The most common criticism I hear about Curie is...
Curie "just" gives authors a big upvote and then "abandons" them.
The inference is that it doesn't give them a community, work with them one on one to help them learn how to improve their posting, mentor them on the ins and outs of the blockchain, etc. The funny thing about that... let's poll the minnows here, shall we?Hey minnows!
Is there a shortage of communities you can join here? Any shortages of Discord groups you can join that will help you learn to post better or teach you about the intricacies of Steem blockchain? Any shortage of communities on almost every conceivable posting subject out there?Now... is there a shortage of huge accounts willing to give you a huge upvote without making you jump through hoops or pay for it? Is there a shortage of accounts with huge votes that are upvoting good content just because it is good content?
The answers to these questions are clear.
There are tons and tons of communities here and pretty much none of them give out $100+ upvotes to their members. DTube and Utopian.io are obvious exceptions, but are also obviously focused on very narrow ranges of posting (video content and open source contributions, respectively).For just an average blogger or social media user who has read the advertisements that STINC continues to put out there, saying that this is a place where you can be paid for posting, the truth when they come here is that groups like Curie and OCD are the only realistic chance of getting a big upvote. This is the reality - and it is reflected in the staggering user churn rate of 120% experienced by Steem in Q1 of 2018 (see @paulag's post here). If that figure doesn't alarm you or give you pause as to the long term future of Steem, it should. It doesn't matter how many new users sign up, if more users are dropping off because of the frustrations of life on what is rapidly becoming a pay-to-play platform than are joining... it is bad news.
Now lets talk about value added to the platform.
How many people are talking to friends and family that are not on Steem platform yet about the awesome Discord community they joined? Versus how many people talk to friends and family about the USD $200+ upvote they received just for posting a song or artwork or story that they would have posted for free in the past on Facebook or a personal blog?Every single large Curie upvote is an advertisement for Steem
An advertisement that reaches a large group of people who are not currently on Steem blockchain. This advertisement for Steem is delivered by a voice these people trust - by a friend or family member excitedly talking about the large (in some parts of the world, REALLY large) payout they just received on a post. I can practically guarantee you that every single person who has ever received a big Curie upvote has told their friends and family about it. I certainly wouldn't shut up about it when I got my first Curie.This form of advertisement is by far the most effective way to get people to join the platform. STINC knows it, that is why they still use this line of attack in their advertisements when the reality of the platform has shifted so far away from rewarding quality content (hello bidbots!!!). But unlike STINC, which has done nothing to adjust the algorithm on the trending page to remove paid advertising (cough... posting boosted up by bid bots), and has done nothing to make delegating to vote sellers the most profitable way to use your stake, and which has chosen to only support apps and developers with its own stake, Curie has been actually going out and keeping the brain in Proof of Brain the entire time. Curie is actually supporting content creators.
What is more likely to get people to come here and stay here...
a community they can join or a huge upvote on their posting that they didn't have to pay for? The answer is so obvious that it blows my mind when I hear people questioning the value of Curie. Wake up people! You can find a community of friends and peers on Facebook or any other social media platform. You can't find a group like Curie that will give you a significant sum of real-world money for your posting there.If you want to support Curie you can:
- Follow the @curie blog for twice weekly Author Showcase posting and resteems of the very highest quality posting
- Follow the @curie vote trail on SteemAuto to support the authors
- Vote @curie for witness (100% of witness proceeds are used for Curie operations)
- Consider delegating SP directly to @curie if you can afford it (remember to leave at least 50 SP in your own account so you have the bandwidth necessary to transact on Steem blockchain). If you would like to delegate to Curie you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
This post began its life as a comment in response to this awesome post by @silentscreamer in support of Curie:
https://steemit.com/curie/@silentscreamer/why-curie-needs-to-be-your-choice-for-witness-my-thoughts
Hi Carlster!
Good post, way too many whiners here on Steem, real life is much harder than on this amazing blockchain, they should be super grateful for a $100 upvote .... what they want us to also wipe their ass after flushing for them? :P
Ok..Promise to not make this TL'DR, I think Curie is the light-house and hope for Steem. I believe the next step to help get Steemian more exposure along with the fat-love upvote is by partnering @Curie up with various grassroots Communities ..... via some form of curation exposure, Example.. curation collabs.... just like you're doing with @comedyopenmic / #comedyopenmic.
But hell, we can't forget....posters can't have everything handed to them on a silver platter, they gotta:
Will just end by saying Thanks Carl!...keep up the excellent work leading and helping Curie pioneer new grounds!
ps. Also Check This Out:
Even with a modest COM 41,000SP $10 upvote (#comedyopenmic tag averages $5 per post.... many post gets $15 to $115 due to Dtube, Curie, Dlive, and many passing whales and orca's swimming by the #comedyopenmic tag to show love and encouragement), now consider that anyone can make 8 original comedy entries in any format every single month. That's an average total upvote of $40 - $80/ per month, not too shabby for writers, content producers and video makers to earn consistently in upvotes just posting 2 times a week! Now throw a a @curie $15 - $90 upvote once a month, and Bang! At least $55 - $170/month...and that's just average upvotes not including prizes**, ....Now you got the best of both, income and organic followers ....ok I'm over simplifying, but hopefully some of you guys reading here get the point, learn to add satire and comedy into your posting repertoire and use the #comedyopenmic tag to enter to win SBD, Steem, and Glory Every Week......it's Great for you wallet, and it's Fantastic for Steem!
pss. pls ignore my grammar and spellos....promise to start fixing that up when #reply-curie is launched
**the top COM earnerers can get upvotes of $700-$1000 per month! (no joke...go ask @myndnow in his Dtube streak for 4 weeks running doing @comedyopenmic from Round 8 to Round 11!)
From what I believe , @curie was never supposed to ''walk you through'' the Steemit community , as networking , engaging and building a following is a work you have to do on your own. As my brother @meno calls it , curie has the ''cake effect'' , meaning they show you your ''big potential reward'' if you produce some awesome quality. I have my own ''curie'' success experiences here on Steemit and come on , getting a $100 - $50 - $25 payout is amazing , when did you get one cent by uploading to ''mainstream social media''?.
When I joined Steemit I was still in doubt on what to write about here ( tutorials in production, share my original music, audio ) and after uploading my first song ( which got curied ) it was the big motivator to start writing.. I had just made $100 on a song! That's insane by today's standards , I am a musician and producer in real life and the amount of investment you need to do to have some money return on music is just nuts... getting paid for just uploading a song is almost too good to be true.. even if it is just a couple Sbds..
I had some Curie's on my extended music tutorials and such , but one day , the ''support'' stopped , and I interpreted as it was my time to ''start walking on my own'' and went on to engage and build a network inside the platform , get to actually know people , create projects , etc...
Having said that I got Curied again last week.. after many months of not seeing them ... on another song! How sweet can that be? getting curied has that nice feeling of ''maybe I'm doing this thing just right'' :) .
Long story short, as @dj123 says it ''real life is harder'' , we put up with lots of more difficulties on our daily lifes to make a living , it is amazing to have some earnings through here by sharing our thoughts in our fields of interest. But still, you have to work your way through here ! So , create , engage and build and you will do just fine ! Cheers!
Damn skippy! I had my first small curie through #comedyopenmic yesterday and it really does invoke change! Carl, your badges of originality helped to keep me hooked on the platform and the curie vote actually consolidated my decision to completely scrap vote buying and "go clean" so to speak (I made a post about it here).
Curie has no obligation to follow up people they've helped; as if a large one time sum of money for content isn't enough!
I agree on organic growth. Comedy is one of the most powerful weapons of promotion. Remuneration is a plus, we must learn to be in steemit for the content, for the enjoyment. That is the vision we must share.
Curie makes it fantastic and I believe that those votes really help to promote the platform, but once again, we should look for people to stay in steemit so they can enjoy their stay, just like they do in other social networks. Remuneration can be a first hook but not the essential one.
Can anyone imagine what Steemit will be like if we just delete @curie from existence? From the very beginning of its creation? Has anyone seen any success story not related to Curie? If so, how many percent? 0.0001%?
The highest ecstacy i have experienced on steemit rests on Curie when they deemed this piece worthy. On that faithful Monday morning, I remember asking myself when did i resteem some whale's post. Yep, that's what Curie does, surprises you so much that you will walk into your own blog and start convincing yourself that it isn't yours.
Without Curie i wouldn't have gotten to know of the three best writers - @rachelrick @warpedpoetic and @iamthegray - from my homeland Nigeria. They are actually the three best i have seen on this platform and that is no fucking lie. Check them out.
That is the point. Exposure. The bonus of $100+ love is what it is. A bonus. Not a right or entitlement to be bestowed on a million accounts EVERYDAY. People should fcuking stop expecting high quality love to be jizzed on them by virtue of being on this platform.
In spite of the challenges they have been facing, i was shooked upon seeing Carlgnash extend his benevolence to #comedyopenmic
But that is what makes him and others running Curie awesome: they never stop supporting contents/projects that will add quality to Steemit. They don't just stop.
Effing cheers to them menh
Big ups!
I can't talk about @curie without a sigh. Let us forget the money for a moment. Let's turn away from the $100 upvote, so that our hearts can stop racing and our lips can get some wet on their cracked face. Let us look at what a curie upvote means to a writer.
Do you know what it means for a group of people to come to an agreement about your skill and say that you are good at what you do? Do you have any idea of how much boost that gives to one's self confidence?
Today when I chat on discord and people are like hey warpedpoetic! Hey man, can you give me some tips? Can you check out my blog? It is because @curie gave me a platform to sit on. They told the world of steemit that this young Nigerian knows how to manipulate words and imagination, and the steemit universe believed it and accepted it as true.
My reputation, my popularity, as much of it that exists in reality plus the supposed popularity existing in my mind, is based mostly on @curie's role in my steemit life.
The @curie team and the curators of the project have been the reason behind why there are writers and other content creators who believe in their abilities and are churning out innovative and superb content on the platform. Because those who have experienced a curie upvote feel a sense of respect for their art, they will continue to aspire to surpass their previous efforts and such a manner great works are born. I can get behind that.
If I add the monetary value to all these, then @curie can be considered to be the largest reason for continuity and quality on the steemit platform.
I recently joined @comedyopenmic/ #comedyopenmic and the reception has been great. To find that @curie supports the project means a lot to me. For me, it shows a willingness to support the beautiful aspects of steem, the fun parts, the enriching parts of steem.
I don't think, steemit cannot do without @curie now. It is in most cases, besides OCD, @comedyopenmic now too, the only hope of the redfish who does not want to bid butts. I really do not know what is special about the particular butts, that everyone seem to be bidding on them ferociously?
I support @curie. I support @comedyopenmic. I support @ocd. Yes I said it.
Thank you!
I could be wrong but if I remember correctly, @curie was my first witness vote, and I really can't imagine ever changing my mind on that one.
I couldn't agree more. As excited as I was for Steemit as a whole during my first month or so, if not for the @curie vote I got, I probably would not still be here today.
Like @carlgnash said;
I would have certainly been one of those. The pay-to-play nature of Steemit today it very troubling to many people like myself. If not for @curie and @ocd type organizations there would be little hope for those of us who are just starting out.
@carlgnasher please forgive those of us whom, time to time may "critic" the inner working of @curie. The truth is the vast majority of us are very fond of her work, and feel that making suggestions could make her even greater. I'm sure that this is not always correct or feasible, but we do it out of love.
You're right @dj123
You are very right @dj123, i have seen curie pushing content with tag #comedyopenmic,
I chose @curie as a witness on your advice,
Thanks to @dj123, #comedyopenmic and @curie, you guys have helped me grow in steemit.
Ok!!!. @dj123 todo lo que escribes es una obra maestra... ahora bien, en todo el tiempo que tengo en Steemit (poco tiempo) he sentido que mi contenido tiene valor. Ok, varios amigos han comentado que dejemos las recompensas a un lado, pero es imposible dejar de lado todas las recompensas que hemos recibido de parte de #comedyopenmic . Y mejor aún las recompensas crecen cada semana... desde que estoy en Steemit borré de mi memoria a facebook! ¿Quien es facebook? ... en ningún otro serás recompensado por expresarte e increíblemente mientras más alocadas son mis publicaciones mejor se pone la cosa... ... Admiro el trabajo realizado por @curie .. que hariamos sin ti!!!!!!??????? ... ... #comedyopenmic y @curie es la combinacion ganadora.!!! .. y el trampolín al Éxito para nosotros los comediantes!
I was at first kinda pissed about @curie when i was looking into their vote trail and then I made a post about it and @carlgnash came in and discussed what was going on and looked into it further and ended up ending an entire curation trail that was abusing the @curie vote. At that point I went from pissed to impressed. @curie does great things for the steem block chain but people have to realize if you get a $100 upvote you can not expect for that account to follow you around and wipe your ass for you for the rest of your life. Do something with it, power up, reinvest it in wise and profitable bot votes ( I still hate bots but they are here to stay) , put bounties on your posts to attract followers. Do ANYTHING except whine like a little bitch. If you are here thinking that your only reason for living is getting a @curie vote, I got bad news for you son. I crank out content that makes people blow beer out their noses from laughter and guess what..... That shit ain't getting Curied but I keep on keeping on because people enjoy it and someone is willing to throw a fucking penny my way. I will build my mansion from pennies and laugh from the top. That is fine with me. I work my dick off for what i got and I sure as fuck wouldn't spit in @curie face after they dropped a hundred dollar bill at my feet.
When I first joined steemit it wasn't long before I heard about the infamous @curie. It was literally the only manual curation community with a heavy upvote that I heard the most about. It was nothing short of a goal to get a curie upvote and my first one came in January when I wrote about My first snowmobile adventure.
This came after I had used my first bidbot (I only used them for one post) and the feeling of being rewarded for my work was not there with the bidbots. The curie proof of brain system is exactly what brought me to steemit. Since then I've had multiple curie upvotes. It feels like I receive one every month as I have found my niche sharing #rockhound pictures of my agates. Two months ago my second curie upvote came and the feeling was just as good, if not better than the first. It let me know I'm doing something right. I even spent a bunch of money on a new Nikon so that I can take better pictures of my rocks. Good thing I did cause I got a third curie upvote because of it.
This is what Steemit is all about. It's not just about curating crypto and developer posts. It's about curating original content. Not through the illusion of bidbots though! Take it from me, persistence, hard work and dedication really pays off as my fourth curie upvote came through this morning and I couldn't have a bigger smile on my face. My day has been made!
I actually watched an article the other day go from nothing to something as I refreshed the page and they got a curie upvote. You can't find a community that will reward you with any amount of money on any other platform.
We all have plenty of channels to find information on becoming great bloggers. 100 well thought out posts with good content in 100 days alone shows great results. We don't have many communities like @curie and this is absolutely the #1 way of advertisement as every time I get a curie upvote I share it on facebook to let others know what they're missing out on.
Curie doesn't just curate content and pursues the proof-of-brain concept. Curie helps create and strengthen communities all over the steemit blockchain. While not all my steempower comes from curie, a large percentage does, and it's helped strengthen the #comedyopenmic community. The curie upvotes that our COM contestants have received only strengthened our community by encouraging more people to make entries.
This is what Steemit is meant to be.
I just love the organic exposure that it has given me. These rewards have allowed me to support the #comedyopenmic / @comedyopenmic community with voting power and judging the contest. So I have to say that curie doesn't just upvote and abandon the author. Take it from me, I've gotten 4 curie upvotes since mid january. These upvotes encourage us minnows to keep going and reach for whale status.
Keep up the great work @carlgnash because Steemit needs you and @curie. I've heard rumors that @curie was going away. I don't believe this to be true, but I do think @curie needs more support!
Anyone that bitches about curie is either lacking awareness or butt sore about not receiving a meaty upvote!
If you put a microscope to anything in this life you will find the fissures. But stepping back, widening the view and taking off the ego shades will show curie for what it is. The central nervous system of steemit sustainability. @curie reaches into all the dark spaces and feels around for substance. I do not believe any other witness currently can claim a greater over all effect on our steemosphere. But watch out... here comes @comedyopenmic / #comedyopenmic nipping at the heels...😜. Haha, but really I’m in 💯agreement with @dj123 that @curie collabs with other kick ass discord groups is where it’s at! Finding those grass roots groups that fill the gaps of this most common criticism you bring up Carl, gives @curie a finger 👉 for pointing folks where they can find the help they seek. As I agree that this shouldn’t be the mission of @curie to train for posting or teaching Blockchain dynamics.
So thanks for sharing you clarity Carl... may @curie continue finding support for its vital proof of brain mission and may it continue linking and weaving with the communities that are engaged at the front line of steemit sustainability!!
Curie has been very supportive to dtubedaily family and I'm so grateful for that. I want to say thank you and god bless you, really! You have changed dtubedaily members mood and encouraged them to post more content. You are telling them that "hey! Your content is being watched! And you are great". Thank you 1000 times.
Now, obviously when you collab with another bigger group that would be fabulous! You have been contributed a lot to steem! But in a team, we are stronger.
Obviously, everything is up to you and you have done a lot already <3 but on the grand scheme of things, perhaps it might be beneficial for all of us :)
Winny out...for now ;)
I remember when I first heard of @curie. I had just started hanging out with the #newbieresteemday folks and I got a curie upvote for about $50 I think. There were like 200 votes and I didn't understand until @beeyou explained it to me.
I spunked a little. Don't worry, I had some tissue ready.
I can't say that it was what kept me here, because I had just met so many great people in Newbie Resteem Day, but it gave me some hope and validation.
That can go a very long way with me. It has made me want to find others that deserve some encouragement and to stay around here to make Steemit a better place. People can fight about bid bots and whatever else, but I decided to try and fight for something I believe in, which is good content.
That's why I landed and stuck with COM. I see people trying to make it better. Not everyone has the same sense of humour, and nobody is trying to force their version of comedy on others, just trying to make people laugh for all the right reasons.
And hopefully getting a curie upvote to validate that they are not only funny but know how to install Grammarly in their browser as well.
Thanks, Carl, and the rest of your team of do-gooders.
You're right, @curie is an honor to have you here at steemit, precisely because we always agree with the points where we believe the community will grow, and of course, thanks to the support of blogs like yours. Thanks to him because he has driven excellent projects like comedy, and the tag of #comedyopenmic thanks for the support, You are great!
Hi Carl,
I support @curie as a witness because I have seen their support to newbies in our #newbieresteeemday community. Many of times we have newbies highlighted on the account that receives Curie support. Even if they are not newbies, I still send a great post off to Gene or Debbie to review for Curie support. Now I have a Curator look at a post directly in Discord.
I've seen many people received support. Some choose to stay for this very reason, but I have also seen others decide to leave, despite their big payout of $70+ and even $300+. I believe the retention rate is partly due to the relationships built on here and community support individuals receive. However, not everyone are community engagers and do become discouraged after one big upvote support because now their expectation is this kind of payout. They only have to look at Trending to see this is what Steemit should be paying them for their post. When they start seeing penny or small dollar amount payouts again, well, I think it can be discouraging.
With that being said, we all have to find our "tribe" and receive the community support there. Sometimes, it's not even one community, but a parade of them. I enjoy helping newbies with the #newbieresteemday community and I also enjoy hanging out with the folks at #comedyopenmic.
Curie does an awesome job supporting authors but people have to understand it can never be a one-man show here on Steemit. One really does need community support for long-term success.
I've had this argument so many times with people... I think people see Curie as the means to support them instead of an extra amazing special bonus thing to help kick start their Steemy careers.
I think, honestly, if you're only here to make blogging your full time job, you might need to re-evaluate your expectations... but, compared to your own website or blog, the infrastructure and marketing is already done for you.
I value curie, as a massive upvote, it’s exciting. I did run off and tell people outside the platform on my first. I’m not sure how much more advertising it does within the Steemit community. After the excitement spike, there is always a slow fizzle back to Earth when engagement in the form of readership follows and comments that isn’t forthcoming. I’ve always got the sense, no one else (other than those who genuinely care for you) is excited for you, so best just be quiet and glad you got something to keep you going. So to me, curie is a form of life support. To give me a reason to remain on this platform and feel there’s a point putting extra effort into the posts we submit. Although, it’s a good reminder that we never got anything from other platforms.
I don’t see curie as ever abandoning me. It’s my job to work on my profile, to network to meet new people to learn about the platform. This is where the community component comes in. I don’t blame curie for not getting more follows, upvotes or comments. I just see it as human nature. But I do see curie as deeply entrenched in the psyche of Steemit, and that people can become over-reliant on curie or be upset it’s not them. I worry about that for myself, the sense that as a newbie we don’t have any other means of gaining SP traction. I’m not sure how the problem can be solved to generate more real engagement. I’ve always found this hard, and it’s this and not missing out on curie’s blessing that will lead to me leaving the platform.
Yeah that is what I meant as far as advertising - the first big Curie upvote works as advertisement outside the Steem ecosystem. Which is really, of course, where advertisements for new users have to go. You don't advertise for new users within the existing user base. My main point with this post is that I hear a surprising number of people who do not see the value of what Curie is doing from a "adding value to the Steem blockchain" perspective. These same people get excited about Jerry Banfield advertising for Steem on youtube, or some developer attracting new users to the blockchain with an app.
My point is - Curie has been advertising the core concept of Steem the entire time and gets very little credit for it. The entire Steem blockchain is based around "proof of brain", and the entire Steemit, Inc. marketing plan is based around "You can get paid to post your content". Every large Curie vote that a newbie user gets, they go running around to friends and family outside of Steem and tell them about it. This is the most valuable form of advertising you can get! You can't buy an ad from youtube that comes from the mouth of a loved one and tells a personal experience of actually getting paid for posting content. The real shame of course is that the trend is going farther and farther away from upvoting content based on merit, and is going more and more toward upvoting content based on who paid the most for the upvote.
Thank you!
At least someone gets it :)
Content producers have a few choices: Produce for utopian, produce videos, produce content FTG likes, produce content V4V likes, or - produce whatever you like (outside of religion or politics I think?), do a good job and get a @curie vote.
Vote @curie as witness, show your love to solid content and delegate to @curie - support manual curation til the end!
Awesome feedback Ash!
Hey i came here from your other post. Left you a comment, i think you're onto something here, but just need to clarify how you want to make this work?
let me know:
https://steemit.com/welcometosteemit/@abh12345/competition-welcometosteemit#@dj123/re-abh12345-competition-welcometosteemit-20180513t112353080z
Cheers!
Already replied, you got me at a good time :D
Daem you're fast!
Ok, replied to your reply already :D
Dear Carl,
I just decided to double my delegation to @curie because of this post. You guys and gals are awesome and - without a doubt - one of the main reasons why minnows like me are still here.
If it weren't for initiatives like/ the people behind curie, I would just collect the contact details of the peepz that I like enough on here to stay in touch with in real life and go meet them in real life.
@curie gave me the strength to leave The Netherlands and go to Portugal armed with a backpack and my laptop. It made it possible for me to keep going without a dayjob and gave me the faith that blogging can actually make a living.
Keep up the great work my friend :>)
<3 Vincent
Aw thanks Vincent this is really sweet to read. Love you man :)
<3
I think the Steemit developers and the community their system creates is the unfortunate problem here- much as I appreciate what Curie is doing, as you've said, it's unreasonable to assume that Curie will upvote more than one of your posts, especially on a regular basis, even though I've gotten quite lucky with Curie itself. And since Curie don't share their decision making process, it's difficult for an outsider to 'cater' their content to Curie's tastes in order to earn a sustainable income (which is likely why that decision making process isn't shared)
The big issue for me is that I don't get a lot of people engaging with my work after a Curie upvote, I might have a post that's at the top of the trending page but there's very little indication that any of the users who regularly read content from that tag, or even the curators themselves, actually read the content. I see the money as a bonus to the idea of Curie being a way to promote undervalued authors, so that those authors can earn followers who will actually regularly read their work. Of my 92 followers I'd say less than 10 of them are actually regular readers. And while I can try reaching out myself, Steemit's upvote bots make it very difficult to find worthwhile content that I can comment on which is relevant to the most used tags I attach to my content, both because of how much crap reaches the top and how much of that crap there is.
New users who join Steemit because I got excited about my upvote mostly do so just to support me, their friend or family member, and then because they don't much care for Steemit they may forget they signed up because of the long sign up process, or they'll lose their password because they're not used to platforms that don't have password recovery functions. That's on them of course, but it still puts people off despite how absurd that seems to an experienced user.
And if readers don't provide feedback, then there's no way of telling what kind of content you should be posting to promote regular engagement with your work. I simply don't feel we have enough actually good content creators or commenters on this platform yet, and even intelligent people might look at Steemit and think of it as a ponzi scheme or a whale farm.
I think these are all issues that the Steemit developers themselves have to solve. We can't tell a community to not abuse a system that is so readily ripe for abuse. Where there's a hole, water will flow through it.
Curie desperately needs to succeed in its mission statement to get the wider Steemit audience to notice- to me, I think Curie needs a way to make it abundantly obvious that their upvote is different from a whale or bot upvote. When I received my first curie vote, I assumed a whale or a malicious cartel had upvoted me. It wasn't until I enquired further that I learned more. When looking at a Curie upvoted post on the trending page, there's also no way to distinguish between a Curie vote and a whale vote, so people might instinctively avoid a Curie upvoted post on principle, assuming the post is garbage.
Just some thoughts.
Thanks for the well thought out comment! First, let me start at the end :) I 100% agree that Curie could and should do a better job of the most basic part of explaining its mission - making it transparent what, in fact, just happened when a post gets the big upvote! The Curie voting stakeholders have already voted to make an automated comment, very short and sweet, without shilling or selling anything, to explain that the post was found through human curation and upvoted after human review as exceptional content (and referring to the Discord channel and our whitepaper to learn more). So, that is in the works.
The lack of engagement and feedback that you are mentioning in the first portions are definite problems with Steem - and this is the problem that all of the communities which I mentioned in my post have sprung up to solve. You pretty much have to engage in an off-blockchain community (usually based on Discord but I guess some people must still use steem.chat LOL) to actually generate real interaction on your posting. Unless you have a large sum of money to invest in which case people will be more than happy to be your friend ;) So, in my post above, I did not mean to imply that the communities here do not have value. They do. My advice to you if you want to stick it out here and actually generate real interaction on your posting, is you are going to have to find and join one of the many communities here. That could be one of the writing communities (writers block / isle of write), MSP, or whatever. It takes a time commitment and a willingness to hang out in a chat server. If you make that commitment, a Discord community will absolutely read your posting and offer you feedback and fill in these cracks that are actually gaping crevasses if you only stay on the blockchain proper.
I'm glad to hear Curie is working to actively improve their system. I shouldn't really be surprised, but it's a good thing to hear from one of their key members regardless!
I must admit, despite being a frequent discord user, I feel pretty overwhelmed when stepping into one of the larger servers. I think you're definitely right, though, that right now joining a separate community is the best way to go about things. I'd be interested in taking a look at Curie's server sometime.
I had a nice @curie vote once, and though I'd sure love if all my posts got that attention it's not just a one and done thing. Not only was I more motivated, my Rep score went up about 10 points and I was able to increase my SP about 30%.
That reminds me, I'm overdue to go write a post.
Get that post out! And thanks for this comment, it very succinctly mentions several points that I left out in my post for brevity's sake. I was focusing more on the big picture value that Curie adds to the Steem blockchain as a whole, by keeping some measure of truth in the Proof of Brain slogan and through organic advertising. But you are absolutely correct - for the individual author who receives a big upvote, this means that you can power up enough Steem Power to actually transact on the blockchain when the bandwidth is restricted because of heavy use, and it is a huge boost to REP. Cheers
Ive been discussing the current issues a lot with plenty of people. Stake based voting aside, the biggest problem i see now is the following.
Quality does enter the platform and Curie and OCD pick it up more often then not. But these two projects arent there to lead you along by the hand all the way. Theyr here to lift you up, get you on your way, provide an opportunity to improve what you do.
Ive seen numerous times how creators drastically improved their content after that one big curie. Everything after lifted the effort of the creator going forward and value created for the platform.
Curie did its job. After that its up to the community and the hard work of the creator to continue raising his payouts. I felt that on my skin as well.
Curie has a very specific and incredibly important spot in the ecosystem.
Whats happening after is the crap part.
The lack of quality/reward correlation, bot abuse, self voting, upvote circles. Etc.
I would wager that Curie and OCD are the most effective projects on the steem blockchain in what they do and in the value they bring.
They keep quality here. Whats happening after doesnt work well. You have that "equality for all" and "me first" way of thinking that is hurting the rise in value of the steem platforms.
Steem isnt creating creators that it can showcase to the world and say: "look! this is our guy here, he made it here".
Due to the same rewards for everyone from those that can give out rewards and due to those that care only about themselves. This creates the idea in minds of those looking from outside that steem is a place for spam and junk content which simply isnt true.
But some platforms even incentivize spam and conveyor belt content.
Curie does what it needs to. Its on the community to work on what comes after. If it wants whats best for everyone or whats best for their individual self.
The thing that convinced me to stay on Steemit was the massive upvote chain I got from Curie during my first week here. It really pushed me to consider making more new content, rather than simply using social media simply for news updates.
And I am glad you are here publishing awesome RPG content! That is actually right in my own personal bailiwick as a LONG time dungeon master ;)
Nice commentary Carl. I just got another Curie upvote today, my 4th or 5th such from @Curie. I have also been rewarded nicely by OCD so I don't have anything to complain about. Thanks.