Hey guys Swolesome here. And I am talking to the face that created the place. @patrickulrich
This Q&A interview will be broken up into two parts to focus on the quality of the answers he has given and more focused conversations in the comments.
Ooo yea lets get into it
What inspired you to create sports talk social?
"I wanted to find more sports content on Steem. I had a couple people I knew that would make regularish sports content but not nearly enough for me to consume. I feel like sports are one of those things that are kind of universal and speak to every person so it seemed like a no brainer.
I actually had waited after the SE announcement thinking that someone else would start one or that possibly another platform may decided to adopt Steem and move over. When nothing was being announced I figured why not me if that's what I really wanted to see here."
So as a fan what experience/atmosphere were you wanting the user to have on Sports talk?
"I want an experience where sports fans can talk freely about whatever is happening within the sports world. I think that Steem provides a system where the most influential media can be pushed to the top of it's tag. This will hopefully allow users to find the content that matters most to them based on the consensus of the wider sporting community."
On the topic of things floating up. What is your take on some users doing short posts or a sentence and a link to espn and upvoting themselves to trending?
"I love it! That might sound like a backwards answer but it's made evident this community can be viable. I personally feel the biggest issue with Steem at a wider level is the stigma, and voting power penalty, that comes with downvoting. The fact that the community is stepping up the charge without direction from myself is reassuring that what's on trending can be what the community actually finds most valuable.
At the root of the question I don't want to say what the community should feel is quality. I think that what's really cool is that we each act in how we feel and by doing so we'll create a consensus. For me personally a link could be worthy of high rewards if its a major tip for example. If someone makes a post showcasing the perfect trifecta box for a horse race and I follow the tip and make $1000 you best believe I'm going to be giving a healthy upvote. That being said I've not seen that happen yet so I'd argue a lot of this quick content doesn't deserve the rewards that would come with trending status. I'd also argue if you're not explaining your tip I'm probably not following to make the bet needed to win $1000.
That highlights that I feel this was an oversight on my part with the initial token launch parameters. I didn't want to launch with too much downvote power where someone could buy an early supply of tokens and push down everyone else to take all the rewards for themselves. Now that distribution is higher I personally feel that we need more free downvotes that don't count against our voting power. I've heard that the upcoming HF will allow for 2.5 and I think that would be a healthy next step for us to explore."
So for the past few months I have been on another social media platform centered around sports. One of my goals was to host a basketball tournament thatd have in person advertising for the platform. So this question has two parts.
What would you do or your group do to support endeavors like this and what events would you hope the community comes up with?
"That was actually a part of discussions on what SPORTS could power. Essentially look at a way for anyone to post an event and allow participants to join for a piece of the rewards pie. Think Splinterlands tournaments as an example but instead focused around sporting events with local referees serving as the oracles for the events.
While that would be an awesome route to take in the future right now I just want to focus on building a strong ecosystem for content creation. That includes making sure people are aware of the platform which certainly includes creating partnerships. I encourage anyone with ideas to reach out and build a proposal for what they'd need. Post it to the blockchain and let's see what kinds of support we can build!"
Sounds good! Put it on the blockchain and let's see what happens.
Thanks for reading guys and stay tuned. If you have any questions you want me to add to part 2 of the interview just drop them below. Might get added in there.