Hey @nonameslefttouse,
I hope you know I hear you and I do see the problem. I was just over at your blog actually reading maybe it was your most recent? The asshole one, haha.
So after listening to you as well as @abrockman, I think I've been pushed a bit more in your direction. With my personal beef being how much good shit is getting pushed down because someone is "Hogging" the Trending top spots. I still don't have that much of an issue if you promote a post just to get it on there. Sometimes you can pour your heart and soul into something and get less than 10 VIEWS, especially when you're new.
But when one user with content that is of questionable quality, I say that because different people find value in different stuff, one mans garbage...you know the rest, has like 4 spots on trending for days at a time, that just makes trending useless, and of course, that's a problem.
I saw one of your proposed solutions; detecting when people are using bots and moving them over to promoted, but I think the hole in that is that any user can promote any post, so someone else could get you sent to promoted section. I think differentiating between those two is probably technically very difficult in terms of development.
So yea, I dunno dude, take some solace in that you moved me from "Bots are A okay!" to "Bots are okay for a special post but even then, don't overdo it"
*Edit: I forgot I wanted to ask you, the great equalizer here is supposed to be the downvote right? If you see someone on Trending and you REALLY don't think they should be, why not bring out the downvotes?
Downvotes. Some of those downvotes on trending right now are from me. Someone abused those bots to write a post to tell people they were about to write a post. That's on trending. I had thought I'd seen it all... That's the "asshole" and he's putting on quite the show. New minnows think he's a VIP. The rest of us are just shaking our heads.
Ewww...
"Sometimes you can pour your heart and soul into something and get less than 10 VIEWS" and boohoo all round I am sure. The question life is asking you when you are not a winner is: what are you really doing this for.
the answer to that is probably the most important part of your relationship to your own creativity and maybe your reason for being.
the journey imo is bigger than just to win, it is to live and die and disappear ultimately as if you never existed at all. looking at it from that perspective is , again imo, the best way.
when it is meaningless, pointless, and no one will see it or give a shit, but you do it anyway, that is when art becomes spirituality and the value makes sense. all the shiz you guys are talking about is the bollocks associated to the industry and selling and the fickle assessment of worth based on the numbers of opinions that say it has worth. but again just...imo. but I enjoyed reading this conversation after the posts of emptiness that abound around steemit.