After I made my first two blog posts after signing up on steemthat, about a week later when I logged in, there was no way I could see to make a new blog post, and I saw that now it appears that it's pay to play in order to make blog posts? I don't get it.
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Someone else mentioned this but that is not the case. There is free membership. We are not just open to anyone that spams now. You must register or join to contribute just like on steemit or any other website.
We did remove the blog posting feature temporarily while we worked to improve the quality of content and it is still down while we work to filter what can be submitted through posts. Mining scripts, child porn, etc cannot be allowed.
SteemThat.com was founded to help people grow. The best way we can do that is through building the whale pool. We can run the website and bots no problem and we have done so for almost 1 year. SteemThat.com is in beta and we may not bring back Blogging the way it was as we dont want to be a website full of spam and junk pics. (Your articles were great.)
Our goal is to support quality writers on Steemit.com. We were hoping for quality articles with links back to users Steemit posts. We were hoping for quality article s that added real value. 90% of all posts were junk, low quality posts that added no real value to the community. Almost all would have fit in a twitter message. The social portal is perfect for that. We tried white listing authors who submitted good posts and that worked for a while but requires a ton of maintenance and is not scaleable at all to manually approve posts.
I feel our strongest assets are giving people a facebook style social portal so that they can create groups and communities and share their steemit posts with real people. Additionally we can fund a whale pool and really support real people and quality writers on Steemit.com.
We have a new video that explains Stish better and how we plan to build the whale pool.
https://SteemThat.com still has a ton to offer and blogging is still available through the social portal.
People do have to register or join now but it is free and free members still get support on posts just not as much as people who actually spend money to fund the whale pool when they buy Stish. Just $10 from 10,000 members would be a wonderful start and we all could find more success.
I understand your dilemma with junk posters and junk posts. The way you've decided to eliminate them from steemthat however, by charging creators a periodic rate in order to provide your platform to them to enable them to post good content there, seems counterproductive, IMO.
I joined steemthat with the intention of making at least two quality blog posts weekly, exclusive to steemthat, in addition to my postings on steemit. With the new membership tiers, and considering the prices of the paid memberships - it just seems to me that it's probably not that worthwhile to post on steemthat, free or otherwise.
The 'free' membership option, (I found all the memberships somewhat confusing since I thought I already was a member upon joining and being accepted on steemthat), when placed alongside the premium memberships you offer - the free membership can't logically give a worthwhile return, as the paying members would rebel if that was the case.
I also think that the free membership will be abused by the same junk posters that caused you to take this approach, which will drive you to end the free membership option as well, before long.
While I still think you have a good idea with steemthat, I think you may be trying to get to a point of exclusivity in having only good content on your site in a way that I personally don't see being successful. Even after reading what you've written in your reply, and while I appreciate your taking the time to explain, I still see it as you're basically asking people to pay you to post their work on steemthat.
To make matters even more confusing to me, is the fact that I am not really well-versed in crypto-currency knowledge and maneuvering. I know little about Steem even; and stish, and how that translates to Steem - I have no clue. So right off the bat, with the changes to posting on steemthat, there's no gauge I can look at that tells me what the free membership value actually is. But with the giant step from the 'free' membership to the charge for the lowest tier of paid memberships - it suggests to me that its worth would be very minimal to a creator of good content, just looking for a little help with exposure.
You've got some good people there, and I wish you all success, but I don't think it's for me - not this incarnation of it, at least.
The whale pool will not build itself. Membership and the level you choose determines how much upvote percentage you will receive. It really has nothing to do at all with the blogging or rewarda platform. Though we can use it to put somethings like send messages to steemit behind a pay wall to prevent spam and abuses. I appreciate the feedback it means I still have not made things clear enough. I will work more to cut the clutter and focus on explaining our mission. Building the whale pool will require small amounts of funding from members. Buying Stish directly works but is cumbersome to assign to who deserves the added steemit support. Especially when someone buys it annonoumously. Membership levels allow us to assign participation and percentage of rewards all at the same time to a member of steemthat. The membership level impacts your whale pool support. The amount of Stish you possess, discounts you get in the store, exchange rate of steemthat tokens to stish.
There are some incentives to support the whale pool verses just getting free upvotes. Some people still may game the system. We cant stop it but we can slow it down. The scammers generally will not spend 1.99 to exchange their rewards tokens to Stish even if Stish is selling for 10 per Stish. Scammers are just that way. We will use all revenue to build the whale pool as the stronger it is the more people that want to join and the more people that want to join will eventually drive the price of Stish up. Ill take my chances on a longterm payday and if people do not see the value in what we are offering they are missing out.
With regards to blogging, the social portal, and almost all of the other features and benefits they are still free whether you become a free member or not. Not everyone that uses our website cares about Steemit or the whale pool. Many just want to blog and earn Steemthat rewards tokens. Some just want Stish so they can be in on the ground floor of something special. All members could automatically be assigned free membership and this is not even an issue. I will work on it.
Thanks for your reply. Seeing value in something is not always as clear to someone else as it is to ourselves.
As I explained, I personally don't see the value, which could be attributed, possibly, to my just not getting it. As I explained, I don't know much about the crypto-currency world, and I really have no urge to learn the intricacies. The rewards for posting on steemit were enticement for me to join, but minor. I do think it's likely that, some see receiving Steem as an incentive only to get more Steem. If one can get rewarded for junk posts, they're not ashamed to pursue that path. Nor should they be. The potential for abuse exists - it will be exploited, no question.
I look at however much Steem and Steem Dollars and Steem Power I have as something that could be valuable to me financially at some point, but I also remind myself that it could all disappear in a flash potentially as well. What I mean is, its actual value is debatable when you factor in the potential insecurities with crypto-currencies, the exchanges, etc.
I've no plan to delete my steemthat membership. If you're gong to auto-assign to steemthat members the 'free' option, and make things a bit more clear on how steemthat is going to operate, I'll continue to evaluate.
Additionally any support you receive for free is a positive return on investment. Plus you get the whole community, earn some rewards convert to stish. I cant see how free is bad but maybe you are right we should do away with free because people cant see how free support is an automatic positive gain no matter how small or large the gain is. You somehow are seriously complaining about free support of your steemit posts. Lol this just cracks me up. We support people they support us as they grow we will grow. Think about it. It sometimes right now is only a few cents per post per day but for many that is more than they get all week on posts. I want to see it build to dollars for quality writers. You can help. We run it all and you can help. Help me and other build a whale pool. Commit 10 or 20 SBD from posts. Sell on blocktrades for ETH and buy some stuff from https://steemthat.com... We fund the whale pool accounts, everyone get more support on their posts all year long. It has a much better ROI than a a one shot post promoted. You got to think outside of the box and plan long term.
You're misunderstanding me on this point. Did steemthat offer me anything beyond free support for my steemit posts when I decided to join? Well, it offered me support on steemit posts AND it offered me another platform where I could publish my content to another group of people and be rewarded there as well. These things together influenced my decision to apply, and I feel no different on that now.
The point is I willfully applied for membership on steemthat based completely on adding some free support in exchange for my posting quality articles, stories, photos, etc. What I wrote isn't a complaint so much as it's my surprise at the seeming abrupt 180 turn on what the site is about, whether that's due to me not understanding the plan, or being surprised by it.
I write most of the day, everyday. I do research for a lot of the stuff I write. It's required to do so if you want to write something that's factual. It all takes time. I wrote what I did about value because willfully spending more time each day writing just one more article, adds to the value of time spent creating. And that simply must be included as a factor in the calculation of value.
There is no periodic rate for posting on Steemthat.com. This is just fud. Posting was temporarily removed as we redesigned the UI. Now when you submit a post and try to add an image you can. The search icon is not covering up the upload botton anymore. The navigation was 7 pages. You had draft posts, pending posts, edit posts, my posts etc...All of that is under one page under communit social portal as a drop down. so much easier with everything on one page verses 7. Loads much faster too now.
We did fix some things with regards to posting and what can and cant be added and submitted. Automated on thw back side. Unless you are a spammer you will never notice. Instead of allowing 500 main categories and people spamming a food article to steemthat now you get one main category just like steemit and we lowered tags to 3. We want high quality focused content. The new ui reflects that. Posts must have titles now. This was fixed in the update. So much improvement in such little time. 😀 I really do need to create an update and version number system that reflects what changes and growth has been made over time. The amount of days spent developing is really crazy. I hope https://stish.io isnt as cumbersome to develop.
When I first wrote and mentioned the periodic rates, I had no idea that some other(s) had also mentioned it. But the impetus for me writing that was the result of my logging onto steemthat one day, (with the purpose of making a new original post), discovering that the posting options were nowhere to be found, and seeing a big membership tier layout starting with free, and then the prices of all the higher tiers listed after that. Without knowing anything else, how do you think you would have reacted, presented with the same scenario?
I didn't do or say anything to anyone after that first login after the changes. I figured that since you obviously had made some big changes, that maybe you messed up and accidentally deleted the posting links. So I left and gave it a few days. Logged in again, and there still was no posting link. I drew, at that point, the only logical conclusion I could - to post, you had to get a membership, either free or pay, even if you had already been a member. Some of the language that I found somewhere on the site suggested to me, (I could have misunderstood), that free members may not have posting rights on the site - it wasn't clear. I clicked on the apply as free member link and saw a message that I thought said something like, if you choose this option you won't be able to get any other option - or something like that. I went no further, not understanding anything I was encountering.
When I saw your post, I decided to ask about my experience logging in, post changes, and to try to relay some of my surprise and wonder from my experience, attempting to recreate what the experience represented to me, someone who had recently joined and had no reason to expect such a dramatic change all of a sudden. It affected how I thought of the site in terms of stability at that point. My intention was never to diss your site in any way, but to illustrate that was my understanding from visiting to make a post, finding that I couldn't, and then trying to find out what was going on after the changes were in place.
I really do appreciate the feedback. We need to be more careful with changes we make and also somehow make sure members know if we are making changes that will potentially impact them. In our beta testing I just assume most people will find things and we can test things.
We do not plan on any major design changes anytime soon and most things are being brought back with their new design or purpose. We have no stability issues just in beta and cleaning things up and making everything smoother for the end user.
Steemit has not fixed this in like 6 months...
No one seams concerned but me. That makes me wonder if Steemit has serious issues. If SteemThat.com wasn't fixing things and making improvements then I would be worried.
@free-reign feel free to join the support group on SteemThat.com and bring up any questions you might have. If you are having concerns or issues with the website then others might be as well and we could help alot of people find solution the best that way. We can work on things to make improvements and user feedback helps us get better.
I see that in the wallet. I've thought it's just showing the base level where we start, likely because what's supposed to display there usually, isn't displaying - a bug as you suggest. I have seen a couple of times where it has shown my current level, and my cover image on my wallet page. And while it usually says 25 there with black background, everywhere else shows my actual level. I don't think it's somehow actually having an effect on reputation, but I could be wrong. It doesn't look like a big issue to me though.
I'd be glad to offer feedback on issues on the site, but I think the main issue with my experience after the changes, was just being surprised and then not seeing any guidance about the changes. You may want to incorporate a banner or something on the site that will inform and/or direct users on what's going on and how to proceed after changes. Or even better, also plan site changes and announce them before implementation.
I think that is the solution. We are coming up on the end of the completion of the road map illustrated in the white paper. We can create a new roadmap soon and update the white paper. I think we will create a changelog style page with major updates and what changed since the last update. Improvements update really.We could just copy and paste things from the white paper from time to time that we are about to implement. I don't think we really need half of the docs we have now as no one reads them. We need simple one pagers and a solid notification system if we have any major updates. Hopefully we come out of beta soon and really just work on bug fixes.
Steemit used to show the correct banners and rep on every page. I hate the new logo which isn't new to many. I had just bought a ton of shirts after they opened the store. Then about 2 weeks later without any notice they changed the logo. It reminded me of buying a fave sports team jersey back in the day to find out they decided to change the whole look or move cities. I can appreciate the shock you must have been under. I had invested a ton and they knew they were changing logos. At least I hope they knew.
We will try to avoid such issue in the future. Thanks for the ideas and feedback. It will help us make improvements.