I Gave Reading Trending Page Feed A Try
As someone who likes to experiment and try things out from time to time this is one of those instances. Since the hardfork, one of the biggest things I wanted to see was a healthy trending page with a whole lot of different content and not the same authors over and over. Along with more comments then an author could reply back on.
As such this starts right after the HF happened and leads up to today.
Flagging
For the first few days, I was like many other people. I mostly went to front page trending to find something to flag. I was quite unhappy about what trending turned into over the years. It seemed to have lost its value for actually putting in the time and getting such recognition when you could just buy your way into it. It also felt like it reflected it by what was up there.
After a while, it seemed things changed in a major way. The platform seemed to have created this culture of fear and that kind of sucks.
While I never been a fan of bidbots I’ll admire the risk-takers who had the balls to put so much on the line to get it up there for what little attention it would get. Not enough people are willing to take such risks in this world and that can be rather boring when everyone turns into “yes” people. I might have more anarchist in me than I’ll admit.
After all that we could clearly see the auto votes and voting circles take place without needing to look into the matter. Regardless of anything some people no matter what ended up in trending. It would not have mattered much if they posted a nearly blank post or the Banksy levels of amazing.
This lead to some strangeness in people having to flag themselves as they could even see it was an issue. This also seems to put a lot of pressure on some people in having to keep a certain level of post. Regardless of platform once a content creator gets to a certain level they can’t even go to the store without it making the news. I think for now the people at the top are safe until the platform grows a few hundred times over.
I Almost Didn’t Mind Trending
We also had for a while a very low barrier to entry to get into trending. It was nice not seeing the creep of posts raking in hundred or more fighting it out for top slot. It seemed like maybe there would be some organic posts popping up there from time to time. Without a massive helping hand by a single voter.
This also seemed like people could pop up in trending for a short while and then vanish down the ranks. I personally think that is how trending should be. Someone does not need to be up there for days as we should have so many amazing and talented people on this platform it’s always changing.
That, however, did not last long and I become rather frustrated with trending again. Those who control trending kept putting up the same topics and people into it. The biggest topic is Steem and more directly SteemFest. As soon as one post about SteemFest faded out of trending another one popped up as if by design. Most of the platform is not going and unless you have lived under a rock you should know by now. I don’t mind there is content being made about such things it just gets tiring seeing the same thing as so you become fatigued.
We are also now in this weird state of fear. There are people no one wants to flag for the most part even if that same exact post would have been flagged into the ground if written by another. Some of the people up there have in the past threated to sick their whales on you and have your stuff zero out till you quite the platform. While others carry such high positions in communities that no one wants to piss them off by flagging. You also just have the people with mountains of SP that small fish don’t want anger.
Commenting
For me at least I view trending as a place that should have a healthy amount of comments on a post. It’s supposed to be in theory the best our platform has to offer and for anyone in the world who just stops by to see it. So you would think there be high levels of engagement at the top.
Since I was giving trending a try again I started to reply to a couple of posts a day when I could make the time. It was not as often as I was hoping but it is what it is. Some of these trending authors flat out ignored any of my attempts to engaging with them. While others would comment back even if I left a bare minimum of efforts comment.
I’ve noticed quite a few posts that went into trending without any real comments (i.e only auto-reply/I flag post comment.) They didn’t seem to get a single one while up there either. If they did it was only a couple at best. That to me shows something is still not quite right about trending.
This part of trending still seems kind of sad. It also makes you wonder how many have any kind of faith restored in checking out trending. You would think comments would be flooding in on those posts. Perhaps there just fewer people around than I thought or there is a bigger issue at hand?
Final thoughts
While tending had quite a few different people and amazing posts mix into it. There were also a lot of the same people and topics being repeated over and over. If I was interested in following the people who are regularly in there I would have done so by now.
Ultimately I’m going back to only checking in on trending one a week if that. Anything the platform feels is important will surely be repeated in it till you have an aneurysm so I won’t miss out on the news.
As far as me using the shit post tag. I consider one of my posts to be as such when I won’t be sharing it on other platforms and on social media. This was just some random shit I wanted to get out of my head.
Going to go enjoy another S’more and enjoy the night. Cheers!
Information
Screenshots/photos are taken and content was written by @Enjar.
You describe current state of the trending very well. Still better than what it used to be. I wasn’t looking at trending at all before hf. Now I look when I get a chance, probably twice a week.
One day it will get there. I think the key will a massive amount of people on the platform.
My thoughts are pretty much the same, they didn't get it right. It just went from bid bot abuse to tribal abuse, people running around in a circle with their tribes auto voting their tribal members regardless if they read the contents or not.
Readership is something I hope to have a lot of one day. I put more effort into getting my older content views then some of these people put into posts with massive payouts lol.
The reward pool at the end of the day is not that big comparable to all the other opportunities content could create. It’s just the low hanging fruit and some only seem too focused only on farming it.
I am not a gamer so I don't read your gaming material but having glanced over it a bit it's evident you put a lot of time and effort into writing them. Your ability to write like that amazes me.
It can be quite time consuming. While some in the gaming industry try and take a lot of short cuts to put in a fraction of the time. They also can’t deliver what I do. It’s sometimes quite easy to tell when they don’t even take their own screenshots or just have the same talking points as everyone else.
My method might not be very economical but I also enjoy playing the games as well.
A couple of game developers have retweeted or liked my content on Twitter in the past. Even my last game review appears to have gotten a like from someone at that game studio.
Perhaps one day it will lead to something more than just some random clicks on social media. I’m not quite a big enough “influencer” for it to be worth their time to get more involved. I also want to be able to speak my mind about a game and not have any strings attached.
In the mean time I just got keep grinding away. Lots of late nights and whatever time I have to spare here or there to keep going. If nothing else I had quite the fun time.
We've been out visiting and commenting today as part of shitpost Sunday. Glad you played along!
I gave a Sunday tag a try a couple weeks ago I thought why not try another. Perhaps next week there will be new one and it just keeps going.
Are you dizzy from all that circle jerking?
@enjar
I came back to the post to read it because its title made me wonder whether I had been missing something. Clearly not. It's a pity. It's a real pity because it was exactly that page and my disillusionment and the "quality" (i.e. shitposts) and finding content that piques my interests, that made me disappear from Steemit for nearly 6 months. Until @jaynie hauled me into PHC. For which I am forever grateful.
On the issue of engagement: I have been following one particular account whose owner often posts thought-provoking content on which I comment. I think I've commented on at least 10 of his posts. Not once has he acknowledged them. Upshot: I no longer follow the account and it no longer gets my
measlyvote or comment. His loss and someone else's game.On the downvotes, I take @nickyhavey's point on board, but I've yet to exercise my downvote. I've not come across something that I think is worthy of that, unless it's been a comment from a whale and then I'm just NOT going to get caught in a flag war - again. If I come something that doesn't resonate or I don't agree with, I just move on - no vote, no comment. Unless of course, I am moved to say why I disagree and give a different view.
Finally, and it relates to the last point and you've noted this in one of your comments: content creation takes time - even "proper" comments. That seems to me to be what the shitpost "labelers" don't get.
My 2c worth
Fiona
The way I see it now since HF 21, if you aren't willing to downvote, then you shouldn't be willing to upvote. This is a different mechanism than just Web 2.0 social media because you have a stake in the rewards pool by virtue of having steem power.
Can you honestly say to me that everything we see on trending is genuinely worth what the value shown? Seems all we need to do is make a steem post saying how happy we are with "newsteem" (terrible marketing term btw)! Maybe one other non steem post will make it but how often is that going to happen?
What needs to happen is turning off anything that gives automatic upvotes and go truly manual with it all. Then that's true trending and manual curation (finding a way to curb upvote rings is another issue but will become apparent).
Finally, regarding downvote wars and all that stupidity, as you have said in another comment, you were blogging before steemit, you will continue blogging after it (especially now they are taking away content creator rights/original links). It will basically be another blog if everything gets downvoted to 0, except you have a WordPress site that is yours 🙂
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I hadn't thought of it that way. Thank you.
On the trending page: I've not looked at it. Perhaps now I shall. I only curate manually and try not to let my VP go much below 80 which means that even a 50% vote is worth something. I haven't tested the autovote options post HF
And on this:
spot on!
When I was newer to the platform I spent so much time on commenting. I had comments that took hours to write that would be more in depth and longer then the posts I drop them on sometimes. Most would have gone out and just made that a post and called it a day. I on the other hand wanted to contribute to the conversation. Not try and get some extra upvotes which we see more times than not.
One day when those that put in the effort start attracting attention from the outside world people will start to grasp the potential those people have. While the reward pool is great some seem so focused on only earning from it at any cost they are not building much of anything for a future years from now.
These slow times and the struggles times are when it’s best to build that foundation you can for something. When things grow you want to be able to build on it and not worry about the foundation cracking or moving. That is something I think some people are not seeing or perhaps they do and they themselves don’t see themselves rising to that next level.
Well, I have just spent the best part of this morning - about 3 hours on comments. I don't always but the comments are on posts that are raising important issues. For me and the blockchain.
And -
This is exactly it. I've taken the long view.
This is all really interesting, @enjar. Great food for thought.
I think there are indeed political reasons and fear of retaliation reasons for people to not want to downvote over-compensated posts by powerful people. (My brother-in-law, @preparedwombat, learned the hard way what can happen.) I get why HF21 incorporates the free downvote feature, and it’s a great experiment. But I personally think the rebalancing is going to have to happen some other way. Google has figured out how to not only reward good content using algorithms, but how to punish abusers, so we know it can be done. It shouldn’t be left up to the whims and moods And subjective views of individuals, in my humble opinion. Upvoting is different. Saying “hey, I like what did” is very different from making a judgment call that someone’s work has been over-rewarded and taking it into your own hands to set things straight. That is simply going to go badly some measurable portion of the time, and the rest of the time it’s easy to fear that it will. My two cents!
Money has a good way of muddies things up.
It’s also interesting how some social platforms seem to be moving away from negative feedback or simply never had a downvote or anything of that nature. They just had a like and nothing else. Which does not work for us. Having it all out in the open is interesting.
I wish I was better at taking advance of googles algorithm so I could get some better ranking for my content. MMmm I want that traffic!
Trending and shitposts and there is very little difference, I think people should just post what they want and let the community upvote, downvote and ignore at will!
Keep them coming, this kind of posts are very much needed in order for Steem to heal.
Hehe, I usually try and keep these kinds of posts at a minimum. I have far more to say but I’m not big into that drama stuff.
I’d rather go play a game and focus on my next piece of content!
You know... I can't remember the last time I was on the trending page. Never been on the promoted page... but now my curiosity is piqued!
Wrong comment, sorry.
Tribes is where it’s at! I'm blessed a few of my gaming content make it on trending for one of the gaming tribes. That is about as far as I expect my content to get.
Hmm, shitpostsunday...nice tag. And to be honest I didn't really expect the trending page to change much, because unlike Reddit in which every reader has an equal vote value, we rely on SP and that means there is a very big chance that posts that get a lot of readers won't end up having enough power to reach there. Of course there's the Hot section, but that part is equally farmable thanks to bidbots and auto votes.
Personally I doubt that we can hit a perfect balance, but we'll see...people never fail to surprise each other :)
At least it’s all out in the open for people to see. Not being run by a mysteries algorithm that gets changed to favor who they want it to be they people that control it in the shadows.
Looks at YouTube
Yep fully agree there are still plenty of over rewarded automatic voting and bid botting going on for posts that I don't agree with the rewards they are given. Hence I put my downvote towards them. A drop in the ocean with the effect it has but as stakeholders, we all have a right to it. Double edged sword... Maybe.
I don't think we should be afraid to use it though.
And seeing steemcentric stuff all the time is not sending the right message, nor is this whole #newsteem phrase that's branded around.
It's just STEEM.
Newcomers don't know what new steem is, they don't know what old steem is. They just know steem in its current state.
Still work to go but at least we are moving in the right direction and of course, I'm grateful for some bigger votes from bigger accounts coming my way in the last couple of posts. Something that didn't happen often before hand...
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Yep, and here I am contributing to it hehe.