First, let me say I like the idea of Steem, its potential and what it stands for. But after using the network for a month I feel tired, confused and frustrated. After reading hundreds of articles I see that I just scratched the surface. Every time I think I understand something, I discover another layer of information.
Even the information on the Welcome page and FAQ is outdated, incomplete and confusing. The Steemit team instead of creating a good guide for new users, just copied and pasted some posts from random users trying to explain how the system works. Another problem is that these posts are 2 years old now and a lot of the information they provide is inaccurate since many things have changed. And nobody seems to care and update them.
Even basic information such as how voting works, is not there. I have asked many old users to explain to me how voting works but they always give a general explanation and say it's complicated. Nobody knows all the parameters. And they keep changing too.
I just learned that voting on a new post that was published a couple of minutes earlier, gives nothing to the voter. And people should vote articles that are older than 15 minutes and have less than 7 likes. Really? So a minnow user that his article is displayed on New page, has no chance of getting votes. And his post will get buried deeper. Telling users not to vote on new posts is not a good thing IMHO.
The other thing I don't like is the Trending page. It is full of garbage posts. And most of them are about Steem, cryptocurrencies, get rich quick schemes, copy paste news, and boring photos. And the tags are always the same and half of them are duplicates or low interest topics. I see photos of food making hundreds of dollars and amazing, original large posts having zero. How so many "State of Steem..." or "Statistics" should users see? Where are politics, movies, games, celebrities, news etc? You know, stuff people like. And the language is random, English posts are blended with other languages.
People upvote not what is good but whatever they think will make them money. It is even encouraged to do so on a post on Welcome page. Also, people don't downvote garbage posts, spam, copy paste articles etc. I see people with reputation zero that get displayed on the New and Rising section and this should not happen.
The user experience should number one priority for Steemit team, yet they want to add more tokens as I read in the new About page! The system should be more simple and not more complicated. People come, stay for a few days and leave. Most of them don't have the free time to read hundreds of posts just to get started. Just for uploading a photo, you must go on Google, search how to upload a photo, read a couple of guides, go on Google, search for free image hosting, upload photo, copy URL and then go and paste it on Steemit. Want to use bold text or underline a word? Get ready to learn some HTML coding. It is unacceptable in 2019 and not have a good simple HTML editor making it easy for users to format text and add photos and videos. On websites like Twitter and Facebook people sign up and are ready to go. When they sign up on Steem they see that they can't use it immediately. When the sign up verification arrives, many of them have lost interest.
It is shocking to me that there is no 'official' Android or iOS app for Steemit. Third party apps are fine but it is crucial to have an official app. Also, a game that could bring a lot of engagement, Steem Monsters, is for PC only. And not only that but it asks for money to sign up.
I think @ned and Eli Powell should focus on these issues and understand that the complexity of Steemit is what is driving people away. And I have a proposition for the new Managing Director, @elipowell. Why don't you try to use the website for a week without help from employees or colleges. Because I see that she has not used the website and how can you be head of a company if you don't know how it works. Steemit team should have monthly polls asking users about their experience, what they like and what they don't. And they should have someone who not only will update the Welcome and FAQs but will keep writing posts explaining stuff and helping users.
SP, VP, SBD, Steem, Steemit, Steem Inc., delegations, witnesses are confusing and Steemit should try hard to explain them with simple words. New users should know that they will not get paid for posts that are older than 7 days. Or that they must claim the rewards and they don't get automatically deposited in their accounts. Finally, somebody from Steemit should contact Google. Every time someone will search Google for Steem, the search engine will display the message "did you mean Steam"? And this is not good. Google should be able to distinguish Steem and Steam.
Image credit: Steem
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Hey @ond ... don't worry, you're not alone in these thoughts... but yes, the truth is that nobody really cares. Everyone is doing whatever pushes their own specific agenda and/or makes them the most money.
Having said that, a LOT of people's "own agenda" is good for Steem as well... and that's what is so beautiful about this place. Anybody can build whatever they want on top of Steem and they don't need Steemit Inc itself to do anything... in fact it's probably better if 3rd parties do create all the apps etc. that are needed... less reliance on a central body controlling everything... we all own a share in the blockchain after all :-)
P.S. The "Minnow Hell" that new users go through though is VERY real and I've literally seen 100s of friends stop blogging because of it... I wrote about some of it here (https://steemit.com/steemit/@braaiboy/your-vote-doesn-t-count-for-shit-and-you-don-t-matter) and a few others that you might be able to find through Google.
I can offer some good news though: @busy and @steempeak both offer UIs that are miles ahead of Steemit.com and @steem-plus is a very nifty little chrome plugin that extends the steemit UI, that you will want to check out as well.
Good Luck... hope to still see you here in a year or two ;-)
6 months ago I was the same as you but best bet is to ignore the trending posts because guys pay for them to trend and they are all shite. Best bet is to just scroll for posts you like and build a relationship up with people who have similar interests . That way you can build a little network at first and as you grow you will get to know more people . You followed me just there and I would of never spoken to you until you hit follow. Just stick with it. You will get more out of it in the coming weeks . 😀😀
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The truth is that the STEEM Blockchain truly is complicated but it can be understood with a little patience. But you can ask people about a single point of view and ask them to explain it a little. For example ask someone about VP issues and ask another Guy about the 15 Minute Rule. If you go to one guy and ask everything at once he/she is most likely to brush you off as it's a lot of explaining to do.
As for newbies not getting enough Upvotes is kind of correlated to Facebbok or Instagram newbies not etting enough likes on their Pictures when they join. You have to make relationships, friendships and treat Steemit as a Blooging platform and not just an Earning Platform. I have seen many people leave Steemit because when they saw Steemit from the outside they expected to get rich in a Week but in reality it takes Months of Grinding to get your Work up to a certain Level when others appreciate you.
I have a lot of things to add on but this Comment seems to be getting long. So if you have any doubts or want to ask something about this Platform feel free to hit me up. I might reply a little late but I will reply for sure.
Thanks for the response. But this stuff should have been explained better by the Steemit team and people should not go around asking other users. And BTW, when I asked around, I got different answers from different people. For example even old users are not sure how voting works. People stay all day on other social media websites where they don't get paid, so I think it's not about the money. It's just that steemit is overcomplicated. Yes newbies, don't get votes on other platforms but you don't see crap on their Trending page.
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Yes the upper brass is definitely lacked in the matter of Educating newbies. I fully agree on that fact but there are several guys out here who are willing to help out the newbies and educate them however they can.
As for different explanations from different people it might be because of the fact that the Curation system was pretty complicated and almost 60% of the people didn't knew how to curate properly. Let me quickly explain a little about curation.
Previously if anybody upvoted a post which was less than 30 mins old than they forefeited their curation rewards to the author. In this case the 100% rewards went to the author and the person who Upvotes gets nothing but after the recent Hardfork this changed into a different system. Now the time limit has been reduced from 30 mins to 15 mins. But if by any chance someone Upvotes a post before 15 mins than instead of all the rewards going to the author 25% of that reward goes back to the reward pool.
Sounds complicated right??
If you want to learn about curation and how to earn the maximum curation rewards you should check your daily payouts and curation payouts if you receive less than 20% curation rewards than you are doing something wrong but if you are getting over 30% curation rewards than you are definitely doing something right. Plus Curation also has a first come first serve basis rule where if you Upvote a post first and then some whale drops a big Upvote on the same post you receive more than 25% curation rewards.
As for the Trending page yes I agree it is kinda trash but believe me it has improved a lot since last year. Plus other Social Media pages also has a lot of Crap in them.
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Well half the things you don't like are indeed crappy things about Steem, the lack of good information at onboarding is a huge problem and there is a very steep learning curve that tends to eat up most new users before they ever understand how Steem works. This isn't helped by totally unrealistic expectations built up by the Steemit Inc marketing that you can just show up here and get paid to blog. Like anywhere else, you will only succeed and make money on Steem if you put the time and effort into it (or have a bunch of money to begin with) - that is the truth anywhere though, it isn't unique to Steem.
The other half the things you don't like are only half understood by you in the first place. I am not going to go through point by point as you bring up a ton of stuff here, but a few things I feel like I should address:
A new user on the other hand has absolutely nobody jockying to get a vote in early on their posts. A new user has few followers who will even see the post. Nobody looks at "new" tag to find posts - except for brand new users like yourself maybe. Just make sure to use relevant tags to what you are posting about, your content will stay visible on the smaller tags for more than 15 minutes. The fact that your post might get past 15 minutes with no votes on it is actually a good thing for a new user - once your post reaches 15 minutes with no votes, there is a great incentive for someone to upvote it. They won't lose any of their upvote, and they will get a portion of all curation reward that comes after them. I personally look for good posts with 0 payout that are at least 15 minutes old, upvote them and then share them with c-squared to get more votes and eyes on the post - I make good curation rewards by doing so.
Cheers and good luck
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. My point is that Steemit is very complicated and I'm not sure it has to be. I understand that Steem marketing is creating high expectations about making money but I don't think this is the main reason people don't stay. After all they spend countless time on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc. The system is just confusing. Most people say we should ignore Trending page but the correct answer should be what can we do to change it. There must be someone who is responsible for the ranking factors on that page and elsewhere. Yes, I used the bots but because I didn't get any votes. And I wrote something original and didn't just download an image from the internet and upload it here. I see hundreds of posts like this having hundreds of votes. And people vote these photos only because they think others will vote too and make money. And the other thing that bothers me is that now Steemit has a new 'Managing Director', only she just started to use the platform herself and has no idea how it works. Anyway, I hope things will get better.
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one distinction to draw here is the difference between Steemit (a website / steemit.com) and Steem the blockchain. "Steemit" (the website) sucks. That doesn't necessarily mean that Steem the blockchain sucks. There are many alternative website front ends built on the Steem blockchain, and literally almost every single one is better than steemit.com. Steempeak.com is my personal favorite, but there are tons of choices.
There is absolutely no reason that a website built on Steem blockchain has to be complicated. All the fiddly bits can be hidden "under the hood" as it were, invisible to a user, if the front end so chooses. A front end could, for instance, automatically (and invisibly to the user) delay all votes cast before 15 minutes on a post until after 15 minutes, thereby totally sidestepping the reverse auction time window - and a user of that front end would never even have to know about reverse auction or think about if they should vote a post or not.
The truth is that steemit, inc (another confusing factor of course is that Steemit could refer to a company, Steemit, Inc - hereafter referred to as Stinc for convenience and also because it is appropriate LOL) has deliberately chosen not to work on the steemit.com website, instead focusing on improvements to the blockchain behind the scenes. I personally think this was the right call. If the website worked well and tons of new users had on boarded and stayed active during the peak, we would actually be in a world of hurt right now because the blockchain itself wasn't ready for more users. The amount of transactional data that has to be stored in the consensus layer of the witness servers is really high given the use case as a social media site where tons of small micro transactions like upvotes and comments are happening all the time. Until the development work to implement RocksDB solution is finished and more of these social interactions can go to non-consensus layers of the blockchain, the Steem blockchain is literally not ready for more users. So given that, it wouldn't make any sense at all for Stinc to focus on making the website itself work better. It would be like if a bus had an engine that couldn't make it two miles without bursting into flame - the bus company would obviously prioritize fixing the engine rather than making the interior of the bus more comfy and getting more passengers.
Excellent replies, and I agree! It's a common error to mistake SteemIt as Steem itself. @eSteem, @busy,@partiko (for mobile) are all good frontends. And as you mentioned, @steempeak.