A Series About My Experiences On Steemit, What They Do Better And What Minds.com Can Lern From That (I)

My Steemit adventure began a little less than a year ago and the site dragged me in like no other has done before. It was fun, it was fast, it was complex but it was also compelling given the countless opportunities the site offered in light of its blockchain based nature.

I really liked it and was convinced about its bright future, until I dug a bit too deep and offended the wrong people there. Unfortunately, the site has quite a disturbing underbelly the fewest users notice or know about and I had to learn this the hard way.

My conclusion at the end was that the site - despite its potential power, its enthusiastic users and the very capable and engaged developers around the blockchain - will probably have one, perhaps two more years, until it will collapse under its own weight. Impart that is caused by immanent inefficiencies of the concept, the current lack of competition (and fundamentals of the crypto market), but first and foremost because of a cabal of very powerful users - I call them the pack of wolves - who see the platform not as a place of social gathering, debate and networking, but as an arena to live out their personal anti-social traits. Nobody who could stop them wants to and those who would are not in a position to do so.

Given my personal experiences and my conclusion that the site is doomed to fail, I decided to leave and now I (re-)found Minds.com, where I had an account for a brief time before discovering Steemit. The two main reasons why I am back here are the decision by Minds to go blockchain and the mentality from the developers site. In difference to what was and is going down on Steemit, I have the sincere impression that bill, the @ottman is really interested in his community and in feedback and in a constructive development. Something, he regularly shows with his interactions with the users of the site. 

Overall in the sort term, the site may lack of development and innovation speed, the steadiness and mentality here is definitively a big plus for the site in the long-run. Especially with the transition to a blockchain based approch, thinking and testing twice is probably better than just jumping into the cold water.

And who knows, perhaps senior @ottman will even read my series about the strenghes of Steemit and take in consideration one or the other advice I am trying to present here.

In the rest of this article, I will focus on a few differences on the surface that are different on both sites and where I see an advantage on Steemits solution:

1. The text editing

On Steemit, you can use the Markdown system and even html styling elements to edit your text in both articles and comments. While html is not really necessary and can be quite confusing and isn't really decisive (plus, it opens possibilities for fraudsters), I find the Markdown system for editing really good.

At first, it was confusing to me and for the fist few articles, I had to look up every sign, something I am surely not alone. Another negative aspect of Markdown is the limitation of certain characters that are used for Markdown commands.

The star "*" is the main feature signaling italic or bold if you use two of them "**". Then there is this one: "|" (no idea what its term is) for tables and the good old "#" for either tags - or used with a space "# " the command for a headline ("# " = 1st headline, "## " = 2nd headline and so on). There are also commands for links, for bullet points and other useful editing features. Here you can find the guidlines for Markdown.

The system is very intuitive and the more you use it, the less often you forget to set a "*" at the end of a passage to mark the end of the italic part. Over time, you don't even have to look anymore at the preview of the text to see if everything is marked correctly. It takes 10 articles, perhaps, and you're in.

The current system, where you have to mark a passage on which you get a selection of editing tools is not bad, after all it gets the job done, but when you are writing fluently, it is much less convenient than Markdown. Every click extra and every selection extra takes you time, takes you out of your rhythm and demands extra attention for switching the level in your mind. On top comes for me personally that I like to mark a text passage while reading it and right now, everytime I read-mark these lines, this stupid bar pops up - veeery annoying. 

I don't know how complex a switch to Markdown would be, but in my experience, the users would like it. And perhaps, both systems could exist next to each other.

In case of the latter, a specific problem could turn up with the preview. Steemit offers a live preview below the text field for both, articles and comments. Here on Minds, you get the preview delivered in the text field itself. Perhaps a solution like on Busy.org (a Steemit offshoot tapping the Steem blockchain) could help. There, they offer you to switch between the two systems and in the Markdown one, you get a preview.

2. The auto-save feature

On Steemit users, have **zero problems** (see? I just tried to use Markdown..) with saving drafts or losing non-saved content to system crashes or clicking accidents.

With zero problems, I don't (just) mean the saving process on the blockchain, but the fact that everything you type in gets auto-saved. There is no loss when you accidentally close the window, have a computer crash or are not in the mood of finishing the text and just switch off the machine. The text still is there when you come back and open the text field. That is awesome and Minds ~~should~~ ... should must have that, too.

Currently, you can save a draft on Minds. But for my first article for example, I didn't know that this was there. I just wrote and in my sloppiness - and trained laziness thanks to Steemit - I closed the tab in which I had written the text (which only needed a last look before I would publish it). Well, and then the entire text was gone. Thank you for nothing on that, Bill! :)

Also, the "save draft" button is way too far down for the big text window. On Steemit, the default size of the text window is too small, you always have to expand it; on Minds, it's the opposite.

As half-step to auto-save, Minds should put the button for saving drafts on top or to some place where you can easily reach it without having to scroll. But at the end nothing will help expect the full version of auto-save. Users will thank you for that, Bill!

3. Using more than one (self-chosen!) tag

Writing blog articles on Minds is a very narrow matter - at least when you look at it from the perspective of possible tags (or categories, as they are called here). When I counted correctly, there are 19 different topics that you can write about. But what if you are interested in reading or writing something else like, philosophy, literature or the Internet? Is that then politics, art and technology? A bit too broad, as I think.

Sure, with only few topics it becomes easier to fill and categorize from a macro perspective. But as content creator and seeker, I find it rather inconvenient to only have both 19 options in total and can only use one option per post. On Steemit (without gaming the system), you have up to five tags and you can pick them freely. And while sometimes you misspell a tag, the content ends up in oblivion, you can always (well, during the first 7 days..) change the tags with the exception of the first one. And looking at the statistical results, you will see that users do find the most interesting tags on their own. The user @arcange publishes daily stats about the activities on Steemit and under point six, you will find the categories.

It clearly shows, this sort-of chaotic system does produce the correct results. After all - and this is a bit of another criticism - every category has its own "new", "trending" and "hot" lists and the game played on the site - at least superficially - is that you try to get to the top of your chosen categories. The logic behind: The more popular a category and the more your content is listed on top, the more you get seen by users who look there for content.

The side criticism is that at least so far I haven't found out how you can display all new posts of one topic. I guess, you can search for it and *trying it* and you will find content. But I find the Steemit solution more intuitive and specific when it comes to results.Perhaps, the 19 categories could each get their own site where you can search by the "new", "hot" or another selection method.

My main recommendating about tags/categories to @ottman bill is to perhaps leave these initial 18 topics, but allow users to add two more tags on their own. Five is not necessary, I think with a funnel of three categorizations, you can define your content (and the stuff, you're looking for) well enough. The way it is right now though is insufficent, imho.

In short, these were the suggestions of today:

- Markdown as editing tool

- An auto-save feature for text

- More categories and/or self-chosen tags

More to come tomorrow.

PS: What category should I use for this post, big boss @ottman? See, that's what I mean...