Steemit Suggestion Box: A Modest Proposal to Solve the Trending Page Issue, Once and for All
I'm fairly famous for getting sidetracked, but at least I admit it.
This post is actually a sidetrack from reading @abh12345's challenge post about the Steemit Trending page, following @ned's recent appearance on Bloomberg where the issue of the "quality of content" on the trending page content was brought up as being of doubtful quality... and Ned had to concede that it was something we're still working on.
Sorry Ned, I Don't Think There are any Easy Fixes...
Let me preface this by saying I have nothing against Ned or his vision for Steemit, but we do have some problems that are currently interfering with any ambitions involving major growth of the Steemit platform, and the Trending feed is squarely in the center of them.
We have mountains to climb!
I realize that Ned's vision may not place very high priority on the Steemit front end and the social platform... and that the goal here is ultimately to "tokenize" the Universe... but that doesn't get us past the FACT that right now Steemit is the visible window to the world for the Steem token and blockchain.
And whereas other things may come along and have more priority, FACT remains that Steemit is pretty much the world's premier avenue for introducing "regular folks" to cryptocurrency and giving them a "soft, non-technical" entry into the markets.
That little snippet is a huge asset, even if it's not directly a "profit center."
If you don't think the statement "I got my start in cryptos on Steemit" has value, think again!
To use a retailing analogy, it may be that what we have inside the store is what matters, but in many cases it's the public FRONT WINDOW that draws people into make purchases.
The Problems with Trending
A lot of Steemians say that the Trending page isn't a serious issue — to them — because "they never look at Trending, anyway."
Madrona tree by the water
Whereas that may be true — and I can appreciate that pragmatic approach — that's not really the primary issue with Trending.
The REAL issue is that the "Trending" feed is the de-facto front page for anyone looking at or browsing Steemit for the first time, as a non-member or when not logged in. If I tell any random friend or family member to "Go check out Steemit!" what they will see is Trending.
And that's just not a pretty picture, in its current form.
The secondary issue with trending is that a determined person can buy their way there, regardless of the quality of the post.
Sailboats on the bay
By extension, that means that Trending doesn't actually represent the BEST of Steemit, but the RICHEST of Steemit.
Now if you're a rabid free-market capitalist, you might not see the problem with that... but let's back up for a moment and remember that "Trending" is a MARKETING piece, like the front window of a shop. And if you're a shopkeeper, you want your very best and most alluring goods in your front window.
At least if your objective is to grow Steemit into an every larger and more mainstraeam social content site.
But I am not writing this to analyze and give another opinion about what's wrong with the Trending feed, I'm here to explore what to DO about that.
The Solution: Community Curators
What if the only way a post could make it to "Trending" were if it had been "passed" by some minimum number of members of a Commuity Curator team?
Joshua Tree at dusk
Bear with me, for a second.
We have Witnesses, who run the nuts and bolts of the Steem Blockchain. They are voted for and elected by the community-- ALL of us. In essence, they work by consensus of popular vote. They are not "appointed" or "hired" as employees.
So what if we also have "Curators" who were voted for and elected by the community? In fact the selection/voting model could be very similar to the process for witnesses.
The "job" of a curator would be to manually review posts and greenlight them as being of sufficient quality to be released into the "Trending" feed. Once passed, the rest would be in the hands of the community.
Perhaps each post would need a minimum of FIVE "green lights" to be released-- so there's a sort of consensus, and one Curator couldn't just patch their personal friends through.
No, it's NOT "Impossible"
Some skeptics might think it would be "impossible." And too labor intensive.
Fence and mist
But let's remember our objective, here: To create a "Trending" feed that results in presenting an attractive front to the world. Nobody's expecting the Curators to read every post. Let's say with 50 active curators -- ELECTED by the community, remember — it would not be extremely difficult to create a very attractive "Trending" feed.
Now, for those who are starting to mmumble "Yeah, but CENSORSHIP!" it
Let's ALSO keep in mind that this in no way interferes with someone's ability to buy bid bot votes to make themselves $700 on their post. They are still free as birds to do that... their post just won't end in the trending feed, unless it also passes the quality test.
"But what's the point of buying votes, then?"
Well, presumably you're trying to game the system for profit, and nobody's telling you you can't do this.
If you are truly buying votes "to be seen," then perhaps the answer would be to have a new category between "Trending" and "Hot" called "Richlist," which could be sortable on dollar rewards, number of upvotes or number of comments.
That way, there would still be a "game" to play for those who are into the whole "upvote contest" gig.
Why Would Someone WANT to be a Curator?
The tricky part there is to make the job of Curator attractive.
Fiery Sunset
One of the benefits might be that once a post is "greenlighted" part of the rewards is set aside for the five (or however many) curators who discovered and checked the content... using the same "revenue share" algorithm now available for those who run free standing apps with rewards.
If a post makes it to the AUTHENTIC "trending" feed, 10% of that post's rewards automatically goes to the Community curators. The remaining 90% is distributed as usual.
You might be thinking that would be "unfair" to the authors and conventional curators... but let's consider that for a moment:
If the "Trending" feed now represents "the very best of Steemit," which was selected by hand, by trusted curators... isn't it likely that a bunch of those people who currently say "I never look at Trending!" would start actually LOOKING at Trending... because really excellent hand-picked stuff is there?
My guess is that the 10% "loss" to curator compensation would be more than offset by actual readership of posts in the Trending feed.. more votes and more interaction. And therein lies:
An Unexpected Fringe Benefit
With increased readership (internally) and engagement on the "Trending" posts, Steemit would present itself to the external world as a very engaging community.
Koi pond
Meaning, in turn, that the idea of the "Trending feed as Marketing tool for Steemit" would actually become more effective.
Someone examining Steemit for the first time would see a series of high quality posts that a LOT of people actively interact with.
Which would be more likely to serve as an effective recruitment tool; where someone might look at Steemit and think "I want to be PART of that!"
And isn't that what we're really trying to achieve here? Regardless of our chosen path and objectives here, we ALL benefit if the Steemit platform grows and thrives, right?
Postscript
While on the subject of "Trending," I encourage you to check out Asher's "Trending Challenge" for this coming Sunday.
In a sense it's an attempt at a sort of "Occupy Trending" where those concerned with quaklity content and Steemit presenting well to the world select post(s) and vote the hell out of them with the intent of sending them ORGANICALLY to Trending.
It's yet another social experiment... so why not give it a go?
Also, if you think this idea has merit, why not share it around with a re-steem? The more possible solutions we put out there, the better our chances of getting change for the better!
How About YOU? Would you like to see a "Trending" page that represents "the best of Steemit," not just whomever could afford to BUY their way there? Does quality content matter to you? Does the long-term future of the Steemit community matter to you? Do you think it matters when @ned or someone else gets on national TV that they can point to a top quality front page, when talking about Steemit? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
created by @zord189
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180511 17:23 PDT
Hi @denmarkguy
Thanks for the great mention!
I'm surprised a @curie curator hasn't arrived here yet, but I guess what you are suggesting is a 'community curie' type thing.
I'm pro anything that is an attempt to organically push content into trending, it's certainly going to be easier said than done though.
As an aside, did you see this one: https://steemit.com/dlive/@revisesociology/8ac63fd0-53e3-11e8-8cf9-1b93be2e52ab
The account got a quadruple whammy of curation team votes on the post discussed, and it currently sits at $32. He's taking it well, but really, is that all we got?!
Cheers!
You're welcome @abh12345! This kind of thing matters to me; content and community matter to me.
I've also been part of "get paid to write" venues online for close to 20 years, ALL of whom believed they were "different;" ALL of whom (except for TWO of about 100) suffered similar demises. Steemit is also "different," but that doesn't exempt us from having to deal with the wiles of human nature. AKA... greed and short term thinking.
Yeah, I saw that post... and I realized it was more of "a reflection of human nature." The curation guilds involve things like "fairness" and "spreading the wealth." Hence, his post was authentically curated and given a "fair" upvote by each because "in all fairness" there are LOTS of people worthy of a "fair" upvote. Buying a bid bot vote is all about "ME, the MOST, FIRST!" Whole different kettle of fish.
Paging Mr. @carlgnash, your input and thoughts are welcomed and invited here! And I'm not being flip; I believe this is an issue near and dear to your heart.
Yes, I have read your thoughts on this in the past, and respect your opinion due to the time you've spent online producing content.
On reading @yabapmatt's post today, I've gained a bit of new insight and this may fuel a post or two in the next couple of weeks.
Sadly, I don't think the post addresses the state of play here, as much as it discusses the maybe's of SMT.
Come on Mr Nash, we are waiting :)
i know this is so surprising!! first that he got curated by each of those teams haha! awesome! but shocking that it doesn't even make it to trending. was it you or someone else who said that back in the day getting curated by one of those teams would actually put you in trending.. oh the good old days (that i wasn't even here for..) lol
Yep what a sterling effort!
And yes, back in the day @curie had a huge delegation and so their team decided what made it to trending. Pretty confident that page looked a lot better from the outside looking in than it does these days. sighh :)
Curation is what everything is all about. The best curation is still manual curation.
Lacking mechanics like uploading your contacts to check whether they are already here (if you want to), the platform truly needs to help.
When it comes to trending, that should be highlighting the awesome content and if no AI is available to do that (difficult at this stage), then it need to be done manually.
There’s professional bloggers like Jason Kottke and Andy Bailey who have been doing this for more than a decade, Kottke.org for two decades already, and they have found huge following.
Steemit Inc has so much Steem they have ninja-mined they could easily use some of that to assist the platform, especially the community, and make this happen. Because, end of the day, on Steemit projects live and die with SP.
Thus, just like they have mrdelegation, they could use that Steem it for projectcuration and have those chosen curators contribute to influence the content seen on trending.
But that shouldn’t be all yet. Steemit also urgently needs a solid on-boarding flow. The FAQ pages... meh. I mean they’re good but too many re totally and utterly clueless what to do once they’ve signed up and got their keys. Regularly curated to trending authors could become recommended users. Awesome guides which were curated to trending can become part of multiple on-boarding tips.
i'm cooking up something for asher's challenge and i resteemed it. i think it's a really cool positive contest and i'll def give it a go. i'm sure if these curators you propose were paid in SBD/Steem many people would want to give it a go! perhaps bot owners could pay someone to take on that role. I really do think it would take quite a bit of attention and need its own "position" as you state.
Look forward to reading what you come up with!
I tend to think we can get further with cooperation and "carrots" than we can with taking adversarial stands and beating people with sticks to create compliance.
I'm not against the bid bots, per se, I'm against their misuse. SO why not INVOLVE the bid bot operators in the process?
I know @yabatmatt already indicated support... so why not others? And why not create a trending that's there because the bot owners commit maybe... I dunno... 20% of their voting power every cycle to organically upvote worthy content for free? Based on manual curation. It would be a HUGE incentive for content creators to do their best to "win" one of those coveted votes... and it would be a great "advertisement" of goodwill for the bot owners to sell their remaining 80% of voting power. It might predate your being here, but there was a time when @blocktrades would throw an upvote at significant posts and that was like hitting the jackpot... I never got one, but I have friends here who did.
thanks!
gah your last paragraph is RIGHT ON THE MONEY!! initiatives like @ocd, @sndbox, @curie and @tribesteemup by @kennyskitchen truly keep me coming back and back again!!! i want to keep creating better content because of these!! they are communities who are truly enlivening and perpetuating the blockchain as something people want to come back to. i know i don't speak for only myself when i say that this is what keeps a lot of us going!
i did get a couple @blocktrades votes reaaaally early on and totally made my week! it's one of the reasons i stayed on and kept creating content.
i keep my standards for my own posts incredibly high because i want to keep that ethos of what is possible on the blockchain. and, as i get more followers i really want to keep upping the content to keep that high quality and not be one of those who "sloughs off" and shitposts when people give me support.
your idea is "spot on"!! that would truly "be a great "advertisement" of goodwill" and i believe would draw more people here!!!! AND KEEP THEM (that retention is a huge issue)...
I almost would be more in favor of added button for top 20 trending blogs site wide. It would be new kind of flag/site self-policing that does not remove rewards or cause reputation damage. Instead it simply removes a blog from trending if the community determines it not to be worthy.
My issue with giving such a small group of people the power to control trending. Then again they already control who gets to be a top witness and who does not. Either way there no perfect solution or one that can’t be manipulated and exploited for personal gains. If someone willing to pay $500+ to be on trending an extra $50 bribe where those people than get a cut of the profits on top of that could really make some people wealthy.
While I hate how trending is now. It also lets the community see as a whole what is going on. When you see that 1 photo and little text be at $800 and on trending. You can at least see it and so can the rest of the world. That alone I think makes the system want to be better in the long run. As it just makes it look bad. Otherwise it just looks like you are trying cover it up by removing/hiding them from trending. Which many sites already control what is seen to the public and since those they do not agree with their view point. While empowering their friends or for “other” reasons.
The reason I suggested it the way I did is that we have Witnesses in charge of the technical side and the nuts and bolts of RUNNING Steemit.
With that in mind, why not have formal Curators who are — in a similar way — the overseers of the content we have here. It's not about censorship, or about who can say what, or favoritism... it's simply about making the first impression of Steemit look as good as possible.
Whereas I essentially agree with the bones of what you say about the system "wanting to be better," it skips past human psychology, to some extent. The people who are buying upvotes to the top of trending don't give a rats ass about "being better" they just want MONEY. They don't care about Steemit, and if this community goes TU, they'll just head off like a swarm of locusts to the next great thing they can milk for every penny they can find.
But let's consider Trending again. What does it mean to be "trending?" To me (based on twitter, Flopbook and others) "trending" means something is hot and of interest to LOTS of people. Does a post on which the 5-10 largest upvotes are from bid bots qualify as "of interest to lots of people?" In my opinion, no.
Perhaps a limit on how long something could be in tending would be better. Trash or not they can’t keep buying themselves to the top on the same blog for three straight days in a row or longer by overspending. 12 hour time limit. After that the blog is no longer up there. We live in a very short time and fast moving site. It’s a little odd things hang in trending for days on end.
Otherwise, I fear it will just be the same old same old. Everything here is based on vesting. Those “curators” will be put in by vesting totals as that how everything is done. A lot of the top is into vote selling and as a result they have the powers to put those who share their viewpoints into power.
The community as a whole needs another way. The issue here is everyone has different options on what should be in trending. For many anything that is not programing related that is not a new app or update announcement for their programs they are running here is not adding value to the platform and therefore should never be in trending.
Best I could think of. The top 10 tags each should each have someone who represents them and there interest to bring forward every day blogs that are worthy of being on trending. Each person would than put forth a Curation Announcement of their intentions to be a tags leader. Every quarter the top 10 tags are recalculated. There would also be term limits within x amount of time.
Even this has its massive drawbacks. Instead I would rather focus on tags and whenever communities come out to avoided the current trending issues. On top of that I think Steemit should find a more clever way to either have the front of steemit change every time you refresh it to show one of the top ten tags and its trending list or have a way to customize what mix of tags are in your trending. As far as those not logged into the site I’m not sure if it would become economy viable for steemit to have top trending results be relatable to the person who is landing on that front page.
Other method is simply allow steemit inc control and who and what is in trending. Hand pick like many other sites really do. Than you run into issues like twitter or YouTube where they have a bigger hand then most realize on what is “trending.”
I just don’t see an easy solution that won’t over time become corrupted. If we moved off liner rewards and back onto the old system it would at least be cheaper voting power wise to as a collative remove the junk off trending. There is one piece right now up there that many have down voted. The person can easer outspend and the brainless masses will keep upvoting it. This is also very subjective. As who am I to say what should or not be on trending? Why that what my vesting share are for. As such I have no impact on what goes there or not.
@denmarkguy I could not agree more. When I was first invited to join Steemit, the quality content and the ethics around copyright and plagiarism had a lot to do with why I was interested. Then I looked at the trending page and there was nothing (in capital letters) that rocked my socks. Having been on another blogging platform for a couple of years, I knew/know that you don't build an audience unless you engage: it's not good enough to just post into the ether. I have said before, and say again, that while I post about certain issues on my own blog, and not about others, but will happily engage around issues when I see a post/topic that interests me. I am not one to just say something for the sake of it, so unless it's something that really grabs me, I'd rather say nothing than be insincere. Similarly, I'm not going to get all twisted up because people don't follow my blog. I get it. My stuff may be passé to them, but not to others.
Back to my entrance to Steemit: at that early point, there was nothing that really grabbed my attention. So, I wondered, would people want to read what I wrote?
Ok, so this is an awful long way to saying that I also found the Bloomberg interview a little disingenuous because I agree that there is a lot of material on Steemit which is just awful. I appreciate that some of this may be because I'm not in the age group, target market or whatever, but even so. In addition, I am not sure how you are going to ensure that all the content, on what Ned sees as a hybrid social media platform, is going to be quality. It's more complicated: what will be quality to one sub-community, may not be to another.
This is also why I think @jaynie has done such a fantastic job with #steemitbloggers. Through the Discord platform, a community of caring yet disparate people has developed with a myriad different interests. We read each others posts - yes, sometimes with "encouragement", but because of the curation, we do get to read things that would not normally get drawn to our attention. Because they come from "our family" we tend to be a little more forgiving and/or open which is helpful to all. Thenk there are the cherries (like this) that are not only engaging to read but which invite engagement and comment.
I would really like a "curated" trending page - not just as a marketing tool but because I value the opportunity to see beyond just those that I follow. Even then, I can't get to read everyone I follow, and although I know we benifit from having a gazillion followers, engagement is hard. Sometimes when I see someone has "unfollowed" me, I am quite relieved.
So to get back to the curation and your proposal. I really like it and I think that over time, with good management, cracking the nod for that page could be something Steemians would aspire to - a bit like the WordPress long reads.
Finally, I'd be happy to be part of a group looking into this and potentially developing something that would have certain criteria to be applied to make sure, as you say, it's not just populated by one's pals.
Brilliant suggestion, I hope it's heard @denmarkguy
I agree wholeheartedly, and if the action on @abh12345's post yesterday is any indication, I'd venture to guess there are many who feel the same!
The "Trending" page is in fact a total embarrassment as far as first impressions go. Perhaps we need to have Bought and Paid for Trending page and an Organically Grown Trending page, just to try and keep all the kids happy and to show prospective steemians that both are available to them :)
@lynncoyle1, that's where I keep ending up with it.
Let's just look at the dictionary definition of "trending." It's definitely NOT about "who paid the most money."
Which is why I keep coming back to having a "trending" feed from which you're automatically excluded if you have bid bot votes, and another feed called "richlist" which just lists posts by their estimated payout value, regardless of whether or not there are bid bot votes on them.
Call things what they are!
Exactly, that makes more sense. Today I was actually thinking that the entire 'trending' page should be scratched and let people do what they want with their own posts. Leave the categories, and people search by subject matter and not dollar value, because I don't think we will ever change the fact that there are those who want to make money and have no interest in quality writing, ethics, or organic growth. It seems like those who care are discussing it, but those who are the "problem" are no where to be found :)
It is a good idea. Seems like you have put more thought into than Ned/Inc perhaps. They are so bent on tokens, the front end is merely a nuisance to them. I have held the opinion that they have vastly underestimated the value of Steemit per se. Given that Farcebook is valued at roughly half a Trillion bucks (that is with a "T" not a "B"), is it not possible Steemit could have some value? It is soo frustrating!
For starters, Ned doesn't have 25 years experience with the social Internet. He's not even a marketing guy; he's more of an idea guy, but not in the "technical genius" way of @dan.
The Steemit brand has huge value, and keeps building that daily. The Steemit Social site is the "visible window" to what can be done on the Steem blockchain. Most blockchain projects have lots of ideas; Steem has a "WORKING model." It's like a salesman-- one has a product sample, the others do not.
Indeed, many folks on here, myself included so not check the trending page. First thing I noticed when I joined was how shitty it was. Anyway, I think something along those lines might work. With incentives, such curators would be rewarded for their efforts, and it will get many people interested. And I feel such people must be people that are noted for posting good content. Might also be a good idea for it to pass through multiple curators, before it hits the trending.
I just think the Trending issue can be solved by offering a better incentive for people. Simply focusing on "maximixing ROI" isn't necessarily good for the overall system, itself... in fact, it's a pretty good bet that it best serves filling the pockets of a few in the short run, after which aforesaid "system" will simply crumble and collapse.
You're right my friend. I haven't looked at the trending page for months. I just don't want to get my hopes up, because I know that it's a pay-to-win game on here now. It's sucks, but alas, give it a few years :)
Well, yes... it appears to be a "pay-to-win" game, but my question is whether or not there is actually any real WINNING involved? You pay a bid bot 20 SBD for what looks like a $35 vote... but in the course of the post's life that slides to $30, and then you give $7.50 to curators, so now you're down to $22.50, and you get 11.25 SBD and the current fiat rate equivalent in Steem... meaning you actually ended up slightly "upside-down" on the transaction.
The only real "winner" there is the bot operator who (risk free) gets to collect income from SELLING something most people give away for free.
So I can't ever entirely view it as "pay-to-win," but more as supporting a "the rich get richer" paradigm.
Yes, this is essentially what I was trying to say.
I'm in the midst of trying to shift this paradigm and create some healthy traction within Steemit. I'll be releasing it in a week or so. I have an idea that I think you'll like - so stay tuned :)
That sounds like a pretty good idea and would certainly achieve a more representative trending page. Of course, it requires changes to the code and therein lies the problem. Other than the recently disappearing view counter and a shiny new pencil and magnifying glass a few months ago, very little seems to happen in the way of improvements. Yeah, I know, we're still in beta.
I do like Asher's idea as it's something we can actually do ourselves
Sadly, I think one of the "weaknesses" of decentralization is that getting anything done (changes) moves at a snail's pace... everybody is very busy down inside their own little worlds; many of the original witnesses are more interested in developing and working on their own apps for the Steem blockchain than working on the Steemit social front end.
In most cases, there is no "they" here, there's only WE. Asher's initiative is just an example of "we" coming together to attempt to effectuate change.