Remember, Steemit.com is in early beta. I'd recommend checking out the Roadmap - https://steem.io/2017roadmap.pdf. Communities are coming in a couple of months which will completely reshape the site. It'll be similar to subreddits on Reddit. That'll address most of your concerns about filtered feeds, interest groups etc.
Beyond that, Steemit.com is built on the Steem blockchain, and currently there's no way to have private messages on the blockchain. That said, Steem frontends are free to build in private messaging. Busy.org is one such solution which has private messaging. Beyond that, there's Steemit.chat where most Steemians hang out. It's linked to directly from the sidebar.
As for quality requirements, that's up to the community. People can post junk all they want, like they do on every single social platform. The ones posting junk will never make much, if any, rewards and will give up and leave. There are plenty of human curators out there, and in fact there have been bots which evaluate a post quality using algorithms. biophil and anyx have been particularly successful running quality algorithm bots. By the way, long posts don't necessarily mean creating value. A meme could be worth far more on a free market than an academic paper about a niche subject.
All in all, I think everything you have said has been addressed from the very beginning and most of it is in the works.
That hasn't been my experience.
Absolutely. Fiction being a prime example.
On the other hand, you have such things as economic analyses, technology posts that offer insights, educational material, and a lot of other stuff.
These things, applied diligently (i.e. just do it every day), result in amazing returns.
Popular appeal =/= value.
Consider the value of a dank Pepe against a study on say, the neurocognitive correlates of hypnotic phenomena.
The former brings about some amusement. The latter can be easily applied to any interaction, and improve one's life significantly by a factor of hundreds.
All in all, I think 'beta' is far too optimistic for SteemIt. I'd say early alpha at best, as the amount of basic functionality that isn't yet implemented is just staggering.
Perhaps this is not the right platform for you, then? Steem is a completely free open market. Here, popularity is absolutely value. But then so it is at Reddit, Twitter or YouTube.
Of course, subjectively we can both agree that the latter is more valuable for us personally, but it is ultimately up to the community at large to decide what is valuable.
That's why the communities functionality is crucial. Without that, it becomes a huge mess where clickbait reigns supreme.
I agree :) Fortunately, it's coming in the next couple of months.
The only way I can make sense of this argument is that you're implying what you value is what everyone should value. I think the most beautiful thing about Steem in its current state is the diversity of positive perspectives. But it's one thing to share your perspective, and another to ignore others'.
If you have programming experience, you can appreciate the amount of careful effort that goes into developing a new platform built on a new invention. This is new territory. I'm just excited to be on the cutting edge of what I believe will be the foundation of a revolution.
Or... that everyone should be free to not have to dig through stuff they value. Instead, just let me see the stuff I care about without all the cross-tagging.
90+% of those perspectives are useless. If you have time to enjoy everything that's being posted, I highly applaud you on your successful and wealthy retirement.
Not at all. I don't write for everyone. In fact, much the reverse. I write for a very specific group of people, who want to improve how they communicate.
I do. Doesn't make it any less lacking in comparison to even Diaspora, or Twitter.
The only new thing, from a user's perspective, is getting paid for posting. In a currency which is not yet in wide adoption, and exchanging it for anything else is a complex process.
Good for you. The only thing I'm excited about right now is that Steem will rise in value, and eventually I'll end up with a few thousand bucks worth of it.
I see. So you're not saying other perspectives are objectively worthless, but they're useless to you, and you're not afraid to say it. It's incredible that you have nothing to gain from 90+% of all the perspectives on Steem, and even more incredible that you have sampled so much of it in so little time. Cheers!
My point was that reading and writing are not mutually exclusive, except when you make them so. If you do, I'm sorry you don't have time to explore other perspectives. I hope you can find regular time to relax and reflect.
Yes, you are a user, but you are also a programmer. It seems like you are impatiently criticizing the lack of progress on a free platform operating on brand new technology. This prodding does not seem useful to me, from a developer's perspective, and Steemit's developers appear to be part of your intended audience.
If you care enough about the progress of the platform and are experienced enough, maybe you'd like to contribute to the code?
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