterpieces. What you are proposing works on theory, but in practice tips the scales very favorably for the accomplished writers and performers such as yourself. And ultimately, there are a lot less of you guys than there are everyone else.
But I say, "Do you." I only ask that you give others chances and when feasible, direction. If you want to increase the quality of work here, doing that will go a lot further than simply withholding your upvote.
I wrote a Short Poem a few days ago and Posted it. I don't know if it's been Viewed more than a couple times. It took me Hours to write. Would love to Know what you think of it. It's a bit on the Morbid side, but I was feeling moody and Got Inspired.. so.. it is what it is. I too have seen an Awful amount of Insanely bad Poetry Posts with lots of UpVotes. I agree that this Community should be Prudent with their Voting. I'm New.. and Learning to be Selective with my Votes. This is a Definite Upvote for me.
I read and commented on your poem.
I can see a huge disbalance here on Steemit. I often see a lot of upvotes/money on some... practically junk, just because autor is a popular here and has high reputation and also I can see a lot of efforts and great posts from minnows and newbies which got 1-2 upvotes and 0 money on it. and I'm sad when I see such a things.
I've decided to help those fellows: I leased SP for upvoting their posts. Just to help them grow and don't give up.
When I created my account I thought it's a really great fair system. but in reality, the same as in the outside world, this is a system in which only reach guys could win, other else people just a food for them. Just a source for upvotes
That's amazing that you did that! Artists really need that kind of support. And yes.. Steemit isn't perfect. Still good, and we can work on correcting some of the problems, as you are!
thank you for your warm words