The current trending pages seems to be a rather hot subject for anyone who's eager to complain about the type of content that is being rewarded since HF21. Less author rewards and the trending pages, both seems to be in the crosshairs of complaints. I can understand that authors who've been negatively affected by the recent reward changes complain, are angry or frustrated. Perhaps even scared... But I seem to miss the "danger" with the trending pages. I don't fully understand why it would be so bad to have Steem-related content on the trending pages.
- Especially this early after the recent HardForks.
On the other hand, the trending pages seems to have been in the "hot zone" forever. People complained before HF21 too, but it was complaints about the bid-bot abuse and all the low quality content that was pushed to the top.
HF21 gave us all a better trending page. We successfully countered massive bid-bot abuse. Spam and low quality content doesn't last long on Steem nowadays, so we filled the trending pages with other things instead. With good things. With Steem-related articles.
Truth is, that Steem-related content has always been rewarded. Especially things that seems to benefit others and Steem itself. Nowadays, we have contests for people interested in SteemFest. We see articles that contains information about bid-bots and how they have changed. Many of these things are published because of HF21.
- It's the hype train.
Variety Is Key
Ultimately, I would love to see more variety on trending, but if you scroll down a little bit, you can already find travel posts, blogs, movie reviews and political posts as well. Amongst other things.
This makes me wonder what type of content people are looking for... You will most likely never find something like an actifit post on top of trending for instance, and that is a good thing, so I can't really understand all the complaints. The only thing I would personally wish for, is that some of these blogs, travel posts and/or movie reviews will be on top occasionally, but I definitely don't want to see the same author on top of trending with all of her travel posts again.
Also the trending pages of the different tribes we have are usually different from the trending pages on Steemit, so I can't really see the point of all the complaints. You have options. You can easily avoid the trending pages on Steemit if you want.
That being said, I know that Steemit is probably the first thing a newcomer would ever visit, as it often requires some knowledge and experience before you will realize that we have different tribes.
Would the current content on trending hurt newcomers in any way? Would it be bad for a newcomer to see STEEMFEST ticket giveaways or that bid-bots have changed their behaviour? Would it be bad for a potential investor to see that we are truly working towards a spam-free Steem with focus on high quality instead of low quality content?
- I think not.
I don't actually think it would hurt them to see several travel posts from the same author on top of trending either, but I do think it would look more "fishy" to have posts from the same author over and over again, compared to have more unique users on trending.
That being said, I do realize that we are likely to see the same authors on trending further on, due to their support and stake, but I also think that we will see more authors on trending than we have seen previously. All due to manual curation.
People are eager to find new content to vote on and they are eager to follow new authors who produce high quality content on a regular basis. It might not be easy to get their attention, but Steem is not supposed to be easy.
Anyhow, I can't really see the problem with Steem-related articles on the trending pages on Steemit. I very much prefer to have that than the same boring low-ish quality content that was bid-botted to the top previously.