210 sats \ 11 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Jul \ on: SN Zapping and Posting Fees meta
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.
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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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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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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