Decrease Of Content Quality
SteemIt is becoming more popular every day. According to the Daily Steem Stats Report of January 30th by @penguinpablo there were more than 20.000 new accounts created on January 29th. This means that SteemIt is experiencing a giant in-stream of new users of which many don't have a clue how the platform works.
As a result, the platform is flooded with low-quality content, spam and messages posted by users in which they literally cry out for help.
SteemIt has a FAQ page that answers almost every question you can have, and there's also The Complete Steemit Etiquette Guide which gives valuable tips on how things are done on SteemIt.
Unfortunately, the only reference to this FAQ page can be found in the hidden toolbar on the right.
Believe it or not, it took me more than 3 months to find out about those pages.
Part of the newcomers are here to make money, and nothing else, and won't bother reading the FAQ page even if there was a link to it in the middle of the screen. But loads of new people are genuine and eager to learn. They would really benefit if they would be able to find and access the FAQ page right from the very beginning, since a lot of them leave SteemIt again because they can't find their way around the platform.
Yesterday I signed up for a site ( I don't remember which one), and right after I signed up, I was presented an unblockable popup with the FAQ of the site. That gave me the following idea:
Proposal
I think it would be beneficial for both the newcomers and the quality of the platform content that new users are presented the FAQ page right after the first time they sign in.
As an addition, to make sure that they actually read the FAQ page, a little questionnaire about the FAQ-page content could be added.
Mockups / Examples
Benefits
New users would be forced to read through the FAQ, so they get a basic idea of what to do on SteemIt and what not to do. In an ideal world, this should lower the amount of spam posts and comments, because I've met several users who told me they had been the ones posting spam comments, simply because they didn't know any better.
Also, it could reduce the number of users leaving SteemIt again after just a couple of weeks, because they are so frustrated and don't know how to make a decent start on the platform.
In conclusion: SteemIt has got to take action against spam and low-quality content. There are many initiatives that are set up by communities or individuals to make people aware of the importance of quality content. Unfortunately, in spite of all those efforts, the number of no-quality posts and comments is increasing every day.
During the next couple of weeks/months, a lot more users will be signing up for SteemIt. If the amount of spam and low-quality content increases at the same rate, it might eventually cause established people to take their quality content elsewhere...
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors