A Series About My Experiences On Steemit, What They Do Better And What Minds.com Can Lern From That (VI)
For inexplicable reasons, I have forgotten to post a list yesterdays. which is why todays list will be yesterdays list. But don't worry, I still have some up my sleeve. Sit back and enjoy, here they come:
1. Comment trees are great
It's not just on Steemit, where comments and replies are fit together in a tree, but it's pretty much Internet standard since they found out about 30 years ago - yes, 30 years ago in news groups before the www - that things work better that way. Somehow, Bill @ottman must have missed that one. Here on Minds you have to browse first and the woker ones among us open all comments first and then they use ctrl+f to find all possible mentiones for their username.
This means, yes, you can make it work, but it's what I would call a dirty fix and can include a lot of clicking, while missing relevant content in the comments anyway. This is really not necessary and as too many other aspects of the Minds front-end this too limits the usability, because you need more time, clicking and searching more than you have to given the state of technology.
The rudimentary state of the Minds comment section really needs to change. It's not just the missing tree display of comments and replies, but as I mentioned in an earlier list, also the way of how you can access and directly get to your comments. It all a bit (much impart) cumbersome and just lacks intuition.
2. The cool-to-functional ratio of the design is tilted
This could be another one falling into the category "exception", because it might be because I am using Firefox+Linux. But at least in my case, it is a bit annoying when for example writing a blog post and not seeing where the text field is. It's all white and you don't get any other hint that it might be there other than the shape of the cursor. I wonder what tablet users do about that?!
This lack of visible separator blocks can cause a clicking marathon before the writing can start, but you also have to get used to this when editing an existing article. As previously discovered, Minds doesn't auto-save content, which means in the case of freshly edited content that hasn't been "published" yet again, you can lose it if switching the tab or doing something else between finishing the editing and publishing.
At least I tend to do so and I also tend to forget about my last step. While I do admit that this might be a flaw of mine, I tend to think there are others who suffer of the same sleaziness in regard of their process. That's why it would be great to get a few more hints in form of visible design patterns to see where we are and what we are doing. In advance thanks a lot for changing that, Bill @ottman!
3. The trade-off between simple and fair for the reward pool rules
On Steemit, the rules of how the reward pool distribution works was close to wizardry. In some respect, it even surpassed the barrier to wizardry. I never mastered it, unfortunately, looks like there is no Harry Potter in me. As many others I gave up eventually trying to upvote at the right moment, posting a comment in the right sequence and directing my attention to those articles with the most promising payout chances.
Others didn't give up, but studied the whitepaper and the code blocks and came up with bots and other computerized indicators of where to get out the most. It's a hunt where the ones with the most tech - and the least interest in the official purpose of the site - won. They won and won and won again. For all I know, they are still winning. This makes the platform not just less interesting for real users who give a f*ck about the complexities, because of the smaller rewards despite contributing in a preferable way. But it also makes them double losers, because of the many leaches following their tracks, who do not only take away a good part of their well earned payout, but also post nonsense just to get a step closer to a cent or two.
Of couse, you can now say "Hey, that's Steemits problem, not one of Minds!" and you are right. The rules are theirs and Minds quite likely has very different ones. But there is one thing, that is similar and that nobody can escape: The trade-off between simplicity and fairness. The simpler the rules, the better everyone can understand them, but the more a certain behavior becomes dominant, which might be bad for the platform or benefit a certain kind of user. The more fairness and balance you want to bring in, the more complex the rules have to be. This may lead to better distributions, but it also results in less users understanding the rule set in the first place, which can become a problem of its own.
The morale of this suggestion is not to make the rules plain simple and not to seek for the perfect system, but look for something in between. Always be transparent about it and - most importantly - don't be shy to change the rules if you have the feeling, something's wrong with them. You can always change them back. Users will understand that. They too know that such a system needs to be tested and overhauled once a while. The only thing you shouldn't is keeping it a secret.
In short, these were the suggestions of today:
1. Comment trees are great
2. The cool-to-functional ratio of the design is tilted
3. The trade-off between simple and fair for the reward pool rules
More to come tomorrow.