RE: What Adds Value to Steem? A Response to @timcliff's "Open Letter to Stakeholders"
the level of genuine engagement and sense of community I have experienced here is light years ahead of "posting cat pictures on Facebook," or having political discussions in some web group.
Maybe you don't get out enough but unless someone with quite a name recognition writes a article inquiring about changes and/or wants to initiate a specific change almost every site you visit on here it is quite evident that outside of maybe a couple two, three comments all the others consist of the article producers sock puppets they created for their account or some sort of spammers. This is never going to have the participation of FB because FB is inclusive of everybody no matter the ability to write/produce quality content. I had this conversation the other day on a blog whereas someone asked why aren't those who are on utube attracting the same audience onto Steemit. The answer was quite simply. Some people are good at producing content, others are just good at following content, if people who follow people could produce content they'd be content producers not followers. I mean how much more logical could that really be. Like I wrote Bill O'Reilly back when he had his show and was harping on people who need food assistance. I told him if we all had the where to all, know how, intellect, etc., to become millionaires who'd clean the bathrooms? Cleaning bathrooms doesn't pay that well but hey let's not let people go hungry because that may be the only job that person may be able to intellectually handle. That's the whole problem here on Steemit, the audience often gets run off because intellectually they are lacking, these people are actually a needed component to make the site competitive to FB. Who really cares that they want to form a club to share "cat pictures" with each other in between scouring the site and commenting. I don't think they'll break the bank, that'd have to be one hell of a cat picture, on the other hand though they'd make people producing content a audience instead of having to create sock puppets to do it for them.
Personally I could write more content if I really sat down and did it but writing to talk to myself and earning two cents just isn't my kind of motivation to do so. Now when I someday, many moons down the road can up vote my stuff to make it worth my wild, like about ninety percent of the people on here or some generous whales takes a huge liking to me (which is highly unlikely given I am so outspoken) and piles on a huge pile of delegation the only time I am going to write is when the mood hits me and that's not very often..though something has motivated me today that I might spend a bit on tonight, I'll see.
Let's face it, Farcebook is the 600lb gorilla of the social market. Any comer knocking FB over is on the same scale as opening a store to compete with WalMart... just don't.
By extension, FB caters to the lowest common denominator. Which is why I can 50 thumbs up for a picture of a kitten (no disrespect to kittens; I have two cats) on FB but if I post a piece of social commentary, crickets chirp OR some troll who has zero interest in dialogue but 100% interest in disruption comes along.
Steemit will always be a niche market. But it can fill a space vacated by the likes of Xanga (in 2006, hosted 34 million bloggers at its peak), namely social content for people with more than a 140-character attention span.
And yes, you're quite right, some people are content creators while others are consumers. I'm a little bit of both, but there's a reason I'm only following 500-ish people (300 of whom are very irregular posters), while almost 4300 have decided to follow me. Whereas I interact with 100+ people very week, most of it happens in my own comment sections.
As for anyone else, yes there are people with sock puppets and toadies... but such is life, it seems. This place seems to draw wheelers, dealers and schemers like flies to honey. Which is sad, because it's a pretty cool concept, all in all.
I hope you get your "identity issues" sorted out with whomever is so mad at you...
By extension I agree, that extension is why it will continue on. There was a guy who ran a pretty good local issue based forum on FB I use to participate in, that was my first foray into social media contact, don't know what really happened to him. Then I wondered upon the local news Disqus forum, that was a lot of fun until they went to using FB instead. After that I went to Disqus blogs. I just sort of got addicted to blogging. Must be in my roots, I was on the debate team in high school. This forum is a bit rough around the edges in that some site owners want you to just agree with them all the time. Most times I just let it slip by the wayside without commenting unless it hits home with me. That's what happened with the "identity issue" someone just didn't like that I took something to heart. Trying to pacify someone who is distraught over the possibility of losing their children because their husband got caught taking their daughters medication that Texas law says diversion of medication can only be charged in cases where insurance is involved just hit a nerve with me. We are talking about someone losing their children, now isn't the time to feed them stuff like that to cause additional argument and strife between them, the social worker and police, especially since anyone with any shred of common sense would know that's not the only statue on the books. Jesus, don't make things worse. Their usual my sympathies would have been better, better to even say nothing then anything to fan the flames. Same people who got mad at me for saving that eighty percent of Indians are alcoholics or have alcohol related problems....I've been through it, I have two kids by a Indian, I had gone through rehabs programs with him, statistics don't lie, and to make sure they hadn't changed over the years I went and researched current data and it's the same. Ironically they called me angry and hostile but I wasn't the one who spent the last twenty four hour scouring over all their stuff plotting with their buddies from another site to get them banned but that's exactly what they were trying to do to me....who's angry?...I wasn't even thinking about them after that debate....but I found myself drag into defending myself all day long against all their deceit and lies, luckily they didn't prevail getting steem cleaners to abolish me before I realized what they were up to. Some people get a little power and it goes through their heads.