AND IT IS FATAL
It is killing the Steemit platform day-by-day, inexorably murdering the platform we misguided believers thought was nirvana to publish and to preserve our creative writing. We mistakenly thought this was the prefect, final resting place to be ever so slowly rewarded the pennies per minute on good productivity days.
To make it far worse, my Steemian friends and I are the ones who have caused the problem! The better we get and the more we grow in number, the more deadly we become to the organism of which we are an unwelcome part.
All you now-and-then bloggers, all you Steemitbloggers, and all you who just enjoy collecting thoughts and organizing trivia; all of us are the direct cause of the cancer. I am guilty, along with a few hundred others.
It's the quality we foolishly thought was appropriate to create and to get better at as we learned the "how-to" of the platform, and as we tried to expand our contacts and talk with like-minded Steemians. All the while we were adding more fatal quality.
That is the kind of thing I learn when I get away from my familiar stomping grounds. I learned that quality is looked at by the main body of the organism as an internal cancer that is preventing the beta organism from thriving; that if it cannot eliminate the cancer, it cannot survive. It needs to eliminate the anchor of quality to make welcome the Facebook and Twitter refugees who are fleeing censorship and are looking for a more crude atmosphere with zero quality than Steemit offers.
A few sentences ago, I thought I was making light of the problem, but now as I see the words form in front of me, I realize that I'm not. Better minds than mine have opinions on the matter and have diagnosed the problem and the cure. To wit:
I am certain everyone already knows about @taskmaster4450's well-presented posting on the subject. Finding it and reading it has greatly lowered my energy level with my realization that I am in a place where not only am I not welcome, but where even my best intentions are causing harm. The obvious question now is: What's the point in staying?
My only real complaint with Steemit (the platform) has been with the bid bots. I often feel like I am sitting at a small table with a few other writers in a saloon in the old West, writing, and everyone else in the room is gambling for the pool of money in a big bowl on the bar while the fat guys in the suits sit in the corner watching. We have seen enough movies to know who is in charge without even asking who is who. The guys in the suits are the ones running the games.
If that's the way it is, okay. I did not come here to make money to begin with, although many of my new friends work very hard to be successful because they were not here for the pre-mining of Steem when the saloon was first built. There are also many compatriots in other parts of the world finally have an opportunity with Steemit to create an honest way of generating income.
The gambling is okay, too, because it is built into the foundation of the platform.
From page 12 of the Steemit White Paper:
So it is with people. If one tries to do something different, get better grades, improve herself, escape her environment, or dream big dreams, other people will try to drag her back down to share their fate. Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive mining done via mining pools. All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its currency.
The goal of building a community currency is to get more “crabs in the bucket.” Going to extreme measures to eliminate all abuse is like attempting to put a lid on the bucket to prevent a few crabs from escaping and comes at the expense of making it harder to add new crabs to the bucket. It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs sufficient power to prevent others from escaping.
I assume that means the Steemians using the bid bots will someday see the error of their ways and give them up. It alsp seems to imply that it's okay to rob the bank because it is doing a service by spreading the money around.
I don't see how the few guys scribbling away in the corner are going to drag the (perceived) miscreants back down into the bucket. Write them a memo, I suppose. (Short, no quality)
Besides, when you think about how the reputation score is supposed to be the reflection of your worth to the platform, it does not appear to matter much what you write because you are measured by the number of contacts among a variable mix of other Steemians, the number of follows, the number of comments you make within the measured time when they actually count, how often you post, and not a word about content. Not to mention that everything you wrote is buried and non-productive after a couple of weeks.
Steemit simply was not constructed to care about content. That is not a fault; just fact. Our basic misconception was that it was a comfortable nest for bloggers. Nirvana, it is not.
Steemit was designed like a video game: keep you at the keyboard, keep your fingers busy and build up the utilization per user number. Quality really does not matter. Monkeys would probably do as well as a blogger at a Steemit keyboard. (Not by blogging and no insult intended for bloggers or monkeys; I like both.)
The sheriff just came in through the swinging doors and announced a complaint about the damn writers in the corner disturbing all the paying patrons.
"Look here, you pencil pushers! We can't have that kind of behavior in here, Y'all taking up a valuable playing table and you're keeping the paying customers out, so it's time for y'all to get outta Dodge."
"But, Sheriff, we're creating quality here," Tex said.
"Well, ain't nobody asked you to do that and the house rules are against it, so y'all move on now, right peaceable like."
And the small group of bloggers and other makers of long sentences and short stories had little choice, suddenly realizing that the Sheriff was just enforcing the law.
"Where do we go, Tex?" one of the more prolific writers asked of the most experienced writer. "I really need somewhere to write," she finished with a tone of desperation in her voice.
"Well, it looks like we don't have a choice. people with the wrong political viewpoints are being kicked off other platforms and it looks like we're being asked to leave this one.
"I have been hearing rumors about a new town that was formed by writers who need a real home. An acquaintance, @jaynie, has already been there and has staked her claim for her bloggers. Some of them have already left Steemit and moved to the new place. Everything there is still new and there's a lot of turmoil in the town from all the new people joining in the land rush and staking out their own claims, so there must be something to it. It's like a no rules, every-man-for-himself atmosphere now, but citizen committees are being set up to add some policing to control all the newcomers while the town finishes assembling its blockchain structure.
"It sounds like a better option for me, anyway. Follow me and I'll tell you what little I know as we walk."
"What's the name of the new place, Tex"
"It's a strange little name: WeKu.IO"
Enter WeKu:
Steemit rebuilt for writers
The ninth word in the Weku White Paper is "writers" Weku was built specifically for creators of content..
A few items of real interest (copied or paraphrased from the Weku White Paper) to anyone thinking about going to Weku:
It takes less than five minutes to set up an account at
You can repost anything from your Steemit account on Weku. You must note at the top or bottom that it is a Steemit repost, your Steemit user name, and the date of original posting. (If you don't, the plagiarism bots will find you!)
The learning curve for weku is about one minute. You can get an account and be creating a post in five or six minutes.
It may be helpful to keep your Steemit user name so friends can find you (or to keep someone else from registering it before you get to it!)
The graphic is by @willymac, the badge is from Pixabay
@willymac, it has been a hard lesson indeed. i have always felt that we do not encourage good writers. if i consistently tell a good writer that you are only as good as the followers you have got, then i have not created a platform for you to flourish.
i have made points like these in the past but not many people read it or even acknowledge it. I am ok with it if it is a difference in opinion but such writing dont seem to elicit any opinion whatsoever.
Of late i have struggled to post on Steemit for that very reason because it is very hard to see things come to a pass just like you have predicted it.
I have read many articles like the taskmaster's posts and i have not agreed with them. quality is subjective but that does not mean it is insignificant. Quality should be encouraged without which we will have chaos.
Is quality elitist? i hope not.
Initially steemit encouraged bloggers to come on board and pushed for quality posts. Eventually they wanted people to come on board so that there are a lot of transactions on the system. that itself seems like a system bent on self flagellation.
i think there are a lot of people who have made financial investments into Steemit who just want to see it succeed by any means possible. Maybe that is what the platform requires. Who am i to second guess them?
A writer requires a platform that can give people good visibility to his/her work. A platform that is not governed merely by social behavior. A platform that thinks itself as a bridge between consumers and publishers. It will deliver material from publishers to consumers based on preference matching.
I would like to follow good content rather than the author who writes them. But that is my personal preference. I don't think Steemit thinks this way.
Unfortunately, Steemit appears to openly state that quality needs to be completely eliminated from the platform to open it up to non-intellectual endeavors. Too many words in a posting must frighten potential users away when all they want to do is post semi-literate one-liners and clips they found on the Internet.
I was a bit surprised at the total lack of interest in the posting. How everyone - assuming that more than four people actually scanned through it - could be so apathetic to the idea that the apparent majority of Steemit users want to eliminate quality is beyond my understanding.
It is like a sports team who collectively want to strive to be really bad performers! I certainly have no desire to make a career playing on a team that has such a small opinion of itself.
Steemit is designed like a video game: keep the user on the keyboard, time entries, award "gaming" scores based on participation, interact with others, form teams, compete..faster, faster, faster! They do not care about quality, so all measurements are essentially how many times you pull the trigger. I know that's a bit crude, but that is exactly how I feel when I'm trying to communicate with someone who will actually listen at the same time knowing that saying ten words to fifty different gamers would generate a higher score that writing something only one person will read.
Steemit is going to change and it will be in a direction in which neither of us will be comfortable trying to survive. All my life, quality has been emphasized and the fact that many users want to eliminate it is as bizarre as any collective decision could be!
I urge you to set up an account with weku and begin moving your posts there. The account is free and you get 100 WEKUs to start; no payback needed. At least it will give your posts new life in a new world. When the finer points are added next year, you may be able to sell your stories or use your material to support advertisers. It is going to be a place designed for writers and even beginners there are discussing quality and the need for creativity among themselves.
It is a new frontier now, filled with immigrants and settlers and escapees looking for a better future and it is growing faster than Steemit did at this stage of development! To me, it's an exciting venture with a far brighter future.
At least set up an account and look around. if you use my referral, I'll get a bonus and I'll give you half of it when you make your first post. It's an appalling oversight that your posts have received so little of the attention they deserved. You have nothing to lose by adding them to a platform that does not have cancer! https://deals.weku.io/pick_account?referral=willymac
Five minutes to set up an account!
Join me there, my friend.
I haven't posted in this way @willymac, and neither have the people I follow. It's a shame you are heading off to what you see as greener pastures but I wish you all the best.
None of that was directed at you, my friend. Those appear to be the opinions of those who want to eliminate quality and quality is one thing you have delivered constantly and superbly. What gets me upset it such a blatant comparison of quality with a terminal cancer. That comes from someone with a totally different vision and who is in an influential position to make his opinion heard.
One of the reasons I'm not more productive is that I spend my time reading what others have written. I enjoy and learn and am often intimidated by the things others produce on a daily basis. There are a lot of very bright, creative people here.
The other viewpoint wants the really creative people like you to stop because a block of text that apparently few potential new members could read will be intimidating by its mere presence. That is the part that still has me partially stunned!
It is the first instance I can remember that someone has actually advocated dumbing down a game so anyone with two functioning brain cells can play on an equal level. That does not bode well for the platform, and the lovers of creating word pictures are the ones being targeted to surrender to allow it to happen.
It is the beginning of a race to the bottom.
I do see weku as an alternative since its express reason for being is to provide a place for writers by correcting the anti-creativity stance being taken by Steemit. I don't plan to leave Steemit, but I am trying to build myself a base in weku since it is in its startup phase and advancement is far easier now than it will be in a few months. Many others from Steemit are doing the same and it is more like a family reunion every day.
Peace.
I'm there, too!
Excellent! Just added you to my follow list!
I have so much energy invested in Steem that I probably won't abandon it entirely but it's good to know there's a back-up plan!
You already have an account. Why not repost your Steemit posts to weku so they will remain there in the awards pool income status forever? It's not fun to watch something good on Steemit disappear after two weeks.
You can't possibly lose with that approach.
You can continue to vote on old posts?
Yes, according to the White Paper! That is what makes it so appealing.
Hey, @willymac.
When I first read taskmaster4450's post on quality, I was ready to launch a counterstrike. If you missed it, don't worry, it never left the pad. :)
However, in essence, while I understand where he's coming from, I would rather not discourage quality, but encourage good enough. Quality is subjective, and so some people are going to find some things of value, others of lesser value, and some with no value at all.
There is a definite work to result ratio that as a creative I feel I need to meet. If I'm constantly doing eight hour-plus posts, and getting back less than a $1 for my efforts, that's a lot of time being wasted. However, if I'm putting in no more than two hours and getting less than $1, while still not so great a ratio, it's at least four times better.
So, there's some managing of expectations with time spent, but doing the best one can with the post should still be a priority.
Also, the next point where I part ways with TM4450 is I don't believe that all things that could appear here have value, and therefore, masses and their likes notwithstanding, I'm not of a mind to vote for it. I don't think they should be rewarded at all, by the poster himself (because in many cases, they're not even the creator), a curator, the app being used, or bots. I don't know how to discourage all of that, but if we start diluting value we end up inflating things and the platform goes down in flames anyway.
Just because they exist out there, doesn't mean they should. Just because people will do it, doesn't mean they should be rewarded. And certainly not as much as a post that some thought and effort was put into.
So, as for me, I will be holding the line. I will continue to upvote what I find is quality within the limitations imposed upon me by stake (or lack thereof), and I will continue to produce what I feel is quality or what adds value.
If enough of us were to do just that, the issue would still exist, but slowly but surely, the apps whose posts are not adding value to the blockchain will fade and those that are adding will continue on.
Still, everyone is free to find their success and fulfillment wherever that might be. I for one am happy to be able to put my work out there directly to the STEEM community (visibility limited as it might be) and let those who see it be the judge as opposed to going through yet another gatekeeper.
Good stuff. I am with @melinda010100 as I have been in the STEEM Community for over a year now and have a great many friends and contacts here. It is good to have a backup plan though.
Hey, @sgt-dan.
Consider this: set up a weku account and repost everything you have written on Steemit to weku. Just cut-and-paste, add one line saying it's a repost and the original date. It will remain in the live awards pool and can be upvoted even years from now and that will still add to your income stream.
It has got to be a major opportunity for all of us and you don't have to leave Steemit to do it.
Compare that to Steemit's two weeks.
And there will be no bidbots siphoning off the awards pool.
No whales with most of the tokens, either. Everyone buys during the 30 day IPO period!
uh oh willymac speaking the truth again =)
Not always a successful survival trait, though.
Hello @willymac, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
Thank you for the recognition!
Hi @willymac!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 2.574 which ranks you at #14650 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 726 contributions, your post is ranked at #386.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server