I guess it depends on what the criticism is about
Exactly!
If you criticize the next hardfork without having any coding background, then maybe you're on the wrong path. Still a blogger, a content creator, a curator - a Steem user - would definitely be able to have a solid opinion about user experience. If there were no people using this currency and believing in it, then it would be of no value. So I definitely think that the average user - as we have been categorized here - has a right to voice their opinion about user experience.
Steem has always been advertized as the gateway coin to mainstream cryptocurrency. Well if you want to bring non-crypto people in touch with this currency and "tokenize the internet", then you might let these crypto newbies talk about their user experience then.
Couldn't have said it better! The killer argument of "learn to code, before you speak your mind about the platform" is a very lame way of trying to silence the "stupid masses". Steemit Inc should listen a lot more to the users and investors here and the fact alone, that we need users to highlight advancements on GitHub instead of the Dev team communicating (at least) weekly with us, speaks for itself.
I hope my post didn't come across as trying to silence anyone, but I see how "shut up" pretty clearly implies that. I was more hoping to emphasize how important it is to understand context before telling others (who may have far more context than we do) what they should be doing and how they should prioritize their resources. Unless we have experience and understanding, it makes us look silly. I prefer we not look silly and instead work to understand and be helpful.
I've been talking with @corinnestokes about the language I used in my post, and she reminded me it's not accurate to say a criticism isn't "valid" unless it really isn't valid. It would have been better for me to say something like, "valid, but possibly not helpful right now without more understanding and context."
Here's what I mean:
What if Steemit, inc is more focused on the underlying blockchain performance and scaling and needs to get that done before more people join Steemit? So many people are frustrated with the retention rate, the lack of marketing, the UX/UI issues, etc, etc. What if Steemit focused on all that first and then turned their attention to performance on the blockchain? From my perspective, that would cause a lot of problems right now, and we'd probably have even more bandwidth and blockchain bloat problems.
Based on what I see going on, it seems they are focusing on important things. If we think "They should be doing A right now!" but "B" is way better and doing "A" might actually hurt the whole ecosystem right now, then saying "A is broken, go fix it! Why aren't they fixing it yet!?!" doesn't actually benefit anyone.
That said, they (IMO) should certainly focus a lot more on communication. I've been saying this for a long time now.
Thanks for your comment. Sorry it took me a while to reply as I've been at a conference the last few days.
Thanks for clarifying. The thing is, that there seems to be no reason to work on a blockchain, that is No 1 in Tx and has a network load of <1% - outperforming every other blockchain anyway. Yes, I´m no dev, but then again it would be the job of Steemit Inc to explain what they are doing instead of us speculating on the real reasons. It´s great if there are really lots of people working on the performance of the blockchain, but as with any other company, you have to hire some Marketing/PR person who does this job of informing everyone what´s going on - even the smallest companies do that (and for a good reason).