A lot of the suggestions I put forward are for UI changes that look to affect behaviours and nudge them this way or that depending on the requirements. Sometimes it is to encourage actions, sometimes deter.
I do not resteem often and a large part of this is because of two main reason that seem relatively easy to fix.
1. It is difficult to differentiate my content from a resteem quickly
2. I cannot add any information to clarify why I am resteeming
Detail:
(1) The reason this is an issue is that I personally do not like scrolling through resteems to find a blog's original content. I think this is detrimental for the blog so do not want to clutter mine similarly. A rudimentary solution is shown in the image below. There should also be a filter option of course to filter out resteems but differentiation means filtering need not be automatic giving discovery of new content providers a better chance.
(2) Secondly (again in the picture), having the possibility to add a small comment to briefly explain why I am resteeming ups the chances of me doing it. The reason is that I want to be able to provide my audience with clarification and I think this helps the chances of them actually reading it. It could also be used for Public Service announcement type comments as warnings. I see this as a limited character, basic text field so that it doesn't require a scroll.
Lastly, it would be nice to have a resteem counter and perhaps a 'who has resteemed' dropdown similar to who has voted. It might also be a good idea to have resteems trigger some type of mention/notification (not that they often work now) but in that way it allows the author to see how their work is engaging with the audience.
I think that a few little tweaks would provide various advantages to interaction and engagement which are beneficial to the building of the network. Of course, the appearance of these is in the image are only representative of the changes suggested.
Taraz
[ an Original for Utopian.io ]
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors