This is an open letter to all of the people who are actively involved in development of steem, steemit & anyone who is interested in the future development.
First of all, I wanted to take a moment & thank you for all of your efforts both now & in the future. You've done a good job so far. I know that myself & thousands of others are happy to have this platform as a method to be rewarded for our contributions.
I don't want to seem ungrateful, unfortunately, A negative pattern is beginning to emerge from the core influence group. This pattern is causing many including myself to feel marginalized & alienated.
Recently I opened a topic on GitHub regarding a simple change, to restore longterm payouts in order to encourage the creation of higher quality content.
It's sad, but frankly understandable that we have to go to GitHub to in order to bring these topics up. There is a terrible signal to noise ratio right now. It's unlikely to get better anytime soon. At the moment there aren't enough mods to highlight relevant content. It's a bit of a free for all on steemit with everyone vying for the very limited attention of a very tiny group of influencers in a system that is supposed to be representing anarchist ideals.
Since the only way to get attention on an important topic is to go to GitHub, I opened this issue as well as a handful of other issues on GitHub.
Yet as I explicitly stated when opening the issue...
This idea originated on steemit, when I posted it as a reply to @stan who was discussing the difficulty of explaining steemit & other initiatives of cryptonomex to VC's.
Because I recognize that this core group is extremely busy with huge changes that have enormous impact , prior to opening the ticket I solicited input from the community in order to gauge the importance of the topic. I wanted to be sure that I wasn't the only one who felt it was important enough to raise the profile of the topic beyond the comments section of a single user's personal blog.
Once the issue was opened, I expent a significant amount of time & effort, attempting to bring attention to a critical issue that I think we can all agree is highly relevant to future growth of the platform.
Plenty of others agreed with me enough to head over to github & discuss the topic vigorously.
Nevertheless, the ticket was closed unceremoniously & immediately brought back up as a new topic here
Where @theoretical literally says
I would ordinarily have closed the ticket right then, but it was generating a lot of high-quality discussion, so I decided to let it run for a bit. I'm closing it now, though, & asking the discussion to continue in the comments here.
At first, I was a bit puzzled by the degree of controversy this straightforward change created...
Here's my answer to @theoretical...
It generated controversy & high quality discussion, because I am exhausting myself by going all over the place both here & on other platforms, raising the profile of the issue & asking people who care about the issue, to drop by & comment.
Unfortunately, because the issue is closed
THIS HAS HAD A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE DISCUSSION
Now it can't be found as an open issue. It's closed now & if anyone tries to comment, then it will be summarily ignored. To make matters worse, it now links back to your blogs, & I have to follow you, in order to keep tabs on an important topic I broached while asking others outside of steemit to monitor. in order to watch a democratic process in action.
This negated my efforts & then to add insult to injury you personally monetized an important topic in the process.
This is not a one time event & it's not limited to one person. It appears to be a pattern, but I'm bringing it up now because this is the most important issue to date and the one I spent the most effort trying to raise the profile of.
This pattern may be an oversight, but even as an oversight I'm extremely disturbed by this & I'm not alone in that feeling.
The opening of important issues on GitHub by the community is not an attempt to harass or annoy you. It's an attempt to make sure that you are aware these are issues we'd like your feedback and attention on.
The problem is that it seems to not be worth core's time until it's worth hijacking.
While that may not be your intent, actions are more important than intent & unfortunately, as the core influence group, including developers, you are giving the appearance of attempting to monetize ideas of others, to the exclusion of their creators & originators.
I don't mean to be all "me, me, me", so I hope you'll understand when I say this, but in this particular case...
I already have nearly zero visibility on this platform beyond my own little core group of dedicated followers, many of whom are people I've brought over from other platforms.
The core audience for that topic were actually content creators who have been considering making the jump to steemit from other monetization platforms such as patreon. I thought it might be worth your time to see the size of the market being ignored.
Thus far, they've refused to make the jump, because they believe they will be marginalized as their content is taken away, & reposted by others with more influence.
As it turns out, you've now demonstrated that yes, content hijacking by larger influencers will happen, so don't bother coming.
This needs to stop!
Consider the impact that discussion hijacking has before diverting like that.
Going forward, please give credit where credit is due, this means going beyond a single one word link to a closed issue when you decide to take an issue to your blog instead.
You can do this by highlighting content you think is worth your time instead of expending the effort to move it wholesale to your personal blog & not even bothering to address the source of the idea.
A better solution would be to ask us, who are opening these tickets which you feel would better be handled as steemit topics, to make it a posting on steemit instead. Yet there needs to be acknowledgement that it is worth talking about first, which means demonstrating that you are listening. That means, once we actually do it, please drop by & participate. The visibility is helpful for us, even if you disagree with either the premise or the specifics.
This way, huge discussions don't fill up your inbox as each reply filters in from open topics on GitHub.
You'll be able to keep tabs on important topics by bookmarking them and just checking in from time to time.
Plus, we like knowing that we are making a difference too!
Furthermore if people are regularly bringing issues to your attention which are worth your time; These people & their ideas ought to have real value to you. Hijacking totally negates their effort & devalues them.
At a minimum, when I & others go to this level of effort to open an issue on GitHub & bring people in, we would greatly appreciate it if you didn't close the issue, only to reopen it as a personal blog topic, which is what I mean when I say hijacking.
Anything less is harmful & is negating the efforts of contributors who are trying to be helpful. This maginalizes us & makes us feel alienated.
Thank You For Your Time.
Sincerely,
Everyone trying to contribute valuable ideas & trying to get your attention.
*p.s. Yeah I know... You want me to use the form here...
