It's been six months on Steemit for me, and coincidentally this is also my 1000th post on the platform. That's obsessively pleasing I have to say. I just want to discuss a few things to do with both Steemit, my account here and a few other things. I've been a bit quiet over the past few days mostly just because the weather has been uncharacteristically nice here so I've been getting some stuff done around the garden and house, but it's also allowed my Voting Power to recover a bit. I'll be out in full force this week, upvoting and flagging where appropriate. Anyway, the first thing I want to talk about is...
Content Quality and Plagiarism
I'm going to start off on a bit of a low, but things are only going to get better from here, honestly. Over the past few months, as new users have joined the platform, I've noticed a sharp increase in the amount of copy-and-paste posts as well as misinformation, mostly likely from a lack of research. For brand new users, this is part of the learning curve as bots and users notify the user and eventually flag the content if they don't change their behaviour. What irritates me is when people just do the bare minimum to circumvent anti-plagiarism services in an attempt to game the system and make money from other people's content. This cannot be allowed to continue if Steemit is going to thrive as a platform.
I think there needs to be some clearer guidelines from Steemit Inc., not dissimilar to YouTube's community guidelines, as well as more support in combating the rise in crap posts and straight up theft. If you are posting content to Steemit, it needs to be original, quality content or at the very least, "transformative". I'll explain this concept in more detail shortly, but it is allowed under what's known as "fair use" or "fair dealing". At the bottom of all my posts, I leave a disclaimer that states the following:
"All images and videos are used without the express authorisation of the copyright holders. They are used under what's known in British law as "Fair Dealing" or under US law as "Fair Use" exceptions. For example, exceptions relating to research and private study, criticism or review, or news reporting. For more information visit the UK Gov website or the US Gov website."
There are a number of factors in determining whether particular use of content qualifies as "fair." One of the factors weighing in favor of finding fair use is when the use of the original material is "transformative". Transformative uses take the original copyrighted work and transform its appearance or nature to such a high degree that the use no longer qualifies as infringing. Whether something is classed as transformative seems to boil down to two questions:
- Has the material taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
- Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings?
Ask yourself these questions before posting, and if the answer is no, then it's probably not a good idea to post it. This approach however, requires a certain level of self-policing that I don't think everyone is up for doing, so what to do...
Steemit Police
I couldn't think of a better way of putting it, but basically we need to start policing our own little corners of this site. If we all start monitoring the tags and categories that we are most active in, we can slowly start cleaning up the site one tag at a time. Over the next week, I'm going to be trying this out with the #electroneum and #TVDiscovery (if I can convince others to use that tag!). I think I was the first person on this platform to start writing about Electroneum on a regular basis, and I don't want to see the tag getting polluted with sharticles.
I will be looking out for plagiarism and just generally bad posts that either misinform or are otherwise of low quality. This isn't some flagging campaign, but instead it'll be an attempt at education. I will be highlighting issues and making suggestions on how to improve posts going forward, but I also welcome criticism of my posts too. I feel like I've stopped challenging myself and I have got a bit methodic with my posts, and I don't want to see the quality of my work dropping but instead I'd like to see it improving, and for that I need your help.
A week today I'll post a report on this little experiment, whether it made any difference and what changes can be made. Together, we really can make this platform something to be proud of. If it's successful, I urge you all to start doing the same
Bid Bots
A really great user on here by the name of @conradt posted about Bid Bots last week, and it got me thinking. When I first joined Steemit, I was completely opposed to the use of bid bots, on any other platform it wouldn't be seen as a positive thing. I later changed my mind, and figured I need to join the game in order to get a head, and it worked to some extent. However, now I'm thinking about what my account would look like if I hadn't started using them. Would it be more or less successful? I have no bloody clue sadly.
Upon reflection, I'm going to continue to use bid bots in moderation for posts that have had 1+ hours of work put into them. This will range from 0.5SBD to 5SBD, mainly just because it's helping me to build up my Steem Power without having to invest fiat money into the platform. Since I started bid botting my posts up, I've said to myself that when/if I hit 500SP, I'll stop using the bot services completely. I still intend to stick to that, and I don't see a problem with moderate use of these bots for most users who are posting quality content. I personally view it as a bit of promotion, which is definitely needed for new users but maybe the system needs a few tweaks. I'd like to see something where these bid bots allow you to place bids in line with your reputation. Maybe something like this:
- 25 Reputation - 2.5SBD bid max
- 50 Reputation - 10SBD bid max
- 75 Reputation - 25SBD bid max
As well as limits on how many bots you can put on a post, I don't see why anyone needs to put more than one bot on per post for most use cases. Again, this would probably require enforcement from Steemit Inc. themselves, which they seem reluctant to really get involved in the day to day running of the site. Just a thought anyway.
My Website
Ever since I first got online in 1997, web sites and later web development has been a major interest of mine as well as a career. I made my first website in December 1998 using Homestead (it's like geocities, but older and at the time arguably better) which was a Pokemon fan site called Pikachu's Palace, and considering I was just 10 years old at the time and knew nothing of web design, I was quite proud of it.
As a teenager I setup my first "real" website which I wrote from scratch in Notepad, and over time it grew into something I was quite proud of. It had all the things you'd expect from a personal website in 2006, including an active forum as well as my silly youtube videos. If you're interested you can see a snapshot of the site from early 2006 here.
In recent years I've worked for a couple of software companies as well as doing a fair amount of freelance work, but my personal website has never really reached the stage where I could call it finished. One of the few things that is still online is a HTML5/Chrome showcase I did a few years back now, which is meant to look like a generic old school command-line driven OS (DOS/Linux something like that). If you'd like to check that out, you can here but it is a little bit buggy now, and only really works on Chrome.
I've been slowly working on relaunching my personal website over the past couple of weeks, playing with getting my Steemit posts to show on there. I'll post something once it's done, but that gets me into the next thing I want to talk about...
Steem Gigs
I'm thinking about offering up my services on #steemgigs, maybe just website/SEO audits and troubleshooting at first with plans to offer more services such as web sites/applications, hosting and so on. Maybe a ghost writing service? I don't know, I'm just spitballing at this point, but is this something anyone would be interested in?
My Posts
The range of topics I've been writing about is getting too varied, so I'm going back to an update post I did a couple of months ago and refocus my attentions on what I originally intended to write about. Particularly Cult Watch as I must have half a dozen or so part-written posts for this. I'm looking to increase the quality of my posts by trying to make them more accessible and readable. Also, any suggestions for topics that you guys might want to read about are always welcome. I've found that writing about topics helps me to remember them better, and I'm always after new subjects to read up on. Any constructive criticism is also welcome about any aspects of my posts.
I'm going to stop it there as this has already gone on for much longer than I would have hoped. I really would like to hear your thoughts about any of the points raised in this post, especially regarding post quality here on Steemit and how to better deal with it. As always, make sure to follow me for the latest Cryptocurrency, Technology, Internet and Pop Culture updates. If you're a fan of strange YouTube videos, you might want to follow me on Twitter. Thank you so much for reading this, seriously. Take it easy!