Sorry you're experiencing this :(
This isn't just you and your writing, this is a much larger issue impacting the entire community. Good content is just falling through the cracks. I've seen a lot of people recently that have written great posts and get very little attention. They will get 5-20 votes, but all of inconsequential weight (meaning they get no visibility). Sometimes bots even end up downvoting people and killing any positive weight they had gathered from real users.
It's not a simple problem to solve and I think we're seeing improvements already (with the change to the homepage and with reputation), but it's still got a ways to go. I'm sure over the next week as I browse through the new posts, I'm going to find even more that will just slip through and not get the attention that they deserve.
Hopefully with...
- Better browsing of posts tagged
- Following + feed of following posts
- A more even distribution of voting weight that's happening over time (slowly)
All of these problems will get better.
I'd say that if you're going to leave, make sure to come back in a few months to see how the sites evolved. It's got potential... it's just very much in beta right now.
Well, I have recently posted my sharing of my holiday trip with genuine content. Yes, it may not be good content, but at least I think it is interesting to share your experiences and may be helpful to some. I have to agree that it may not only just fall through the cracks, but we, usually the newcomers may easily get destroyed by those in power, the whales solely to stop you from even starting, thus gaining any visibility. Yes, can be bots like you mentioned.
The current system is flawed, unfair and easily abused, whereby those in power can simply click a button without any restrictions and able to condemn you, stopping you from getting any attention and rewards.
To be honest, this is how social media works, content do fall through the cracks and got buried, everything is about popularity. But with money involved, you will see many evils that try to bring you down.
Yes hopefully there are improvements for better exposure.
It does feel good to share stories, engage in conversation and experience adventures through other peoples lives, part of the interest in coming here was monetary but I think a bigger part was just being involved in something new and different. The engagement that this post has created is truly amazing, not so much the votes but the actually conversation. It is truly humbling.
Very well said...tried to explain both sides of the coin :)
They need to just make a flatter voting system now. And I mean A LOT flatter. I also don't think flagging/downvoting should affect the payout, just hide it for you.
I think a bigger issue is to reward people voting good past content/posts. Once the 30 minute mark is gone, any great post falls into oblivion and only a whale could dig it up days after that and give it prominence (and there are very few whales with that power).