In my opinion #newsteem is much better than #oldsteem.
Under #oldsteem hardly anyone was manually curating. All curation was done by paid voting bots and #newsteem fixed that. The trending page is more interesting now.
But this is my personal opinion and my experience. If you are getting downvotes I understand you are not happy with the changes. There is a reason why people downvote you, however. Paid voting bots are not accepted anymore under #newsteem. Everyone that used voting bots have to adapt to the new rules. It's the community that sets the rules. I like this decentralized approach.
Thanks for answering so quickly. Yes, I get the reasoning and respect your personal preference - but does the DATA support it? I'm not a big fan of "community" or "swarm intelligence." By that reasoning, billions of flies can't be wrong, shit tastes good. I prefer listening to experts, and I consider you one. And I believe you're an honest guy who will clearly answer me with his opinion separated from the facts he knows. Please forget our somewhat opposing personal opinions for a moment: Is #newsteem working or not?
I'm willing to learn, if someone can give me some sort of proof. "The community" has not set any new rules at all. A select few have changed the system, based on a democratic mandate. No problem here. Another select few are on social justice warrior style warpath, seemingly with a perceived mandate to do so. A great many folks (and I have data to prove it) still prefer the old way of selling their vote. And the vast majority doesn't care one way or another. Pretty conflicting information to my mind...
Dear Pablo, I don't want to argue with you, or change your mind in any way, shape, or form. I'm only asking for help to make up my own mind. Please help me, or tell me you can't or won't (which is also O.K.)
Thanks in advance, and warmest regards --- Folker
IMO #newsteem is a success, but based on my data we can't call #newsteem a success. The number of posts and the number of active users is still in a decline. Daily account creation is at about the same level. The only thing positive is that more STEEM is being powered UP. Unfortunately, this has not impacted the price in a positive way (yet). Steem is still following most other altcoins to lower levels.
I think it mostly depends on how we should define the success of #newsteem. What was the purpose of #newsteem?
In my opinion Steem should be a network where 'the community' decides which content receives the most visibility. Under #newsteem manual curation has improved a lot and paid voting services (bots) are no longer effective. I see this as an improvement, because under #oldsteem only posts that used a paid voting service made it to the trending page.
It is still far from perfect though. What I call 'the community' is actually a couple of large whales who have a lot of influence. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I agree with you that their behaviour has the most impact on how the system works right now.
I think we can only adapt to the changes. Visibility on Steem is not for sale anymore by using voting services. Whether we like it or not.
Let's hope communities on Steem (which is in the pipeline) will help to improve this visibility issue. I think it can help if we can post our articles in a specific community to bring it under the attention of that specific community only. Each community apart can then decide which articles should receive the most visibility within that community.
Thank you kindly. This is information I can use and I will think about it thoroughly.
Perhaps my wife and I will leave as well, perhaps not, we're not sure yet. She wants to sell her art at some time, I had ambitions to become a filmmaker now that I'm semi-retired. Until #newsteem we both put a lot of work in our posts here. Scaled down some since then to wait and see, that tallies with "posts in decline" you observed.
In my case, it cost me about $100 U.S. per video in travel cost etc.. With this kind of cash every 7 days (never mind the work) I can't wait for things to happen organically (tried it under a now dormant acct.) but depend on promotion to speed things along. We're not rich people. So Youtube and Facebook with their much broader reach have suddenly become a viable alternative to us, although I have always rejected them on principle. In her case, many fluid art videos get views in the tens of thousands for the established artists. I must ask myself, how much is my anti-YT-attitude worth to me?
Now it doesn't look like we can get any traction on Steem anymore, due to the visibility issue. I've seen other artists here complain about this, and that no star Youtubers come here you know yourself. The powers that be totally underestimate the importance of the visibility issue to COMMITTED content creators and it feels like they're chasing us away, although, of cause, I try not to take it personally.
Anyway, thanks again. You have helped me greatly in making progress towards a decision.
You're welcome :)
At the current Steem price there is about $7.000 USD to be shared among all Steemians per day. That's peanuts compared to the total sum of revenue on Youtube. We all do our best to earn a small part of that small pie, but Youtube has a lot more money to share with its uploaders.
Even if you do very well you probably won't earn more than 1% of the total reward pool. That 1% would be a maximum of $70 per day. Not much compared to what some people make on Youtube per day.
During the 2017 hype a single Steem was worth multiple dollars. People were earning a lot of money on Steem, but most of them left during this bear market. They where here for the money only. At the current price, most of us won't get rich here ;-)
It's not about the money, it's about the exposure. If it was about the pie I could buy a little more Steem and only curate; that has become very lucrative and I can feel the difference even with my measly 4k VP. (Whether there is something left to curate we shall see soon enough.) Blog about what I curate on a daily basis and bingo. That could become the start to a nice little income from a hobby. "Rich" is different, I'm clear on that.
The media acct. is not my first one here. I was there for the hype; good times :-) I stuck around and kept producing content. I only quit writing and recording narration for my vids. It's a hobby, but there is a limit to working for "free" and I had to come up with a quicker format. Now I can't even push those to where they are seen... Too bad.
Let's see where things are headed.
P.S.: I have never used a voting bot and I'm O.K. with stamping out this kind of machine based self gratification. I have bought votes from real Steemians, for visibility. It's not about money for me, it's about visibility. I would be O.K. to send Steem to @null for the same effect, but the "promotion" tab is not acceptable to me; it defeats my purpose. Anyway, just thought you should know. No need to discuss this aspect.
You did see the post about Randowhale? It upvotes but sends steem to null.
https://steemit.com/randowhale/@randowhale/the-new-and-improved-randowhale-all-steem-will-be-burned
Yes, I saw that. Thanks for the tip all the same :-) That's an interesting approach. However, some of the downvoters object to the "unfairness" of pushing one's post up. The randowhale will not necessarily protect from those downvotes. Merits a try, though.