steemSTEM on a break
SteemSTEM has grown a lot in the past few months, but with the growth came the problems. Our goals were simple:
- Promote good STEM content on the Steem blockchain;
- Create a community (with engagement and activities).
The first of these goals was achieved quite nicely, thanks in particular on some comfortable delegation we received a few weeks ago. Here are the statistics some of you may ask about how we use this delegation.
In blue, the number of posts we upvote with the steemstem account week after week. We are reaching some maximum those days, but very importantly, the exponential growth of early 2018 can be observed.
In green, the same information but presented in terms of the number of unique authors we upvote every week. We are probably not distributing STEEM as much as what could be done with memes or development projects, but this shows that the scientific (or actually STEMistic) community on STEEM gets sizeable.
Finally, in yellow, you can see that our weekly available voting power is mostly used at the 100% level.
However, to achieve this goal, our team members were slaved away to find, read and vote good content, engage wit the users on discord, in the comments of their posts. In other words, they work as much as you would expect for a full-time job with getting minimum pay. You can check the @steemstem wallet to see how much each get. And remember, none of the 19 involved people is eligible for curie-votes. In addition, some of them have a 60 hours per week job, dedicate 40 hours to steemstem every week and have also a well-filled private life.
In short, we do that mostly on a voluntary basis.
More and more people joined, more and more posts were voted ... more and more people complained. Yes, we all work for free to get barely a ‘thank you’ and mostly people complaining about their super-hyper post not being upvoted, or because their pay-check is not large enough.
The feeling of entitlement grew. And at the same time, number two of our goals barely happened. One small team cannot replace the engagement of a community: commenting, voting, encouraging each other. That is what we hoped our members would do. Some do. Most do not.
As a result of all of this, we will now take a break of a week and try to restructure.
There will be next to no votes from the steemstem account. We will not explain to you in detail why your post was not voted. We need some time to figure out how to carry on, why to carry on.
Because if the community is not a community but just a bunch of people trying to milk steemSTEM as much as possible, there is no reason to keep going. This does not have to be the end. We don't plan to shut it all down for good. We just need a break, some air to think. I hope you all can understand that.
And if you have ideas about how to improve, or about what you could do for steemSTEM, feel free to comment our post. We will try to answer everyone.
The steemstem management
An idea for what to do to improve community engagement (this isn't really for steemstem management but for others) will be listed here.
Give tips to users on how to improve their writing on posts from tips to using markdown/html all the way to providing tips to getting content.
Comment, ask questions, create discussions.... But also when writing posts, leave points open for people to ask comments or give little teasers if possible.
Make response posts. So lets say someone writes a post on science proving that jelly belly jelly beans are the best type of jelly bean but you found sources that say other jelly beans are better, or maybe you found evidence that points to it all being personal preference, write an entire post about it in response to theirs. Don't attack their post but realize that this is a type of engagement rarely seen.
Vote on content, either manually or trail the steemstem vote (by either giving your private posting keys to anarchyhasnogods or using a trailing service)
Write about something you are passionate about.... So what I mean is maybe you really like jelly beans, make a steemstem post about jelly beans like "cool science facts" or maybe go with "statistics of jellybeans" and do like a cool math thing surrounding it... Maybe even create a special taxonomical classification flow chart for different jellybean bags and stuff. Like create content you are passionate about that is fun to write, because if its fun to write then it is fun to read. Just make sure to add in references to the science stuff too.
Collaboration posts. Like maybe author A could write part 1 and author B could write part 2, or you do something like @zest and @abigail-dantes where they are each writing on a specific topic from different perspectives (anthropological versus psychological)
And more... The point is, it would be so easy and so much fun to have a community that actively engaged. I can give examples of times that happened even in my experience (before I became a curator) and they were some of the most fun I had ever had while posting. I mean there was this post by trumpman where a guy lit his cat on fire by lighting his fart on fire while a cat jumped through his fart (no idea where it is located now) anyways I responded to it with a post to try and see if it was possible, and someone else responded to mine with a post arguing the otherside... and so on. The point is that we actively engaged and it was fun... So make it fun, become a community, get to know eachother and make inside jokes. You don't have to know everyone in the group, but you should strive to learn something from people, whether they have 10,000+ SP, 1,000+ SP, or less than 20 SP (and that category I missed, ignore them, they suck... Just kidding, get to know them too, they are awesome)
I challenge all the steemstem community members to do something off of this list that they haven't done. If you have never done a colab post, then collaborate with someone... maybe make a series with someone... Idc what, just have fun and get to know others in our group, we have some really amazing people here and we could do some very great things.
EDIT
This doesn't mean all of your posts have to be, like, top notch collaboration posts or that you have to do these things 100%. These are just some ideas on how to promote engagement in the community but there are way way way more ways. I don't want anyone to think that these are guidelines.
Thank you. You said all the things I have thought about myself, too. Collaboration I see also in giving ideas and inspirations to other STEM-writers, which I do when I enter discord and it fits the conversation.
My own behavior on the platform is also about very serious issues I like to address and discuss with the community. Even having disagreements and struggles to communicate.
From how I see it posting is very personal and should be linked to a devotion and deep interest in what one wants to broadcast - all of you already said:). Throwing out one article after the other and bending myself to what I sense has the most interest of others is something I see and criticize as it can sacrifice authenticity.
The breaks in between STEM-related articles I find necessary for recovery and letting comments and reactions fade out. Taking my time to be in real touch with the readers. To holding that kind of quality is not easy at all. The rhythm of posting is nevertheless something personal but I do not see quality increasing when I post a science-related article every two days. So I think less is more.
I guess I will reduce my postings tagged with "steemstem" to publishing them once a week or twice a month.
Maybe this is also going to help the total amount of having the team to scan.
I have to agree with Trumpman that making a couple of good posts a week isn't a problem. I just wanted my comment to go and provide some potential ways for engagement.
I am by no means expecting everyone to follow and do everything in this comment, I just think that you know trying one or two of them here and there wold be nice. I mean for you, isn't it nice to get feedback on posts? Or have someone ask questions and become interested in the topic that you spent all that time working on? Thats our goal for everyone to as many people as possible.
:) yes, I do appreciate it a lot to get comments - it's indeed really strange having worked hours on one article and not getting feedback. I support what you've said. I added some contrast to the fun part. Because what I mostly write about cannot officially be related to fun. ... Or so I guess.
In the beginning, my commenting got so intense sometimes that I think I annoyed people with that. So I reduced that. ... Hmmm... I think reducing is not something bad & maybe I shouldn't have adressed that in my answer on your comment. Apologies.
No need to apologize, I was really tired and possibly didn't present myself properly to what I meant.
the 1-2 diamonds you publish per week are definitely not the problem.
1-2 buckle my shoes sounds better. xD
What you post is really great! Please continue. We really enjoy reading your post. The quantity is not the real problem. So please do not change anything concerning your post!
We are addressing the comment section of the posts we support. I won't repeat what @kryzsec said, but I am in line with him!
It's refreshing seeing all the ideas that could make STEM great without missing out on the "cool" or fun side of it. Good points here.
Articles that are fun to write are fun to read usually. So I am always going to promote fun stuff!
I can agree with that :)
I totally agree with this. The articles I had fun writing were the most appreciated. I totally agree with @kryzec and @steemstem on the community engagement. It’s very important for us to help eachother (the community )grow and in the process learn and interact responsibly... For me I get very happy when someone take their time to read my post and make a constructive comment either commending my work or pointing out gray areas. It means a lot to me. I’d love to be a part of collaboration posts. The thoughts of it gets me all excited because it’ll be fun and would improve community engagement as people would love to air their own point of views from their unique discipline.
We are indeed expecting everyone to do this. This will be wonderful! Fingers crossed on my side ^^
Let's hope this will be followed!
This is totally the best comment I have read so far. Okay it is also the first :D
I hope many will read it as well!
Hi @kryzsec, we are currently working on a post where we will try to explain how to improve the quality of your blog posts.
Very good! Thanks!
Jesus christ you almost wrote a full post in a comment xD Well said though, i've seen way too many people that don't care about the content they just want the SteemStem upvotes, It's a shame some of the good posts sometimes only get 1 or 2 comment, i don't follow the steemstem curation trail because i would rather read the posts myself, upvote if i find them good and leave a comment, following the curation trail would increase the amount of upvote $ they got, but it wouldn't provide any "comments" to the posts, but this is just my opinion
One of the best initiatives i've seen inside SteemStem is what @simplifylife is doing, ea week he does a contest to give out 5 smartcash to the best commentor, guess what... i'm the only one that shows up so i've won 3 weeks in a row, i already told him that i would understand if he stopped it, winning without any challenge isn't fun at all
Regarding the management team, just like i said yestarday in discord, i'm still amazed at how they were able to work, create content, read thousands of posts and upvote them, it's just to damn much, i'm a college student and i'm already overworking and i think i could never do what @justtryme90 and @lemouth and the rest of te management team is doing! It would probably end up messing with my life outside steemit.
That is completely fine, as I said that I don't expect everyone to do all of these, I just think it would be cool if more people tried these things. Personally I love going and looking at others posts and commenting on them when I have time (recently for steemstem posts it has been explaining that pictures are copyrighted or else improperly cited)
We aren't saying that nobody promotes engagement in the community, there is a good group that does, however there is a larger group in the community that doesn't.
Regarding your statement about the management team, I am part of the curation team and I am amazed that the other curators are able to do as much as they do. I always feel I am dead weight getting carried by them and that I could do more but, as you know, classes take up time. How the management team does what they do is beyond me.
Yes, i've also been telling people that, not only about pictures but about memes and gifs too, i don't think people grasp what copyrighted means...
Classes take up time, studying takes up time, godamn, why wasn't i born rich :P
I know how you feel, though if I was born rich I would still be going to school for a degree simply because its my passion, it would just make it A LOT easier.
I would take a degree, but i wouldn't be here on steemit, i would probably be building my own company, probably in the renewable sources department or health department, and after that i would join up with Elon Musk and get on that space race adventure
Totally agreeing once again. It is sufficient everyone does this or that once in a while. Times 300, 400 steemians, and we are there!
This is the real problem. This is what we want to fix, somehow.
Yeah. I am currently almost sleepless :D
Sleep is a must for a healthy brain, go hibertante @lemouth
Too late for that, I have kids :D
I loved your idea of collaboration posts! That would create a lot of engagement, motivation and a sense of community!
They are also fun to do and I think that can really make it worthwhile.
Unfortunately it´s a sad truth that you even have to explain yourself for not granting your vote to someone. People just expect to use a certain tag these days to receive an upvote from a community account while not even engaging with aynone on a regular basis.
Like you say people are just trying to milk any community account or service available on steem as much as possible. The greed and the bots have taken over this place within the last weeks. It´s about time that we fight back, that we stop explaining ourselves for not casting a vote and to make clear that steem is about engagement after all on top of the content.
You are correct. Many think they are entitled to being upvoted. They are angry because we only give a bunch of bucks (whilst many make only tenths of a cent on the platform)... And in exchange, they just drop posts after posts without engaging anyone else.
I don't say everyone is like that, but the majority is.
I think in that regard communities will have to make clear that a vote isn´t guaranteed at all and it won´t be explained to anyone why they didn´t receive one. People will be rewarded as soon as they create great content and engage with each other as they´ll be noticed!
We are busy with this (making things clear) at the moment. But we want to take our time.
The expression when someone successfully milks a community account.
Thank you for this post. It is important that the steemstem 'board' shares its concerns with the base member/poster, so that we can all try and give a helping hand.
I wonder actually how you distribute the scanning of the articles between the curators just based on the Steemstem tag. How does one curator knows that an article has already been screaned, avoiding repeating work carried out by another curator?
I would suggest that all Steemstem articles be tagged Steemstem + another keyword specific to the group. For example if I write an article about electric fields, I would need to tag it: #steemstem and #steemstemphysics. A list of valid secondary tags would be set and communicated to the community.
A curator would be assigned to a specific secondary tag. He/she then can list all articles under his wing, knowing that these have not been screened previously. That should optimise the work.
As a second point, if there are not enough curators for the mass of articles that pop up everyday, I would defined two types of curators and an administrator:
1st class curators: those that wish to curate on dayly basis, like currently.
2nd class curators: those that can curate one set day (or more) a week.
Administrator: person that organises the curating schedule for 2nd class curators.
Then there would be a call to application for 2nd class curators. Selection would be based on the quality of the blog of the applicant.
For example, I think I would enjoy very much curating for Steemstem, but my dynamic life would pevent me doing so on a daily basis reliably, and for extensive periods of time. There would be multiple curators for the same secondary keyword, each of them being assigned a day of the week by the administrator. The 2nd class curators + administrator system would probably bring quite a bol of fresh air to 1st class curators (those already existing).
So I am applying as 2nd class curator :-)!
I hope these ideas help. Be well.
These are all cool ideas but just a point to make:
The problem with expanding further is payment. Not only will people be working voluntarily, but they would need to take a pay cut because they would no longer be eligible for the curie half (the bigger half) of our votes. It's not easy for people to see the bigger picture of the community in this regard.
Even if this were the case, we have no more VP to give them even the steemSTEM half of rewards so they would basically be working without any extra entitlement to votes, and any vote they get would be a fraction of what it was. This makes it very difficult to find trustworthy, hardworking individuals who stay long term.
We've actually been extremely lucky so far finding the team we have gotten but as things grow, this kind of luck should be expected less. These are reasons why we decline very kind offers from individuals who want to help out; they essentially get punished for contributing to the cause.
Regarding distribution, again because we have a fairly small team, it's broken down quite simply and double screening happens rarely, something I notice perhaps once every week or less. This is because the core curators cover all time zones (me in Asia, JTM & kryzsec in North America and lemouth, trumpman, ruthgirl & zest in Europe/Africa time zones), and we simply cover a period of time available to us.
On top of that our sub-communities such as de-stem and stemng have their own secondary tags which we leave alone similar to your suggestion. I imagine when we are way bigger, secondary subject tags will likely be inevitable, assuming steemit.inc continues to not release a more workable interface.
Thanks for the ideas!
Dear SteemSTEM moderators,
take as much time as you need! As Steemit grows, it turns for many from a fun plattform with benefits to a strange sort of competition. This is not how it should be! Many of us science authors value your work and curation a lot, and wouldn't want it to become a burden for you! You helped me to gather people I follow and interact with, as I found good content through the SteemSTEM tag which basically build my Steemit-experience. All the best, and definitely: THANK YOU!
I second this reply! I struggled to find the right direction for my content until I found the steemSTEM tag. Would you consider a small monthly membership fee? Just a few SBD per month from a couple of hundred users might go a long way. For us, it would be an investment that we could earn back through our blog content.
I'm afraid not many people would approve of it OR think they entitled to a vote even more than they do now :/
That makes sense. I can see where that could lead to a sense of entitlement.
Another thought:
I am but a lowly school teacher, so I can't speak the language of the computers, so this might not even be possible, but:
Could you have someone write some code to check the last 7 days and keep track of how many times a person has upvoted and/or commented on steemSTEM content, as well as how many replies/upvotes their comments have received. Comments such as "Great informations! Keep the work up." generally do not receive any attention, so they could be ignored or weighted less.
When one of your curators chooses an article to upvote, they would plug it into the bot. The bot could check for a minimum threshold of interaction from the user. If the user's participation level is below that threshold, the bot could deduct percentage points from the upvote. Participation within the threshold range would get the base upvote. Those who have surpassed the threshold would receive a boost in voting percentage.
I imagine that this would require quite a bit of math and some strong coding skills. It might even be an absolutely horrible idea that ends up being way more trouble than it is worth. lol I'm just kind of spitballing, but I think something like that could encourage more community involvement.
OR
Write the code to compile steemSTEEM content ordered by the participation score. Your curators could have one central feed to check, and those who participate would be the most likely to get noticed. If a curator chose to support a post, it could be checked off of the list so all other curators could see that it is no longer eligible.
Again, maybe more trouble than it's worth.
No, we won't. We accept any donation, but we don't ask for any membership. As @suesa said, we prefer not to be tied to any member in any way.
That is good to hear! Too little people never seem to leave the bubble of their own posts to interact with others. But that's what a community needs: Interaction!
This is only my 8th day on Steemit, and I hadn't heard of SteemSTEM before I read this post, but I agree that this team deserves a big THANK YOU for what they do. It's a shame that many aren't thankful, considering that these good people are doing a job that benefits them and their work.
:)
It is nice to read! Thanks for your comment. Sincerely. I am happy that we helped you to interact with people. This is what we try to improve, at the moment.
Sometimes a break is important - But I really hope this will not be any form of an end! I rather hope you will come back stronger ;)
When money is involved, corruption and greed always be close. However I still think your service was of a huge importance and promoted many great posts. I also loved to tell new people with the right interests about @steemstem when curating for @welcoming. It just was great to have some community I could refer to so that they quickly could find mind-like people.
A huge shootout to @sco at this point, he was of great help and we supported each other by sharing links and commenting/helping out new people from relevant areas. Of course also a huge thx for the creation of @de-stem!
Tl;DR:
Enjoy a well-deserved break and please come back stronger!
We're far from ending this project! There's some re-structuring needed and it will involve a lot of work and energy from everyone, not just management but also the community itself. But I'm positive that we can accomplish this.
You'd need to pry steemSTEM from my cold, dead hands, if someone wanted to end this project :P
Glad to hear that ;)
Yeah, we are far from being dead. Just mutating into zombies :D
jajajaja my circles are more pronounced (I think I become a zombie):P
We will come back stronger. We just need to figure out how and when. We just reached a non-sustainable point... And thanks for your support to @de-stem!
so shall! STEM despite the adversities will return with much more strength, because we love our work, that is why you should take a break to do things correctly
Great :)
@sco's effort and the great idea behind the project definitely deserves the support ;)
Get some rest. You deserved it after working so hard for the past couple of months. I have never intended to reap as many rewards as I can from steemstem. My target is to try help this community grow by creating some exciting article and attract some people to contribute to this community.
The increment of work among steemstem curators is inevitable as the population keeps on growing. We can't expect the number of curators to stay the same, can't we? Even @curie recruits some new curators who are appointed/recommended by their top-rated curator each week. Regarding complaints and everything, I think you know what to do. You can never satisfy anyone. At one point, they will be complaining that they haven't received any upvote from you, and on another, they complained about the number of rewards they should get for their work.
I'm sure all of you, will overcome this hurdle. We need Steemstem community to flourish. This is the only community in Steemit which in my opinion are not stagnant.
Good luck to all of the Steemstem's administrators and thank you for your continuous support and contribution to empower STEM-related content.
P/s: An update for any of decision made by the Steemstem's admin would be much appreciated. We wanted to help as much as we could. A week is relatively quite some days, and we should target to solve this as soon as possible. Afterall, an active account is a growing account (same goes for the community). This is just my two cents. Apologise if I'm being rude.
We will give you updates as soon as things are decided, as too much "throwing suggestions in the room" would create confusion and chaos. I am currently working on a list of proposed changes, new projects and ideas, which will be discussed among management.
The thing is, we're all doing other things too. We have jobs, families, etc., so a week is a good time frame to think about things. After all, we don't want to make any impactful decisions that'll turn out to be harmful for the community!
Thank you for your support
True enough. Can't wait to hear the changes. I think this is an important step to propel forward; reflection and changes.
The problem is not really curation only. This is the tip of the iceberg. But we will keep the community informed. Steemstem is not dead (yet :D).
Thank you. Steemstem is too young to die.
Totally!
Yes. I like this. It actually makes me want to come back and post (been busy and I'm not a fan of some of the entitlement I have seen some times from some authors). I thank you all for all the work and experiences you've all shared, at least with me. I have no idea how the project will scale but I agree with a pause to re-evaluate and rest. Is well deserved. :)
Thanks for passing by. Please come back and help us building engagement.
Oh, I don't think am the guy for the engagement job. My answers to other people are too long and fisty.
Exhibit A:
My posts are too long, heck I was starting to make videos and articles for the same post.
I even bully people who don't seem to read my posts but comment regardless.
Exhibit B:
And I have no respect for people with visual impairments. I just love making fonts smaller and smaller and smaller
I'm not the best guy.
lolz goodd post plz upvte me so funny
Only if follow4follow...
I think @Teutonium will like this xD
Just kidding, well at least you got some comments on your posts, in mine i think i only got 1 comment from someone inside the steemstem community, the rest were people that knew me from other communities.
Bully!!
I know, but you answer people. This is already something. And you also reward some people! This is another something.
I like the idea of the break because have notice recently that people have been complaining about not getting vote and the most annoying of all us the part of low votes complain.
The idea of stem on the blockchain is not to Boost your wallet but to encourage your research I believe
Each time I see steemstem vote on my bloG I feel like my work is ok to use for other projects in future..... If it's about the payout then I see no reason why steemstem should keep up because people want to milk the community.... I really wish the break turns out positive which is coming back with better strategy and have really learnt from @mobb @trumpman @pearlumie and @samminator..... Which has improved my research ability
Thanks for the Good work @steemstem
Take time to figure the right strategy and hope the discord is still open to learn about STEM
STEM on the blockchain has a potential that not many might see, especially because it's still a long way to go. But imagine a future where new scientific breakthroughs are published on the blockchain, uncensored and funded by a decentralized community? I think that's something to strive for. But to reach that, we need to start somewhere, and that is, in my opinion, with a community. But a community needs people interacting with each other, not just caring about their own rewards.
That's hard to accomplish.
I agree with @suesa.
The specificity of steemSTEM is that we target the long run, and not the 'get rich quickly' run. The rest has been said: we need a real community...
Well, this is a welcome development as it is geared towards making the community a great one.
I just went through the chat on the discord channel and i can admit that a lot of us are guilty one way or the other.
I look forward to receiving the updates on how the community would operate and vow to support in my capacity.
A big THANK YOU to the management and everyone involved in the organization.
Too many are guilty of this, but a handful are already working on improving the situation. The first step to change is accepting your mistakes and deciding to be better. So, thank you for your comment and your promise of future support!
thank you too for always being there (im a fan!)
:)
Thanks to you far admitting a lot of people are guilty. I appreciate it, knowing that most people won't say a word and wait for the storm to end...
Afterall, we are a community!
Whats a community without honesty?
Well, ask the majority of it :D
I don’t even know how to respond to this. I feel the pain behind your words, you guys need to remember, steemit, this whole beautiful thing. Still in BETA, its a long arduous process to figure out how to make a social media system like this work. It has never ever been done before. Manual curation is as important as bot curation. And localizing your voting parameters to a single tagline creates a centralized route for bad actorss to take advantage of the system. Vote for good content. Thats it. Enough pandering to people unwilling to put a vote or voice into the mix, people who are doin exactly what you say, trying to feed their wallets of your steempower and attention. Thats not right
We haven't just been curating steemstemm but also science, technology, engineering, math, and all other slightly related tags. The problem wasn't the amount (and sometimes not even the quality!) of posts, but people being unwilling to help each other.
How can a community function, if it doesn't interact with each other? Just posting and waiting for your vote doesn't make you part of a community. And that has been the problem with many members for a while.
We won't give in to people feeling entitled to our votes, don't worry, but we need to see a change in this community, if there is to be a future.
That makes alot more sense. Its sad because some of these people vote waiting as you put it dont realize the true value of a blog here. The conversations you can have during the week its active. And the money you can EARN being a part of that stimulation of neurons. Thanks for clearing up my inderstanding of the steemstem boting parameters. I actually respect the outlets your using. Thanks!
I don;t get you. I don't get any money in reading the blogs of others. It is the opposite way round...
I make quite a bit, because, I read the blo and give aome sort of opinion or addition to it in my own words that results in people liking what i have to say, it’s simple really, earn it, work for it. Think about what people are saying and put your own foot forward to make the discussion better. Thats what community is about.
Aaah, ok, you were meaning gaining knowledge, somehow. There is no value to that, IMO.
To repeat @suesa (interestingly enough, we are on the same lines :p ), we don't curate a single tag. We curate all STEM disciplines. This means more than 10 tags. Of course, the usage of the steemstem tag helps us, but we are not limited to this.
I interpret this as a "yes, work more, that's it". I answer: 'no thanks'. Not under these conditions. We need people (this includes you) to be a real member of the community. This goes beyond getting an upvote.