Can we Stop Preaching to the Choir and Get a More Representative Trending Page?
Recently I came across a couple of things that made me have a look at the trending page the other day. First was a post that @joshman had dropped in a Discord chat that he was encouraging people to boost into trending. The aim was to try and get something other than @sbdpotato into trending and I unfortunately missed the window. Then I saw this post from @slobberchops, about the need to get people on board who might not be tech and crypto savvy, but have other interests instead.
Trending's not something I've looked at for probably two years, but since the bidbots’ hold has been broken it must be a better representative of what's doing well. This is what the top of the trending page looked like:
The top four are about Steem related things. In 5th position we have something for “crypto lovers.” Then we have a travel post, followed by four more Steem related posts. Then there's a post on how Peter Schiff lost his bitcoin! Gulp!
As @slobberchops brings up in his post, a lot of people are already wary of crypto, it's something I've encountered when talking about Steem too. If you're not into crypto and you land on this page as a blogger or content producer of anything non crypto related, would this be appealing or daunting? If you're not someone who knows enough to write about Steem, then you might think that your content will have no appeal, so what's the point in joining up.
I get why the steem posts are up there; the big accounts voting for them are invested in Steem and are encouraging the promotion of it. In fact, @jaynie's post is a great one to see up there, because it's about how Steem has impacted her, but it's a bit like we're preaching to the choir when we only promote what's going on in Steem.
It's promising to see the travel post up there, so it gives me hope that we can get other content on the front page, but can we get more up there and if so, how?
Could we select posts to boost to the trending page, which are non Steem or crypto related? We may not be large accounts, but could, or would, communities come to help? What if we could select posts and share them in the community Discords, could we rally together to get some of the posts we love so much into trending? The post values would probably need to be upwards of $40 to make it up there.
What do you think, can we make a trending page with a more representative variety? Are there any other ideas you think could work? Do you think your communities would like to get on board with this? Perhaps a post from each community each day could be selected to target and this could give a good representation of each of the communities.
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The Trending page is always going to be tricky - not sure of the mechanics of improving it - other than via someone with big stake and the right intentions.
I think you have a mislink for the @slobberchops post btw.
Oops, thank you! That must have been on my clipboard last. Teach me to check next time!
I remember @abh12345 doing an experiment at one point, to see if small accounts could get a post onto trending. I'm not sure what the results were.
I'm not doing very well, @pennsif, this was supposed to be replying to you!
It's still the game for the big guns to win. I have tried to fight it, hasn't really worked. It's either you join them or nothing.
Maybe a new front end with a better metric like one's reputation score or that of the people voting to determine what gets to the trending page
A different metric is up to Steem inc and out of our control. It would be interesting to see if there's anything within our control.
The steempeak team have been very receptive to ideas around this.
The Steempeak trending is a bit different, isn't it? It's great that they are finding other methods, but a lot of people are still landing on Steemit.
Thanks for the mention. I was quite dismayed when I took a look and saw this last night:
I can coordinate the votes if the high quality stuff can be found. The issue I've been having is finding the sort of quality magazine article type posts. It's a bit of a chicken and the egg issue too, because the more the focus in on trending posts like this, the more people will start to up their game.
Feel free to hit me up on discord if you have any ideas.
Looks like burnpost has replaced sbdpotato! Sort one thing and another issue crops up.
I think we can find the high quality with the help of the communities. They check certain tags regularly and are most likely to come across the best posts.
That would be great if you can help. What sort of thing do you look for in articles? That could help as a guide to what we submit to you.
Trying to avoid cross-posted videos, single photos of artworks. Some examples of stuff we have targeted are below. I think part of that is identifying the authors capable of showcase quality posts, and get them relatively confident that these types of posts will get showcased (at least once per 7 days is what I imagined). If you showcase two authors per day, seven days a week, that's going to dramatically improve trending IMO, and also get the quality bar moving in a positive direction.
https://steempeak.com/technology/@zacknorman97/a-new-dawn-the-best-tech-trends-and-gadgets-at-ces-2020
https://steempeak.com/hive-112018/@spectrumecons/prevent-solve-or-manage
https://steempeak.com/blog/@markpritchard/marks-top-vehicles
https://steempeak.com/adaywithalineman/@jlsplatts/a-day-with-a-lineman-42-first-snow-of-the-year
https://steempeak.com/travel/@ladybug146/glow-gardens-indoor-light-festival-glow-around-the-world-exhibit
@riverflows, what do you think? Do you think the communities could find some of these posts?
@joshman, is there anyway we can co-ordinate via Discord with community leaders and/or representatives to drop links that can be supported by the communities?
My ONLY issue is that as a listed Health Curator on Steempeak, we'd be messing with the stuff that appears in our curation feed. Whilst I'm okay with upvoting content that isn't natural health or health or any of the other content we upvote, I don't know how the other community leaders feel about this or whether it's something we can all be on board with -- I think it's a really good idea.
Thanks! As we discussed, I think finding and encouraging the posts is harder than actually finding the votes for them.
I think since i commented we have sorted things out. I might write a post about it now!
Sure, just didn't want the blockchain to think I was blowing you off!
Could we have a community leader chat ON discord or something where we could submit best posts for this?
I think the real issue is that a lot of these posts are unprofitable for the author.
They're promoted to the top because he has a message he wants to share, and is willing to pay to do so.
Do you mean the burnposts and potatoes?
Not so much those, just the more Steem-focused posts; campaigning for various changes/upgrades.
I like the idea of a Trending page that's expensive to climb.
To be honest I don't expect we'll see much non-Steem content there organically any time soon. That'll have to wait for Communities.
It will be interesting to see how the communities change things.