In “normal” conditions, I write my articles in one go, from the start to have it posted in one session. When I start, I know nothing except a phrase or idea, or sometimes even just a single opening sentence. This requires little effort, mostly because I often surprise myself when I’m editing an article with how much and how long the article turns out to be. Much of the reason for that is because I want to write the article, often even eager to write it.
On the flip side of that, though:
There have been articles or posts in my life that I really did not want to write, but felt I had to write because they responded to an allegation or warned of potentially harmful things. Each of those posts was written, and I wrote them with ease as I knew the cause, purpose, audience, and I was confident about the content itself.
This article though is probably one of the hardest I’ve ever written, and there have been few articles I’ve wanted to write less than I want to write this one.
Any motivating factors like a probable tip from the random rewarder do not apply to this article either, as what I’m about to write hardly invites generosity either
But it is an article I feel I must write. It is rather rare because it lacks a specific threat or action or accusation to respond to. It also will be containing information and opinions and suggestions that contributors rather not see posted on their platform/community.
But the implications of what will be in this article are great and have potentially project-ending impacts on the whole community.
A community that might denounce me after reading it, or be angry with, or something.
Doubt Dammit
I am not even sure if I will end up posting this post publicly because I fear it might contribute to causing the very thing it is intended to prevent through awareness of other causes.
Yeah, reading that back myself, I agree I’m probably not making the most sense I have ever made right now.
ALRIGHTY THEN!
But screw it, I am emotionally invested in this platform (read.cash) and with its related coin, so I feel that writing this article is a little like my civil duty or something.
Is Read.Cash slowly slipping into a coma and bleeding out?
Yeah. That’s a rather scary, shocking, and painful question, isn’t it? If you care for read.cash in any way it should be. If you know me, on top of that it’s even more frightening because anyone who does knows I don’t use questions like these to generate shock value hoping to attract clicks, views, or subs.
If I ask such a question, I do so because the question needs to be asked and should probably have been asked a while sooner.
I also did not put that question in the Title either to prevent the possible perception of me wanting to influence any algorithms.
But to emphasize my serious concern, I wil ask it again; Is read.cash slipping into a coma and bleeding to death?
I ask this because on this site you’ll find very few if any posts expressing criticism or pessimism about read.cash. Doubting the future success of read.cash is almost tantamount to criticism of Bitcoin Cash and an attack upon the wonderful life changing things it has done for so many of the contributers to this site’s content.
But the question needs to be asked and I am afraid that if nothing is done to ”stop the bleeding” the site will slip into a coma it will not survive. You see, I think the answer is even more scary and likely to incite antagonistic reflexes towards the article itself, and its author, me.
WHAT'S GOING ON THEN?
Well because I noticed that a growing majority of my articles accumulated a declining amount of tips despite a growing number of views, a stable level of quality, and quantity of content (more words, longer read time estimation, I began scrolling through the statistics that read.cash keeps and posts for everybody to use.
I thought maybe there was something that changed in the conditions for tipping or something. But I found key metrics that indicate decline which must be reversed and probably quickly before its too late.
One major concern is the metrics for active users. The number of Daily, Weekly and Monthly active users is declining. The decline has been there since January, but is accelerating since May:
The number of new users per day also shows a declining trend, with smaller rebounds and shorter periods of recovery.
Here may be a contributing factor to these to be found in the newcomers funded daily metric, which is also declining
The metric that the stats page shows first though is the total number of users, which is steadily rising at the same rate since October 2020. As it is the first metric shown, and therefore could be assumed to be the most important one, many might see it, assume all is going great and then return to posting/reading or whatevering it is they do on read.cash. Thereby missing the three metrics I mentioned above.
There are other metrics that could be taken to show positive trends, which also could elicit a false sense of optimism, but mainly concern the more active users that have been on read.cash for a while already. Also camouflaging the implications for the site’s future for those who even take the time and effort to even look at the statistics at all.
But realistically, the New Users per day and the active users metrics are the two most important metrics for maintaining the site’s viability and possible growth of the site. It should be considered in relation to the articles per day metric and if we do then we must conclude that the number of articles that get posted by users that have been on read.cash for a while is getting higher.
The number of articles posted has remained almost stable since January, while the number active users has declined. The number of comments has also gone up meaning that the number of active users who actually post articles as activity is even less., as the number of comments portion of those active users is growing.
The way I read these statistics a smaller portion of the users write a growing number of the articles, the number of new users that are/stay active is getting lower. While the total tips given user to user is growing steadily the tips given to new users is dropping.
I also read from it that a smaller number of users are getting larger part of the tips and in my interpretation that leads to more users less motivated to create and contribute due to receiving less for the work they do post and seeing other posts get more.
Now I suck at statistics, and I’m even worse at mathematics. I'm also not good at coming up with solutions to improve the metrics that I do understand. I’m also not saying “WE ARE DOOMED!” and go running down the streets in panic in my underwear.
I am saying that the site’s admin/operator might want to take a good hard look at the metrics and the trends and consider what they mean. I’m also saying that people in our community who DO have skills in statistics, analysis and mathematics look through the stats and graphs to see what is happening, what they can predict by correlating them and maybe think of ways to improve them.
And if this post turns out to miss the mark completely and get everything wrong that can be taken wrongly, then comment below and tell me so. Don’t worry about my feelings because if there is one instance in which I would be overjoyed and elated to learn I was wrong and stupid then believe me, this is it.
I am someone that has a few hours on some days in the week to write and post. I am unable to post 10 times per day on noise.cash and honestly read.cash is the only platform with which writing and posting content with the frequency I am able to write and post at is worth the time and effort to write and post. I’d hate to see it go down because an ever-shrinking number of users get an ever-growing part of the rewards while an ever growing number of users gets an ever shrinking part of the rewards, leaving an ever-shrinking number of new users with even less reason to give read.cash the try it deserves.
So please, can statisticians, mathematicians and analysis experts look into this?????
Thank you for reading!
Stay safe and stay happy!
