After my delight at getting my local version of Steemit running, I went to bed with my brain buzzing... When "the experts" recommend distancing yourself from screens at least an hour before trying to go to sleep, this is probably why.

Keeping me awake were thoughts of what I could do to improve steemit.com... where do I start with my learning and playing with code?

Initially, I thought about playing around with the layout of the "Notifications" tab - perhaps surprisingly, this is where I start my journey - either here (checking mentions) and then the "Replies" tab. Once I'm done replying, I head over to my own interface to browse around and see what's about (I see a few more posts being promoted). If I'm on my mobile, I'll look at my friends feed and see what @realrobinhood is recommending. Which leads me to my proposal...

I remember a couple of years ago, there being a lot of discussion about the "Trending" page. Still, the first page which new users will see when they visit https://www.steemit.com, the idea that users were seeing bot-delegated content appeared as a deterrent to would-be bloggers looking for a respectable platform.

The discussed solution at the time was to rewrite the Trending algorithm to more meaningful factors - post length, comments and resteems being a few examples.

I don't know what happened to these discussions, perhaps apathy became so deep-rooted that nobody bothered caring any more but whilst lying in bed last night, a simple solution occurred to me...

Redirect steemit.com to steemit.com/promoted

Ok... so the /promoted page isn't currently awash with content but that's where a number of supporting initiatives come into effect...

1. A new account is created which is little more than a "promo post" creator. It'll share a weekly guide, helping new users to sign up, etc. (it'll be more prominent in the prime real-estate rather than in the blind spot on the right) and the rewards earnt will be used to promote their posts via a transfer to @null.

2. So this will give us content to help new users - it could also be used to promote existing users... I was thinking along the lines of a weekly post celebrating new dolphins. There might only be a handful of users each week but this would be motivational to existing users and perhaps aspirational to new ones... look what can be achieved. Similar to above, rewards earnt leads to transfers to @null to promote posts.

3. So this might give us 2 guaranteed posts per week but what else? @realrobinhood - the top 5 posts each day are promoted on a sliding scale - 0.005 SBD, 0.004 SBD, etc. (depending upon the required "cost") on a daily basis. Posts that remain high up for consecutive days get a daily boost.

4. We're up to 7 guaranteed posts and to top things off, the aforementioned, dedicated "promo" account can manually promote posts at the owner's discretion - this could be run within a small team of Steemit Angels 😇👼 - without the pressure of daily curation to use up voting power.

5. Finally... there's the free market. If every user who visits steemit.com lands on /promoted (so logged in users go here instead of "My Communities"), there's an incentive to get noticed and promote your own posts. Yeah, every now and then some dick head will decide to promote some shit-spam-crap but it'll be less painful knowing that they've spent their SBD doing it (and could always be out-promoted by the above dedicated account).

I suspect the bid-bot users won't really care - in theory, this should attract more authors, making the platform more attractive - and I seriously doubt that it will have an impact on their daily $400+ returns.

This definitely feels more achievable than rewriting the Trending API (although it might not be 😂)

I'd love to hear your thoughts and would love it if this could be proposed to the Witness channel for discussion.

the-gorilla's Alternative Steemit Interface

In case you didn't know, I've created an interface to help you find content that you're interested in more easily.

Posts by voting bot users, abusers and spam tags are hidden and you can search by multiple tags - allowing you to find the content that you're interested in more easily.

👉 Launch Alternative Steemit Interface 👈

the-gorilla's Club Status Tool

I've also created a tool to help users review their club status - showing them where their power's coming from, how much they're powering up, transferring out and who they share a wallet with amongst other things.

Please use it wisely.

👉 Launch Club Status Tool 👈