On how to solve the unfair multilingual Whale problem!

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

Today I've started putting together a list of Spanish hidden gems on the wake of the original concept by @dragonslayer109 and the Russian version by @serejandmyself and the German one by @knozaki2015 and I've noticed that the voting and revenue generation (let's keep in mind that the revenue generated gets shared with authors mentioned in the post) and level of activity in general are much lower than those in other languages and obviously in English.

This really doesn't make too much sense, if 30% aprox of the Spanish population speaks Spanish, then 30% of Steemit users should speak Spanish, thus giving the language a nice base of users upon which to build audiences and the like.

After a bit of poking, a couple of chats and some thought on the matter during the day, I've come to a conclusion, part of the Spanish lack of activity may be due to the lack of Spanish whales and the fact that current whales don't really speak Spanish.

So I was asking myself, if this happens with Spanish, with its potentially broad user base, what happens with those other languages which are not so widely used, ie; Italian, Japanese, Dutch or Arab? Does this mean that people writing in those languages will never thrive in Steemit? If we accept this thesis as correct, then Steemit will fall short of its target of "universalizing" its use, furthermore, it really won't help one of the "conditions" which personally smitted me regarding the decentralized movement, cryptocurrencies and the like, the making of a more just world where individuals can thrive through their own merits and the unbanked can have financial activity away from the traditional banking system.

Bearing the above in mind, I humbly propose the use of some sort of system whereby reputation gets adjusted according to the number of users in the system per language. In this way, someone who's not a whale in the overall context of things can bring more weight if he's influential in a specific language, thus helping better remunerate those users posting content in a specific language and not just in English. The devil, obviously is in the detail, and this should be thought through thoroughly, but I think something along those lines would make a lot of sense and help in the future multilingual adoption of Steemit and its great concept.

If questions of this type aren't taken into account and addressed by the community's intellectual leaders, then we'll see how Steemit isotopes will pop up in different languages all over the place, thus reducing the potential network effect of which Steemit should benefit and hurting the progression of the project in the short and medium term. I don't think it'll have too large an impact in the long run, but may definitely end slowing it down.

So, thinking heads of Steemit, bitcoin pioneers and whales, what do you think of this? You are the intelectual leaders of the community... will you take a step forward and lead in providing thought and exposure to matters of this type? @rogerkver
@tracemayer
@charlieshrem
@ummjackson
@mrosenquist
@tatianamoroz
@tomz
@thebeachedwhale
@dollarvigilante
@rubenalexander
@ned
@dantheman
@berniesanders
@smooth
@itsascam
@blocktrades
@wang
@dan
@rainman
@steemed

I hereby apologize to the people mentioned in this post for throwing their name on the table on this matter, but, at the end of the day, this community is built top-bottom, you guys are on top, and I risk losing any reputation I may have if you decide to flag me for bothering you with this.

I additionally must confess I'm not aware of any multilingual development road map for Steemit, if there is please point me to it or any content of that sort which may enlighten me a bit. thx

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Totally in agreement, the barrier of the language is a problem in steemit, for the present 90 % of the content is in English and it provokes a rejection for the people who does not speak it.

The second barrier is that there are no whales that speak all the languages, as what to the people it does not have interest in postear in these languages. (I imagine that it will change with the time, but to the step that we grow it will be in a lot of time)

Maybe a translator of page, who translates all the post into the language that your you use can be the first help.

Here we have a graph on the languages of the world.

Las soluciones que veo es. Una blockchain independiente por lenguage.
Otra es que tags de lenguajes como es cs it tuvieran revenews en partes iguales.

Cómo me gustaría una blockchain para nosotros solitos!!!

Thank you sooo much for this marvelous article! Let`s decentralize the languages!

Thank you for your comment... I really believe there's a very interesting space to be explored in Steemit languages... we should get organized ;)

A pick at hidden gems Spanish Version 3 - Una selección de tesoros ocultos versión española 3.

https://steemit.com/spanish/@webosfritos/a-pick-at-hidden-gems-spanish-version-3-una-seleccion-de-tesoros-ocultos-version-espanola-3

Very good point you raise. I think this is a topic that not only affects languages though.

Thank you for your comment... Interesting. What other things might this affect?

Everything. You noticed that most whales speak English. But you can replace English with certain topics. If you want a topic to do well on steem and no whale cares about it, how is that going to work?

So your question is much more genetic than for languages.

Most of the investors probably are crypto freaks and anarchist, sure they will have general interest but they likely do not represent the general world population very well.

So I think you raise a great point.

I'm trying to push Italian community with Italian post but there are very few results. Hopely I'm not alone and I've to thanks @fabio @anonymario and the others that post with the tag #italia or #it-steem

Thank you for your comment. I understand... I'm having lots of trouble with Spanish... I think it has to do (partly) with the whale situation I mention in the post!

Si, estoy de acuerdo con tu proposición de hacer un upvote que tiene más potencia para los artículos en lenguas que no son inglés pero no pienso que steemit quiera porque no le conviene.

Acabo de leer tu comentario... ya te estoy siguiendo!

Gracias tío, intentamos ayudarnos entre nosotros por lo menos😉😅

Entiendo... alguna idea sobre como podríamos intentar solucionar esto?

Nosotros(los italianos) tenemos un chat en rock chat y metemos los Link y intentamos ayudarnos pero como no hay ballenas y a penas hay 1 delfín y un par de peces pequeños que donan 1 céntimo cada like es verdaderamente difícil haber nuevos usuarios. Si puedo ayudaros empiezo a seguirte así q puedo votarte cada vez que veo un tío artículo en los feed

There are some users who actively push other languages. I think this is the effort we need. @abit is upvoting a lot of #cn and @fabio is active in supporting #deutsch

Hey. Thank you for your comment. I'm trying to push Spanish, but I obviously don't carry too much weight, it'll take some time... Here's the second article I've written.... I'll try to contact @abit and @fabio... if you know anyone pushing Spanish I'd greatly appreciate.... Cheers! https://steemit.com/steemit/@webosfritos/a-pick-at-hidden-gems-spanish-version-2-una-seleccion-de-tesoros-ocultos-version-espanola-2

Maybe you are the first! Than this is great and you got first mover advantage. @fabio is doing some initiative like translating popular posts to german in #deutsch

yes. i think starting with translating important posts to local languages is a good start !

Well, you may be right... We'll see. Its going to take some patience. I appreciate your support and comments. Thx :)

Me encanta la iniciativa!!! Mi padre jgcastrillo19 esta empezando a escribir bastante en español, yo a ver si voy intercalando los post en ingles con los españoles
. Un saludo, upvoted

Que buena noticia... sus posts están incluidos en una lista periódica de contenido para promover la adopción, remuneración y descubrimiento en Español que estoy impulsando... a lo mejor te interesa echarle un vistazo... https://steemit.com/spanish/@webosfritos/a-pick-at-hidden-gems-spanish-version-3-una-seleccion-de-tesoros-ocultos-version-espanola-3

Hola @webosfritos! Yo creo que tienes mucha razón. La falta de gente con peso relevante hace que esto sea bastante difícil. Me pregunto yo si además en inglés han hecho campañas publicitarias, de difusión, etc. Me intriga saber si realmente la ventaja competitiva servirá de algo a futuro.

Por cierto, yo también creo que la creación de contenido a través de traducciones y demás puede ser una solución y me ofrezco para hacer algunas pero no sé cómo contactar con autores y demás, alguna idea?

Cuenta con mi colaboración!!

Hola @martaspn gracias por tu comentario. Escríbeme en el power chat y vemos que se nos puede ocurrir

Puedes mandarme un enlace? Creo que el otro día me registré pero ahora no lo encuentro. En realidad yo preferiría el mail, me he creado una cuenta para no dejar aquí pública la mía habitual (por el rollo de la privacidad y que se me inunde todo de spam) martaspnsteemit@gmail.com

Si vas al menu principal veras el steemit chat y te llevará allí donde solo tienes que agregarme con mi nombre de usuario en Steemit

Yo prefiero no usar el email por temas de Spam y demás... :)

Fantástico, votado!

Wow... mil gracias... me alegro te haya gustado!

Interesting

Thank you :)

I hope that you are still around, what about as bilingual users, we knock on english speaking whale's doors and propose an organized and serious curation effort for them?

I'm sure at least one of them would be more than happy to give us a hand...

What do you think @webosfritos ?

Just came back to Steemit after some time... Happy to help and get involved!