Less zapping and posting?

I'm not very observant, but a few fellow stackers have mentioned that there seems to be a reduction in posting and zapping here lately. I started checking the analytics page and looking into territory posting fees. It's true that the top posts seem to be awarded fewer sats than what was normal over the past year or so. It's less dramatic on a longer time frame, I think, but it's still concerning.

Why?

There are two big reasons for this, in my opinion:
  • First of all, It is counterintuitive for new stackers to realize that by giving away their sats through generous tipping, they can earn more here. I have posted about it, @Undisciplined has posted about it, @Natalia has posted about it, yet it's still hard to convince stackers. I have noticed many accounts who have been here a year or two that still have not gotten the message.
  • Territories may be the other culprit. In 2022 and 2023 the fiat value of bitcoin was much lower, yet the cost to post on SN was much lower. It makes sense that new stackers would zap fewer sats now than a year ago, when bitcoin's value in fiat was roughly half what it is now. However, as a result of territories, the average posting fees here are much, much higher, perhaps by a factor of 5 or 10 to one. Anecdotally, I have been shocked a few times when hunting around for a territory to select for a post. I don't consider myself a cheap zapper. I can't imagine the reaction of new stackers here. I am not blaming territory owners. I own three myself. The costs to own a territory are astronomical compared to what you can likely earn. Raising posting fees are an attempt to at least reach a higher fraction of break even monthly. Owners also hope that setting the bar high will improve the quality of posts. Incidentally, this "post inflation" is not just a territory owner thing. Despite bitcoin tripling in fiat value over the past year or so, the cost to post in the original three, SN owned territories (bitcoin,meta,tech) has also risen dramatically.

The Solution?

The entire site will suffer if stackers stop registering and posting. I don't have easy answers. I know territory fees are an important part of SN revenue. I just fear that if things continue like this, SN will become less relevant.
Keeping posting fees low! Slow and steady wins the race.
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Couple other things to consider, dead internet theory is real, engagement is generally an extremely low percentage of views...
Factoring that, the curiosity factor has worn off, not just SN, but all Lightning apps. Nostr for example is pronounced dead regularly. As such, my focus has been on infrastructure away from Video partly due to this. Engagement comes in small adoption waves, and Lightning infrastructure is currently too terrible to foster a big adoption wave for social apps.
Lightning apps also come with the tradeoff that higher signal content with less bots and bullshit is simply dramatically less engagement. We've been conditioned to fiat platforms where trash content is subsidized and brings trash engagement with it.
Territories seems to have been a controversial change here, I personally am interested by a wide-range of topics but it's a dilutive UX as implemented. When I comment on something its because I saw a link somewhere else or was tagged, I never browse the main site or specific territory.. my SN feed is the telegram channel which doesn't even indicate territories (and I think the telegram bot maybe filters stuff?)
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SN has a telegram channel?
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The official RSS channel is https://t.me/stackernewsrss (maintained by me).
I created it because https://t.me/stackernewslive was down for a while with no way to contact the admin.
But it's mostly the same. The official one only also shows author and date.
unofficial:
official:
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👍👍👍
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The entire site will suffer if stackers stop registering and posting.
This is the sentence I hope everyone sees. There are always going to be stackers who stop, either because of temporary issues (travel, life events), or just because people move on to something else online. For the site to grow, enough new folks need to stick around. Not that I have a solution, but it is a concern.
On another note, when someone uses a freebie, do territory owners get no fees, or does that come from SN? I know I've seen some freebie abuse here and there, and wasn't sure if they're screwing over just SN, or SN and the territory owners.
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Freebies pay nothing but have limited visibility until zapped by someone with greeter mode enabled.
They don't screw over anyone, it's a feature we've implemented to decrease friction for new stackers and territory owners can disable freebies if they want.
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What if zaps to freebies first went to retroactively paying the posting fee before the poster got any?
Once the fee is paid, the "freebie" designation could be dropped.
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Good idea, we've considered negative balances but no decision yet.
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I did not realize that territories could opt out of freebies. That's a huge difference.
I do realize it's a feature, but when someone abuses it, at the very least, SN is getting screwed a bit.
(I'm thinking mainly of that one person who abused freebies to post links to his medium articles over and over.)
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When there was some spam in ~crypto, I thought about letting territory founders control fees per stacker. This means that they could increase (or decrease) the fee for individual stackers. So they would have two controls to combat spam: base fee + individual fee.
But I am not sure if I ever even told @k00b about this.
Maybe we could also disable freebie on a user-by-user basis.
Registering a new account would defeat this mechanism but maybe it's still effective to some degree. It could be part of a defense-in-depth strategy.
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Medium? He should be excommunicated
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304 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 1 Jul
I'll be honest-- I still zap here as much as I used to per time spent here, but my time has been split with other platforms, including Twitter. I'm really almost exclusively interested in Bitcoin, and I find that most devs are on Twitter. I'm also on Nostr but it's a meme circus.
Some other thoughts--
Bull markets create NGU Bitcoiners and modern times bring bots and scammers.
Bear markets bring true Bitcoiners, and convert the NGUs who haven't sold.
NGU Bitcoiners are hoarders AND don't have much to say. Though there are many territories here, everyone ARRIVES here because of Bitcoin. We could have an inflow of 20-something degens from Reddit Bitcoin sub, but I really don't think you want those people. I occasionally DM people on various platforms to tell them about SN, but it's deliberate and targeted at those who I think "get it" enough to fit in here.
A natural ebb does not indicate disaster. Seasons for all things.
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I don't know why people are giving fewer zaps, I guess few understand how SN works and how important zapping is on the platform, I don't blame them, I started similarly, maybe a guide on how to use SN and how important zap is could be a viable solution...
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Like @siggy47 mentioned, we've definitely tried to communicate this. I think it might just be something that takes time for people to appreciate.
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It took me a few weeks to realize how important zap is, maybe these same users also realize it, luckily I see that the majority of regular stackers zap, that's a good sign.
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Thanks for making this post. It's one I've been mulling over for a little while.
Activity wise, we seem to be about where we were when territories were starting. One of the big differences is that SN is making money off of territory revenue now, which is another important element of SN continuing to exist.
We may have experienced something like an artificial boom when territories proliferated and posts were cheap. Founders discovered that they couldn't ever hope to break-even like that, so they either closed up shop or they raised their prices. Naturally, posting declined.
Another possibility is that some of the subtle efforts at reducing disingenuous engagement have put downward pressure on the metrics.
There may also be seasonality on SN, with the summer being a little less active. It's too early to draw conclusions from prior years, but there was a dip last year.
All that said, I selfishly want us to improve our retention of quality stackers. There are definitely some who are not as active and others who have left entirely. I hope this post stirs up some good solutions.
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This topic is probably too big to write meaningfully on...but in general I'm not a fan of territory model. I think SN should simply implement a monthly subscription fee for users -- something modest 2500 sats or so.
In turn, I think Territories should be done away with entirely and replaced with the ability to set tags on new post.
An aside, but important for future: Sub-reddits is ultimately what led to the downfall of Reddit. It created the ability for 'cabals of mods' to form. In fact it became a big business to take over subreddits and stack the mod team with members. Those members then controlled opinion in the sub-reddit and sold access to social media companies. This is why every sub-reddit, no matter the topic, seems to have the same core values....because they are just proxies who sell access to the same bidders.
SN should just be one big homepage with the ability to filter based on tags.
As for the subscription fee model. I think users having "skin in the game" is exactly whats needed to create a site that fosters quality content. Any normal user can earn 2500 sats per month in just making average, non-spam comments / posts.
Thus, the user will just be paying the 2500 sats out of their monthly earnings and will likely never need fund more money into their wallet (outside of initial buy-in).
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I'm not conceding Tags > Territories, yet, but I definitely didn't appreciate some of the benefits of tags back when SN was initially discussing this.
We still need to see what cross-posting and sub-territories actually look like, before I can make that assessment. Plus, there's still a bunch of decision levers that haven't been granted to territory owners, yet.
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61 sats \ 3 replies \ @freetx 1 Jul
there's still a bunch of decision levers that haven't been granted to territory owners, yet
I'm open to whatever new tricks they have up their sleeve, but I don't think Territories will ever have any kind of scarcity. If scarcity isn't achieved, then whats the point?
If "Photos" starts making lots of money, someone will just create a "Photos2". In the end, all territory owners will be forced into marginal rates of return at or below break-even.
At that point, territory owners simply become almost charitable owners - and there is no real problem with that - its just a really convoluted way to impose monthly subscription fees.
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I don't think that's right. Just like there is no Bitcoin2 that is a serious threat, there are forces that work in favor of first movers and good managers.
Territories are quite expensive to maintain, which limits entry. We also have relationships with the active territory owners. If someone else started their own sports territory, just to undercut @grayruby, I wouldn't go there.
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61 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 1 Jul
This is not a now problem but SN will have to figure out how to balance the free market where new territories can be created and preserving user experience where you don't have 10 copycats of the bitcoin territory because it is successful.
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I don't think so. Territory owners will just have to keep fees low enough where it's not worth starting a competing territory.
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+1
I was thinking if territories are necessary instead use tags 🏷️
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That was the big debate back when we were headed down the territory road.
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Can we tag 🏷️ a thread ?
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No, tags lost the debate.
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What about keeping territories but putting them behind a paywall. As the internet becomes shittier by the day, I would be willing to shell out sats for access to a high quality knowledge base on a variety of topics.
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304 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 1 Jul
We all have our own witchdoctors when it comes to this stuff, but my own haruspicy says:
We haven't been working on this stuff (I've hardly been able to look at it) because we've been working on the wallets, so its all suffering. The one person who was tasked with looking at it and working on it while the programmers were programming, walked away around the same time. Territory and posting fees might be contributing, but I'm not sure what to do about that. Revenue isn't really important right now, so neither is important for revenue, but both are important for preventing an abundance of things we don't want.
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haruspicy
New to me, thanks.
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Haruspicy is what my programming mentor (an OG that worked on BitTorrent) called debugging code by reading log files.
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What I am finding is most of the activity on SN is really only happening in a 6-8 hour window tied to eastern and central time in North America and the evenings on the weekend are even worse than during the week. I have been trying to jump on and post and zap at different times but no one is around.
So because everyone is on during a short period of time all the content is being produced in that time and people are trying to maximize their zaps and rewards.
I do also agree that a lot of newer stackers aren’t zapping that much.
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activity on SN is really only happening in a 6-8 hour window
This is odd, because I feel like we also have a larger share of the active stackers who are on the other side of the world.
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Yes, and they are all posting around the same time we are posting because that's when they get the most sats. We have a bit of time zone inertia going.
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Ironically, they might get more by being the only ones posting stuff for us to read on weekend evenings. I'm often feeling pretty zappy, but there's nothing to zap.
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116 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 1 Jul
This is the problem. Sometimes I jump on late at night when everyone has gone to bed and I am bored and there is hardly anything to zap. I have posted a couple times late at night too and gotten almost no sats and then in the morning the post will get sats. I don't know how to solve this problem.
I was pro scheduled posts but I think they are just going to make this worse.
I do think it will help when new stackers start zapping more.
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This is why I've always been anti-scheduled posts. I'd rather we improve evergreenness than schedule posts.
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157 sats \ 2 replies \ @Taft 1 Jul
Maybe we need less stacker and more zappers rather than more stackers and less zappers. I think that one year ago you had here more zappers than stakers. I wasn't here a year ago, but when I joined SN in February this year, there still were more zappers than stackers here. So, when I saw people zapping my posts and comments with generosity, it gave the straight message that I should do the same because this is the way this site works.
Probably, people are receiving another message today: zap less, stack more until SN is available!
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That would be an unfortunate message. It still pays to zap more, but for some reason it's hard to convince people of that.
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40 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taft 1 Jul
That would be an unfortunate message. It still pays to zap more, but for some reason it's hard to convince people of that.
I agree! I hope people understand it.
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Perhaps remove the Leaderboard altogether. It’s quite demoralising to post and comment when you are far down in the rankings - and consequently think that your comments won’t matter.
N revert to the old way of announcing rewards. Like this comment came in at 120th position to net 169 sats. I was always pleasantly surprised at how my throwaway comments written near the end of the day somehow garnered me some sats lol.
I also think we need to move away of zapping = gaining back more sats n build a culture where we are more intrinsically motivated to zap because it makes us feel good. It’s why we give generous tips irl haha.
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I agree that ditching the leaderboard is worth trying.
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Me too
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110 sats \ 5 replies \ @NRS 1 Jul
I'm new here and I've noticed this. I think it's very important to reconsider posting fees by territory owners while focusing on managing posts. Similarly, to avoid posting being monopolized by a specific, small group. SN is a great thing and an innovative idea. I hope this grows.
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It will grow if we all do our part, or at least a large part of us.
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Byzantine general problem?
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19 sats \ 0 replies \ @NRS 1 Jul
lol
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Now that you mention it... it could be
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @NRS 1 Jul
👍👍
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have been just a couple of months in SN. Still trying to figure this out, though not as prolific as other stackers. Zapping higher than in my first days but perhaps not as much as others.
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I think the main problem is the lack of stackers. Yesterday at midnight European time the leaderboard still didn't have 100 stackers.
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I'm no expert on analytics. That number is the number of registered stackers already on the site? I have no frame of reference. Is that unusually low historically?
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The stackers on the leaderboard are those who came and spent at least one sat on the day. I've noticed that it's getting later and later to reach 100 stackers. This means that fewer and fewer people are taking part. I don't have any data on those who don't take part, so perhaps it's irrelevant.
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That's really interesting. It's not something I ever thought to check.
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Maybe it is because it is summer? People want to be inside instead of on the computer.
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Euro Cup?
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I don't think so, since the vast majority of people here are from the United States. And you know they don't care about soccer. The Copa América is going on there and no one is talking about it. The other day I heard a phrase and maybe it's true. Soccer in the United States is a party for immigrants.
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Not true
Maybe in 1994
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Sure, the phrase is exaggerated, but it's not too far off the mark. Do you have any statistics?
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Yes it is a party for foreigners living in America
But more Americans watch soccer today than 30 years ago
I don’t have viewership numbers
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I've learnt it. I'm sure anyone who takes interest here will learn it.
First of all, It is counterintuitive for new stackers to realize that by giving away their sats through generous tipping, they can earn more here.
Yes, you're right. As you know I've taken a few new Stackers to SN after I found it intriguing. Some are even very new to Bitcoin. I've told them that tipping or zapping here at SN isn't like someone is giving away his sats. Told them about how leaderboards work and everything. However whenever I check stats for those who are very active, I find that they aren't zapping generously. Yes one or two have slowly realised, but still they need to learn.
I also think that the fiat price of Bitcoin has a lot to do with this downfall in zapping and fees.
Meme Monday and Fun Fact Fridays should also return. If not one stacker, top 10 or top 20 Stackers should take this responsibility. I'm ready if something forms up. We need more engagement. It seems more to me that SN is getting less engagement than those 2 months of MSM
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Remember my warnings about this to happen? #509885
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So that's what you meant? I remember the meme.
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I said several times here on SN that after the halving it will be brutal to see how zaps are going on SN. People usually do not want to listen my words or do not pay attention too much 😂
I also said: SN is CHARGING sats to post / to say something. People are getting it in the wrong way as a faucet or something like that... Getting sats should be considered an extra favor, not as an obligation or expected earning.
Be happy that SN doesn't start charging more sats for posts and comments.
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You tend to digress and make your comments about you instead of the topic of interest
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I am planning to create a new territory this week.
Your post has not deterred me because I am staying the course for 2 months maybe 3
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173 sats \ 0 replies \ @398ja 1 Jul
OK, time to increase my default zap amount.
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This thread feels like a Monday morning in office space
TPS reports will be ready at noon
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Am I the guy in front?
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It’s too early to eat cake 🍰
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54 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 2 Jul
Well... A lot of other things have changed too. Territories and those monthly payouts might have played a part.
It could also be that everything has already been discussed.
I still get a lot more engagement on SN than I do on nostr. I quite like the community here with their various fields of expertise.
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119 sats \ 0 replies \ @Catcher 1 Jul
I think the more btc price will go up in fiat terms the less sats you will get as zaps and this is inevitable. It's like creating the SN in 2012 and then wondering why nobody is willing to zap 0.01 BTC anymore these days. I also had a feeling there were much more generous zaps on nostr when btc was below 20k last year. Solution - get used to smaller zaps=) SN also need to reduce the price per territory in BTC terms=)
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First of all, It is counterintuitive for new stackers to realize that by giving away their sats through generous tipping, they can earn more here.
I think it's a feature, not a bug. It might act as a filter. I noticed that blatantly a couple of days after starting using the site, wrote this post about it: Zapping feels like playing Go!
I think the slow down in posting might be due to said filter acting, which is a very specific characteristic of SN that I actually like. SN has become my go-to network, way above twitter, because I feel I will make good use of my time. That attitude in itself is a niche attitude in the social network market, much of which is already taken by reddit.
To me a solid solution to growth is the fourth one posted here, "make every link to SN a referrer link". Simple, elegant, fair, organic.
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What if we default to recent instead of hot?
How often do you scroll to bottom comments?
Recently I started viewing recent instead of hot
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I switch back and forth. Maybe that would make a difference?
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I do the same, but it might be worth switching up the default.
People might get more bang for their buck that way, because they'd be zapping stuff a bit earlier, which might increase the amount being zapped overall.
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117 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 1 Jul
I think it would not be bad to reduce the rates of some territories, to further encourage the interaction of new users who are learning how the SN economy works.
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This was something I have been thinking about, too. Many nights there are posts I dont really want to comment on, because they arent my interest. I remember March Madness had so many posts. I might need to start posting on old articles, just to enjoy my interaction on here. It might be time to move up my zapping to 21 sats lol
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I actually come here for news and discussion. Zaps/sats are secondary and nice :-)
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73 sats \ 1 reply \ @Roll 1 Jul
-i wonder if it did not changed since the fee for a post got higher from 25 sats to 100 sats ?
-100 sats represents 0.0583 euros may be psychologically it is a lot...
-If you spend more than you earn, it s a bit normal that you do not want to zap (especially for newbies, you are not aware of all the guidelance). May be if someone subscribes, it can be helpfull if he receives an email with the main points
-You should add a reminder "by giving sats you earn more" may be in each topic (as a highlight at the begining a topic page)
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99 not 100 Problem solved
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73 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 1 Jul
Yep, I noticed it too, and I too am thoroughly shocked at the price tag some territory owners choose to put on posting on their territory.
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I wasn't here back then, but I think having a stronger referral program would help. Another thing I think would help is connecting through mainstream podcasts. I believe I found out about this through Peter McCormack's podcast. There are a lot of bitcoiners that would join if they knew about it!
A stronger referral program paired with discussions of stacker-news on larger podcasts/conferences/meetups could be a big help.
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Great thoughts. Maybe people needed a break after the monthly madness contests and summer time for many posters?
Thanks for questioning and moving us forward!
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This is exactly my case :) I spent here too much time that should go to kids and myself. And, to be honest, it was not so much worth.
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Yes we all need to find a balance!
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I don't think that I'm eligible to answer this so I'm gonna ask everyone a question!

How can an increase in fees for zapping, commenting and posting be productive for SN? If Stackers aren't zapping generously now, how can a rise in sats make them zap?

I had a look at the analytics and I can say it looked to me like a normal/regular dip. I also considered that in late last year and early this year, there was a big spike.
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It seems to reward those that post often and these stackers are consistently in the top 20 with less quality of the content. Quality and fun content should be rewarded. But posting to just post? Where's the quality when you do this daily?
Quantity = not Quality ^^is SN law
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155 sats \ 27 replies \ @zklsbn 1 Jul
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What does it matter how long you have been here or who you are? We will be happy to read your thoughts.
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339 sats \ 24 replies \ @zklsbn 1 Jul
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @0fje0 1 Jul
The truth here is : people value creators over content.
Isn't the algorithm re-enforcing that?
Like @ek wrote elsewhere:
Reputation increases the chance that someone will even read your content
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You mean you've realized that reputation here is more important than your content?
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I think this is very interesting. I enjoy posting, but I have noticed my post always seem to make me negative. The comments usually have 3x,4x, and 5x the amount the post gets.
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16 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 1 Jul
I see this same phenomenon on reddit. Topic with 30 upvotes, top comments with order of magnitude more upvotes.
I think people open topics in a new tab, engage with comments then forget to upvote the topic itself.
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The difference is that on Reddit you're not giving any monetary value with the upvote's action, which is even worse.
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16 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 1 Jul
Reddit karma is priceless!
It’s a catch 22
You build reputation via quality posts and comments
What am I missing?
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deleted by author
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Reputation increases the chance that someone will even read your content
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I remember seeing your posts and zapping you... And even replying.... I just checked.
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Everyone has their own vision of things, I don't care if you have made a low quality post, if the next one is good and of higher quality I will zap you accordingly, regardless if your other posts were not as good, we are all here to learn...
35 sats \ 1 reply \ @zklsbn 1 Jul
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I trust you
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Actually, your posts to 100x better than mine lol
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Why did people not read and zap running bitcoin content?
I have not seen him or her recently
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Huh? Are you kidding? I think I speak for many in saying we all would welcome your thoughts. Please type away!
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