So this is my second day here at steemit - I had previously been fixated on the facebook medium, with little use of twitter and reddit. Someone on facebook linked a post to something here on steemit, I stumbled upon this mysterious land and had to investigate.
What the hell is a 'block-chain'? I've heard of Bitcoin before and researched a little but still couldn't get my head around the crypto-lingo. I understood the impact though - a decentralized economy, and a decentralized social network that encourages quality content. Personally, the standard of quality discussion and content on facebook was decaying - people wanted truth in the form of a catchy slogan, if they wanted truth at all.
I admit, being exiled in facebook land comes with a few bad habits that some (like myself) may also carry over to steemit. You see facebook is more about consensus (the like/trolls ratio), overall subjectiveness is often ridiculed, discouraged or ignored - it teaches a habit of presenting information, so long as you keep your subjective view out of it.
One of the first things I notice with steemit, is that the 'post' button is a 'publish' button, and there is a title bar? This gives the impression that this isn't your usual "blert-box", so I went about compiling together a "story" to "publish".
So it got "flagged" (is this a 'dislike' button?), I hadn't even got my head around what the crypto-currency vote thingy was all about either. I noticed that this "flag" had made my post a little less noticeable. I thought to myself ' it's this easy to censor someone elses post?'.
Being a well-tempered facebook warrior, I initiated a 'flag-war' on one particular person with rather healthy and robust blog - my flag seemed have no effect at all - the confusion grew.
Shortly after, I met 'steemitcleaner' who informed me on the rules of copy/paste and use of subjective material only. I was surprised at first (you mean, you actually want to hear what I have to say and think? - and that its kinda a rule here?), that's when my attention was directed to "the white paper".
Alas! This is an amazing idea... I quickly made the adjustments to my flagged posts, and cleaned up my flag war remnants with upvotes and an apology. Lesson learned, this is not facebook - create content, not simply redirect it.
To any fb transfers out their, read the white paper first, and express YOUR words and YOUR thoughts when you publish a story. Presenting other peoples work requires more then citation and acknowledgement, but primarily your overlayed commentary/perspective.
I know there are people like myself who skip over the fine print and just like to jump right in, but be mindful of the intellectual property laws and copyright - make it original, speak your mind here at steemit, it is more then a distribution network of recycling news and content.
Step by step you gonna learn how steemit works. Welcome.
A Steem vote is NOT the same thing as a FaceBook 'like'. That's hard to wrap your head around or it is for me. Content, content, content. That's important. Always think in terms of 'content'.
So do you upvote comments? or is the general consensus to reserve them for the published article? Thanks for the tip :)
Yes I upvote comments. But I'm VERY picky about the ones that I vote on. Voting pays. I'm trying to learn how to NOT waste my vote if I can avoid it. I've taken to making comments rather than voting . A vote is NOT a 'like'. (A comment is NOT a post. they're different.)
There is a NEW change in the making. It's not fully implemented yet and for you and I ( krill...very low powr) it will take a while to affect. The short version is that you get five full power votes a day. The more times you vote than that the less they count.
But wait...it gets better.
If, somehow you manage to accumulate thirty dollars of steem power (THE POWER!) you get a slider. A voted adjuster. With the slider you can calibrate the power of your vote. you can vote five times at FULL power...or many more times at reduced power.
Think of it as water pressure coming out of a tank that's slowly being filled by a drip...drip...drip.
the flip side is that if you do NOT vote at all...your tank runeth over, and your steam power is wasted.
Well said. This is not a place to copy-paste material. One thing that I think is missing is a "Get Started" page where newbies can see what can and can´t be done. The site it´s stil in Beta so I´m sure it will be added eventually.
White paper OR..https://www.amazon.com/Steemit-101-Discover-Social-Content-ebook/dp/B01HC47NLU#nav-subnav
Well, 4 weeks from now you'll probably have a 50 followers! hang in there.