I know that it seems a bit cheeky to come forward with a review and maybe criticise of a platform which I have only been using actively for about a fortnight but since for the past couple of days I had my arm in a sling and could not really write I spent some time on exploring the site and thinking about what I like about it (and what not so much).
[CC0: source - pixabay]
So I'll be brief and try to summarize my observations in points.
1) Steemit is a content-oriented platform, which, in theory, should reward and promote the good and comprehensive content.
Why then - I ask, there is no easy way to subscribe to and follow tags? If the content is to be promoted, instead of following people you should be able to follow tags - which would make it easier to find and promote good content regardless of who wrote it.
Now, I do understand that the current set up promotes social relations but it annoys me that I cannot follow tags from topics that I am interested in. The workaround I found was to make a bookmark in my browser for each tag I find interesting, but I'd rather have one button to click than several.
Experiment: I'd like to also experiment with a feature that would make content creators completely anonymous so that people would not know who wrote the given text and would perhaps vote on content not necessarily on the author.
2) The idea of paying for content with cryptocurrency.
I will not go into details of Steem vs Steem Power vs Steem Dollars, which I think I cracked and have some understanding of. And I think that rewarding writers with cryptocurrency is a brilliant idea.
But it also drives people to write and upvote just to qualify for the reward. This is probably the toughest nut to crack - how to balance rewards with avoiding excessive upvoting for said rewards. The system of voting power seems reasonable.
But it does limit one to about 10 votes per 24 hours and that stops me from searching for more great content since I wouldn't upvote them anyway.
3) Bots
I've heard that people use upvoting bots. I also have seen some bots in the comments. My take on them is ambiguous as they can promote both worthy and worthless content. But if I had my own platform like steemit I think I'd ban them because I feel the point is to actually read the content and respond to it and not to have a bunch of tiny robots voting for texts nobody even has read.
4) Comments
They are a wonderful way to engage with your audience. I'd add some pool to the author of the post that s/he could spend on rewarding the most insightful comments on the post; and some pool of tokens to the commenters to appreciate the other in a comment thread. That would work even better if the comments were anonymous, so that the rewards would be for great content.
5) Curation
I love reading and discovering new content. The algorithm behind the curation rewards, however, is quite a tricky one and holds people voting on what they like. And they vote on what's already trending instead looking for more great content. Maybe the voting power should be in two separate strands - one for trending and hot articles; and the other for new ones.
Well, that's my two cents of a dollar for you :-).