3 Things to Make Steemit Better Now
This is Day Seven of @ dragosroua’s #challenge30days writing challenge. For more info on the challenge, Click Here. Today’s prompt is “Name 3 Things That Must Be Done Immediately To Make Steemit.com A Better Experience
Source: Pexels
Every day when you’re going through your Feed on Steemit, you probably see at least one, if not 20 articles about things that are going wrong with Steemit. Some of the people are just complaining, but some really have good ideas that, if implemented, could have a positive effect on the platform, the communities built on Steem, and the cryptocurrency itself.
I’m going to stay away from some of the more controversial ideas and points of contention. Those have been thoroughly discussed by people who are better informed and more eloquent in their explanations of the issues. Also, I don’t see any of those changing any time soon. Therefore, let’s tackle some attainable ones.
Source: Pexels
Idea #1 - Wallet Spam
Wallet Spam is sending an unsolicited message to someone through the wallet memo line. You send them a small amount of Steem or SBD (typically 0.001 SBD) and a memo with an advertisement for your resteem "service." (I put "service" in quotes because I don't believe resteem services have any legitimate value. If you disagree, feel free to let me know in the comments below, but I'd ask you to prove that an active Steemian is willingly subjecting his/her self to hundreds of resteems per day.)
See what I mean? This was just in the last day.
This is a topic that I wrote about a while ago. Feel free to read my original article here if the issue has been bugging you as well.
Steemit considers using the wallet function to send unsolicited memos to be spam and abuse. Their solution is that the community is supposed to downvote the offenders, but it can be difficult to do so, because there's no way to flag a wallet transaction.
Here is my solution that I wrote about previously:
Transaction Escrow
Currently there is no way to prevent this spammers from sending their unwanted messages. From what I have been able to tell, muting someone won't prevent their message from showing in your wallet as it's a transaction on the blockchain. Therefore, the message gets through.
Because these scammers are exploiting the system to advertise their "services," I propose a change to the system. Rather than simply sending money directly to another party, the funds would be held in escrow by Steemit until delivery was accepted. Each transaction would have to be specifically "accepted."
For those of you who don't know what escrow is, Wikipedia defines it as: "... a contractual arrangement in which a third party receives and disburses money or documents for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacting parties."
In this case, the dependent condition would be the approval of the transaction by the sender (by sending the money) and the receiver (by specifically accepting the transaction (and memo)). Since the escrow is held by a neutral 3rd party (Steemit), you wouldn't have to worry about your money getting hijacked or stolen. All you would have to do is approve the transaction.
Whitelist
Yes, it would add another steps and could be time consuming, but the process could be automatically bypassed for specific senders. A "whitelist" could be added so users could put certain potential senders on their list for automatic approval. Any transactions from those senders would automatically enter and successfully exit the approval process without additional confirmation from the receiver. The successful transaction would show on the wallet log like normal.
Whitelist Variant
A variant of the whitelist could be a "followers approved" type of system. It would still rely on an escrow system with Steemit acting as the intermediary, but rather than requiring a user to specifically approve specific senders, all of the users they follow would automatically be approved. Additional users could be added without following them, but that would have to be done manually.
Blacklist
Because Steemit will be the one holding the money in escrow, it should be safe from hacks, and it shouldn't be retrievable by the sender. Also, a sender could be "blacklisted" so that transactions from specific people will automatically be rejected and the SBD returned to the sender. The would-be receiver wouldn't even know that a transaction had been attempted.
The blacklist could even apply to people below a certain reputation threshold. For instance, you could set it to automatically reject any transactions initiated by a sender with a negative reputation. Or you could even block potential transaction from anyone with a reputation below "x."
tl;dr Let people Reject or Block wallet ads from beggars, spammers, and scammers sending 0.001 SBD.
Source:Unsplash
Idea #2 - Resteem Filter
Continuing with the theme of resteems, add a filter so resteems don’t show in the Feed. I thought I had written about this before, but I can't seem to find the article. Maybe it was in a comment. Regardless, here we go.
As I've shown, there's ample opportunity to abuse the resteem system. There is currently no limit on the number of resteems that can be done in a day. There's also no way to limit the number of them that appear in your feed. Therefore, if you're following someone who likes to resteem every cat picture or meme they see, your only recourse is to unfollow them, even if they normally post great articles that you'd like to read.
This is definitely on a different level than the wallet spam, but it's still an annoyance. Because Steemit can already differentiate between a post that was made by me and a post that was resteemed by me, it should be relatively straightforward to create options that allow you to choose to see resteems or not.
- It could be as simple as going into the "settings" menu and checking/unchecking a box
- It could be a whole new "user interface" menu where there are more options for how you would like information displayed
- It could be limiting the number of resteems per day to 1 per person so that it has value rather than just being something that can be useful, but is not limited in supply.
Just a few ideas and I'm sure there are many who could present better ideas in a better fashion, but this would be something that I would like to see addressed.
Source:Pixabay
Taper Delegation
For many of us who have been on Steemit for a while it can be difficult to remember the daily struggles of the newer Steemians. For example, I started using Busy.org a while after joining and was able to use their slider bar for voting, but I mainly use the Steemit interface for posting. As such, it was extremely helpful when I received a delegation and was able to start using the slider bar here. But I digress...
After trying to help some folks remember the struggle of the newer members, let's go back even further, to the first few weeks after signup. You have your account approved, you chose your username, and have even started posting/getting rewards. And what happens every time you claim those rewards? You lose some of that delegation from Steemit.
Yes, I understand that the purpose of the delegation is so new users can actually post. Without it, they wouldn't have bandwidth to be able to make contributions. However, there's a psychological barrier that's put in place when you lose just as much delegation as you gain in rewards. I agree that the delegation should be removed, but it would be better to remove it at a rate that is lower than what is being gained. This would allow the new user to feel like they're making progress.
Rather than removing delegation at a 1-to-1 ratio, reduce it to 1-to-2. In other words, if you claim rewards for 1 SP, rather than having Steemit remove 1 SP of delegation, remove only 0.5 SP of delegation. By the time the user gets to 30 SP, the delegation would be completely gone. This way, the user can see that they're making progress. It will encourage them to continue rather than discouraging them by making it seem as if they aren't getting anywhere.
Conclusion
Wow, those were a lot of thoughts and it was (I think) the longest article I've written, so if you stuck with me through the end, thank you! I hope the ideas made sense to you and hope you feel they would be useful to implement as well. Feel free to let me know what you think of these ideas in the comments below. Also, you can share your ideas if you'd like.
tl;dr Stop wallet spam/abuse, allow users to filter out resteeems, taper delegation for new users
Disclaimer: These are just my opinions. They're for entertainment/informational purposes only. Do your own research. If you find value in resteeming to 40,000 dead accounts, feel free to use those services as much as you'd like. I'll get your posts in from of just as many eyes (0) for the same fee. Just send me SBD with the memo "down the drain" and I'll know what to do with it. Min .25 SBD. Remember, even turtles need spring cleaning, so encourage them to clean out their shells. Thanks.
Previous Writing Contest Entries
- Day Six: My Main Reason For Staying On Steemit
- Day Five: What Are The Top 5 Crypto Assets I'm Investing In Now?
- Day Four: What Are My Top 5 Most Relevant Witnesses On Steemit?
- Day Three: What’s The Best Thing That Happened To Me Because Of Steemit?
- Day Two: What Would I Do With A Gift of 1,000 Steem?
- Day One: How Did I Get On Steemit?
great ideas! I have one question about the message spam - I get it all the time as does everyone else - but I don't really mind it - after all - they are sending me money every time they do it - I couldn't even tell you how much SBD I have received for free and I don't even read most of the spam - but I hope they keep sending it to me
I can tell you how much you've recieved, less than 1 SBD. Yes, less than $3 in value. Honestly, it's probably closer to less than .1 SBD which means less than $0.30, but let's round up. They send such a small amount that it's negligible.
The bigger issue is that they shouldn't be allowed to choose what goes in your wallet, you should! If you got up in the morning and before putting your wallet in your pants you noticed an advertisement card or three sitting in your wallet, you might be upset. You didn't put it there. It's your wallet, you should get to decide. Either creating a whitelist or allowing us to set the message cost, then we are determining the value we place on our time. We have a National Do Not Call list for a reason.
Does that all help? Make sense? Still think I'm crazy? ;)
I dont think your crazy - it's the principle of the matter which I get - but as a fan of dividends and multiple streams of income - I have to say - I hope they keep polluting my wallet with spam cause I never read it anyway and I don't have a real possessive relationship with my wallet except where it concerns taking money out of it .... I wouldn't want anyone in my physical wallet - this is true - but I don't mind some extra digital scratch here and there for a little spam. Speaking of spam - how about a little shameless self promotion - check out my blog and look at the new firepit we just put in this weekend...
I can see your point. If you don't look at it, probably doesn't make a difference. And I understand the "anything helps" mindset. I just think if they want to bother me, they should pay more than 1/3 of a penny. I'm a numbers guy and I like to see what's going on (the inflows and outflows) from my wallet, so I check it. Having a bunch of clutter in there makes it harder to evaluate. It's probably back from the "balancing the checkbook" days. Ha ha.
Heck yeah, promote that thing! I'll take a look at it now. :)
We agree on that point! - I think they should raise the pay to 1/3 or more
@Steemplus has an amazing app that allows you to deal with resteems. It also allows you to hide wallet spam. I really love this app, it is browser extension. @SteemPlus latest post has installation information at the bottom of the post. They are always working on adding new features and improving the app.
That sounds really good. I have trouble trusting browser extensions though. They tend to be more susceptible to security breaches and I don't want to see my work go down the drain. I'm going to look into it though. I'd like to have an interface that meets my needs better. Thanks for the suggestion!
The resteems are my major reasons to unfollow someone. It's because it reminds me very well of the thousands of shares I saw on Facebook and I don't want to be reminded anymore about it.
Something about this should really be done in the nearest future. Otherwise resteems will and up like spam for users like you and me who don't like this kind of practices in excess.
I agree, man. Any time you start getting comparisons to Facebook, warning bells should go off in your head and you should change your actions immediately. Ha ha. Seriously though, they need to change it.
Thanks for sharing!
I'm definitely down for the Escrow idea. It get's annoying seeing random services advertising on my wallet. Also speaking of delagations you were the winner of the BOUNS delegation from my live drawing earlier today.
https://dlive.io/video/humanearl/ebe164a9-522c-11e8-b1e0-0242ac110002
I will also be releasing a dtube video of it if you have to wait until tomorrow to watch. Congrats man and thanks for all the support you have given me. It means alot and now you will have more SP to play with for an entire month.
Man, thank you so much! I have you on auto-vote because I had been missing some of your posts and I want to continue to support you since you've been such a big supporter of me. I knew you were doing the drawing, but I didn't know I was in it. I must have missed the one where you disclosed the list. Thank you though! I'm honored. I'm also excited for it as I have been working on building a community of people that I upvote and they're going to be stoked to be getting hit with extra ooomph. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help dispense the kudos on people. :) You rock!
Very well written. I like all of the ideas. All of which I think would make a big difference. Also, I think that most of them should be fairly easy to implement.
Thanks for your comments. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, but I had to step away for a while. Real life summoned me. I literally laughed out loud when I saw that you had read the disclaimer and that you actually sent .25 SBD. I'm going to over-deliver on my terms. I've looked at your profile and it looks like you have some interesting things to say, so you just got a follower. Thanks for the laugh, man!
Haha, I'm glad I made an impression. Your article was spot on.
Here, I will delegate you one of my tapirs.
Thank you! I will delegate the task of carrying messages to it. Also, it can carry it's own treats because it has an honest face and I feel I could trust it not to eat them before it was time. :D Does it have a specific name that it's normally called?
I feel like telling you her name might be breaking the social contract going on around here. But it's Indah.
It's a bit of a violation, but I didn't want to be rude and call her by the wrong name... or assume she was a boy and then find out she's a girl. She's cute as can be. :)
I'd applaud the re-steem filter, as sometimes I get like a dozen or so re-steems from the same person, and that can serve to alter the whole focus of your feed, and not always in a positive way!
I know what you mean. All of a sudden you're getting bombarded with things that you don't have an interest in and you wondering how they got in your feed. It's days like that I want to unfollow those people... or I whine about the lack of resteem filter. Ha!
I like the ideas. The unsolicited messaging in my wallet has just started to pick up within the last week. Hardly saw it before that, and now I generally ignore it.
Resteems must be a bigger deal to others than it is to me. I see stuff I don't care about, but I also see things that turn out to be posts that everyone should see. So, I probably wouldn't use the filter before I used the unfollow, which I have done on occasion based on the resteem issue.
With tapering delegation, I am in full agreement. There's no way in one week that a new user makes 15 SP. Not without considerable amount of help. More help than most will get in six weeks.
All of these fixes are ones that should have been in place months ago, though. They're no brainers. All I can say is, the most likely place to see these changes is through a third party interface, like sugarsteem, which theuxyeti is working on, or even busy.
On Steemit, they've only been taking features away, or hiding them. And they've done that without with any announcement whatsoever.
Sorry, I might not have been clear on the tapering thing. It probably didn't word it well. I meant that when you get, say 1 Steem, when you power that up, Steemit removed 1 SP from their delegation, so in essence, you haven't made any progress. You're still at 15SP. I think it would be better to only remove .5 SP so they can see they're making progress.
I'd at least like to see more value placed on the resteems. Here's another idea: how about if you want to resteem, you also give the post a 100% upvote? That way it demonstrates you feel the post is really worth it. I actually like that idea. And if you get below a certain VP threshold, you can't resteem.
Yeah, I don't have a lot of hope for the changes to be made to Steemit. Even if Steem gets worked on, I don't know that Steemit will improve much. Here's wishing though!
Yes, I really don't like that there isn't a "patch update" when they make changes. Seriously, every other software program out there tells you what changed when they make a switch. I don't know what to say. It's frustrating, but I don't know what can be done about it. They really, really, really need to hire a communications officer. Or if they have one, they need to have a coaching session with that person.
re: SP
Oh, no, you explained it perfectly and I got it the first time. The communication failure was on my part. I was trying to say that there's no way a new user earns 15 SP in a week, which is typically when they've been ending the delegations. You were saying do it in half SP increments. I agree with that, too, as long as the user is making SP. Even if they reduced the SP they delegate by what the new user makes bit by bit that would be better, instead of the way they do it now.
Yeah, there definitely needs to be some kind of announcement board or something when it comes to Steemit. With all the talk of the big things that are supposed to happen, it's the little changes, the phishing and the scams, the hacks and attacks, that just don't get explained at all. I'm okay with Ned getting the word out. Someone should. I'd also like to know why Steemit is down or buggy or showing wallet transactions from a week ago instead of now. You know, "Hey, this is happening."
I ran newspapers for 15 years. I could probably do their communications for them. My concern would be getting information, and then toeing the company line. I guess that's better than nothing as long as there are useful details in the releases.
I think the misunderstanding is still mine. I had not realized that they took the 15 SP delegation away. I thought it stuck with them until they reached 15 SP of their own. That's what happened to me when I joined. That would be terrible to lose your delegation right away. Would they even have enough bandwidth to post?
It would be great if they actually communicated. I think one of their biggest challenges is there's a general perception that Steemit just doesn't care about it's users at all. They do what they want and if it works for us, great. If it doesn't work for us, well "who cares?" because there are more people who are supposed to be flocking to this glorious utopia. They may need a reality check if they continue treating their customers like this.
Hey, you should apply for the job. They could just give you the keys to the account and you could put out the deets. I'm looking forward to your first press release!
Mine went away within a week, and I don't remember reaching 15 SP by then. Now, instead of giving new users 0.5 SP, they've dropped it down to 0.1 with the corresponding delegation to get to 15. I haven't paid attention to how they're cancelling or retracting delegation now, so it could have changed back to the way it happened to you for all I know.
Crokkon has a post out I'm working through analyzing what HF 20 would do for curation whenever it comes out. That's about as close as I've seen to an update, while not really being one. We've heard from basically everyone else around the horn, just not the HF group. Of course, Ned's been more visible.
What really could be a double whammy with this communication deal is that supposedly the community is encouraged to be involved. That requires knowing what to be involved with. I understand that a lot of communicating takes place off site, in Discord channels, so I guess if we really want to know what's going on, we'll end up over there.
It's not likely to happen for me while I'm trying to top the engagement league since I spend most of my time trying to do this: Comment.
Definition of Utopia:
it seems like most people key in on the word 'perfect,' but really, the main word is 'imagined.' It doesn't exist. So if they're hoping for people to flock to their imaginary place of perfection, rude awakenings will abound.
re: communications job
I checked out the LinkedIn page a while back for Steemit Inc. and I think I remember seeing a communications officer and thinking, "Oh, really?" But then that was immediately drowned by the realization that any communication being done must be within the company and out threw every other Social site. I'm shaking my head.
I don't know if there's even a position available, but I suppose I could look into it. That would be the way to get knock me off the league list. :)
I saw they had dropped the given amount. That's probably smart since there are so many spam accounts getting created. You'd think they'd invest in some people to scan those applications better. Oh, well.
I saw his post. I didn't understand all of it, but I did understand his conclusion that the curation rewards aren't going to go up much, and that it will be easier for the bots and scripts to make money off it, while it will be more difficult for humans. Oh, well. That's how things go.
Like they say, if you ever find a perfect place, leave immediately. ;)
Yeah, you should totally look into a communications position with Steemit. It would help that you've had communications experience, and that you have a Steemit account, and that you have actually bought Steem which shows that you believe in it. They should at least give you an interview.
That could help quite a bit! Hee heee hee!
I hate wallet spam too. It's really annoying. One idea I read about that you didn't mention was being able to set a minimum transaction value. Like you could set it to 0.002 or 0.5 etc.
That is a great idea! Yeah, have that be part of the user interface menu so you can automatically decline anything under a certain amount. I'm not sure how the day-to-day logistics would work (i.e. would the system warn you that the amount you were sending was below the receiver's threshold?), but something to make progress on this would be great!
Like it could be customised, setting values for reps, individual people, who you follow, blacklist/whitelist etc.
But yeah it would probably need an error message.
Makes sense. As long as you got some notification that your send didn't go through, that would be nice. That way you're not just sitting around waiting for it. Ha.