With this post I want to take part in the contest to fix the trending page announced in this post by @utopian-io.
The problem
The trending page is constantly made up of the same few hundred accounts with very few exceptions.
This hurts the Steemit/Steem community because:
- a lot of new valuable members cannot be noticed and a lot of them leave the platform because of it
- a social network with most accounts inactive will have big difficulties to continue to thrive
- it tends to be less variety of fresh users/posts/perspectives on average
The good news
Even though we have this problem, it is refreshing to see that there is genuine interest in fixing it by a lot of big names in the Steem community. Hence this contest.
The solution I propose
I think it has to be dead-simple to seggregate posts based on reputation.
Below I will make my case for this proposed solution, I will show how this could look on the existing Steemit site, why it will bring more value for everyone in the long run and also possible solutions on how this can be implemented.
How
I propose that there should be a way to split all posts on the trending page and also on hot and new.
The actual numbers may vary, but here are the sections I am thinking the posts should be split by reputation:
- 0-45
- 45-55
- 55-65
- 65+
- All
The All section will be what we have now on the site, all posts together, no matter the reputation.
The rest of the sections are self explanatory I suppose. For example if 0-45 is selected on the trending page then we will see only posts made by authors with their reputation between 0 and 45 that are "trending".
I know, at first we could have a lot of posts in the trending(0-45) with just a few cents or dollars, but with this new seggregation, a lot of new users will get the visibility they need to get more. And of course that the low quality posts will eventually get buried.
This way we could ensure that new accounts will always have a fair chance of getting discovered early. Doing this will also encourage them to stay on the platform and grow.
What it would look/feel like
I think that this new seggregation I propose should be at the top of the listing on the trending, hot and new pages.
Below I will show how this could look. I will show 2 options, one with buttons, and one with a slider. And for each of those options I will show how it could look on 4 different screen sizes.
Here we go, starting with the buttons version, from big to small screen sizes:
large:
medium:
small:
very small:
And here is the slider versions, the reputation interval selected is between 45 and 65:
large:
medium:
small:
very small:
With the slider version, there is even more flexibility because we can choose smaller intervals like the buttons or bigger intervals like 0-55 or 45-65. And of course to see the trending page as it is now you could choose 0-100.
Note:
The selected seggregation could be saved in the browser's locale vars, so that you could navigate to other sections and still have the posts split by the reputation you selected.
This feature will help discover new users for example in the 0-45, 45-55 sections, this will also help curators discover them.
But if that is not your thing, you could set 55-65, or 65+ and only look at what the high rep accounts are blogging about and not be bothered by low rep posts.
Of course this seggregation will help the hot and new sections also.
Some examples could be:
- tag: life, new, 65+ or life/hot/0-45
- bitcoin/trending/45-55
- nature/new/55-65
- etc
There will be 100s more ways to discover posts and people.
Why is it better for everyone
Steemit is a social network, and for a social network to continue to thrive it needs growth and active users.
With this seggregation of the posts we could ensure that there will always be a place where the new users will get noticed. Doing this will help the platform and sustain it's health.
A healthy platform with active users will drive engagement and ultimatelly the Steem price will grow. That is beneficial for everyone.
Why reputation
I think it is the best indicator of good quality involvement. Steem, Steem Power or SBD are not so relevant in my opinion, as they can remain the same or change drastically depending on the actions of the users. For example maybe a writer got 2000SBD in a few months and now wants to use them to pay the rent.
Therefore he will then have 0 and be considered a "new"/"low" account even though he might have written quite a lot. The same is true with Steem and Steem power.
Reputation however will drastically change only in very few occasions and not at the actions of the user, rather at the actions of the community.
The age (time since it was created) of an account, or number of followers could be better indicators than Steem/SP or SBD and be used to seggregate posts. But I do not think that it is better or simpler to understand than reputation.
How could this be implemented
I have played with steemJs and made a very-alpha prototype (app.steemhelper.com) with pure nodeJs, that I am planning to build a website on top of eventually.
I did not plan to share this so early, but maybe if it could help my case in this contest then it is worth it and ultimatelly it could help the bigger Steemit community.
The way I buildt the prototype is to call one of the posts functions (getDiscussionsByTrending, getDiscussionsByHot, getDiscussionsByCreated) with the appropriate tag and with limit 100.
And once I get the results I ignore all posts that do not fit the reputation selected. It works but I know that it is not the best way by far to get the results seggregated by reputation.
I am sure though a better idea will come from one of the existing devs as to how this can be most efficiently implemented.
It also depends how much interest there is to actually fix the trending page. Because maybe a new set of functions(or modify the current ones) could be developed by a Steem core dev(s) that could take 2 additional optional parameters.
One such function could be called like this:
steem.api.getDiscussionsByTrending({tag: 'life', limit: 10, min_rep: 45, max_rep: 65}, function(err, result) {});
This would be the ideal solution that I can think of right now implementation-wise.
Do you have other suggestions or questions regarding this proposed solution.
Do you think it is worth pursuing? Is it a great or a bad idea? Or maybe you can tell why exactly this cannot work?
I really think that this could help the platform immensely but I could be wrong, that's why I am asking. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors