Ok, I Have A Problem With People Having A Problem With Steemit
I didn’t intend to post anything today. Partly because I was traveling (9 hours of the last 24 I was driving) and partly because I wanted to invest some of the remaining time in other Steemit-related projects (like checking my witness an seed servers, doing some research on the price feed and so on). But after seeing some posts about how bad things are in the Steemworld, I decided to do it.
Please be warned that there will be some adult language down below.
Congratulations! You Know How To Run A Decentralized Social Media Website, Backed By A CryptoCurrency Which Is In Turn Validated By A Proof Of Stake Model
No, seriously. You are a genius. Your IQ is dwarfing Einstein’s. Yes, you. The one who’s writing articles about how bad Steemit is. About how slow development is. About how @ned and @dantheman are powering down. You seem to have everything lined up. It’s like we can wake you up at 2AM in the morning and you’ll know exactly what to do. And then go back to sleep, knowing that everything will be ok and we’ll surpass Facebook user base in 2 weeks.
It’s ridiculous. People who have been on the platform for 6 months - because the platform is just 6 months old, folks! - write articles about how to run this business and then question Steemit leadership. Guys, 6 months is not even enough time to properly develop an embryo, if you know what I mean.
You don’t like it here? Then just leave the fuck up and let other people build something. Maybe they’ll be slower than you, maybe they’ll choose a different path, maybe they’ll succeed, maybe they won’t. But you being here telling everybody that you know how to run this business, without contributing anything at the operational level, it’s just ridiculous.
Oh, you don’t like the speed of the development? Why don’t you do a pull request on Github and start coding? Did anyone see Facebook's code on Github? (I’m not talking about React, I’m talking about their inner core). Did you? Can you show me where can I do a pull request on the Facebook pages reach code? Because I have a campaign starting in two weeks and I kinda dislike how they do the reach right now… Exactly: you won’t see that code on Github. Never. Ever.
Steemit is open source folks, just go ahead and write some code.
Oh, you wonder how you’re gonna be paid for all that work? Well, you are paid already, can’t you see it? You get something for every article you post and for every vote you cast. Some of you are getting paid for a few months now. And if you code, if you improve something that you’ll use in the future, your future payment will be bigger. Can’t you see this?
Oh, you don’t know how to code? Then please, pretty please, with sugar on top, stop giving advice about stuff you don’t know. It’s bad for your reputation.
And, above all, stop complaining. You’re toxic. You’re shouting that Steemit needs a community but you’re driving people away with this pessimistic tone, with the constant innuendos about Steemit leadership, with the whining.
Organic Growth Is Organic. Meaning Slow
I saw comparisons between Steemit and Facebook.
Folks, do you even remember how Facebook was after its first 2 years? Do you? I think they needed 2 years only to invent what we now know as “the wall”. And the term “posting on somebody else’s wall”. Yeah, it was that long.
And you want to build something similar in 3 weeks. It’s simply unrealistic. It’s like starting to run on Wednesday and then run a marathon on Sunday. You may be able to pull that trick, but you’ll go straight to the hospital after the race.
Organic growth is slow. Each project has its own audience, its own way to unfold, its own terms. Just because those terms aren’t in sync with your expectations it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong. It takes time to build something reliable. It takes time to be able to sample enough data for shaping some stats and to identify some trends. It takes time.
I’m going to repeat this once more: it takes time.
If you’re not willing to wait, nobody is keeping you here. If the only reason keeping you here is the 2 years lock in for your Steem Power, then I’ll gladly wait to see you powering down everything once the 3 month withdrawal period will kick in (which I think it’s just a matter of days). Maybe the price of Steem will fall under 1 cent. That’s it, I’m okay with that, I’ll buy a lot more then, for the some amount of money.
I’m not diminishing your contribution and I’m not saying you’re less of a user if you “just” contributed money, but I do say that this constant complaining from people who did “just that” starts to feel like a knife scratching on glass. Not cool, man, not cool.
Follow The Leader, Leader, Leader
To be honest, I have nothing to say about Steemit leadership. Because, as I see it, I’m a part of it.
That’s the fundamental difference between Facebook and this platform. Between any other social media website and this platform.
And this is the most puzzling thing I get from all this FUD concerto (for those of you unaware, FUD comes from Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). You are part of the platform, folks. It’s yours, you have shares in it. In fact, you have more than shares: you have voting power. You decide who is going to maintain the network, as witnesses, because you vote for them.
How many of you are voting for Mark Zuckerberg as a CEO for Facebook? No, really. How many? How many of you are voting for what is going to be implemented in the next Facebook release? How many of you are getting paid by Facebook for posting there? How many of you are getting paid for liking stuff on Facebook? With real money? With money that can be exchanged for other crypto currencies or for fiat?
If you would just realize that you are a shareholder in the next Facebook, I doubt that you will lose one more second whining.
P.S. I know there is a significant part of the people contributing at the operational level (witnesses or developers) that are somehow sharing the gloomy views expressed by the FUD spreaders. I have a lot of respect for what you’re doing, folks, I watched many of you on the chat (sorry, I’m a lurker) and I respect your competencies. But I honestly think you’re not doing any good to yourselves by supporting these pessimistic and hostile views. It’s exactly because you have expertise in crypto, in server management and in coding, it’s exactly because you are smart, intelligent, well educated people that you shouldn’t be part of the FUD movement. I’m sorry if I alienated some of you with this post or its language, but I stand by my words.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
Here's my witness thread.
Amen! Thanks for the great write-up. I couldn't agree more!
I'm all for some constructive criticism - "here is an idea of how we can improve things", "I disagree with the direction we are going in here", etc. - but there is a point at which the 'constructive' criticism just becomes whining / complaining, and the only real outcome is spreading negativity. I talk to the dev team quite frequently, and they are well aware of where we need to be, and we are not there - yet. They are working extremely hard to get us there ASAP.
My recent reply to the post about the 'slow' development was basically "here is a link encouraging more people from the community to submit pull requests". It was a subtle way for me to hint at the fact people can stop complaining and do something about it, but after reading your post I'm thinking maybe subtle wasn't the way to go. This need to be said. Thanks!
Thanks for pointing that out. I left another comment below where I tried to be more specific about what the priorities are at the moment, and, most importantly, about the tone of voice.
I agree. Lot's of haters and people who think they know more than the creators of this platform and tech, as if they know how to do it when they can't , or think it's 1-2-3 quick and easy...
I support @dantheman and @ned who created and lead the vision of this platform, and they both take input from the community in modifications they make going forward. We have a say, and they listen.
My thoughts exactly.
If you're referring to me, then I would suggest a re-read of my post. It isn't "FUD." It's simply a critical view about the surprisingly slow speed of development of even the smallest of tweaks. I received a comment from Ned in chat that it was a good post, so take that however you wish.
Also - being on a blockchain does not excuse the lack of minimal features on the UI, such as a template for a profile page. A professional developer - or a team of them - could figure that out rather quickly. Many of the features can be handled by adding/improving tabs and redirecting content. It's not like anyone is asking for an entirely new, dynamic website to be built from scratch.
And if you're concerned about my intentions, feel free to look at how I have been powering up - even as whales continue to power down and the price continues to drop. I have removed from my wallet a grand total of 20 SD in over three months. I have been asked to believe in Steemit and to trust the leadership. I think I have every right to express my concerns about their plans, their level of communication, and how I see things going. It seems that a lot of people agree with me as well. Obviously, you do not. I'm not sure how that makes me stupid and toxic.
Hi, first of all, yes, it was your article that created the impulse, but no, I'm not implying that you as a person are stupid (even did a search on my own article and couldn't find that word written by me). But the constant pressure on the developers and the constant critique of the Steemit founders is something toxic. I will detail how is this toxic a few paragraphs below.
I will also want to make it clear from the beginning that all people are ok for me and what I'm not agreeing with, sometimes, might be their actions. But as a whole, all people are ok. So please don't be offended and, most of all, don't take it personally.
Now, the tone of your article is something quite common (especially since the price went down), and my reaction built up for many weeks, it just happened that your article was the trigger.
I will try, though, in the spirit of transparency and common effort, to state my opinion on some of the suggestions you made.
UI versus Backend
Strategically speaking, I think backend is way more important now. Why? Because we're a small lot, and if the word goes around quickly and a lot of people will join at once, we will have a very, very big problem. One that will be very, very difficult to amend on the fly. One that has to be prevented. I had my thoughts about the scalability of the blockchain as a backend and I was relived when I saw @dantheman articles about ChainBase. It's way more important to be prepared once the number of users grows with another zero, than to have a better UI now. In fact, a better UI could attract more people and, if the backend can't cope, now that will be really bad. Better an ugly site that works, than a beautiful one that doesn't work (or that don't exist at all, yet, like Synereo or other projects).
Security
I don't think you're aware of that, but Steemit was undergoing a few attacks (some of them quite recent). The latest was a white spam attack, trying to mimic a DDOS (commenting every 20 seconds until the blockchain will fill up). I think the issue is being addressed right now. But this is the kind of problems that are very common now and that we, as end users, might not be aware of. Strategically, though, for the founders, these are more important. Again, it's better to have an ugly site that is secure, than a a beautiful one that it isn't.
Tone Of Voice
The abundance of articles about how Steemit has a problem is really toxic. It's not enough that the technology is new, that the vision is disrupting, we need to have now something even more disturbing, implying for newcomers that there is a problem with the site. Like they don't have enough reasons to believe that this is a scam. Again, your intentions may be really good and I'm sure you want to create value, in your own way, but the tone of voice is not helpful. It's like going on the street and shouting: "guys, I have this wonderful apartment that I want to share with you, but you know, it's really bad, it stinks and it doesn't have running water and so on, but please come and join me, let's make my apartment great again". This tone of voice doesn't attract users. I don't imply that we should put under the carpet the shameful stuff, I'm all for transparency. I'm implying that there isn't any shameful stuff to being with.
Hopefully my position is better now. Again, you shouldn't take this personally, although it was indeed your article that triggered my impulse.
I actually agree in large part with both articles. I thought @ats-david's article had good and important insights, and I thought it offered constructive suggestions - even if it was a bit harsh in tone. @dantheman and @ned are big boys. I'm sure they can manage to separate the tone from the message. I even seem to recall a not dissimilar article by @dragosroua in reference to the 30 day payout limit, which I also thought offered valuable feedback.
I recently reviewed Amazon.com's 14 leadership principles. Principle #1 was to obsess over the customer. Steemit.com needs this sort of feedback in order to have any idea at all what the customer is thinking.
On the other hand, all too many articles here are nothing more than rants that highlight problems (real or imagined) without proposing solutions. Even those posts have value, but if the proportion of them is too high, they will harm the platform.
As a general rule, the solution to speech that we don't like or agree with is often more speech, not to try to shut people up. If someone writes an article that we disagree with, or that we feel lacks context, then we can offer corrections or framing (in a cordial way) so that new users aren't overwhelmed by the negativity.
Very nicely put. The solution is always more speech. I was glad to see @ats-david reacting so fast and I answered to his comment here. But I stand by my words: the whining is becoming toxic.
And you're right, I voiced my own concerns in an article, but then I went further, engaging in discussions with influencers and creating an issue on Github. Devs responded to that, end of story.
Well said. Resteemed, and I'm not the only one.
I love this piece, and agree emphatically. Thanks for giving some inside scoops above and below. In the last 4 months or so since I joined, I actually have moved from one stage to the next. I was excited and optimistic, which led to being a discouraged minnow as I saw little interest in my articles. I then became attracted to FUD articles, and went into a holding pattern period of a few months where I stopped posting, but came back every few days to see what articles had posted. In this time, I didn't even curate or regularly vote. Now, I am back writing a few articles and hit my first major one yesterday which put me over 50. :) So why the change? I can say, without hesitation, that it were the witnesses that kept me going. I voted for my first witness a week or two ago @timcliff , and follow them to see what is going on. There is a passion and belief that is unshakable, and encourages the growth of the platform. I think it is important that, in the future, the witnesses have some sort of voice that users can be aware of. Maybe a newsfeed or something that is different than regular articles. The reason is because new users will immediately become aware of the leaders of this growing community, and what initiatives are being created to improve the site, and what challenges are acknowledged and fixed. A witness channel or feed or section will bring a level of transparency that is already there, but not visible. That way when FUDDERs start their doomsaying, it will be easy for just about anyone to point to a feed that answers the concern. In fact, it just might prevent the FUDding in the first place.
I too agree with your post, and the tone of it.
I'm a developer, I haven't done a pull request because 'm working full time already, with multiple other projects that I'm doing for free, so I don't have the time to write quality code.
And trust me when I say that a concept like Steemit needs quality code if it is to survive.
I have no doubt that the dev team are killing themselves getting things done. In any web app the UI is only a very small part of the equation. But for Steemit that small part is even way smaller. there is just so much other code that needs to be written, tested, debugged, rewritten because the requirements change, or the environment changes etc.
And it is very easy for a user to say 'Just give me one of those. But not green like that. I want rainbow colours' By Monday. And when you tell them that will take a while, they look at you in confusion, and say 'But other websites have rainbows. My 14 year old nephew could make it with rainbow colours in about an hour.'
They don't see that the other sites with rainbow colours took months to develop their site.
To those complaining about the lack of progress, I say, take some screenshots of the site as it is now. store them away for 6 months. then in six months take them out and compare them to the site that is not progressing fast enough, and you'll be surprised just how much it has changed.
As for the price of Steem, it's a currency , a young currency being freely traded. f yo want the price to go up, do stuff that add value to it so people will buy it. Call your friends and neighbours and get them excited about Steem.
If you want more from your Steem, and from Steemit PUT MORE IN!
Nuf said.
I got the impression a few times that some of the Fud Pack are very young...as in..don't even have to shave yet.
Don't know about that and I don't think that being young qualifies or disqualifies somebody. But lack of respect, lack of gratitude, self-entitlement, well, those can be disqualifying, no matter the age.
could be.
I was guessing they were young by their speech patterns.
The whiners I mean.
I'm a little late to the party. Two words.
Well said.
Blockchain is the biggest thing since the internet.. it will takes years for people to understand THAT concept. Understanding Steemit (or how a businesses work) seems to be a whole other skill set. Really enjoyed your post.
Thanks, totally agree that blockchain is the biggest disruption in the digital era.
This is what I like on steemit. One can always see both sides of the coin and try to find the right one. Great post.